Estimat Frank

I don't know where to start, I don't know where to end. I always had faith in you, I always believed in you, I always thought that you will cut it in the end and all of the stuff said about you, regarding tactical inflexibility and whatever else was just rubbish.
I knew and expected you to be better, the best possible coach this team can have and your level of tactical knowledge good enough.
So please tell me, how could you blow it that bad last night?
Ok, you gambled on Ronaldinho's pride. Well, the guy has no pride, but either way, you gambled. But why didn't you take him off once you should have realized that he is not working?
Henry was not fully fit, fair enough, you didn't play him. But why didn't you bring in Gudjohnsen as an example to help out Eto'o in attack, to hold the ball for him, to play in his path, to do something apart of letting him die upfront alone against Cannavarro and Pepe? Why didn't you react to the fact that Yaya, who btw. was one of few players outstanding and playing like a man, being pressured by Van Nistelrooy and Robinho, to the man-to-man defense of Baptista against Xavi or anything else?
Why didn't you try to solve the problems but instead of that brought in Giovani, who wasn't the cure of the problem?
Why Frank? What did you try to prove with playing Ronaldinho for 90 minutes against Ramos, knowing that he is lost? Why didn't you tell him to switch sides with Iniesta, to move at all, to do something, anything? Why didn't you react??
You let me down, you let us down, you went from Frank White to Frank Elsner.
If you have enough and want to retire then do it, but you don't need to blow a game like that, because in the end, you took the decisions of that game and you blew it, as sorry as I am to say it.
I'm not over this defeat and I won't be for some time. Yesterday you officially declared that an era was over.

S'acaba una era

London Calling for Ronaldinho

And I heard that he likes theatre..



btw. doesn't he look like Scarface?

For thousand reasons

For Messi
For Last Season
For Eto'o
For Milito
For the two chulos Schuster and Mijatovic
For Getafe
For Cannavarro
For Henry
For Ronaldinho
For Antena 3
For Tomas Roncero
For Rijkaard
For Barca
For the people who pay your wages
For the fans
For Jose Maria Aznar
For Marca
For Fabian Ortiz
For that Rabbit
For the end of the cycle
For history
For your pride
For the shame of last season
For Txiki
For Manuel Vazquez Montalban
For Sant Jordi
For everything said about you since last year
For Partido Popular
For the fascists
For Zapatero
For the record
For Me and all other socis
For Rashid
For 1000 more reasons...

The Dutch Frank White

I talked before about Rijkaard's role and compared to movie characters. I guess he has found his role now, he is Frank White.


He is a good and nice gangster, with warm heart, but he's still a gangster.



I'm extremely bad in photoshopping btw. but I'm good in knowing Biggie lyrics by heart. If anyone could do this one with Rijkaard and Eto'o's face on it, he or she will have a special place in my heart.



I grew up a fuckin screw-up
Got introduced to the game, got a ounce and fuckin blew up
Choppin rocks overnight
The nigga Biggie Smalls tryin to turn into the black Frank White
We had to grow dreads to change our description
Two cops is on the milk box missin
Show they toes you know they got stepped on
A fist full of bullets a chest full of Teflon
Run from the police picture that, nigga I'm too fat
I fuck around and catch a asthma attack (*heavy breathing*)
That's why I bust back, it don't phase me
When he drop, take his glock, and I'm Swayze
Celebrate my escape, sold the glock, bought some weight
Laid back, I got some money to make

Barely Breaking Even

There was a discount offer at BBE and although I could use my santa money for something else, I somehow had the urge to spend the money on some records I always wanted to buy but never did.
The offer was 50% off on everything. In the end, I ordered 4 CDs I might have been able to download too, but I felt like supporting good music, so I did.
Somehow, I have little problems downloading music from majors, but even then, if the album was good, I still go and support it.(I realise that I talked about this in some post before, but either way..)
But I can't do anything else but support BBE. BBE is a label run by Pete Adarkwah, who is also an Arsenal fan, like all decent people in London. It's run by music fans and it gives the people working with them an incredible amount of freedom. When a record is released on BBE, you really feel that these guys are real fans of music and they released an album they would buy and listen to themselves.
They also had a pretty big 11th anniversary party, where DJ Premier and Marley Marl were on the decks. I personally would have broken an ankle to be there, but couldn't make it by any means to London.(Jazzy Jeff was at their 10th anniversary...that's leg and ankle)
Either way, I personally believe that music needs more labels and people like Pete, BBE, ABB, Saddle Creek, Ed Banger and whatever else. These people really try to change music and the way the industry is going. If you like music, support is a must for these people.

Obregado Jose!

Dear Jose,

You probably won't read this, as I hardly doubt that you read blogs. 2 years ago, when you passed me by with your iPod in ears, I didn't ask for a picture with you or an autograph, although you were willing to give one to anyone. Somehow, unfortunately, I had a bad picture of you in mind as a guy too soft in duels and tackles, who loses the ball too often and whose work Motta and Marquez could do better too. Then this season Yaya came and I saw my ideal 6 for Barca and kissed you goodbye. I forgot and didn't care anymore about your Milan games, about the fact that both Xavi and Deco played better with you behind them and about everything else you did without people noticing it. I never took you serious.
Then you had this interview, where you just told the truth and when a mild mannered guy like you says "Honestly, I have enough", then it means a lot.
Now you are not saluted really in the public but people say that you did something wrong. But what did you do wrong? Stating the obvious? Telling some people to wake up? Codigo intern and other bullshit? Screw it!
For what you did, you showed that you are a real leader and you don't have to say sorry for anything. You didn't sugarcoat it, you just said it as it is.
I have to say sorry for being an idiot and not knowing your true worth.

Obregado Jose for daring to say it and not talking bullshit like everyone else.

Rijkaard

These are the most difficult days for Rijkaard since the first year, where he was about to get fired, but the acquisition of Davids and the later run saved him.
Back then it looked as if he was not capable of starting an era, now it looks as if his era has come to an end. In between, there was always the same criticism and stuff said about him: that he is tactically not good, he is not good enough as a coach for Barca, that he has luck having these players...etc.
To me it's still incredible that a guy who has been the most succesful Barcelona coach after Johann Cruijff is not getting the credit and praise he rightfully deserves. He had a good team? Robson had an even better team, Van Gaal spent much more money on players and had a team just as good and not to mention all the coaches before and after, who didn't have a bit of his success, like Menotti having the luxury to have two of the history's best midfields in Schuster and Maradona etc.
It's also interesting that one of the best defensive midfields in football history, a guy who was the brain of the great Milan side, who as a player could read the game like few others could, is called tactically unaware. How does that work?
Or maybe it was Henk Ten Caate, the guy who was an absolute ace as an assistant, but so far has failed everywhere as a coach? Alright, a coach is dependent on his assistants reporting, helping him out with the right line-up etc. So what's the news?? Or do they think that as an example Jose came up with everything on his own?
The problem of Frank lies deeper and that's with his character and the character of his team. Frank believes in the intelligence of his pupils and the fact that all of them are professional and mature enough to give everything for their common goal, their employer, the club that pays them the mansion, cars and everything else. He somehow believes that he is just a coach who has to make decisions and tell what way the club has to go, and doesn't believe that he has to play daddy to mid-20 guys. He believes that the guys are grown up and should come up with a solution to their mental problems on their own, because that's how it works in real life. Which worker simply stops working because he had beef with his wife at home or who would skip work after going clubbing the night before? Frank has to deal with too many kids, and the grown up and more mature kids, the kids who always want to be first and win no matter what, they have either too little influence on the squad or are out injured right now. If you like it, Frank is like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, or De Niro in Sleepers, while right now he needs to be like De Niro in Godfather or Goodfellas. He needs to be Vito or Michael, or well, he has to be Michael.

To explain this, Michael is just overprotective and wants to have everything under control. He doesn't go easy, he is sort of brilliant and he knows it, he didn't want to be in this game probably, definetly not that long, so he has a professional distance to it, and if he has to make difficult decisions, like kill his brother, he does it. Managers that are very much like Michael are Sir Alex and Jose Mourinho. Look through Sir Alex career on his relationship with big players and he handled them once they got too much. He simply waved them goodbye! Could anyone imagine Frank handling let's say Paul Ince, Beckham or Van Nistelrooy like that? Or would Frank ever sub Ronaldinho or Messi out after 18 minutes, because he didn't like what they played, like Jose did? He wouldn't. He also can't as he simply is not like that. He respects and treats players like grown-ups, unlike other managers. That's why I personally believe that as an example Van Basten would be an ace as club manager, because he has that Michael character. When a player doesn't perform, he doesn't call him up and he also doesn't care about the media.
The other view of success is the utter pragmatism and rationality shown by Wenger. Wenger, unlike Mourinho or Ferguson, is not Michael, but he is at least Tom Hagen, the guy who runs the business like no other. He does everything in a subtle way. He would never sub a player out after 18 minutes, but he would bench him the next 20 games and sell him in summer. He, like Rijkaard, treats players with respect and as mature beings, but unlike Rijkaard, he has full control over the club and can do whatever he likes, and he doesn't have a press like Rijkaard has in Barcelona.
So as an example, if Wenger decides to give time to a player like Da Silva or Adebayor to settle in, or decides to do this or that with training and medical board, he has the full authority, and nobody really comments, which is not the case with Rijkaard.
So overall, I see the problem with him in his character rather than in his footballing intelligence or work and his character might just eventually leave to Barca losing to Espanyol and him retiring on his own then or him retiring at the end of this season without the success this talented team was supposed to have, without winning the titles they could have. It's simply impossible to be Robin Williams one day and Al Pacino the other, Oh Captain my Captain in the morning, and Michael at night. He might just try to be Father Bobby one day and the young Vito Corleone the other day, but that's about it.
I still hope for a miracle,me being wrong and that a change happens, the squad realizes what they have with Frank before it's too late. Maybe someone should play them some Joni Mitchell or Got til it's gone from Janet, so that they realize that they don't know what they got til it's gone and how much their life will be more difficult with Van Basten or Mou in charge and that Frank is the best thing that could have happened to them, but, I somehow have stopped to believe in the intelligence of some players and with Eto'o and Deco injured for the upcoming crucial games, I don't see the turnaround coming.

Additional read: One of the best(if not the best) interviews with Frank I have ever read courtesy of artversussport

Anonymous Dejagah

I have a hard time with internet and the whole anonymity issue. I quite understand it when someone in a difficult position tries to reveal information on the internet but remains anonymous, like this whole Wonkette blog and political blogs and whatever else. I also understand it to a degree in forums.
The problem I have is when it comes to character assasination and when people simply go on to discredit a person, with their anonymity. Somehow, through being anonymous, you can't address and target them, but they are just anonymous figures, hiding behind their name and in my opinion pretty low figures. If you call out a person by name and claim that he did this and that or accuse him of something, at least be man enough to tell us who you are, because you obviously also know who that person is. There have been a lot of cases on this issue I came across and although it has always somehow been an issue to me, I never really cared, but now I do.

On another issue, Dejagah scored again for Wolfsburg. I still don't believe that he will ever play more than 15 national team games for Germany, but I feel okay about him choosing Germany and although I think he is a real stupid guy, I felt it was absolutely ridiculous how the German public treated his case. Everybody sort of knows, that you get into trouble when you are Iranian and travel to Israel. Now a lot of Iranians do it with a different passport, but when you play an international game there, how can you remain anonymous?
Something else that strikes me and makes me go "hmmm" on Iranian football is how Dejagah was treated by Iran, Iranian players and IFF. Some friends of mine got to know him when he was a kid and played for Hertha Berlin on youth level. They said that his eyes glowed when they asked him about playing for Iran. He said that he only wanted to play for Iran and no other country. That was when he was about 15 or something. However, Iran never invited him to anything.
Worse still, Daei, who back then also played for Hertha, said something like "We have enough of these talents in Iran. We don't need them!". Nevermind that I really hate Daei for a lot of things, but the guy is seriously saying that a guy who is considered one of the biggest talents in Germany, a nation of 3 world cups, 80 Million people, and 100 world class players, would be nothing special in Iran of....nevermind?!?
This is what's wrong with Iranian football and I don't see it getting better. When Messi joined Argentina's national team, people like Zanetti, Milito, Ayala, Sorin, etc. always had an eye on him. At Barcelona, Sylvinho, Deco and Edmilson treated him like their young nephew, Xavi and Puyol did the same for Iniesta and Eto'o, Messi and Henry do it for Bojan Krkic. They protect the guy, help him grow into the team, respect him and take him serious, because he has to learn it one day too.
And then we have Daei, Karimi and the rest....

Fir Sorman Noster

We have a winner. Sir Norman Foster is set to remodel Camp Nou and he won it against some prestigous competitors, although non of them has really his name and reputation and I guess the New Wembley really did his thing for him.
I have to see the model first to really judge, but I personally am not the greatest fan of him, or let's say, I see it as a huge name thing of prestige. First of all, it will cost a lot, second it will not be some avantgarde thing, third you know when two big names collide, it hardly ever results in something great.
But eitherway, I'm interested to see the result, which I hopefully should this weekend in Barcelona.

I can't stand the rain

It's raining now for around 2-3 days in a row. Incredible. I haven't seen anything like that before. It hasn't really stopped to rain and it keeps on and on. The weather is really flipping.
Too bad there's national team week right now, otherwise I would have probably booked my flight earlier, as in Barcelona and Madrid, there are 27 degrees and sunshine and here we got 9 degrees and rain....and rain and rain..

The new Keith Murray album is great btw.

Time will tell

I have more time now, also to update this thing here. My work contract is over, so I'm a full student again. I will go to Barcelona in end of September for the Sevilla game and the 50 year Camp Nou anniversary. However, I'm quite saddened, as I won't see Eto'o. His injury comes at a very very bad time, as in one way or other I'm pretty sure, that Rijkaard wanted to try the front 3 of Henry-Eto'o-Messi, because Henry-Eto'o is just perfect and Messi is just Messi. However, Eto'o is now out of football for around 3 months and once he comes back, he will probably have to play African Cup of Nations. I personally strongly believe that this season will be Ronaldinho's last at the club. I don't see him play for another year, so it would have been even more important for a healthy Eto'o to lead the way. Specially, as so far his partnership with Henry had looked pretty fine and now he will probably miss out again of El Clasico.
Regarding Ronaldinho, the friends from Futbolitis have written an excellent analysis on him, which unfortunatley the most Ronaldinho posterboys won't understand and they will come up with his 21 goals of last season. However, Ronaldinho as a football player right now to me is finished and I wouldn't mind uncle Silvio's suitcase of money. He might prove me wrong, you might come back at me, but as it is right now, Ronaldinho is just useless and my last hope for a semi-decent season is Henry, whom I really respect both as a player and professional.
With regards to the team, I had a look at our team again and I would say that we would need 1 more right or leftback and a winger would have been a good idea too. Dos Santos might fill the role, but I'm not so sure.
Eitherway, the game against Athletic should be interesting.

Anims Samu!

Would they ever dress like that?

What the hell are they thinking?? White pants, black shirt...all of them?

Could anyone imagine Franklin, Eusebio and Johan dress like that??

Btw. 5-3 Sevilla, Forca Juande!!!!

If I should get married one day...

Every time I go to a wedding ceremony, I think about...should that day come..how should it be?

Generally, I believe that you either get married right, with a big party and you have everyone in you know and like, or you don't mind at all and don't get married. Getting married with just 10 people around you...somehow, it's not fun. So if you get married, get married right.

I would ban everyone from holding a speech, specially if they would come up with a poem by Molana, Hafez, Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, Verlaine, whatever. Honestly, either make it personal and say your own words and feelings or nevermind at all.
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't like anyone to talk.
The wedding ceremony should be short. The party however, should be even longer and again, no TALKING. I will just let the music play and make sure everyone has something to eat. I want to celebrate, not bore people.

And, if I get married, I either want DJ Jazzy Jeff, the greatest DJ on earth, or my man Cay Taylan, the next-best choice.

Hommage to Jeremy Clarkson

I have never been a person who bought car magazines or really read through car reviews. Generally here in the German speaking world, both of them are pretty dull and boring and most reporters try to get past it like as if it's writing a user's manual. It's a real shame to read the reviews and articles, it's an even bigger shame that those people call themselves journalists.
That's why Jeremy Clarkson is such a breathe of fresh air. At work, I've gone through most of his reviews by now and they are simply..amazing. He not only gives his articles soul, but also the cars. He doesn't take the political incorrectness too far, his articles are full of wit and he is in full control of both language and knowledge on his field.
Take this as an example from his review on the Lexus GS:

Cars sit in the Japanese psyche along with spoons and mashed potato. They don’t come naturally. Oh sure, they can copy a Mercedes and use it to earn vast lumps of foreign currency, but how do you copy flair and panache and feel? The simple answer is: you can’t, so you end up with a completely soulless driving experience.

It’s a bit like those vegetarians who insist on eating hamburgers that are designed to look, feel and taste like the real thing. But they’re just not.

Technically, this new Lexus is probably better than a Mercedes, in the same way that a golden egg made by laser is going to be technically better than one of Karl Fabergé’s originals. But which one would you rather have?

About the Jetta:
t my old school, detention usually involved being asked to write a 1,000-word essay about the inside of a ping pong ball. So I’m well qualified to write about the new Volkswagen Jetta. Because I spent every Saturday afternoon for five years writing about the precise chemical breakdown of air, it’s a breeze to fill these pages with prose about what is unquestionably the most boring car in the whole of human history.

His review on the M3 CS starts with a brilliant rant about car clubs:

Many thousands of years ago, I was a member of the Ford Cortina 1600E Owners Club (South Yorkshire branch). We’d meet once a month, in a car park, and would mooch about in the rain looking at one another’s cars. Looking back on the experience, I really can’t see why this should have had any appeal at all. I mean, yes, my car had a picture of Debbie Harry in the centre of the steering wheel, but other than that it was pretty much the same as everyone else’s car.

Perhaps we thought that because we all had the same type of car we had a common bond, a platform on which lasting friendships could be built. But they were all miners. And when they lost their jobs a few years later they had to burn their cars to stay warm. So the bond was gone.

Today I loathe, with a furious passion, all car clubs. The notion that you’re going to get on with someone because he also has a Mini is preposterous. Clubs are for people who can’t get friends in the conventional way. They’re for bores and murderers.

The Ferrari Owners’ Club is particularly depressing because they all have carpet warehouses in Dewsbury and creaking £10,000 rust buckets from the Seventies and Eighties.

Most turn up at events in Ferrari hats, Ferrari shirts, Ferrari racing booties and Ferrari aftershave and you can’t help thinking: “For heaven’s sake, man. You’ve spent more on your apparel then you have on your damn Mondial.”

Anyone with the wherewithal to buy a proper, important Ferrari from the past 60 years is going to have better things to do with his time than drive to some windswept motor racing circuit no one has ever heard of and spend the day watching a bunch of Dewsburyites going off the road backwards in their botched and bodged 308s.

Mind you, I’d rather swap saliva with someone from the Ferrari Owners’ Club than go within 50,000 miles of someone who turns up to Aston Martin events. Because there are no cheap Astons in the classifieds — well, none that will actually get you to an owners’ club meeting, or even to the end of your road — the members are a lot more well-to-do than their oppos with Ferraris. There are few regional accents, and lots of green ink.

All of them are stuck in the 1950s when for a few glorious years Aston Martin did manage to win a couple of not-very-important racing events. And all of them, you know, were attracted to the brand not because Aston made the best cars — it really, really didn’t. But because they were made by British people and not “darkies”.

The worst thing about an Aston Martin Owners Club member, however, is not his politics, or his still burning flame of hatred for Harold Wilson. It isn’t even his shoes, or his trousers. No. It’s the way he refers to all previous Astons by their chassis numbers. And to the people who raced them by their nicknames.

“Do you remember when Pinky and Lofty drove xvr/ii-2? Course that was before bloody Wilson.” Sometimes, when they talk to me. I find myself wondering what they’d look like without a spine.

You can read the reviews here and frankly, there's nothing better to read during 5 minute breaks than these small pieces of brilliance.

Une Stage

I'm doing an internship at a big Austrian bank in August. The work is pretty...how can I say it best? I could imagine that if I had to do this work for more than 3 years, I migh eventually end up jumping down from a bridge or something. Maybe as an example investment banking is much more fun than what I have to do, but knowing a few investment bankers, I really doubt it.
I'm quite mad at myself that I always was lazy and didn't work much better at university, because life in academics still seems to be the best option.
I have finally bought the Evidence album. I had it on MP3 before, but I always support good music and good albums, so I finally bought it. So far it's my album of the year, although supposedly Finding Forever gives him a run for the money.
Elton John says the Internet should be shut down in order for music to become creative again or whatever. I say that if people would make good music, people will eventually buy the album too(although, I still haven't bought the excellent Fishscale by Ghostface)

Pretemporada against Dundee

First game of the preseason and it really felt nice to see them play again. The result of the game is meaningless, as we were just in the first week of training and Dundee are at the end of their preparation and will start into the league next week. Therefore, win, draw, defeat, whatever, would have been meaningless.
Overall, I really really really enjoyed Touré, who despite it being his first game ever for Barca, tried to take responsibility, was always available for getting the ball, asked for it and overall, had a promising debut. He might need time to adapt to the tempo and again, that game is absolutely meaningless, but still, it was a promising start. I just hope that he gets another number, as I stronly believe in the curse of the 17(previous players carrying the 17 include Petit, Bogarde, Christanval if I'm not wrong and Van Bommel). Abidal had a solid debut in defense, but offensively, he pretty much showed that his crossing and everything is really weak. But he is a good worker, and sometimes, your team simply needs people working over people playing.
Eto'o in the first half was great, and I would have liked to see him in the second half with Henry, however, what I saw of Bojane and Giovani was pretty nice too.
Overall, the new signings seem to really make sense and that was pretty important after last season.

Corinthians break off partnership with MSI

Corinthians is one of the most wonderful clubs in the world. Apart of having a great list of celebrity supporters(Lula, the late Ayrton Senna just to mention two), the club also were responsible for one of the most important democracy movements in football, the Corinthians Democracy, that in some way or other had a role in the democracy movement of Brazil in the 80ies.Also, they are the team of the working class in Sao Paulo, unlike FC Sao Paulo and Santos, and had no racial seperation policy like Palmeiras had.
So all in all, for Corinthians you could argue the "more than a club" status.
However, in the past years, they had signed a deal with the devil, namely MSI, a pretty shady company led by Iranian Kia Joorabchian, who probably made his fortunes through money laundry for Russian oligarchs.
So it was pretty difficult in the past years to have sympathy with Corinthians.

But thank God, the deal is over, and despite the struggle in the league, they will hopefully survive.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

I guess a translation is not needed

Le Week-End de Merde

I don't wanna talk about Iran's defeat. Utter disaster, utterly disgusted, utterly..god damn.
There are too many other issues. My urologe, 34 years of age, suffered from some high blood pressure thing and is now in ICU at AKH. If he gets lucky, he will be half sided disabled, otherwise he will die. You really don't know what's worse. Being half-sided disabled or to die at 34.
Another personal disaster, not as bad as that, but still, was that I had moved all my pictures, music files and videos on an external hard disk I had bought. All of a sudden though, I couldn't read that external disk anymore and everything was gone.
Now, it wasn't such a problem with my music, as I have them all on my iPod and can transfer them. But the real tragedy was with my pictures. It was a collection of around 4 years of photos, 4 years of memories, 4 years of my life in pictures, all gone.
Somehow I managed to get a recovery programme for free on cnet.com and I could recover almost 90% of my pictures, although mostly a bit corrupted, but anyway, it's better than nothing.
The 4 years included pictures of my grandfather who died in February and lots of other beautiful memories. Everything was gone in around 30 seconds.
I researched a bit and realised that that External Hard Disk I had bought was simply rubbish, as lots of other people had the same problems. It's a Maxtor Personal Storage something, but produced by Seagate, who are actually good when it comes to hard disks. But this one was simply utter rubbish as I can't access the hard disk anymore and all my files seem to be gone.

What has life come to, that so many dear things are gone by a split second, be it human life, things defining human life, or anything else that makes life beautiful?
Modern Life is Rubbish...

Math Bus

I don't know how many people know about the Bang Bus(I won't link it, just google it) but you better know about the Math Bus.

The Law of Zanetti

If there's one absolute law, rule, theorem, whatever in football, it's the following:

Pupi's law: Javier Zanetti can not play a bad game, no matter how bad his teammates play.




I have not seen in 10 years of football and watching him play one single bad game of him. You might argue that maybe I have seen too little games of him, but my friend who is Interista and has seen all of his games over the past 10 years doesn't remember a single bad game of him either. It's simply impossible. Just like Kepler's laws, Maxwell's laws, Gauss Theorem or whatever else you want to come up with, this is a law of football, that it's impossible to catch Javier Zanetti having a bad day, a bad game, or whatever else.

The worse it feels to see this great player not getting the full credit he deserves. While Cafu is regarded by many as the best rightback of the past decade, I would argue the case for Pupi, simply because in terms of consistency no one came even close to him. His problem seem to be that he is too nice of a guy and he always faced a moron as a coach, at least for Argentina.
Whether it was Passarella, who didn't take the great Redondo to the World Cup in 98, Bielsa who played the great but old and out of form Batistuta, over the great and in good form Hernan Crespo, or benched the great Pablito Aimar for the rubbish Ariel Ortega or Jose Pekerman, who somehow thought Scaloni and Coloccini are just as good as rightbacks as Zanetti is and didn't take him to the World Cup at all, it somehow wasn't meant to be for Javier to have the great success on national team level. And despite the two scudettos the past 2 years and the UEFA-Cup...don't get me started on his career at Inter.

All in all, Pupi for me was one of the main reasons I always had a soft spot for Inter, despite everything. All the best for his future career. In my book, he will go down as a legend and the model rightback and athlete.



Official Site
Fundacion PUPI

All Praise Due to Mobali

Iman Mobali is a player I truly adore, because simply among all Iranian players he is the one with the most footballing intelligence. The only Iranian player who would be of Cruyff's taste is him. I would have written a total praise for Mobali, but I had to keep it this way. Nonetheless, Mobali rules.
Article on ISP

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Nekounam and his Partner in Crime
IranSportsPress.com - The game against China was apart of all the intense action a very interesting one in terms of tactics and how the performance of one player can change the game of a whole team.
Mahdi Rahimi

The two halfves against China were completely opposite in terms of performance. While in the first half Iran didn't really know what was going on and they were blitzed by China, in the second half China didn't have anything to say and Iran controlled the game with relative ease. If Iran's first half performance had been half as good as the one in the second half, they would have won the game relatively easy. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for 3 points, but coming back from being 2-0 down and drawing 2-2 still tastes good. But what was the reason? Simply said, the reason was Nekounam.
The point is not that Nekounam played bad in the first half and good in the second half. The point is more, that Nekounam had no one to play with in the first half, but had a partner in crime in the second half.
Nekounam has always been a player who preferred possesion over simply playing forward. There's a huge difference there we have to understand first. When you play forward, you simply play forward, you release the ball quickly, you try to give the game speed etc. When you play on possesion, you try to control the ball and have the ball in your team for most of the time. It doesn't matter for you whether you play forward, backward, north, south, east, west, slow, fast...you just try to have the ball and keep it away from the opponent. It even makes sense. When you have possesion, the opponent doesn't and hence it's difficult for him to score. This type of play has developed even further during his time in Spain, where the player in his position has to be able to control the ball and control possesion. However, in the first half Nekounam was left alone with his plan. No one else really seemed to care about possesion. The other player in Iran's team who would have cared too about possesion was Zandi, but Zandi, specially in the beginning had too much to do with defensive work on his side and couldn't help Javad.
In the second half the key to Javad's Man of the Match peformance came in, it was Iman Mobali. Mobali doesn't play in Spain, but he has the footballing brain of a La Liga player. Mobali, like Javad, doesn't care about going forward. He cares about possesion and space and he tries to use that space. Iman doesn't play the long pass forward, he plays the ball that makes sure his team remains in possesion or at least even if they lose possesion have enough time to regroup and win the ball back. Javad finally had a player apart of Zandi who understood his football, and Iran had possesion, had chances, and outplayed China in what was one of the best performances of our team in a long time. And Nekounam wasn't Nekounam anymore, he was NekouMAN, a Superhero as a 6, becuse he finally had his Robin, his Sundance Kid, his Starsky, his partner in crime.

Iman replacing Karimi, who had a shocker of a game, and giving our game a whole new dimension by keeping possesion, slow build up and excellent passing, made us control China for 45 minutes, and we could have scored a 3rd one too, while after the first 30 minutes, we could have been 3-0 behind.

I don't want to give too much credit to the coaching staff today because they did too many things wrong, and they did so many things wrong, that it's not even funny, but credit again to them for making the right sub and replacing Karimi with Mobali, which was a huge move.

I had mentioned before, that it's important to learn from mistakes. The coaching staff hadn't unfortunately learned that it's a mistake to play Enayati on the left wing as he is hugely ineffective on that position. It remains to be seen whether they will learn in the next games or not. As far as the leftback position is concerned, despite everything Zandi simply doesn't seem to be the solution. I prefer Zandi over Madanchi as a leftback, simply because Zandi is an incredibly intelligent player, but it might just be best to play Nosrati, Aghili or even Rezaei there and push Zandi forward. That way we might not have to stay through another early scare in the quarterfinals, as Zandi as a leftback against either Saudi Arabia or Korea would be complete suicide and a waste of such a brilliant player.
If we learn from the mistakes, we might go somewhere. If not, we shouldn't make it further than quarterfinals.

You can watch the goals of the game here

The Asian Cup

So far the Asian Cup has been pretty entertaining. The quality of the games is not on level with let's say Copa America, but compared to the Gold Cup it's World Cup 86.
From the host nations, Indonesia have so far played the best football followed by Vietnam, coached by Alfred Riedl, a very likeable Austrian coach, something pretty rare. Indonesia's game today against Saudi Arabia was maybe the best of the tournament so far. I personally sort of like Saudi Arabia's new team, as they play pretty fast and attacking football and Qahtani is a great attacker. The game against Indonesia was end to end action with chances on both sides, but in the end, Saudis were simply more clinical.
Yesterday's game of Iraq-Australia was equally brilliant. My friend Babak Golriz has written an article on Iraq's young princes, so I will leave it with that. Overall, what Iraq played was amazing. Very intense, very brilliant. As for Australia, surely Hiddink was a big factor and these guys believed that Oman and Iraq shouldn't be much more different than Samoa and Tuvalu. In the words of Biggie "YOU'RE DEAD WRONG!"

Iran will play tomorrow against China. I believe we have a great chance to beat them, as our team is better and they want revenge for the unlucky defeat last time. Somehow, I'm quite enthusiastic about this new team, because you feel that they have fun on the field again, unlike the dire past years under Daei, where everyone was just there to play and go home. But now, you really feel that they got lots of fun.
That's why I believe that they will go far and maybe even bring the cup back home.




These are pictures of a team having fun....

Kamaal The Abstract

I finally got the whole Kamaal the Abstract album. Somehow, L.A.Reid didn't like the album and didn't think of publishing it in 2002, so it got shelved and...well, long story short, L.A.Reid robbed the world from one of the greatest albums ever, which is a real shame.
The stuff Outkast/Andre 3000 did on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, was basically what Q-Tip did before on Kamaal the Abstract, just that Kamaal the Abstract was incredibly much better. Q-Tip was just way ahead of his time and after Pete Rock, Prince, and many others, he was yet another victim of a record label having no clue about shit.

You can listen to the album here.

And if you liked it, you can sign this petition to release it.

Hansi Krankl Pichichi de la Lliga

you can hate him for whatever, but he's a legend



equally legendary