Always Chip The Keeper
Always Chip The Keeper
The Week In Ball
So, I was away this weekend, meeting up with friends I hadn't seen since Before and looking at cows, not quite, but almost in the Motherland.
This meant that my football viewing this weekend was restricted solely to what was shown on Sunday. Saturday was just a series of LiveScore and Bundesliga app notifications flooding my phone and causing me to send increasingly random and loud single word tweets
To clarify, these tweets refer to the following games:
Atalanta beat Napoli 3-2, after Milan had won earlier in the day, to allow Milan to move to top spot in Serie A. Inter also won which forced Napoli into third. Don't sleep on Serie A this season! I knew I'd be invested as soon as Mourinho moved to Roma but it's giving so much this year.
My shrieking about Erling was of course Der Klassiker. Just like the last one, Dortmund scored super early thanks to a goal from the wonderful Julian Brandt, only for the inevitable Lewandowski to almost immediately get one back.
Now I didn't see the game as I've mentioned, so I can't comment, however it seems to have been dogged by a few "interesting" decisions? Certainly from Jude Bellingham's comments and the fact Marco Rose got red carded it sounded like there were 'scenes'. Afterwards Mats Hummels gave a fulsome apology for his performance, showing it's not just something that's endemic to the Premier League.
Dortmund are still second however and although I've seen it mentioned that this is the point where we accept Bayern are cruising to a tenth Bundesliga in a row, there are still plenty of games left and plenty of time for teams to upset the apple cart.
For example, my tweet about Mainz is a case in point. For the past decade Mainz have been one of those solid mid-table Bundesliga members. Not likely to go down but not likely to do anything spectacular either, a Southampton or an Everton if you like. However this season they've quietly crept up to seventh and on Saturday beat Wolfsburg 3-0. I have a strong and inexplicable dislike of Wolfsburg so this was extremely pleasing to me!
Not included in those tweets but definitely worth mentioning while we're still in Germany, is the game yesterday between Borussia Monchengladbach and SC Freiburg. After 37 minutes Freiburg were 6-0 up against the Foals, whose form has plummeted this season (despite the tonking Bayern in the Pokal in October) and now they find themselves fourth in the table. Their own form has been up and down at best over the years (after promotion in 2016 they finished 7th and have bounced around from 15th to 8th and everything in between since then) so it's probably worth keeping an eye on them to see just how well they can do this year.
Of course I also need to mention West Ham here. The David Moyes renaissance has been quite something this season. My Dad is a West Ham fan as his mum grew up in the East End, so I've always had a small soft spot for them and I just think it's great to see that when all the pieces come together there can be challengers from outside the 'Big 6'. It adds a bit of spice and excitement to the league, makes it more interesting to watch and can only be a good thing for clubs and players.
Anyway, the reason to mention them is not only that they beat the increasingly wobbly Chelsea (possibly my fault? Mendy has barely kept a clean sheet since I put him in my Fantasy team) but that they beat them with an extremely late and astonishing goal from Arthur Masuaku.
Of course I haven't even mentioned any of the games played in the week, there's just so much football right now...
Let's briefly run down some of the key points: Liverpool were fantastic against Everton (though it caused a bit of weird emotional tension among some of the Liverpool supporters I know because they just love Rafa Benitez so much); the games on Tuesday (Newcastle v Norwich and Leeds United v. Crystal Palace) which I'd somewhat dismissed were brilliant fun.
Then, of course there was Man United v Arsenal and Emile Smith Rowe doing what everyone is always told to do, which is to play to the whistle. And there was no whistle. Which lead to this.
Of course I was annoyed we didn't win, I hate seeing Ronaldo score, but I had a feeling in my gut that we'd come away empty handed. What's worse is looking at the table now and seeing United and Spurs ahead of us, even though I know full well we've got a game to play this evening.
Lastly of course we need to mention the Women's FA Cup Final at Wembley yesterday between Arsenal and Chelsea.
Played exactly 100 years since women's football was banned from association stadia for being 'unladylike' and 50 years since the first Women's FA Cup Final following the lifting of the ban, it was an emotional occasion. I shed a tear watching the ladies from the FA Cup game fifty years ago bringing the trophy onto the field.
As for the game itself, as an Arsenal fan it was like watching the men's team from earlier this season. Lacklustre, disorganised, no penetration. We're a great team so it was extremely frustrating.
Not to take anything away from Chelsea though who were fantastic. And how often do I tweet about the men's game, moaning that no-one chips the keep anymore? It's a LOT. Sam Kerr however showed them how it's done for Chelsea's third and her second with this glorious glorious dink.
Kick Off
A while ago I had a reader request for me to cover how the Ballon D'Or is decided, so given that it's just been announced I thought I'd take a little look at this and see what nonsense awaited me.
First conceived in 1956 by sports writer Gabriel Hanot (who also came up with the European Cup) the award was to be for the men's player who was deemed to have performed the best in the previous year. Between 1956 and 2006 it was voted for by football journalists, then after 2007 captains and coaches of national teams were given the right to vote as well.
It was originally restricted to European players only, then in 1995 expanded to include any player active in a European club, before finally becoming fully global in 2007.
Despite these changes there has only ever been one African winner (George Weah, below, also the first non-European winner) and no player active outside of Europe has ever won. Indeed both the winners and the Top 3 each year since 2007 have been dominated by players at Spanish clubs, although no-one has reached the full dominance of the Milan side of the late 80s which held all top three spots in both 1988 and 1989, with five of the six players also being Dutch.
So how do we get to the shortlist given to the journalists, captains and managers to choose from?
The 30 players on this shortlist are compiled by the editorial team of French publication France Football. Once this is done, the names are passed to the voting pool who are asked to pick the five players they believe deserve the award and to rank them in descending order. Once received, the votes are allocated points with the first pick receiving six points, second four, third three, fourth two and fifth one. If the points are tied the number of first place nominations is used to decide the winner.
When choosing, the jury is asked to take the following into consideration:
Individual and collective performances (winners) during the year.
Player class (talent and fair play).
Overall judgment of the player's career.
Naturally this causes some controversies over and above the general arguments about whether Player A is better than Player B. This year saw a convicted criminal nominated and a multiple winner has a continual cloud of allegations over his head. Should these things be considered?
Additionally, players and managers who are eligible to vote often vote out of obligation, friendship or loyalty. Then there's the issue of Eurocentrism. Yes it's a global award with global voters but the shortlist is picked by a European country who by design or accident are going to be more familiar with European football and most probably have a conscious or unconscious bias that European football is better than the rest of the world.
The only rules for the voting pool are as follows:
Only one journalist per country may vote. They are allowed to select players who play in or are affiliated with their own country.
National team captains cannot vote for themselves, but can vote for national or club colleagues.
This year the winner of the men's Ballon D'Or was Lionel Messi for the seventh time, there was also a clean sweep for Barcelona (remember this was for performance last year) with Alexia Putellas winning the women's award and Pedri winning this year's Golden Boy trophy.
The {Offside} Thirst Trap
Sticking with a theme, this week's Thirst Trap is frankly, the GOATiest GOAT to ever have GOATed, Sir Lionel Messi.
The thing about Leo is that he creeps up on you. At first you're like yeah he's brilliant, what a player but nah, not hot. Then he dyes his hair blonde and grows a beard and it's like oh, ok ok, this is interesting, then the beard gets bigger and you see him shirtless for the first time and all of a sudden you feel a bit unnecessary. Look at what a cute dad he is too! I'm the least broody person on the planet but that stuff still gets to me. Also, I just think he looks nice and sometimes that's as important as being smokin hot.
Kit Bag
This week I want to highlight Aston Villa's gorgeous Pride warm up tops. I really love the simple design and to be honest, I think anything based on the rainbow is generally going to look great. I do think it's brilliant that they've got these specific tops for the occasion though so huge props to Villa. You can buy one should you so desire, currently 25% off!
Extra Time
I simply cannot finish this newsletter without the most wholesome content of the week and that is FC Zenit players coming on to the pitch accompanied by dogs from local shelters looking for a new home. Just look at how gentle and soft the players are with the little fellas, how happy they look with them and try and tell me that their man mountain captain, Artem Dzyuba, bringing up the rear with a nervous puppy who he gently kisses on the head, isn't currently at home with said puppy that he immediately adopted for himself after the match. For additional content, this instagram post is a must look.
Something that amused me this week was the dry wit of Eric Dier. Yeah yeah, I'm recycling my Twitter content but this really made me chuckle. I love that it's played so straight, with no extraneous punctuation or winking emoji. Good work Dier.
Football content? Simpsons content? Gently ribbing Sky Sports? OK then
Everyone loves the classic genre of a team having to announce an opposition goal on Twitter vs how a team announces their own goal on Twitter but I found these tweets particularly poignant (hilarious? Maybe I mean hilarious).
That's all for this week but before I go, I just want to say thank you to everyone who's subscribed over the past week or so and helped me reach my goal of 300 subscribers by the end of the year. I continually mention this but I'm genuinely blown away by the support and lovely comments I've had about this silly little endeavour. It's great fun to do and I'm glad so many of you are happy to indulge me.
Next stop... 500!
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