Falling into fancy fragments

As I intimated in my half-baked Soccerlens piece (though the Party of Five line was pretty sharp, I feel), the Arshavin deal is stupidly exciting to me, even if beyond reason. You can spin all manner of pretty webs out of it, all ready to snare the idiot fly. You could take his first two games at the European Championships and transplant the damn-near-transcendent spectacle to your future hopes for the Arsenal. You could see it as a furthering of Arsenal's New Tradition. You could see it as a bold new departure, buying the finished product instead of the half-assembled one. You could look at it in simple military terms: we got a new toy, motherfuckers.

Honestly, the main reason the transfer makes life effervesce so is because it's a good thing. That is -- for all that Arshavin is but a thought experiment for now -- it stands in contrast to the rest of Arsenal's season. (I know -- dry those tears.) The comedown from the first two-thirds of last season has been brutal and is still being endured, which means that something like this feels like opening the curtains. (Amy Lawrence wrote in the Observer, "Not since Dennis Bergkamp walked into Highbury in 1995 has a transfer been so important to the fabric of Arsenal", and though she was talking about the off-field Arsenal, it may turn out to be true on the pitch as well. Or Arshavin might be the next Alex Hleb. Who the hell knows?)

The whole Premier League season has been a washout. Note that: not just Arsenal's season, but the whole wretched thing, because to me, they are one and the same. My favourite football season is 2001-'02: a properly glorious Arsenal Double, with a Cup Final win against Chelsea and a league-clinching win at Old Trafford (and a Champions League exit too pathetic to spoil things). In 2002-'03, the football was often just as astounding, but the season was defined by the 2-2 against Manchester United at Highbury. Again, not Arsenal's season -- the season; because that is ultimately how I see the Premier League. When you're paranoid about Man Utd and Chelsea, it's hard to derive any pleasure from their brilliance. (Liverpool just make it hard for anyone at all to derive pleasure from watching them.) And, as we all know, the rest of the league may as well have been a different league altogether for much of the last decade, meaning that for the too-hardened partisan, it's shut off from the fevered reality of the Exaggerated Parallelogram, serving as so many attendant lords. Relegation battles become knife fights between recently unemployed stockbrokers: gleefully compelling, but still knife fights.

Last week, following the furthering of the Federer-Nadal myth (the good kind of myth), I noted: "who wins is now only a part of the matter; it almost seems a shame to reduce it to a simple zero-or-one question." The problem with seeing sport by way of the travails of a particular team is that it shifts the balance so far towards the binary that it overshadows everything else. The whole thing becomes about the outcome; process, with all it entails, be damned. Almost everything gets stripped away bar the catharsis of victory or the dejection of defeat. The teams you despise exist solely for the extraction of ill-earned schadenfreude or bitter frustration. It's like getting your kicks from a coin flip.

This blog was fortunate enough to be born in time for last summer's Euros. Though we were too callow to properly make hay with the tournament, it was a beautiful thing to be allowed to behold. The key to this -- besides the majesty of the football itself, which was kind of important, like -- was being able to just sit back and allow the thing to happen without fretting about how a certain team was going to do. I don't even mean Ireland, in this instance. It's easy to be wrapped up in Ireland's progress through a competition and know that it's not going to affect the fabric of reality too much. (Case in point: Ireland 1-0 Italy in Giants Stadium in '94 didn't prevent Italy reaching the final.) More's the point, England's absence freed up the time otherwise set aside for angsting about the possibility of 'Three Lions' being played on a loop on all BBC stations forever, and instead allowed it to be used to just drink in the goodness. It showed that angst up for the silliness it is. Similarly with the Wimbledon final: it was too big and too good for it to be about tying your enjoyment solely to the success of one participant. For me, the Premier League doesn't have that.


It's not that results don't matter. The hours I've lost here, wading through tables from leagues I have no connection with, are innumerable. To quote myself again, shamelessly, "the beauty may be in the struggle but the struggle is for victory, after all." But stressing the payoff dismisses the rest of the sketch which, as any Monty Python fan will tell you, is often the best part. The fetishising of the result is strengthened by each game being isolated and transformed into apparently universe-defining events. Each moment -- each contentious decision and scuffed shot and questionable substitution -- is magnified beyond its rightful significance, beyond its place in the narrative. It is significant, but modestly so. When a well-turned out yet discernibly smarmy gentleman knocks on your door and tells you he's conducting the Last Judgement, something ought to tell you he's lying. Whatever the truth is in sport, I'd wager that I saw more of it at Melbourne Park last week or in Austria and Switzerland last year than I do on any given Premier League weekend.

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People take pictures of the summer just to prove that it really existed

It was with a jolt that I flicked on page 302 of Ceefax on Monday morning to find that they had already done away with their special Euro 2008 index. Way to punch me in the solar plexus, guys. It's been so nice to indulge for a few weeks without having a great big headline about a hot new Peter Crouch transfer rumour clobbering you over the head and dragging you back to its cave. I know the party's over, lads, but couldn't we just pretend, just have "BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY" on the top of the page for a few days?

Of course not. We haven't even been allowed the grace of that hazy minute between dream and reality when the two magically merge. Instead, the radio-alarm of life shakes violently with the din of a Five Live newsreader blaring "DECO HAS COMPLETED HIS MOVE TO CHELSEA".

It occurred to me while reading Brian's latest piece on The Run Of Play - particularly "'remembering' is a hybrid act that marries suspicion to the consultation of an external repository" - that I had not recorded a single minute of this tournament for posterity. For as long as I can remember, I've videotaped the final of major international tournaments, plus re-runs of particularly fine matches. My supposition was that I would, on some dreary day, feel an urge to transport myself back to an evening filled with drama, passion and no little splendour. Perhaps I would one day show my grandchildren how football used to be back in the good old days by digging out the old video machine from the attic and playing them the 2006 Germany-Italy semi-final ("would you believe me if I told you that this chunky 'cassette', we used to call them, could only hold three hours of video footage?").

But I honestly can't recall the last time I did actually fire up the wheezing VCR to watch one of these classics. The attraction is just not there. You can hardly marvel at the way the script was written before your eyes when you've already seen the ending. It would be patronising to act surprised at the twist in the plot when you've been silently reciting the preceding lines to yourself. If you're honest with yourself, you just want to see the explosions (and nod sagely at the expertise of the pyrotechnicians, of course). I have more than once accidentally inserted the tape of the Spain 4-3 Yugoslavia game into the machine; on discovering my error, I would resolve to watch the whole match, but after five minutes would grow restless and fast-forward it to the 88th minute.

I knew all this, yet would persist in my efforts to cryogenise these events. It may have been a pathetic hang-up left over from childhood, where these things really did seem to matter, because your worldview was defined solely by your own perceptions and feelings. If you were lucky enough, as I was, to have a blissfully untroubled youth, you could easily live in the fantasy that sport was the most important thing in the universe. I was just a bit slow in growing out of this (though traces remain and occasionally surface) and accepting, in Brian's words, "that even at its greatest, it’s one part of your daily life, something you make room for, something that fits in with everything else"; or as someone else may have put it, it's a TV show.

Looking at photos of some past special occasion is an unsatisfactory experience. It's a natural impulse to want to capture the spirit of a wonderful day in a way that you can later conveniently recall, but a photograph never succeeds in this. It can never present what you really felt, only generate a second-hand copy that doesn't match the purity of the memory that plays back when you close your eyes.

So, this time I didn't do it - not through prior resolution, but simply because it never crossed my mind. One could say that being all broadbanded up now means I have no need, seen as I can access these Precious Moments at the buffering of an embedded clip whenever I choose. (Also, throughout the tournament BBCi showed highlights of the previous day's games plus a loop of every goal in the competition thus far - instant nostalgia!) I like to think of it as a belated acceptance of the transience of sport, and indeed (adopts voice of Jim Hacker when giving a self-important speech about freedom or some such to Sir Humphrey) life itself. It's also to recognise that even though a football match is a slowly unfolding drama built on ebb and flow, on the tension between stuff happening and not happening, your recollection of it usually consists of a coalescence of the glory and the boring (even the best games normally have some dead air in them) into something perhaps even more beautiful that the original, and that it's probably wise not to disturb it. After all, it's the party that stays in your mind, not the trip to the off-licence.

Photos by chasing twilight and maddiesnapsthecamera

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A Counterblast To Agnosticism

To those who would have us believe that 'pretty football' and 'winning football' are mutually exclusive; who believe that the primary aim of the game is to keep a clean sheet; who are happy to have teams rake in millions from a captive market while telling us "we're in the results business"; who mistrust beauty; who would praise Chelsea; who are called 'Sam Allardyce'*; who would happily see the entire population of the world enslaved as the bitches of an alien race of eight-foot, 30-stone-of-pure-muscle, endless-diagonal-balls-to-the-head-of-the-big-fella-up-front super-bastards; who would inculcate us all with their particular brand of bitter, witless self-hatred given half a chance; who probably secretly fancy Margaret Thatcher...

...to those I say: MWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!

To recklessly exaggerate for a moment, this has been as close to a perfect tournament as we're likely to see: positive and often spectacularly football, heart-abusing drama, a lack of cynicism (in terms of both style and discipline**) and an honest-to-god football team triumphing. All that was missing was a hilarious snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory by England and a heroic 1-1 draw by Ireland.

It's almost too good to be true. Spain's midfield yesterday comprised Senna, Xavi, Iniesta, Fabregas and Silva, while Xabi Alonso came on as a substitute. How cool is that? (World-class analysis, there.) Something to consider: this is still a young team: the bulk of it will still be there in two years' time. I'm praying for a Spain-Argentina final in Johannesburg.

On which note, and without wishing to hastily jump to grand conclusions based on scant evidence, I nevertheless hastily conclude based on these 31 games that a loving God does indeed exist. Sure, He sets a mean test of faith, what with the last Euros, Mourinho, Abramovich, the Eduardo injury, Cyprus 5-2 Ireland, etc., et-bloody-c., but it's almost been worth it all for these last three weeks. I say almost because I'll only be fully convinced when I see Arsenal winning the Premier League again - and what the hell, the Champions League while we're at it. I mean, that's what He does, right - portents? And what else could this tournament, with its beautiful attacking football and the right team winning, possibly mean?....

No, no - now's not the time for such parochialism. Let's just wallow awhile in this, no less than the triumph of Good against Evil. Not that I take football too seriously or anything.

Photo by Hell's Donut House

*I've had a go at Allardyce before, and I will again. It may seem to you like I'm picking on him. You'd be right. There's a special circle of football hell reserved for him and his ilk.

**Wonderful stat: there were fewer red cards in the whole of Euro 2008 than in the Holland-Portugal game in the 2006 World Cup.

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In which I inefficiently explain why I don't want Germany to win

Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about not liking the German team. It's not that I feel any antipathy towards them, as such, it's just...I just don't want them to win.

They're an easy target, really: the team that always seems to get that jammy goal, that's always lodged comfortably above the Southgate Parallel of international football no matter how bad they apparently are. At every major tournament this decade, we've been told that this is the worst German team for a generation*, yet in that time they have reached a World Cup final and semi-final, and are potentially one game away from being European champions; all this while the (sniggers) Golden Generations of certain other nations act like a flock of geese with their natural sense of direction degraded through generations of inbreeding, knowing vaguely what they must do to make it to their destination but instead crashing haplessly into one another and falling to the ground, honking incessantly at the injustice of it all.

Deep down, I know it's a quality to be admired: to be able to so tenaciously keep a vice-like grip on the leg of football fate with those terrier-like jaws of theirs. If it was, oh, let's say, Turkey, we'd be celebrating their plucky, never-say-die doggedness and rushing out to buy a replica shirt to wear in solidarity with these fine human beings as we sit in front of the TV this evening.

But we're not. Why? Perhaps every sport needs its big, bad, but very dour wolf to make the story complete: the NBA has its San Antonio Spurs, the Tour de France had its Big Mig, the Bundesliga has its Bayern Munich. Even the goodwill earned in defying the stereotypes in the last World Cup in breathtakingly forthright style, and playing a part in two of the finest game of the championships (vs. Argentina and Italy), has evaporated over the course of Euro 2008, what with their set-piece goals and their incompetent midfield and their average height: 6'9". It may be an unreasonable and immature view, but (here comes the excuse) this is sport we're talking about; if you can't sometimes be unreasonable and immature about sport, when can you be?

Okay, allow me to put forward a more thoughtful reason for my wanting Spain to win tonight: it would be a tear in the fabric of history, a disturbance in the world's natural order. Or, more prosaically, a novelty. The prospect of something happening that you've never seen before is mightily alluring. Growing up in an era when Germany left their efficient fingerprints** all over the international scene has rendered the prospect of more of the same unappealing. If there was anything to be taken from Greece's triumph in 2004, it was the shock of the new, the feeling that we were seeing something we weren't really allowed to. So often Spain have entertained us before being bumped off before the end of the film. Let's have the plot re-written before our eyes instead.

Ah yes. Spain. Nearly forgot to mention them, as I wallowed in this mudpool of negativity. As we've spent the last few weeks slobbering over Holland and Russia, Spain's contribution to the Euros is in danger of going under-appreciated. Admittedly, it has been a bit difficult at times to get as excited about them as we, pre-tournament, imagined we would do. It didn't seem right that this team, with their astounding collection of world-class ball-playing midfielders, were winning games through their counter-attack (the winner against Sweden came via Route 1 - ye gods!). And they didn't exactly thrill us against Italy. A few points to be made here, though. I forgive them (and I'm sure they've been begging for my forgiveness) for the Italy game. Italy didn't exactly come out to play, as they executed a malfunctioning version of catenaccio, the swift counter-attack being replaced by the Emile Heskey method. Also, the relative tentativeness of Spain can be excused by what must have been a hefty historical weight on their shoulders: the awareness of their usual Pavlovian response to facing a big team in a knockout game, and the little factoid about not having beaten Italy since that da Vinci chap made his debut in goals.

But more importantly, how good were they against Russia? The thing is, we've been blinded by our disastrous rendez-vous with Russia that we haven't properly appreciated how well Spain played, how Spanish they looked. Not co-incidentally, this was especially so after Fabregas' entrance, which is why I'm particularly hopeful about tonight (unless Aragonés is really as contrary as he seems and goes and picks Alonso instead). It appears not to have had the same romantic cachet as Russia's win against Holland, but it was almost (I say almost) as impressive.

(Wouldn't you love to see Cesc's reaction after he scores the winner tonight? Remember how he looked when he scored the penalty against Italy?

Look at him. Bless.)

Another good reason to want Spain to win: I'd rather see a group of little players...I mean, players with low centre of gravity, triumph over a bunch of shooting guards who got lost on the way to the NBA Draft Camp.

And wouldn't it be something if Michael Ballack achieved that unprecedented double-quadruple, finishing second in four different competitions in the same season for the second time? I don't especially dislike him, it just reminds me of Chelsea's trophyless season. Unreasonable and immature, see?

Photo by europeanartphoto on flickr

*Admittedly, the only time I've heard this said this time around was from the mouth of Éamonn Dunphy at half-time in Wednesday's semi-final, so its currency is automatically devalued right there.

**Actually, the next 'expert' who uses the word 'efficient' to describe this team will get a sternly-worded letter of rebuke from me post haste. If that Rolfes fella is efficient, then I'm the most efficient player in the world.

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No title

Looking back over the posts in the blog so far (my, is it three weeks already?), I notice how often I've invoked the idea of romantic love, or more specifically heartbreak, in describing my interaction with Euro 2008 and football generally. I don't know if this is a sign of a lack of imagination, or vocabulary, or girlfriend. Regardless, lest you confuse me for someone with someone endowed with the capacity for original thought, I shall continue with the theme.

I've approached this tournament, despite resolving to regard it with chin-stroking detachment, instead much like someone on holidays, drunk on sunshine (and possibly alcohol), falling desperately in love with someone new almost every night. One evening, this person meets a beautiful, out-going, vivacious woman, and their first two dates are simply sublime. Our pathetic protagonist wakes the next morning full of all the world's joys and imagines a beautiful future for him and his new belle; indeed, he gets so swept up in this vision of eternal bliss that he heads straight for the jewellers and buys a brilliant diamond engagement ring. Tonight, on their third date, he's going to pop the question!

But as he collects her that evening, she doesn't seem herself. She's quiet, lethargic even. As they walk to the restaurant, it's almost as if he is propping her up, as if she would simply collapse otherwise, so little energy does she appear to exert. They reach their destination and are shown to their table; he pulls out the chair for her to sit on, but she doesn't seem to know what to do, and he practically has to push her into the chair. In conversation she is distant; she never initiates it and responds to his small-talk not with words, but with a sound resembling "mmhnghm". The rest of the time she merely stares down at a spot three feet beneath the table. He by now, being quick on the draw and all, realises that something is amiss; perhaps she's ill? He tries to gently and reassuringly take her by the hand, whereupon she screams, runs into the corner of the room and curls up into a shaking, whimpering ball. He, of course, runs back to his hotel and immediately posts about it on his blog.

Or something.

Anyway, it's hard to reconcile the Russian display tonight with the glory that mine eyes saw in their previous two games. Maybe Sweden and Holland aren't all that good, and Spain are? Maybe Cesc really is the man-god us Gooners believe him to be? How did Arshavin disappear like Cristi...I mean, CR7-85? Who knows? This isn't the time (or let's face it, the place) for reasoned analysis.

You know, I'd rather get carried away by intoxicating beauty than look at things with total objective rationality. There's nowt wrong with objective rationality, of course. It's just that football can bring us moments, or even entire games, of exquisite wonder. The thing is, these are rationed; supply is kept deliberately low, but just high enough to allow us enough of a glimpse every now and then that it keeps us hooked. When a sudden glut comes along, we stock up and practically blow our own heads off. That's my excuse, anyway.

So I still refuse to learn my lesson, and after a quiet evening of feeling sorry for myself (and the Russians too, obviously) I'll hop on the Spanish bandwagon and hold on for dear life on Sunday. At least we'll be spared any Stalingrad references in the press.

I had a kick-ass title prepared for this post had Russia won tonight: 'Exit, pursued by a bear'. Ah well. Maybe I'll get to use it if Michael Ballack powers home a couple of goals on the way to a German victory in the final.

Did you just get a shiver up your spine too?

Photo by pmpboarder on flickr

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(embarrassed cough)

"It was just a thought when everything was so sad. I thought life has some beautiful moments and you should tell people you love them. I wanted to show some emotion."

Ah, Raymond. I feel for you, pal. It's happened to us all. We've all done something silly while drunk on a cocktail of hope and despair, no? Some of us have proposed to our partner live on national television; whilst other among our number have rashly declared that despite our estrangement and the harsh words and icy glances we've exchanged subsequently, we're still in love with you, Dutch football!

Yep. I was one of them. It might be something to do with my being a "beautiful game"-spouting pseudo-intellectual pygmy* who's read Brilliant Orange twenty times and longs to see something in Dutch football that is, perhaps, merely a ghost these days. Perhaps I got carried away by the contrast with the vapidity of the 2004 team and the 2006 vintage's descent into record-breaking levels of indisciplined ridiculousness, in tandem with Portugal. But hey, tell me you weren't swept up by the majesty of their performance against Italy, which was surpassed by the win over France four days later. Tell me Sneijder's goal in the first game and his and Robben's against the French won't come instantly to mind when you recall this tournament in your dotage. Wasn't your heart warmed by Marco van Basten withdrawing Kuijt and Engelaar and sending on Robben and van Persie? What does that Cruijff chap know, anyway?

And like poor old Ray, we were left feeling a bit silly returning to the seaside the morning after we'd scrawled our words of devotion in six-foot-high letters on the pier wall. At least we didn't do it on live TV, I suppose.

(Oh, and Gabriele Marcotti says we're morons. Cheers, Gab.)

So, like some shameless football slut, we discard Holland now that they've fulfilled their usefulness and jump on Russia instead. We're surely on more solid ground here. As Jonathan Wilson (the finest football writer around, I'm beginning to think) pointed out at the weekend , it's with them that the idea of Total Football is most faithfully embodied. Wilson points out that this has at least as much to do with Russia's own sporting tradition as with the fact that their manager is Dutch.

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a match (in a non-partisan capacity) as much as Russia-Holland. Sure, Holland appeared relatively sluggish - James Richardson's pun of choice on the Guardian podcast: "Holland Dozier Holland" - but Russia were superlative**. Whenever they had the ball, they looked to score. (The same went for the group decider against Sweden, too.) It didn't matter what the score was at the time. Even when a single goal to the good late in the game, they still went for it. This runs against the prevailing trend which says that possession is merely a means of not conceding a goal. This was glorious anti-anti-football. Most teams would have instinctively shifted their weight onto the back foot and doggedly hoped to protect their lead.

Like England. Good lord, remember how close they came to qualifying - to eliminating Russia? If that thought doesn't send a chill down your spine, you're probably English, in which case you're understandably excused. Think of the difference between the styles of the respective teams. Take England's collapse in Moscow last October: they take the lead and without even thinking, cede two-thirds of the field to Russia, giving up any notion of threatening to score again. They don't even try to control the game by maintaining possession, keeping Russia at arm's length. I would call it 'panic', but that just makes it sound like a reflex rather than the neurosis it probably is. Sometimes it works (cf. the win against Argentina in 2002). This time it didn't.

While we're dragging the party down, let's recall how our hopes are continually elevated and then callously thrown out of the fifteenth-floor window at these major championships. As well as Holland this time, I can think of Argentina in 2006, Anyone But Greece in 2004, Holland in 2000 and, um, Holland in 1998. And Spain, anytime. Yet here I am getting giddy at another bunch of teasers on the basis of a couple of games. The rational course of action would be to pre-emptively adopt the crash position and brace oneself for the inevitable.

Well, luckily, I'm human and therefore inherently stupid. So I hope...no, no, fearlessly predict that: Hiddink will figure out how to counteract the counter-attack of the Spanish; we get a fantastic game between two of the most technically accomplished teams around, with Russia winning; they will then overcome Germany with a wave of almost ideologically attack-minded football; pundits all over the world will not decry Russia's "naivety" and won't say "if only they didn't go for a second goal"; Andrei Arshavin's tournament will be hailed as the greatest since Roberto Baggio in 1994; and I won't be stood forlornly on the pier on Monday morning, clutching an engagement ring in my fist before chucking it into the ocean.

Photo by Georgio R. (away for a while) on flickr

*It's one thing being an intellectual pygmy; imagine being a pseudo-intellectual pygmy.

**'Superlative' being the superlative of choice when one can't think of an actual superlative to say.

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Our Prayer

Seriously.

No, seriously.

You're giving us one last month of pleasure before You smite us all, aren't You?

I mean, that's cool. You made us, it's Your prerogative. I ask just one thing of You - now this may sound greedy, but hear me out - there's only four games left: You couldn't just give us a little more of the good stuff before we all die in a horrible mess of guts and pitchforks and whatnot, could You?

Thanks, G. You know I never really doubted You, right?

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Cosmological phenomenon astounds viewers, baffles experts

BASLE, 20th JUNE - It is a curious function of mankind's insatiable quest to uncover the workings of the universe that the more one observes and tries to learn about a subject, the more mysterious it often becomes.

The star CR7-85 was first discovered 23 years ago, but became especially interesting to astronomers in the early part of this decade. With no prior warning, it rapidly grew, both in magnitude and luminosity. Within a few short years, it had become one of the largest in its constellation, and astonishing temperatures were recorded on its surface.

What makes CR7-85 particularly fascinating, however, is that it contains a seemingly intrinsic property possibly unique in the cosmos: every so often, it disappears.

The first time this observation was made, it appeared so fantastical that it was rejected on the grounds of an apparent fault in the recording equipment. This seemed to be confirmed on next viewing when the star was present in its usual position in the sky. However, many months later, it 'vanished' once more. This time, it could not be denied: the star was 'missing' for a period of approximately an hour and a half.

Some time afterwards, it happened yet again. Here it was established that the star was, in fact, still present, emitting a very faint radio signal. Yet it was invisible to the eye, telescope or no.

Astronomers working to develop a model to predict the star's 'disappearances' believe they detect a pattern. When the star re-appears, it quickly regains in magnitude; indeed, at times over the last ten months, its luminosity, dwarfing its neighbours in the night sky, has startled observers. Its temperature increases too, to levels rarely before recorded. It is now thought that this extraordinary heat may be responsible for the phenomenon: when the space around CR7-85 gets too hot, it vanishes.

Using this information, and factoring in data collected by observatories in Milan and Barcelona, a 'disappearance' was predicted for this month, and it duly transpired last night. A team here in Basle was the first to notice it, and thanks to the marvels of modern communication, the world was able to share in the splendour almost instantaneously. Millions tuned in to bear witness.

Last night's happening was what is called a 'partial disappearance': the ninety-minute duration of the star's visual absence was punctuated by the occasional glowing; a couple of these were quite spectacular, the remaining few more feeble.

Debate is rife in the astronomical community as to how exactly CR7-85 should be classified. One problem in this is that it has been difficult to ascertain the substance of the star and how exactly it manages to generate such heat in the first place. Nevertheless, it hasn't stopped the speculation.

Some believe it to be something more than a star - as one researcher put it with a typical scientist's wit, a "superstar". Others take the opposite tack, that it ought not to be classified as a star at all, that it is merely a "congregation of vapours", in the words of a prominent astronomer. Those who agree with this, however, have failed to account for the star's almost incredible periodic brightness.

Research into CR7-85 has been centred on an observatory in Manchester for the past five years. Yet in recent weeks a political tempest has erupted between the British group and a team of scientists working in Madrid, who claim that they are better equipped to carry out the work. The dispute centres, as so much does in science these days, on money. The issue is expected to be resolved shortly.

CR7-85 should re-appear within days and enter a period of significant but steady luminosity. The next major increase in magnitude and temperature is predicted for August or September; the next 'vanishing', April or May of next year.

Photo credit: darkpatator on flickr

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With Flanders and Swann playing in the background

Read this by wingco on the When Saturday Comes message board. That is all.

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Reasons To Be Cheerful, Parts 25-31

Ordinarily, I'd be fretting right now. We've seen possibly the finest group stage of a major tournament in my lifetime. I don't need to recall everything which has made it so, you know what those moments are (do your own damn recalling, people - this is my fourth post today and I say I'm entitled to a bit of lazy blogging).

I describe myself as agnostic. I had a very mildly Catholic upbringing - I made my first communion and my confirmation, and we occasionally went to mass - but it wasn't enough to convince me that He's there. What it has done is plant a seed of doubt in my mind from which a shoot occasionally sprouts and pokes into the happy part of my brain when I'm enjoying myself: what if He is there? What if He's teasing me, allowing me to experience some magical pleasure before striking me down with one of his thunderbolts? (Or is that Zeus?)

What if He's given us all this glorious football in the first round, only to present us with the Second Coming of Italia '90 in the knockout phase?

On Sunday, Richard Whittall posted an article entitled Euro 2008 Could Help Regenerate the European Game on his A More Splendid Life blog*. It's what I would have written: (a) if I'd thought of it first; (b) had I been a better writer; and (c) had I not been such a natural-born pessimist. I read it, re-read it, and re-re-read it, and it won me over. We have four fascinating quarter-finals to look forward to. Hopefully, as Richard argues, the championships will have as far-reaching consequences for football style as Greece's sadly did four years ago.

There. I'm optimistic. And it feels...well, strange. I'm sat in the roller-coaster cart. Hopefully it'll get moving, and I'll want to get on again when the ride's over.



*Given that as far as I know, Richard constitutes one-third of Sport Is A TV Show's readership, it might be a bit futile providing a link to his blog, but hey.

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Goals are over-rated

I don't think you can ever really be neutral watching a football match. The issue is more complex than merely having an allegiance to one of the teams, or a prejudice against the other. You want to see good football, whatever 'good' happens to mean to you. To me it means, broadly, playing with an attacking spirit, with flair and a high level of technical ability on show as well, if possible. So immediately you're not the blank slate you may even try to fool yourself into thinking you are. And, of course, if one team shows these qualities significantly more than the other, you'll instinctively wish for their success.

So it was for me and Russia last night. Their display of attacking verve trumped Sweden's consummate Sweden-ness last night. It was the kind of performance that left you wanting more, and their win means we shall get it on Saturday night as they play - can it be true? - Holland. They scored two team goals so wonderful that I'm tempted to regard them in the same light as Holland's three (three!) similarly-worked efforts against Italy and France. That it's a Good Thing that they have qualified is something we can probably all agree on, except the Swedes, and perhaps Sam Allardyce.

Yet my abiding memory won't be of any of the above. I reckon there should be award for Best Non-Scoring Shot of the tournament; it should be instituted just so that we don't forget Henrik Larsson's miss. A gorgeous, long-range, twisting header, it inexplicably looped towards the far top corner. Just as inexplicably, it failed to drop in, instead bouncing off the top of the crossbar.
In that moment, despite having already fallen for Russia, I was a Sweden fan. It hurt.

It's been said that Pelé's fantastical dummy against Uruguay in 1970 was all the more beautiful for the fact that it was followed by a near miss when he collected the ball and shot. I'm beginning to agree with this.

It's probably this bloody tournament. Not having my own team to follow, nor a natural rival on whom to wish bad cess, has left me vulnerable. I've fallen in love with so many teams in the last week and a half. Naturally, some have already broken my heart ; and I know that some more will do so again during the next ten days (that's not being pessimistic; it's just a mathematical certainty). Watching these games, I've become hypersensitive to these little moments of tragedy, and I dwell upon them.

I'm frail, people. Just now, I saw an ikkle drop of rain-water fall off a leaf and onto a squirrel's head, and I cried.

Who knows what I'll be like by the time the competition's over? God, I love football.

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It's the ITV Football Drinking Game!

I've often read that soccer fans in North America would prefer to have more English commentators on TV coverage of games. I understand this - I know I'd be disappointed not to hear American voices calling the action at the Super Bowl, for example. However, if you are one of these people, and you get the chance to spend a bit of time in the UK, be sure to check out ITV's football coverage. You may well find yourself counting your blessings.

I know, I know - I really shouldn't complain. It's a free-to-air station and they do show some top-notch stuff (as well as the Euros they have the rights to Tuesday Champions League games). It just that it's so damned hard to concentrate on this wonderful fare when they're so intent on
smothering it with the most brain-drillingly irritating presentation imaginable. It takes all your mental resolve not to go all Luton Town v. Millwall, picking up your armchair and firing it through the TV screen, then realising that you're at home and that TV cost a fair whack and bugger me if that chair isn't heavier than I thought and I think I've done my back in.

It's with this in mind that I present the ITV Football Drinking Game. If you're going to be so driven to distraction that you can't focus on the actual football, you may as well make an evening of it, or at least stupefy yourself before they do it to you. So if during the next fortnight you find yourself with no option but to watch a match on ITV, here, at no cost whatsoever*, are the rules:

-Clive Tyldesley mentions the 1999 Champions League final - take a drink

-The first words out of David Pleat's mouth are "evening all" - take a drink

-David Pleat pronounces the same foreign player's name in more than one way - take a drink

-Jim Beglin says "ah, he made the most it" or "he went down a bit theatrically there" after a foul, regardless of the viciousness of the offence - take a drink

-After a free kick is awarded for a high foot, commentator says "of course, that wouldn't be a foul in the Premier League" - take a drink

-Peter Drury indulges in a meticulously scripted opening monologue - one drink for each minute's duration

-Peter Drury screams a player's name as said player scuffs a shot into the grateful hands of the goalkeeper - one drink for each eardrum ruptured

-During a Turkey game, the word 'Leytonstone' is uttered - take a drink

-Ad break! - take a drink

-At half-time, Steve Ryder describes a match of soul-stealing tedium as "intriguingly poised" - take a drink

-Commentator finds some way of shoehorning a mention of the English team into the commentary - take a drink

-Andy Townsend witters on yet again about the non-offside call for van Nistelrooy's goal against Italy, bringing up an example from the present match where a striker is off the field but wasn't given offside and how surely that shows that he's right, and what do UEFA think of
that then, eh?, even though it's completely, but completely, irrelevant to the issue - one drink for every notch you have to turn the volume down by

-Sam Allardyce - three drinks

-Commentator invokes a national stereotype, eg. "efficient" Germans, "cynical" Italians, or this, courtesy of Humble Football - take a drink

-Someone makes an insightful comment - you're hearing things - you're incredibly drunk by this stage, remember

-Commentator 'nudges you in the direction' of the highlights show at 2am on ITV 4 - take a drink

-Commentator mentions Cristiano Ronaldo - even though Portugal aren't playing - take a drink

-You find yourself wishing this match was on the BBC - you'd even be happy to put up with Gary 'Perma-tanned Smugness Factory' Lineker, Alan 'Gordon Brown' Hansen and Alan 'I'll just say what Hansen just said except I'll change the wording around a little bit so I can perhaps fool some of the British licence-fee payers out there into believing that a huge wedge of their hard-earned isn't being spent merely on providing Hansen, Lineker and Lawrenson with someone to make up the numbers for their pre-match fourball' Shearer** - you hate yourself - I think I have some Prozac in the medicine cabinet...



*Except the functioning of your internal organs. That's your disclaimer, by the way.

**Luckily I'm Irish and don't have to pay the BBC licence fee, so get it for free. Unfortunately we have to pay the RTE licence fee instead; if ever you feel the need to complain in any way about the Beeb, come over here and see the crap our money is spent on - and we still have to suffer the ads...

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Ali MacGraw will lose to France on penalties in the semi-final

Like everyone outside Italy, France and Germany, I've been thrilled by Holland's two displays so far, which have provided more beautiful, life-affirming moments than we could decently have expected in two hour-and-a-half chunks of our lives.

We've all seen this movie before. They get together, they bicker a little, they realise they love each other deeply. We realise what a beautiful partnership this is and hope with all our hearts that we can see it blossom. A third of the way through, everything is perfect. What could possibly go wrong?

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Senderos, salt-tears and Switzerland: how I found my team to follow in the Euros when it was too late

Funny how it happens. You're sat on your couch watching the latest kickaround in the 2008 Premier League Trade Fair...I mean, match at the European Championships. You have no allegiance towards either team, and though the game is not especially pretty, you have been mightily impressed by both teams' positive attitude, which has turned a match you were wary of watching beforehand into one you're thankful to have caught. Despite, or because of, both teams' urgent need to win, they're locked at 1-1, but in stoppage time, a long-range shot deflects off a defender's leg and loops over the goalkeeper. It's then that you discover that you're not neutral after all - you have fallen in love and had your heart broken at once.

I wasn't prepared for this. Switzerland? Why? How? They're that plain girl you know to say 'hi' to but never engage in conversation, who's just kind of there; it's easy to imagine life without her, because you never think of her anyway. By what perversity have I come to feel bereft at her leaving?

In truth, it was creeping up on me, starting with Alexander Frei's tears on Saturday. Injuries happen in sport, of course; if you watch for long enough, you'll see so many that you become de-sensitised. But there was something about this one that got to me. Leading his country in his country, in the biggest game of his life, and it turns out the fates were just screwing with his mind: allowing him to get comfortable with the whole situation for forty minutes or so before popping up round the corner, clad in black, and bashing him in the knee with a lead pipe. And as his tears flowed, I found myself looking away from the screen; it was genuinely uncomfortable watching the man's hopes leach away.



Some old-fashioned love for the plucky underdog came into play. Switzerland are one of the poorest technical teams in the tournament, and their lack of flair is embodied by that wretched Puma kit they wear. But they went for it. They actually subscribed to this antiquated notion that a team should actually try to score, to win a game rather than waiting for the other team to lose. Now, circumstances no doubt dictated this (chasing down a deficit against the Czechs, having little option but to win against Turkey if they were to survive in the competition). Still, some teams struggle to grasp this idea in similar circumstances. The difference between my expectations of the Swiss and what they actually did beguiled me.



I can't remember if Kobi Kuhn always had that distant look about him. He's like a movie character (played by Jack Lemmon) who has been visited by tragedy, watching his life being picked apart before him with quiet bemusement, edging dangerously towards resignation. You worry about what will happen to him after the credits roll.



And then there's Philippe Senderos. My relationship with Senderos is complex. As a Gooner, he's one of us. He comes across as a genuinely likeable man: a well-read footballer who is sensitive to the world outside the bubble, who goes out of his way to help new young teammates to settle into their changed situations. But I still wince slightly when his name appears on the team-sheet, as I do when an opposition forward bears down on him, or when he has the ball at feet and is lining up a threaded pass through a crowded midfield. I so badly want him to do well, but each time I see him play I become less convinced about his ability.



And yet, and yet...you know he cares deeply about how he plays. He tries. He wants to succeed for his colleagues, his manager and the fans. He is proud, but not egotistically so. Still, he is regarded as a weak link, and many Arsenal fans will be happy to see him leave this summer, which is highly possible. Understandable, too, given some of his performances, most notably against Liverpool where he was blamed for Fernando Torres' goal. But why do I feel defensive about him when he faces such criticism, however justified? Why was the most heartbreaking story of last season the fact that he took defeat so badly in that game that he was given time off work? Why do I feel like this about Senderos and not about, say, Gilles Grimandi?



Maybe it's his face. Sure, at first glance he looks like Vincent Cassel in La Haine: say the wrong thing and he'll pull out that cop's gun he found and hold it to your temple. But look again and you see someone who looks to be on the verge of tears, and not "I'm a footballer who's just missed a penalty" tears either. It's more like a small boy upon whom it's just dawning that he's lost in a bustling city street. I think it brings out the big brother (with lower case b's) instinct in me.



I want Senderos to stay at Arsenal next season, and I want him to have at least one great game, in the latter stages of the Champions League, say, where he turns in a display of Paul McGrath proportions; one game to go down in Arsenal history. And I want him to lead Switzerland on to the knockout stages of...


...oh yeah. Forgot about that.

Is this some sort of complex, falling in love with the patient as the life-support machine flatlines? It doesn't seem healthy. Maybe it's a function of my team not making it through the qualifiers several times in a row - I have to find someone else to put me through the wringer. Maybe there's just something wrong with my hormones...hey, listen to me go on; you're the expert, Doc, you tell me what's wrong.

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Please, just once in my life, let this happen...

My last post was called Correct me if I'm wrong, but..., so I may as well do it myself. The scenario I described therein does not rely on the result between Portugal and Switzerland. So, it's even more likely than I first thought, unless I've understood the rules completely incorrectly.

This has got me thinking. Imagine if this situation applied not to two joint-second-placed sides, but two teams in equal first, level on points, goal difference and goals scored. They meet in the last game and draw, finishing the group in joint-first. Both teams are through, but a shoot-out is needed to determine who finishes top and who finishes second.

Now, imagine that before the game began, it was known that the runner-up in this group would have an easier draw in the knockout phase. After ninety minutes of our game, with both sides already assured of qualification, they both know it would be in their interest to lose the shoot-out. So, what happens next....

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

As it stands after yesterday's games in Group A of Euro 2008, the Czech Republic and Turkey are level on points, goal difference and goals scored, and are thus locked together in joint second place. According to this, because this is so, and they face each other in the last game, a draw will mean that the second qualifying spot will be decided by a penalty shoot-out (unless Portugal also lose their game against Switzerland).

A shoot-out. In the group stage.

Please please please please....

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Cracks in my facade of carefully considered neutrality

The English media, bless them, have been all in a tizzy in the run-in to the European Championships. Baffled by being in the relatively unusual position of having to endure a major competition without the presence of their brave boys, the question dominating the run-in to the tournament has been: "who should we support?" The BBC have even made it the theme of their promotion of the tournament.

Kind of cute, really. Coming from a country whose presence at these events is unreliable (though it was much worse than that not so very long ago), I know exactly how to deal with this kind of situation: if England are playing, you back the other team; otherwise, you just hope for a good tournament with some nice football. Support a team? How gauche.*

Except that's rubbish. Just look at that line in the last paragraph: "you just hope for a good tournament with some nice football". If you're anything like me, the football snob inside you comes to the surface. You find yourself damning those who defences sit deeper than 35 yards out; your heart (unlike that of many Spaniards) breaks into many gooey pieces when Spain snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; and when Greece won it all last time out, even though on some level you knew it was something to be celebrated that a team so utterly overlooked had triumphed over the big boys, your reaction was "..."

Of course, there are other predilections and prejudices which may come into play: a favourite player; the aesthetic appeal of a jersey; the bittersweet memory of that foreign-exchange student you really fancied but never summoned up the courage to introduce yourself to...

I, though, am a child-partly-of-the-nineties, and grew up a football fan in a home cruelly deprived of a satellite dish; thus my mind and soul could find illumination but twice a week: once on Saturday morning, once on Sunday afternoon. If, like me, you listen to the Guardian Football Weekly podcast partly to hear James Richardson's voice (and puns), and dissolve into a puddle of helpless nostalgia** on seeing this:



-then, even if they were start playing like Bolton; even if Daniele De Rossi decides he needs to scratch the itch in his elbow by attempting to decapitate our Cesc; even if you feel jealous at their flowing locks and perfect cheekbone structure; no matter how much you might outwardly grumble, there'll always be a place in your heart for Italy.

Of course, Germany will win the tournament anyway - so much for what I think.

*In fairness, the Irish media have run similar features, both this year (including in yesterday's Irish Independent) and for the last World Cup, though they do seem to appear outside the sports pages; one prominent chat-show host urged the nation to support Poland because we have a lot of Polish immigrants.

**It feels slightly wrong for a twenty-something to indulge in such childhood nostalgia. Is it? I mean, if so, it's probably society's fault and all, but it'd be nice to know.

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Lines spoken at a sports desk, London

You got them photos from the tennis? Lovely, let's have a butcher's. Yes, that one there with Ivanovic at the moment of victory, the one where she looks like she's having an orgasm. That's our back-pager tomorrow. Fantastic. Actually, could you make an extra copy, for my own personal file, know what I mean? Good job that Russian munter lost. Look at those facking biceps. Looks like a facking geezer. No-one needs to see that while eating their breakfast on a Sunday morning, do they?

Can't wait for the Premier League to start again, I tell you. These Saturdays without footie, fackin' 'ell. Slow facking news day or what? I lost a mint on the Derby and all. That racing correspondent's out on his arse if he doesn't buck up his ideas. Tipped me a facking mule. Can'. Roll on August, eh, Bob? No more tennis, no more golf, just footie all the way. Proper sport, know what I mean?

'Oo the fack's watching Deal Or No Facking Deal? Gimme that remote. Christ on a stick, Noel bleedin' Edmonds, does my facking head in. The banker and the wanker, eh, Bob?...No? Suit yourself, then, tosser. Let's see what else is on...

...'ere Bob - there's footy on the Beeb. What the fack...European Championships? But it's June! The final was only a few weeks ago...yes it facking was, Bob, I should facking know - I was in Moscow, wasn't I?...oh yeah, the European Championships - fack me, are they on now? 'Oo's playing? Switzerland and the Czech Republic. Oh, for fack's sake. 'Oo gives a toss? Look at it. Fackin' 'ell. Hardly the Premiership, is it, eh?

Did we do any previews of this thing then, Bob?...too facking right, that all it deserves. I tell you, if we'd 'ad a proper manager, someone to show a bit of facking passion, know what I mean?, someone to slap those facking nancy boys around the place and show 'em who's boss, someone who knows how to give an all-important half-time team talk like a proper facking manager, instead of that ginger muppet can' McClaren, we'd facking stroll this competition. Look at the players we 'ave. 'Oo else in this tournament would get into this England team, eh? Okay, Ronaldo, I grant you. Of course Ronaldo would get in. And Cech, of course, best keeper in the world, he is, hands down, no facking argument. Apart from that, 'oo else would get in?...Exactly. We'd facking murder 'em.

We got any boys over there, wherever this thing is?...They're all at the Portuguese camp? Lahvely.

Fack me, I'm bored already. How long's this thing last, Bob?...You're facking joking. Well thank Christ Wimbledon starts soon. Just hope it's an Ivanovic-Sharapova final, eh? Take our minds off this bunch of garlic-munching, Toblerone-making, eastern, fascist, Nazi dago cants...Who'm I gonna support? 'Ooever's playing Spain. Racist bastards.

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The Official Sport Is A T.V. Show Euro 2008 Preview, for those whose countries failed to qualify

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