Entertainment For Lively Minds
Oh god, that was painful
Posted by sourdust on 28 May 2011 - 9:59pm.
It could have been 7-1. What a shambles. I feel like Gordon.
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Bit good that Barcelona lot...
I don't feel too bad after watching that, despite desperately hoping Manchester United would somehow win. They lost to an exceptional team. Theirs is no disgrace.
The best football team
ever. You can't play football without the ball.
Oh well
At least there's one place where Giggs remains anonymous.
Becks, monitor interface
:-)
(the beer, not Dayyvid...)
No shame
in losing to that side. I can't imagine any team with living with this Barcelona.
Now I have to work out a way to see them. Fraser, you do a lot of these European football weekends, don't you? Any tips? Is an organised trip best, purely from the point of view of guaranteeing tickets? Or are tickets easy to get (against the likes of Real Betis rather then Real Madrid, obviously)?
Spanish games
...are often the easiest to guarantee a seat at, as you can buy match tickets from the UK very easily (apart from those for El Clasico). I go through la Caixa, which is a Spanish bank website - you can buy tickets online months ahead of the game, then print them out from cashpoint machines in the city when you arrive. You can't do anything like this for most countries.
I've never actually been on an organised trip - I generally do it via a combination of budget airlines, dirt cheap hotels, and standing outside the stadium looking like a man who hasn't got a ticket. It's also worth checking out the secondary ticket market - I've found both Seatwave and Viagogo reliable - because although you'll be paying an inflated price, it often compares favourably to the cost of going to Premiership game, even with the price hike. Earlier this season I went to the Milan derby, and it was still cheaper than most seats at the Emirates.
Cheers Fraser, very useful,
although having read the comments below I may now be going to see my nearest Blue Square South side instead!
Fraser's latest sobriquet
'The Word's man hanging about outside a stadium without a ticket'
:D
When i've been to matches in spain
I haven't even bothered to book in advance we've just wandered up to the ground sometimes at lunchtime before the game but on other occassions just before the match and got tickets. It may be harder for bigger games but I been to local derby's with no problem.
It's much the same in France and Italy in my experience.
Easy
Barça fans are the most apathetic in World Football when it comes to actually going to games. Getting a ticket,apart from Real Madrid,is easy. As Fraser recommends, La Caixa is a great place as is The Barça website. They advertise on the side of buses,billboards and have young girls walking around tourist traps selling tickets.
Expect an atmosphere similar to Banbury on a wet sunday afternoon. The Best atmospheres are Betis,Sevilla,Espanyol,Osasuna,Sporting and Athletic Bilbao.
Ahem
Average league attendance this season:
Barcelona: 79,184 (80% stadium capacity)
Espanyol: 26,087 (64% stadium capacity)
I know you don't like them, SC - I know you really, really don't like them - but how does that make their fans the "most apathetic in world football"? I was frankly surprised by that figure for Espanyol, whose support is, as you say, famously loyal. In a year when they've been chasing a European place, where was everybody?
As for getting Camp Nou tickets, getting your hands on a ticket of some sort may be easy enough, but if it's close to match day and you want to go with a mate, finding anything better than an odd single way up in the gods isn't quite as easy as you make out, especially in the second half of the season. I've tried.
I second your list of proper-atmosphere stadiums, by the way, and don't dispute what you say about the often muted crowds at the Camp Nou (and, even more so, the Bernabéu). Unable to get decent tickets to see Barça at the Camp Nou a couple of months ago, I went to see them in Seville, and I'm really glad I did. It was a loud, exciting, good-natured, all-round great experience - not unlike Old Trafford when I was a kid in the Sixties, in fact - right down to the rusty roof.
Rose tinted
World's best football team and 20% of the stadium is empty. The average is only that high because of the Real Madrid match. That's 20 thousand season ticket holders who can't be arsed to watch fabulous football. It's criminal.
Sorry Archie,but you didn't try hard enough to get a ticket.I'll be more than willing to help you out.
Espanyol 30'000 season ticket holders. so 26,000 to watch average football ain't bad in a city where most people support the other mob.
Barça? Laughable
Watching them live, you see the precision, the speed, the controls, the turns, the dribbles, the dinks, the chips, the backheels, the one-twos and the one-two-three-four-five-sixes, and all you can do is shake your head and laugh.
(But although I've seen them twice now I still haven't seen a Messi goal, which considering he's scored 100 over the last two seasons - yes, you did read that right - is pretty wretched luck, really.)
Messi
Six times (once for Argentina), no goal.
Well, I did see one, sort of
But the ref disallowed it for no reason known to man (or, probably, even the ref):
And set pieces and penalties don't really count anyway, do they?
Mas que un club.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Ole. Mas que un club.
That will get you shot
Wouldn't say that to a Barça fan if i were you,Mark.
Never mind United
at least you got the double.
Oh.
A good night for English football
Failure for Manchester United = fewer provincial kids jumping on the red bandwagon, and just maybe supporting their local team.
or Barca
:o(
Oh spare me
We live 250 miles from Manchester and yet my young son calls United his team. I have no problem with that. The alternative is sitting through the dross served up by our local League 2 side. We did go once - now I threaten him with a return visit if he won't eat his greens.
Pros & Cons
It's all very well supporting United from 250 miles away. The downside is, if you want to go and watch your team, it costs a fortune. And going regularly is almost out of the question.
You
Are proud of this?
It doesn't bother me
one way or the other.
No-one ever says "Why are you going up the West End to see the best actors in the world when you could be going to your local amateur dramatics production in the town hall?". But when it comes to football I'm supposed to subject myself to 90 minutes of a bunch of cloggers hoofing it up the park just because I live near the ground?
Fair play
If you are only interested in seeing good football, but it has nothing to do with being a supporter, just an observer.
Yep,
true.
Maybe...
if you and more of the big club glory hunters went to support your local team then the extra revenue would enable them to achieve your obviously high standards.
Being part of the problem, it's a bit rich to criticise what lack of support creates.
And yes, you should support local sport,local drama,local shops in fact everything. Otherwise remember not to bitch when it's all gone.
It's not the quality of football that matters
I support my local team in a lower division. As Frank Skinner says, you get an atlas and a compass, that's all you need to work out which is 'your' team.
There's much, much more to it than the quality of football and turning up to a match day pub in a city you've never lived in to 'support' a team from 250 miles away does not even come close to the joy of supporting your local club for life.
yes indeed
I have often wondered how "fans" living 250 miles away from an area they have no connection with, supporting a team largely made up of players with no connection from said area manage to create such vociforous support for these teams that win silverware every year.
If the logic is followed through then those fans seeking higher quality surely have to switch allegience every few seasons don't they? Imagine if a catastrophic descent to league 1 befell Man U; would Chelsea's fan base increase when Man U fans all sought "higher quality entertainment"?
A lot of lower league football teams try to play good football, every fan loves to see it, and it is still the way you win matches. From my experience, a lot of fans in the lower leagues won't tolerate hoof it up and the clubs respond to that. I love lower league football, the emotions, passion and pride it creates. I wouldn't trade Colchester's sporadic Wembley visits and 2 seasons in the championship for all your empty "we won it 5 times" "we won it 19 times" tweets made on the long, long train journey "home".
A personal view.
When Blackburn were the richest club in the land 15 - 20 years ago, & also at CFC, they were frequently accused of "buying success" you could (& on occasions still do), often hear chants of "Where were you when you were crap".
I am old enough to remember MU getting relegated in 1974, the support they had the next season (in division 2) was incredible.
For my sins, I live in West Cumbria & I remember seeing someone wearing a Chelsea shirt on cup final day last year. I thought he looked like a twat. (I wonder if he was a "diehard Chelsea fan" when the likes of Mickey Droy played for them? )
I like to think that he suffered a thousand insults that day.
I genuinely look forward to the day Abramovitch gets bored with Chelsea & flounces away.
Trouble is, because of its location, there will be no shortage of people with a shilling or 2 who would glady take it over.
And so it will go on.
You have no idea why
that guy was wearing a Chelsea shirt. You're just jumping to the ludicrous conclusion that because you spotted him 300 miles from Stamford Bridge he must be a Johnny-come-lately glory hunter. Perhaps, he comes from West London and moved to Cumbria? Perhaps as a lad he was entranced by Osgood, Hudson and Cooke on Match of the Day and just fell in love with Chelsea as a result?
I mentioned in a previous thread that most of my friends at school in Scotland followed Man Utd because they had up to 8 Scots in the starting line up. They weren't glory hunting, Utd in the 70s were even in the second division one year. I imagine Irish kids at the same time gravitated towards the Arsenal of Brady, Stapleton, Rice and Nelson for the same reason.
The point is that there are loads of reasons, rational and not, why people end up supporting a team, and geography is just one of them. Anyone who thinks otherwise should get off their high horse.
As I said
It is a personal view. Just as yours is.
my other half wants to know.....
are you a Barside man?
I was,
Now expat, much harder to go now
It gets harder when you move
My team has to be Watford because it's my home town. As you say, it's as easy as that. However, I lived in Stevenage for years so I watched the game yesterday afternoon with some pride. The best place to watch a game locally is MK Dons so we tend to go there to watch live football (easy parking, comfy seats, good facilities) so I'm quite keen for them to do well. When The Dons play Stevenage next season I'll certainly have divided loyalties. However, if any of them play Watford, there's no contest.
I do know two people locally that decided, back in their glory days, that "their team" was to be Leeds United, both are now in their 40's and one of them still travels up the M1 to most of the home games. I wonder what would happen to their supporters if Manchester United were ever to slip back down to the lower divisions again.
There's no divided loyalty...
with Franchise FC.
Stupid expression
I find the use of Franchise FC an extremely stupid one. Any team that has been in administration and gets bought for a song is effectively buying a league position and the fact that they usually don't need to find a stadium or a willing fanbase is surely a bonus too.
I wonder how long it will be before MK Dons is accepted as the MK local team. Are there people that still complain about Arsenal moving to a completely different location 100 years ago?.... probably... but most people see it as the local team in Highbury. I accept that it must have been very sad for Wimbledon supporters but at the end of the day, league football is a business and it's about making money.
Man Utd could probably quite easily relocate to London... without the majority of their world wide fan base even noticing!
You forgot to mention Millwall...
:o)
Still, at least AFC Wimbledon are back in the league. Hurrah for fan power!
its very sad
for the 100s of non league sides who are trying to get promotion through the correct channels.
IF you still haven't grasped the concept of a league system by now then you never will.
Bollox to Franchise FC
Location = Points
I didn't really follow the details of the move from Wimbledon to MK but I was under the impression that it was a business that had earned it's place in a league that decided to relocate. I don't see how the location of a club is of any concern to any but the club's own supporters.
football as a business
It was a business move in as much as Asda needed a football stadium to be built in Milton Keynes to get planning permission to build on a green belt site. It wasn't and isn't related to football as a sport. Of course it isn't possible to separate the two these days.
The idea of following a football team in itself is almost irratitional and in most cases is purely emotive - fans will go when there isn't value for money. It's what the business is built on. I can see you not understanding the emotions felt about that move across much of football but without those emotions football doesn't exist in it's current form.
Personally, I feel real disgust at the people involved but if a five year old kid falls in love with MK Dons then I can't bring much ire about the future.
i know
a lot of 40 year olds who support Leeds. I'm from down south
Living where I do...
...you get loads of Man United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool fans, cos there's never really been a local team of note (nearest league side up till recently was Crystal Palace, but Crawley's inexorable rise has changed all that).
The important thing is the age old addage of not changing your team - I vaguely follow Liverpool, having glory hunted them in the 80s; despite going to see and having a soft spot for Charlton for a number of years now, I don't feel I can call myself a supporter of theirs, because it breaks that unwritten rule.
Should I have offspring interested in football, I'll encourage them to support someone local, but if they don't, well, it's not going to be the end of the world. Wherever you go (even places like Crawley) it costs an arm and a leg, so it would have to be a treat rather than a regular thing.
Note?
There's the rub. Note doesn't come into it. Give me all the teams and honours of note and I wouldn't swap it for being in the same pub with the same mates before watching my team.
That's where (the term is used above) observers and football fans differ.
Bad choice of word!
Apologies for that - should've put something like "League Status" or some term for teams in and above League 2.
Desperate
Ripping Yarns is the only thing that has made me laugh tonight.
So thanks, and enjoy the Up.
I am deeply conflicted, despite winning twenty five quid.
there is something so inhumanly efficient about barcelona's play that | found myself hoping for a brutal foul to drag them down.
Even Paul Scholes couldnt get close enough to break a leg.
From a marketing point of view they should sign an english player so i wouldnt hate them so much.
Pfft
I can't think of an Englishman who'd get into that side.
To be fair
there are only a couple of Englishmen who can get into the United side.
Barcelona are stunning
Often it's tempting to big up the oppo to help ease the pain, but in this case there is no disputing the unvarnished truth - they are miles better than United. The team selection was puzzling, just as it was two years ago. I admire Fergie greatly, but Valencia over Nani? Owen over Berba? Carrick over anybody? I feel badly for Van der Sar, a brilliant keeper who quietly predicted this shelling.
Well, that was dull...
Yes, Barca were miles better, yes they deserved to win, hands down, but the major, major games i recall - or the ones i have reinvented in my memory - have involved major changes to pattern ...
in 1970, aberdeen went to hampden for the scottish cup final to play jock stein's 9-in-a-row celtic side - in the european cup final for the second time in four seasons that year - and aberdeen won 3-1
in the 1989 'fever pitch' game, i remember seeing liverpool v arsenal on the tv and the dominant liverpool side that had dominated my childhood, my student years and beyond usurped by the arse in one of the most dramatic games ever in professional football in the british isles
tonight seemed all about an exceptional barca side playing to form, and a fuckload of english schadenfreude (which has no more dignity than the average non-weegie scot looking at old firm travails in europe and saying, "ha ha ha" despite the OF being light years over the horizon in scottish domestic football ...)
so did anything interesting happen? nope
did anything exciting happen? not really, especially after barca's third goal
were the mancs particularly bad? i don't think do ... they could have given anyone else a game in this tournament (real madrid included) and didn't try to stifle the crap out of the match like a mourinho team would have done
the game this evening was a bit like being brilliant at maths as a teenager but finding you were in the same class as stephen hawking, so netting no prizes whatsover ... as that bloke up there said, yours is no disgrace ... and i'm saying it was dull because nothing unexpected happened ... predictability makes for no drama ... eddie turnbull's aberdeen have to beat the european cup finalists for that, or mickey thomas has to score in the last minute ... didn't happen ... no fun ...
when a man has tired of Barcelona ...
... he has tired of football.
I couldn't disagree more with your description of the game as dull. I wanted Man.Utd to win, but was utterly enchanted by Barca. I can't remember seeing football of that quality before. I couldn't take my eyes from the screen for a second; the passing, the movement, the invention, the work rate ... it was close to being football as art. It doesn't make it dull just because it was kind of predictable that Barcelona's A-game would be too good for Man. Utd. When Mourinho's Chelsea used to grind Stoke, Newcastle, Villa et al into the ground, that was dull. Barca's football was just beautiful.
To take an example from another sport, two of the finest exhibitions of tennis I can recall involved John McEnroe. In the first, the 1980 Wimbledon final, the match ebbed and flowed between him and Borg before the Swede edged it. In the other, the 1984 final, he slaughtered Jimmy Connors in a display that was absolutely mesmerising. In its own way, it was every bit as entertaining as the 'classic' final.
Excellent analogy.
And you're dead right about the entertainment value of truly artistic excellence.
In fairness to United one shot on target in 90 minutes, one goal - that's why they are so hard to beat. Even when confronted by a steamroller they don't lie down.
Barca
Thanks to Barca & Spain we've had at least three years of Barca-style, tippy-tappy dominance in world football and the interest for me is in how someone goes out with a little dignity and class (not Mourinho then) and beats the buggers ... that's an interesting problem ... sitting back and making observations about the aesthetics is now boring the pants off me ... so it's perhaps more true to say that when a man has tired of Barca, he has thrown away his underwear
tippy-tappy
It's not as if anyone else can play like that and win like that. I think it'll take me a good few years to get fed up with 'tippy-tappy'.
I remember George Graham's Arsenal grinding their way to winning the European Cup-Winners Cup in the early nineties. That was the first time I remember thinking: "there's football on the telly tonight, but let's see what's on the other channels".
Not so much a football team as an essay in pragmatism, Graham's Arsenal set a benchmark for weapons-grade boredom. Barcelona would have to win about 10 successive European Cups before boredom of that magnitude could set in.
i have a
pathologically short attention spa
I completely agree
Barcelona are a breath of fresh air. The importance of them being able to dominate the European game with such style cannot be overestimated. A few years ago it looked as if pragmatic, tactical play was the only way to secure success in Europe. Mourinho and Benitez both got far with stifling, chess-like play. Xavi Hernandez has himself admitted to seeing such teams and wondering whether there was a place for someone like him (small, tubby, skilful) in the modern game. We should rejoice at Barca's success in the hope that the other grandees of the sport follow their lead.
This is good for English football
I will always back an English team in games like this, but the fact that Spain are now Euro & World champs and Barcelona are so very, very dominant means that we, as a nation, can go back to our rightful state - the plucky underdog.
The EPL has rolled out untold riches to some rather mundane English players over the last decade. Those players have swaggered around as if they are in the same arena as Messi & co, purely because they on about the same money. They also think that they deserve the unconditional love of the nation just because they wear the white shirt of England - and are disillusioned when it doesn't come as easily as it seems to at club level. You just haven't earned it yet, Rooney.
We should expect to be humped, which means that the occasional win will be a bonus rather than a birthright. Hope only brings misery. Let's kick optimism out of English football!
It seems that Barcelona's players find it difficult...
to exhibit the same tastefulness they show on the pitch in their choices of post-victory entertainment. They are all going to see Shakira tonight.
Isn't she...
...Gerard Piqué's rumpy-pumpstress?
Maybe she'll dedicate "Long Time"
to the Man Utd players, as in it'll be a long time until you win my boyfriend's trophy back...
On the positive side: Barca brilliant
On the negative side: Man. U. will always be loathed because of the nature of much of their support (i.e. arrogant/southern/glory hunters) and Ferguson and Rooney's involvement doesn't exactly help.
Also, with regards to a point above, I'd have thought that cheering on your local team and local economy (mine happens to be Barnet, mathematically the worst team of the 92 in the league as we speak) would create a far more appreciative teenager than taking him to a foregone and expensive one-horse race 250 miles away but, hey.........
However, shot with their own gun last night and it's great that their particular Achilles' heel is alive and well and, as a despiser of the Premiership, that's all I can ask!
Just goes to show that 5 is actually a much bigger number than 19.
Would've thought?
"Like football, but better"...
...was how one of my mates summed up Barca's performance, which seems fair enough to me.
As a contribution to the debate above, family history shouldn't be overlooked as a huge contributing factor in deciding which team you follow. My grandad went to most games at Highbury while he was well enough to do so; my dad did the same until he was in his 20s and moved. My love of Arsenal, despite being raised in Nottingham, was inevitable given their passion; my son supports the team too, despite having never lived anywhere except Liverpool.
Talking about the Gunners (usually in disparaging or despairing terms!) has been a deep-rooted bond over four generations of males in my family. My dad once said he regretted that my grandad hadn't lived long enough to see Thierry Henry play for his beloved team. On the other hand, I'm glad my son never had to witness Willy Young in the red and white shirt (though Sébastien Squillaci seemed to be doing a very good impression of him at times last season).
Sorry if my supporting Arsenal does not fit in with the correct geographical criteria espoused above, but I can assure you that I'm every bit as passionate about the team as someone living 400 yards from the Emirates even if I don't go to games as frequently.
Spot on
I actually do live 400 yards from the Emirates.
Sadly, I'll be moving to the other side of London this summer. I intend to continue supporting Arsenal and will bring my kids up to do likewise. Anything else would be heresy.
Hello neighbour
I too live 400 yards from the Emirates. And while I had a season ticket the year before last, I've never considered myself an Arsenal supporter for a moment. I let the season ticket go because it's hard to justify the price if you don't have that emotional involvement, however pretty the football.
follower from afar
Perhaps being from here, rather than there, geographical concerns have never entered into it when supporting my English football team. I was first able to watch English football in 1980 with ESPN beginning to show FA Cup highlights. I was taken with Tottenham's style of play early on, and was rewarded with two FA Cups right away. Subsequent lean years did not dull my love for the Spurs, and I was thrilled to see them in the Champions League this last year. I've only seen them play live twice, never lived in North London, but they are my team.
Now, in farness, I have had partial season tickets for my "local" team, the Columbus Crew, for many years. Thay play 100 miles away, but they're as close to local as it gets here. I'd still root harder for Tottenham any day.
Howdy neighbour
Sadly, I know of several season ticket holders who are finding it similarly difficult to justify shelling out for their usual season tickets next term, only in their case the issue is the apparent lack of emotional connection between some of the players themselves and the club.
Personally, I'll be back for more. I find it hard to imagine that we can dish up a series of performances as deflating as those seen since the cup final and, as you say, the football is certainly pretty.
As for the area itself, I'll be truly gutted to leave. I'm sure you've already discovered it but, if not, then I would heartily recommend Litro, the little Italian/Brazilian (the nationality of the owners changes every time I ask) bar opposite the stadium (Fiszman Bridge) - a great place to waste a quiet afternoon being served strange drinks in mismatched glasses.
Optimism
"I find it hard to imagine that we can dish up a series of performances as deflating as those seen since the cup final".
I only wish I shared your optimism... (Please see my earlier "disparaging / despairing" comment.)
Self edit
Willie Young.
Barca
yet to do it away to Stoke on a January Tuesday night.
then and only then can they be considered to be one of the greatest sides of all time...
Stoke
Been listening to the Football Weekly podcast?
Andy Gray,
wasn't it, who said that?