![From today’s Liverpool-Manchester United FA Cup clash. This Liverpool supporter in the white sweater jacket allegedly made this “gesture” at Patrice Evra of Manchester United, who was famously involved in an on-pitch racism dust-up with Luis Suarez of Liverpool.
I would suspect you’ll be hearing more about this as this week goes on. Liverpool were victorious in the match, 2-1.
[picture courtesy of about a million people on Twitter]](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/theworldsgame/16637928130/1/tumblr_lyin1r0N4U1qc88ar)
From today’s Liverpool-Manchester United FA Cup clash. This Liverpool supporter in the white sweater jacket allegedly made this “gesture” at Patrice Evra of Manchester United, who was famously involved in an on-pitch racism dust-up with Luis Suarez of Liverpool.
I would suspect you’ll be hearing more about this as this week goes on. Liverpool were victorious in the match, 2-1.
[picture courtesy of about a million people on Twitter]
From the New York Times, suggestions that the Scottish government is taking a much firmer hand in sectarian-related chants and violence surrounding the game:
Under the new legislation, people convicted of soccer-related sectarian behavior would face unlimited fines and as many as five years in prison. The law covers not only what happens in stadiums, but also behavior in pubs, encounters before and after games and Internet postings.
The already ubiquitous police will be given an extra 1.8 million pounds to form a “football intelligence unit,” the government said. Its officers will patrol stadiums carrying cameras and recording devices, keeping the peace and gathering evidence for later use.
“Clearly, you can’t go and arrest a large group of fans if they start singing a song in a football ground, as it could lead to mass disorder,” said the government spokesman, who asked that his name not be used, in keeping with government policy. But the police would be “targeting ringleaders and others involved in this behavior — then arresting them afterwards,” he said.
What this means for fans, steeped in the verbal rough-and-tumble that is an integral part of Scottish soccer, is murky.
The first episode of the Pitch Invasion podcast was released yesterday, with PI founder Tom Dunmore and former Chicago Fire president Peter Wilt interviewing Jesse Marsch on how he is forming an MLS team from scratch in Montreal, and discussing UK/US fan culture with Dave Boyle, formerly head of Supporters Direct in England.
Stream it here, download the mp3 or subscribe on iTunes.
What do you think of the first episode?
Just an FYI for our followers!
Shunsuke Nakamura, a former Glasgow Celtic FC legend, bends a free kick through a moving bus.
onefootinthegrave asked: can you guys explain a little bit of how promotion/relegation works? Like I know Blackpool got relegated last year, but are they doing well in the lower league this year because they have better facilities/a larger payroll from being in the top league previously?
Promotion and relegation is pretty simple at the base, X amount of teams move down a league, while X number of teams move up. In England, the top two teams in the championship move up and then the 3rd-6th place teams play in a playoff to determine the 3rd team that moves up. Other countries have different ways of doing promotion and relegation, but they pretty much follow the basic pattern. It is theoretically possible for an English team to move up or down a total of 24 different leagues. This is not very likely over a short period of time as there is hardly any money at all beyond the Conference National.
As far as Blackpool’s situation specifically, they are currently in 9th place in the Championship, but just 3 points outside of the promotion playoffs with a lot of matches still to play.
They actually don’t have much better facilities than most teams in the Championship. Bloomfield Road is actually the 4th smallest stadium in the league this season. I couldn’t find anything saying how many seats a premier league club needed, but I did find this, which has some info on stadium rules.
Since Blackpool was an unlikely candidate for promotion two years ago (they’ve been a mid level championship club for a while), and was seen as highly likely to get relegated (as they did) they were rather cautious with regards to going out and spending a lot of money last season. So their payroll really isn’t too high this season. (They also sold Charlie Adam which put some cash in their pockets).
Typically when small teams like Blackpool get promoted and then relegated they’ll stick around the mid level of the Championship for a few years, build their squad back up after their team has had all it’s good players/coaches stolen by better teams and then hopefully jump back up for a year or two.
Got a question for us? No matter how silly you think it is, we’ll be happy to answer it for you and hopefully teach you more about our favorite sport.
Infographic - Diversity in the Premier League
It’s difficult to “rank” diversity per se, but that’s exactly what was attempted in Visual News’ infographic. Race and ethnicity has been far too prevalent an issue this season in the Premier League for anyone’s liking, but it’s something that cannot be ignored. Honestly, nothing can be justifiably deduced from noticing that one club has players from 11 nationalities and another club has players from 6 nationalities, but regardless it’s interesting to take a look and compare.
The Maestro: Johnny Haynes — Fulham’s greatest ever player. Pelé was once quoted as calling Haynes the “best passer of the ball I’ve ever seen”. This photograph was taken at Craven Cottage, home of Fulham Football Club (FFC) since the 19th Century, established 1879. My old man took me to the Cottage in the late Eighties, when I were a little one. Since then, I have seen us climb through the divisions to the Premier League, and from there to a European final. A proud FFC fan through and through, I will post more details on this photograph when I have them.
(via footballarchive)
Barcelona players on vintage cigarette cards. Cool idea, excellent selection of expressions.
In 1871 the American company of Allen and Ginter began inserting pieces of card to protect the cigarettes from being damaged. It was not long before tobacco companies had the idea of printing advertisements on these cards, or “stiffeners” as they were called in the trade. In about 1876 companies began producing a series of cards that the smoker could collect. It was believed that this would encourage the smoker to continue using that particular brand.
The tobacco companies discovered that these sporting cards were a great way to obtain brand loyalty. In 1896 the first football set appeared. Footballers & Club Colours was published by Marcus & Company, a small firm in Manchester. These cards are extremely rare and individual cards are valued at £170. This is true of all the early football sets that were issued at this time: Footballers & Club Colours (Kinner, 1898); Footballers (J. F. Bell, 1902); Footballers (F. J. Smith, 1902) and Footballers (Percy E. Cadle, 1904). The cost of individual cards of these sets vary from £40 to £160.
In 1902 W.D. & H.O. Wills published a set of 66 football cards. This included George Clawley (Tottenham Hotspur), Matt Kingsley (Newcastle United), George Hedley (Sheffield United), Jimmy Crabtree (Aston Villa),Ernest Needham (Sheffield United) and Fred Spiksley (Sheffield Wednesday). Interestingly, most of the players were photographed in suits.
For the 2011-2012 La-Liga Season, Diver & Aguilar have recreated these vintage style cards with the first team squad of FC Barcelona,including Lionel Messi, who for the third year running has been voted World Player of the year & Pique,Xavi,Ineista and Puyol European and World Cup & Club Champions of Spain.via: Diver’s & Aguilar
I WANT THESE and I don’t even care for Barcelona.
Xavi looks hungover and Pique is looking at the camera like it caught him doing something bad.
Yes, the headline beneath is correct. He stopped at a school to use the restroom, walked around the school’s campus, and talked to students and teachers. SHINE ON, YOU CRAZY DIAMOND.
(via Manchester City’s Mario Balotelli visits local college to use toilet | Football | guardian.co.uk)
Hannover’s players have been asked to disclose their sexual interests as part of a survey designed to help their coach understand them better.
The psychological test, to be undertaken on a voluntary basis by the Bundesliga club’s squad, includes statements such as: “I am what you could call sexually unrestrained”; “I want any sex I can get” or “I have a lot of erotic fantasies”, which players can evaluate on a scale of -3 to +3.
The club’s coach, Mirko Slomka, said he had already completed the 128 questions, and the players were free to see his responses if they wanted.
And the moment Arsenal had been waiting for came with 12 minutes left as Henry gathered Song’s pass in his stride before sparking scenes of ecstasy on and off the pitch with a perfect angled finish.
Sigh.
One point above the drop zone, Queens Park Rangers sacked the manager who’d saved them from League One and had them head and shoulders above the rest of the Championship last season, Neil Warnock.
Warnock has as many detractors as supporters — many of them either from his days at Selhurst Park or who remember his kvetching spell against Liverpool over fielding a weakened side against Fulham when he was relegated as gaffer at Sheffiield United — and you can tell if you see any reference to a “Colin Wanker” (an anagram of his name.)
Warnock’s sacking is worth note to me in the sense that QPR’s poor form has largely confirmed my own pre-season suspicions they’d be the only one of the promoted sides to be sent back down. Now, there’s still plenty of season to go, but Warnock isn’t a tactics man, while Norwich’s Paul Lambert and Swansea’s Brendan Rodgers very much are. Sunderland’s sacking of Steve Bruce was a harbinger: if your primary attribute as a manager is as a motivator, you are not going to have very much rope to work with in the Premiership (unless you are Harry Redknapp and can identify and afford coaches to handle that for you; you could probably say the same about Kenny Dalglish and be justified.) Sacking rumors surrounded Warnock since QPR’s promotion with this rationale in mind.
Two entertaining notes to end this: the first is that Warnock has a “Disputes” section of his Wikipedia page, which is fabulous reading. The second is that Mark Hughes — the one who declared the other small club in West London too small for him when he thought Aston Villa would come calling — is apparently a shoo-in as Warnock’s successor. I can’t imagine Hughes would find Loftus Road any less cramped for his ambition/self-delusion than Craven Cottage.
Messi. Ten years old. Already Messi.
well, fuck.
A new rendering of Rostov-on-Don’s proposed 2018 World Cup stadium, via our sister site now on Tumblr, Stadium Porn - give them a follow!
