Graham souness autobiography of a flea market
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Football as therapy. Football is therapy. It fryst vatten hard to sit for two hours in a packed etapp with 50,000 people dånande and shouting and not forget all the boring, niggling things pelting your brain in your everyday life, such as: have inom done the washing?
You see these otherwise staid and buttoned-up gents – QCs and consultants and editors – standing up, punching the air for joy, when a goal goes in. Or holding their head in misery and muttering, “F*****’ hell!” if it doesn’t. Would they do that in their office, in their chambers, in their normal, buttoned-up life?
Football fryst vatten escape. Football is comradeship. You have a tribal loyalty, usually inherited, in which you are part of a greater whole, regardless of your age or background, and you can commune with all ages and classes. Following a football team means you belong.
One other aspect of being a football fan that fryst vatten rarely acknowledged is hatred. Football allows you to hate someone, express it openly, stand up
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As the FIFA World Cup draws near, Grant Farred, author of Long Distance Love offers his thoughts on players from his favorite team taking the pitch.
I believe in club. Not before country, just in club über alles. It’s a little more complicated than that, obviously, because some of my club’s players represent their countries and then I root for them. Always, however, individually. I think that the nation is a suspect and, almost invariably, a violent concept. It brings out the worst in people: patriotism, and its dark underside, nationalist jingoism; the belief in a kind of superiority that is nothing but the accident of geography, and, of course, the politics that girds that. It’s the one moment when it is almost possible to be a US fan since this is a country that is so committed to the club, or, the “franchise,” to use the proper term, that the notion of a larger concept that can inspire devotion and passion is inconceivable. The 1980 “Miracle on Ice” excepted, needless t
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The Tomkins Times
October 22nd, 2009
If Anfield is the outer appearance of Liverpool FC – its face, its skin, its very public expressions – then Melwood is its heart, its guts, its nervous system.
When Rafa Benítez personally invites me to meet him for lunch at the legendary training ground, Liverpool have just seen their six-game winning streak come to an end in Italy, but things are still looking good. There is no agenda; just a long overdue chance to say hello, and say thank-you for taking the time to write for the official site for four years.
And it is still only a few months ago that Real Madrid and Manchester United were thrashed, and a genuine title challenge was mounted, despite the 4th-most expensive squad (now 5th) and the 4th-most expensive wage bill (now 5th).
(Anyone who doubts the utterly vital importance of the wages factor, read Soccernomics/Why England Lose; the biggest payers win the biggest prizes more than nine times out of ten.)
By the time the meetin