The Great Soccer Forum Write Off (The Final)

Dub13

This poll will be open for 7 days.Well done to all on making the final.


Article 5 Neil1984

F.C. Barcelona – More than a club

Inside the vast walls of the Camp Nou, the UEFA 5 star rated facility that is the home of F.C Barcelona, emblazoned on the seats in the middle tier of the uncovered grandstand, where nowadays you would normally expect to find a corporate logo or the logo of the clubs shirt manufacturer, instead reads the phrase “Mes Que Un Club”, literally meaning “More than a club”. It is a mantra that rings particularly true for this great club and one which is especially close to the hearts of the loyal Barcelona supporters, as is shown by the mosaic of the phrase which is regularly seen in the Nou Camp before big games. You see, Barcelona are not so much a football club to their loyal supporters as much as they are an identity to the people of Catalonia. Their supporters, known as “Cules” (meaning “arse people” – a phrase stemming from their early days when supporters would sit on the top tier and all that would be visible from outside the ground would be their backsides!) are known as some of the most passionate in world football. They are now, a far cry from the mere football club they were formed as in 1899, when Joan Gamper placed an ad in a local newspaper seeking players for a team. For the people of Catalonia, F.C Barcelona is a source of great pride and great tradition.

The club famously holds a rivalry with real Madrid. Both clubs represent very different cultures and traditions with Madrid representing the Catile region and Barca representing Catalonia. Under the reign of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, the club became a symbol of strength to the Catalan people. The long standing and famous rivalry with Real Madrid stems from this time. Real Madrid are known in Spain as the “Kings Club” and are a representation of everything that the establishment and Franco’s regime stood for whereas Barcelona represented the freedom and identity of the Catalan people. This rivalry in many ways transcends football. It became more heated after the controversial transfer to Real Madrid of Alfredo di Stefano who had previously signed a deal with Barcelona only to be swayed to Madrid to huge political influence. Madrid claimed Barcelona voluntarily allowed him to join them whilst Barcelona insisted that they were pressured out of the deal by Franco’s government. Whichever side you choose to believe, it certainly strengthened the disdain both clubs already had for each other. This derby, known as “El Clásico”, is regarded as the biggest rivalry in world football.

Barcelona are also an unusual club in that they are not owned by any billionaires be they Russians, Americans, Saudi’s or otherwise. They are a club run by its members in the tradition of a club (and yet were still listed at the end of the 2006-2007 season as the third richest club in the world). This allows them to retain the feel of the entity being a club rather than a business. The owners/members of the club are known as “socis” and there are known to be more than 150,000 socis worldwide. The “club feel” is further strengthened by FC Barcelona running teams in women’s football, ice hockey, rugby union, volleyball and a range of other sports.

Interestingly, Barcelona have never received money from any corporate entity for shirt sponsorship. In fact, up until the summer of 2006, the clubs jersey had never had any sponsorship on it besides the small logo of the shirt manufacturer. In 2006, Barca took the decision to allow the logo for UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) to be put on their jerseys in a deal which, unusually, will see FC Barcelona donate 1.9million US Dollars per year to the charity.

In previous eras, clubs like Ajax Amsterdam and Manchester United, and, more recently, Arsenal, have been praised for their willingness to promote youth from within their club. Barcelona have always sought to bring their young players through to the first team (in keeping with the tradition of having Catalans in the team) and the club has produced some of the best players in the world with this philosophy. Current Arsenal sensation Cesc Fabregas is a Barcelona Youth Academy product, as is Argentinean Lionel Messi. In the current team alone, the club maintains its Catalan traditions with a strong representation provided by Carles Puyol, Victor Valdes, Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez and Bojan Krkic. With a Catalan manager in charge of the club, in Josep (Pep) Guardiola, the club has returned to the strong Catalan traditions of years gone past and has tapped in once again, to the identity and pride that is the very heart of F.C Barcelona.

It is not only the youth academy that produces first team players. Barcelona also have a track record for signing and attracting some of the greatest plaers that ever played the game. Any club which has been home to such footballing greats as Cruyff, Neeskens, Maradona, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Romario, Stoichkov, Luis Figo, Ronaldinho, etc, will always have to have something particularly special about it. In this case it is a tradition of greatness. Cruyff, interestingly, became so enamoured with the club that he chose a Catalan name, “Jordi”, for his son.

Barcelona has always been a unique club. In a time when Catalans were marginalized it became a vehicle for their voice to be heard. It is an identity to them even to this day, and many Catalans view the club as a kind of “Catalan national team.” The club is very much the leading symbol of the identity of the Catalan people. FC Barcelona – Mes Que Un Club.

Dub13

Article 7 Xavi6

Til death do us part – remembering those who died playing the game we love

SATURDAY, August 25th, 2007 will forever rank as one of the saddest days in Spanish football history. Sevilla were taking on Getafe in a La Liga game when, on 31 minutes, defender Antonio Puerta collapsed in his own penalty area. Despite being able to walk off the field, doctors said he had a heart attack in the dressing room, and at least one more in the emergency room of the Seville hospital where he was taken. After three days in intensive care, Puerta died, leaving a nation to mourn the loss of one of its brightest stars. It was later reported that Puerta had suffered multiple organ failure and irreversible brain damage as a result of multiple prolonged cardiac arrests due to an incurable, hereditary heart disease known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy.

Sevilla returned to the field just days after Puerta’s death as they lost 2-1 to AC Milan in the European Super Cup. Both sets of players wore Puerta's name on their jerseys underneath their shirt numbers, and a minute's silence was observed while flags at the Stade Louis II were flown at half staff. Milan chanted Puerta's name and draped a banner reading Onore a Puerta (Honour to Puerta) from their end of the stadium. Sevilla's section featured several banners in homage to him. One simply read "Puerta 16", honouring the player's name and his squad number. "We wanted to win to dedicate the game to Antonio [Puerta], but we at least played well," said Sevilla boss Juande Ramos.

Approximately 10,000 people turned up for the funeral which took place in the Andalucían city. Just two months after his death, Puerta’s girlfriend gave birth to their first child, a boy named Aitor Antonio Puerta Roldan, who was immediately made an honorary member of the football club.

Rewind four years to the summer of 2003 and specifically to semi final of the Confederations Cup between Cameroon and Colombia. Midway through the second half Cameroon midfielder Marc Vivien Foe collapsed in the middle of the pitch with nobody around him. Doctors tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate Foe with no success.
Team captain Rigobert Song later revealed the poignant half time words Foe had issued his team mates. “Yesterday at half-time, his last words were ‘Boys, even if it means dying on the pitch, we must win this semi-final’. And he was the victim. It's terrible.” After a first autopsy to find the cause of death proved inconclusive, a second later revealed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and concluded that Foe's death was heart-related.

Foe had just spent a successful season on loan at Manchester City in the Premiership and was a one-time transfer target for Manchester United. Manchester City later retired the number 23 shirt that Foe had worn at the club, while Lyon, another of his former teams, retired the number 17 in his honour.

Just months after the Foe tragedy, Hungarian international Miklos Feher collapsed and died while playing for Benfica in the Portuguese league. Having just received a yellow card in injury time against Vitoria S.C., Feher suddenly fell backwards clutching his chest. Players immediately rushed to his aid and he was given CPR on the field. However he could not be revived. The Public Prosecutor (the Portuguese agency responsible for the release of autopsy details) later announced that Feher died of a heart attack. The club subsequently retired his number 29 shirt.

Heart failure also claimed the life of Motherwell midfielder Phil O’Donnell late last year. The 35 year old former Celtic star and Scottish international was just about to be substituted in a league game against Dundee United when he collapsed and died. A post-mortem revealed the cause of death to be specifically a failure of the left ventricle. Motherwell announced that the name of the main stand at their Fir Park ground would be renamed The Phil O'Donnell Stand as a permanent tribute to the player. O’Donnell’s team mates played out the 2007/08 season with his signature embroidered on their shirts.

Other less high profile, but equally tragic, incidents have claimed the lives of Chaswe Nsofwa, Matt Gadsby, Guy Tchingoma, Mohamed Abdelwahab and Catalin Hildan amongst others in the last ten years alone.

Thankfully onfield deaths are very rare considering the amount of games played on a weekly basis, and advances in medicine have made it possible for hereditary heart conditions to be diagnosed in advance. World Cup winner and France’s most capped player Lillian Thuram took the decision to prematurely end his playing career earlier this year having been diagnosed with a heart condition, saying that some things are more important things than football, a sentiment no doubt echoed by the families of Puerta, Foe, Feher and O’Donnell.

Dub13

Article 10 GuanYin

How to Build a National League

In recent years, the FAI League of Ireland has seen just about every dark aspect of soccer that you can get. Clubs folding, registration issues, unpaid players and more recently, match-fixing issues, all against the backdrop of poor attendances and national apathy. Despite this, there has been a feeling of hope in Irish soccer, the 2005 Genesis report was damning of the National League structure, leading to the reorganization of the league into the FAI league of Ireland, a move which has seen a greater emphasis on marketing and branding of club soccer and a restructuring of the league aiming towards greater sustainability. However, even the most ardent optimist will admit that the process has been slow. Many of the problems have occurred since the FAI re-branding of the league and the premier division has yet to be reduced to 10 teams and the league suffers from a poor public perception, despite small rises in the club attendances in the last two seasons, continued glimmers of success in Europe, and a nation that is still obsessed with the beautiful game, the league teams rarely sees full houses unless playing meaningless friendly matches with their more glamorous English counterparts.

League of Ireland supporters will say that real progress takes time and for a prime example of how a league can blossom from an unfashionable amateur set up to a competitive multi-million dollar franchise, one need look no further than the MLS. Soccer, in the United States is a second-tier sport, unable to compete with the draw of mainstream college sports like football, basketball and baseball. Soccer is handicapped by the American college sports authority’s archaic rules preventing college scholars affiliating with pro-teams and locally the South American leagues have a longer history and produces better quality players than anything the USA could ever imagine. Against this backdrop, you would imagine a US national league would struggle to find any support or popularity. Despite these handicaps the MLS has managed the phenomenal feat of growing to a major franchise sport in the US in just 12 short years.

It has done so with many setbacks, Like the FAI league, MLS suffered from fluctuating support and fickle TV contracts, the desertion of key sponsors, dwindling crowds and a disastrous performances by the National team. The league itself has lost over 350 million dollars since 1996, but the signs are there that the MLS is now approaching profitability. While, like the FAI League, the MLS is founded on a backbone of homegrown players, in 2006 the league has changed salary caps to attract international superstar players (The Beckham Rule) raising the profile of clubs and attracting greater TV and sponsorship revenue. The league contrived and marketed local rivalries in order to generate local support while also focusing heavily on school and college outreach programs. The MLS also taps into local national rivalries and the large immigrant population in the 2007-initiated Superliga competition between MLS and Mexican league teams. All these have seen 2008 MLS attendances rise to an average of around 16,500, competing well with more established leagues like the NHL (16,000) and the NBA (17,000) with record attendances surpassing 54,000 (Dallas Vs New England).

So what could the FAI League do to emulate their US counterparts? The major factor influencing the US game is the fact that MLS is a single entity offering franchises for each team, as opposed to the FAI which is an umbrella body governing many individual clubs. It would be a bridge to far to hope that the Irish league ever goes down this route. One area the FAI league has emulated the MLS is in promotional strategies. With the FAI merger came a National Promotional Officer, League Director and promotional officers for each premier league clubs. Another area is the formation of the Setanta Cup a competition focusing on rivalries with the Northern Irish league. In this respect one feels the FAI League could aim a little higher with both English and Scottish league clubs offering a far more lucrative prospect for both the FAI league teams and their invited counterparts.

In the end, it all comes down to money and the FAI league simply doesn’t have the 350 million to invest in the national league to raise it to a profitable status. There is no money to improve old run down stadia (the MLS has built seven in the 12 years since formation) or to attract big name stars. Here is the real dilemma, in order to reach a higher standard, the league needs a huge investment and thus far this simply doesn’t seem likely. Better structure and funding from the FAI itself may allow improved ground facilities and better marketing strategies which will help the clubs grow. More support and coverage from the Irish media would certainly also help. If you want to see the difference this can make, you only need to look at the MLS attendance stats. In 1999, in its third season, over 32% of games had less than 10,000 supporters attending, in 2007, that figure was just 8.5%. A soccer naïve nation has managed to turn league soccer into a phenomenon in just 12 short years; a soccer obsessed nation could do worse than take notes.

Dub13

Article 12 thusspakeblixa

Moukoko's Lament

The name Ton-Ton Zola Moukoko may not mean anything to most people, yet to some he ranks with the Peles and Maradonas of this world of ours. Moukoko is probably the best example of what can happen when the line between fiction and reality is blurred.

Moukoko was born in Kinshasa in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, and at the age of 7 emigrated to Sweden with his family. In Sweden he began to play for local youth teams, and by the age of 15 was playing for Djurgardens of Stockholm. Juventus were among the clubs reporetedly interested in young Ton-Ton, but a year later he plumped for a move to Derby County.

Around this time, the legendary Championship Manager 01/02 had been released, and Moukoko was earmarked by players as a "wonderkid". Everyting began to move quite quickly for the young attacking midfielder; he was called up to the Swedish under-16 team, and at one stage was captain of Derby's under-17 team.

Just as Moukoko began to break into the reserve team, in thousands of virtual-realities; he was winning league titles, playing "in the hole" and keeping Figo and Zidane out of teams.

In actuality, Moukoko was far away from his glamorous second career. Ton-Ton had a disagreement with the Derby management over wanting to take up part-time study alongside his playing career.

Trials with several clubs followed, eventually a return to Sweden was organised by none other than Sven Goran Eriksson. A journeyman career across the Swedish lower leagues followed, with Moukoko currently plying his trade at IK Sleipner of Swedish Division 2.

The player once dubbed "The Swedish Ronaldo" had been hyped up beyond belief, with fans of one Scottish club reportedly even begging their club to take Moukoko on trial, despite having never actually witnessed him playing.

Moukoko has joined the Valhalla of former Championship Manager gods, alongide such luminaries as Nil Lamptey and Michael Duff.

Lamptey must rank as one of the most prime cases of wasted potential in footballing history. Aston Villa fans may remember the name- in fact in a 2007 poll, Lamptey was cited as one of the biggest flops in Villa history.

Lauded by Pele on his 17th birthday, Ghanaian Lamptey had the world at his feet at one stage. Scouts from Madrid to Milan salivated over his potential. Men in their underwear scoffing Pot Noodles from Aberdeen to Wexford salivated over his ability to score 40 a season on CM 00/01.

The young prodigy bided his time, eventually chose what turned out to be the wrong move, and ultimately played out his career in ther Kuwaiti and Qatari leagues. On CM, Lamptey remained a god long after his fall from the limelight.

Michael Duff is probably one of the more positive stories to come out of the aspects of CM-Superstardom. Duff began with Cheltenham Town, where he became a favourite with players of CM4. Soon Duff moved to Burnley, where he is now a regular, and has won 22 caps for Northern Ireland. CM4 fans, however, disregard his other honours and still refer to his ability to withstand 2 weeks of fines without complaint.

The one thing that ties these three players together is that their virtual careers far outstripped their real-life careers. It is perhaps a symbol of how much football has changed that a player can have a second career (sometimes without even knowing it, as in in the Moukoko case) in another world completely to the one he inhabits.