Some Truths About Football

Since I had an earlier cranky post about football, I couldn't help but be blown away by the accuracy of the best-ever cultural analysis about the relative popularity of "soccer football" in Britain and "American football" in America over at The Septic's Companion, formerly known as the English2American dictionary.

Go buy his book, or at least a beer for him. Without knowing it, he's been a great contributor to our blog. Go Web2.0!

Top Five Lies About Soccer, er, Football

I love the beautiful game. I'll sit down and watch the British football equivalent of a Single-A baseball game if it's on, just because. But there are some things that you'll hear about the game that are just not true.

1. English people never call it soccer. This is just a flat-out lie. On Britain's leading sports channel, I just finished watching a show called "Soccer AM." I am now watching a show called "Soccer Saturday." English people can stuff it if they sneer at me for call it soccer. Get your story straight. It's either "football" always, or it's not.

2. Soccer is a non-contact sport. This is a lie that many American soccerphiles will tell you to promote the sport among kids. Hossam Ghaly's teeth will disagree. So will Petr Cech's head.

3. Soccer players run the whole game. Yeah, if they're 5 years old and the game is aimed at getting kids tired out so they'll take a nap on a Saturday afternoon. When players are substituted in certain matches, Britain's leading sports channel likes to pop up with a figure of how much the substituted player has run in that match. I've seen figures as high as 15 kilometers. Memo to Sky Sports: 15 kilometers is 37 and a half laps of the stadium. I'm not buying it, especially when I see guys in the 78th minute doing a lot of standing, walking and slow jogging.

4. There's no more hooliganism in soccer. German authorities might disagree. So might the Manchester police. Football fans have to be separated. Rugby fans don't. 'Nuff said.

5. Soccer songs and chants are sporty and inspirational. I'll let you be the judge of that. It appears that Atletico Madrid fans agree with me.

I Predict A Riot

I've written before of our ubiquitous bookies in the UK. You may know that they'll offer a wager on almost anything: Sporting events, elections, natural disasters. Perhaps it's an outgrowth of the kind of behavior that goes on at the Lloyd's of London insurance market, with less sophisticated financial instruments (e.g. you're the guy holding the bag if you lose your gamble, instead of your reinsurer). Mrs. Werbenmanjensen has emailed this morning to tell me that one of our fine bookies, Paddy Power, is offering odds on riots in several international cities related to economic turmoil.

New York, at 9-4, and Washington, at 10-3, are suckers' bets, in my opinion. The terms of the wager are that "riots must be confirmed by that countries ruling government as being due to motivated by economic circumstances." The Bush administration would just call them looters. It's happened before, after all. My money would be on Paris, at 3-1. But I'd also like to know where the Kaiser Chiefs are putting their money:

Familiarity Breeds Contempt, Part 2

Forgot to mention:

Don't get all snarky if I refer to the game you call "football" as "soccer." You also call it "soccer." I am now watching a TV show on a sports channel called "Soccer a.m."

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

I know that's the adage, and it's true in my case, at least lately. I've been struggling on occasion in my relations with British people, and it's an attitude problem. I think it's that I've wearied a bit with the "first and best" attitude held by some when it comes to their contact with Americans.

I can trace my attitude change to an incident at a party held by a colleague of Mrs. Werbenmanjensen a month or so ago, when I was about to get the "why-do-you-call-it-the-World-Series-when-it's-only-teams-from-America?" lecture, as if this had never occurred to me nor had anybody ever mentioned it to me. I finally had to ask him if an English cricketer would rather win the World Cup, a contest among all the cricketing nations of the world, or The Ashes, a contest with just one other country (PS: It's The Ashes). He didn't think that a fair comparison, but he did point out in the same vein that the Six Nations is technically only a contest between four nations.

This conversation was the first of several incidents I've found at least a little irritating lately. Perhaps the whole thing was accelerated during the Olympics period when the British press was picking a fight over medal tallies. (No, it wasn't just so Americans look good this Olympiad. We've always done it that way. It's you who choose to denigrate silver and bronze by failing to count them.)

So to any native who might be reading this: I've lived here two and a half years. So please understand:

1. The "British" Open was the first of the major golf championships in the world and should therefore be called "the Open Championship." I know this, so please don't lecture me about it.
1a. No, really, Americans don't take the Ryder Cup that seriously, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise. Golf ain't a team sport.
2. There are various claims about inventions attributed to Americans that may have been British. History is written by the winners.
2a. We could get into a long debate about who exactly invented the first computer. Suffice it to say: IBM and Apple are not British companies.
2b. You are way ahead of the US when it comes to broadband, digital television innovation and mobile phones. I said it. Leave me alone.
3. You spell honor with a "u", check with a "que" and summarize with an "s". I work for Americans. Therefore it would cause some difficulty if I got in the practise of spelling like you.
4. (Courtesy of Mrs. W) When I say things like "VY-ta-min D" there's no point in you saying back to me "VIT-a-min D." I know we pronounce it differently. I'm not going to change, and neither are you.
5. I'm not saying things like "brilliant" and "bugger all" to make fun of you. It's things I've actually picked up.
6. "High-fives" are not something British people do or are that comfortable with. But I'm going to do them when I'm excited anyway.

And now ...

"Hey, Smitty, how's come you dowan't come around no mowah? Ever'body was dere: Big Petey, Little Petey, Regular Petey, Joey Bagadonuts, Jimmy the Woman, Irregular Petey, Muscles Marinara ..."

Well, the truth is threefold. One, I'm lazy. Two, I've been getting ready for a rather important event coming up, the preparation for which has consumed more of my time than I care to say. Three, I was watching a lot of Olympics.


Now, if you follow the Olympics, you know that London gets the next summer games in 2012. The handover of the games was marked by celebrations throughout London and the sonic boom of the Red Arrows (the British Thunderbirds) screeching directly over our flat. I noticed two cultural trends emerging from the overseas Olympic experience.

First, I get the impression that with the conclusion of the Beijing Games it has become all the more immediate to the London 2012 organizers how big their job is. Obvious trampling on human rights aside, Beijing put on a nearly flawless fortnight. In their defeatist post-Empire way, the British already are despairing that they'll never be able to duplicate it, a theme I started hearing from the moment the Beijing opening ceremony ended. If the organizers share that belief, they won't be able to duplicate Beijing. I think they're up to the job, however.

Second, I learned a bit about British sporting fans from the unexpected medal haul the GB team earned. In victory, British fans can be much like Boston Red Sox fans: insufferability squared. Yeah, I know Americans are the arrogant Yankees fans of world sports. But the British are simply annoying--yes, you're annoying, with your sneering over topping Australia in the medal table, with the way you picked a fight about how the medals are tallied. (PS: Times of London, the IOC doesn't issue a medal tally. It takes the view that the Olympics is a competition between athletes. PPS: I was planning on cheering for England in the next Ashes series, but when you picked a fight over the medal tally and started mocking Australia, I changed my mind.) I expect to have to put up with a month or so of this, I guess--but then the World Cup qualifiers will begin soon, and with luck we'll be back to the same old British sports fans. I could use the peace.

Besides, we all know who the real winner is: Arise, Jamaica! Your tally means you won medals on a weighted basis at a rate of 11.5 per billion dollars gross domestic product.

Olympics Commentary

I didn't realize there was such a rivalry between the British and the Australians.

More here.

And to think it all stems from a silly little urn.

Famous For Britain, The Answer

Before any more of the Olympics slips past, the answer: Yes, Middle Kid got it right, it was Daley Thompson, Olympics decathlon champ in 1980 and 1984. He looks a little, well, beefy in that ad. I remember him looking a little more like this ...


... but maybe the tracksuit doesn't do him justice.

The New Football Season Has Begun

From the shouts on the streets, I can only surmise that Poland beat Germany, but I've been locked away from TV for an hour or two.

(Note: English football fans really hate Germany. And the Polish are in strong numbers here.)

UPDATED: I've finally bothered to look it up. I was completely wrong.

End Of Football Season, Until Next Month

Because Americans Amuck readers want to read, and not just look at purty pictures:

Tonight is the final of the UEFA Champions League, the tournament among the top teams of the various national football leagues in Europe, in Moscow. The first two years we lived here, an English team played in the final both times, only to be defeated (by a Spanish side in 2006 and an Italian side in 2007). I felt like I had some emotional connection to the 2006 game since our neighborhood team, Arsenal , was in it. This year, an English side is certain to win, since the final is between Chelsea, from southwest London, and Manchester United, from, um, Manchester. I don't feel any emotional investment in the game, although I will watch. A contest between those two teams is like watching Notre Dame vs. Michigan--they can't both lose, so I cheer for career-ending injuries.

Now with the final of the FA Cup over the weekend, the football season is over. Or wait, is it? In just a couple of weeks, Euro 2008 begins, the tournament among the national sides of Europe. It's sometimes called the best tournament in football, since it's a tournament among the greatest concentration of really good football-playing nations.

England will not be in it this year, failing to qualify. As a result, it looks like a bad summer for the broadcasters that bet on England being in the tournament. Advertisers have been forced to take a different tack. You'll remember that Mars bars changed their names to Believe bars two years ago for the World Cup. This year Mars is giving away 100,000 footballs to bring back the "kick-about" (the linked article fails to mention Mars' 2006 campaign). To the extent that people are outside playing a game rather than inside watching it, that's probably a good thing. It does smack of desperation, however.

And then, the tournament's over in late June, and it's over for awhile right? Wrong. The Community Shield match to kick off the English season is Aug. 10. And it all starts again ....

Scrum Bums

It's been a sporty couple of weeks for me. Football last week, followed seven days later by rugby, live from Twickenham Stadium, home of English Rugby. And with a trip to see cricket last summer, we've now done the triple crown of quintessentially English sports.

Saturday's game was a European Cup semi-final match between London Irish (who play in Reading) and Toulouse (who play in, probably, Toulouse, as in France). Since it was a high-level match, it was played at a theoretically neutral ground, although it was clear Irish fans dominated the stands. Would that it were so on the pitch.

Here you see one of the more interesting plays, a "line out," (click for better detail), the equivalent of an in-bounds throw in basketball. There's lots of feinting and pumping of the ball on a line-out play, as both team scan lift a player up into the air to catch it (or knock it loose), so anticipation is key.

These photos are as rubbish as last week's football photos, but bear with me. They were taken with my iPhone.


The truly quintessential rugby play, the scrum. Which is what happens when one team fumbles the ball forward (a penalty called a "knock on.") The team who didn't fumble gets to toss the ball into the two tons of snorting humanity, usually to his side's favor. I had an American say he didn't understand a scrum. I described as being the same as a jump ball in basketball: It's how you decide possession after play has stopped for a specific reason. Not so much anymore in basketball, I suppose.

And after a hard-fought Toulouse victory--their side was favored, although the outcome was not clear until the final whistle as Irish, down by a try kept, pushing toward their goal--you see that the fans can get along, with the green Irish flags and the red Toulouse fans flying side-by-side. Not like football at all.

Saturday And Football, Like Fish And Chips

... or something. On Saturday, I managed to borrow a pair of season tickets to see the legendary Arsenal Football Club, aka the Gunners, at their fairly new park in North London. From our old flat in Highgate, I could walk to the main drag, turn left and see the top of Emirates Stadium, but inside it's a little more fun. Saturday's game was against Reading, a club that might get dragged into a little bit of a relegation battle (in European sporting leagues, the bottom two or three teams in any league get bumped down to the next level and the top two or three from the league below get to move up. It spares the awful spectacle of teams trying to lose to improve their draft position that you see in such leagues as the NBA as moving down a league has financial consequences).

I invited a friend whose knowledge of football is fairly encyclopedic. He is a Crystal Palace fan and could recall the scores of the last four times Palace ventured to Arsenal's old stadium (all losses for Palace). Among other things, I could crack a joke about a pub called "The Herbert Chapman" on Holloway Road and he was able to tell me which titles Arsenal won under Chapman (the years helpfully listed inside the stadium).


This photo will join millions of other lousy photos of football matches published online (you can click on it for better detail--Arsenal are in red, Reading in blue, and Arsenal is on the attack in this photo). One thing to note: If you look at the far end of the stadium, you might just be able to make out a line of orange-clad stewards. To the right of them are Arsenal fans, to the left are Reading fans. Football fans do not tend to play well together.

My friend, the Palace fan, said after the game, "I'd forgotten how good football can be." Indeed, Arsenal were in the hunt for four titles this year, although at this late stage in the season are out of all four. They did win this one, however, 2-0.

Famous For Britain

Duncan Goodhew.

The BBC calls him "Britain's most famous swimmer."

I've never heard of him either.

Uh, Hi!

Apologies for not posting this week. We're getting ready for a kind of big event around here, and besides, not much is happening. How many similar pictures of the same sunrise do you really need?

But while we're at it, let us give a big American whoop-de-do cheer for Kikkan Randall, the first American to win a top-level nordic skiing event since, well, the article doesn't say, but probably since Bill Koch invented the skate stride. And thanks to Eurosport, I got to watch it live.

About That Football Match

How the English singer who sang the national anthems put the Croats in a good mood:

Fans of Croatia are lauding the British opera singer who they say helped get their team into the right frame of mind to win - with an X-rated blooper in the country's national anthem.
Tony Henry belted out nearly all of Lijepa Nasa Domovino (Our Beautiful Homeland) flawlessly in the pouring rain before the vital Euro 2008 qualifier – despite the ill-mannered booing from some England fans in the 90,000 sell-out Wembley crowd.
But instead of singing 'Mila kuda si planina' ('You know my dear how we love your mountains'), he instead sang 'Mila kura si planina', which translates as 'My dear, my penis is a mountain'.

England Crashes Out

All England had to do was tie with Croatia last night to make the finals of the European Championships next year. You can guess what happened next.

This morning, Radio 6 has been asking readers if they've seen team manger Steve McClaren this morning. The best response: "Flood warnings in Scotland as 5 million people p--- themselves laughing."

Signs You're Becoming An Englishman

We were watching Fawlty Towers on DVD last night, when the following bit of dialogue took place:

The Major: Strange creatures, women. I knew one once... striking-looking girl... tall, you know... father was a banker.
Basil: Really?
The Major: Don't remember the name of the bank.
Basil: Nevermind.
The Major: I must have been rather keen on her because I took her to see... India!
Basil: India?
The Major: At the Oval... fine match, marvellous finish... now, Surrey had to get thirty-three in about half an hour... she went off to powder her... powder her hands or something... women... er... never came back.

I found myself laughing at the reference to the Oval. It would have been lost on me two years ago.

Cultural Exchange, The Final Word

The New York Times had this to say about London's NFL game:

For most of the game, a spritzing drizzle fell through the hole, and with some swirling breezes, it sometimes felt like playing in a sneeze.

More On That Rugby Song ....

Commenter Joy Suzanne visited from her Montpelier-based blog to find out if there were others who found the use of "Swing Low" to be offensive as a rugby fight song. I can't say I'm necessarily offended. Just baffled. (Although the obscene hand gesture pushes it into the offensive territory, I suppose.) But she has some thoughts about this over at her blog, which has the great title "The Same Only Different."

Even More Cultural Exchange

Hi, we're back. Well, uh, that wasn't the best the NFL had to offer its overseas fans ... between the low score, the poor passing, the five or six consecutive plays the Giants were penalized and the last comic onside kick that ended up as a line drive out of bounds, there wasn't a whole lot to cheer about. But some cultural notes:

1. The British were gaga over the cheerleaders. A British spectator sitting one row in front of us (who listened to the 1-1 Arsenal vs. Liverpool draw on the radio as the game was on) said to us, "We don't have these here. Well Wigan Athletic do -- it's two guys."

2. We dressed for rain, but in true British soccer fashion, Wembley Stadium has fairly effective sheltering for the spectators. Not for the players, though.

3. The razzle-dazzle of the NFL was a bit foreign to the British. At Premier League matches, our friend said, "There's nothing before the game and maybe at the half somebody will kick penalties for charity. Nobody watches." Compare that to the loud music thumping from loudspeakers an hour before gametime, the banners, the cheerleaders, and an opening musical act that the NFL put on the field.

4. To hear "Bollocks!" shouted out by a fan disagreeing with a call just seemed strange.

5. Our friend asked, "Fans for both teams sit in the same section?" Evidently, this is not done in English soccer because some rather foul, vulgar, and probably even actionable things happen between opposing fans even when separated by a fence. (It's not restricted to the sectarian-rooted rivalry at Scotland's Old Firm. I did point out, however, that Philadelphia fans are in a class by themselves among NFL fans.) As a side note, I met my rugby enthusiast friend for coffee this morning and he pointed out that fans for opposing rugby fans can mix in the same sections without anything untoward happening.

I'm sure there's more, but it's late.