Layer 257 . . . The Philosophy and Economics of Football; Arsenal and Emotional Intelligence

.
Yesterday Arsenal closed the gap to 3 points from Premiership leaders Chelsea, and 2 points from Man Utd.  All three have played 28 games. Arsene Wenger said some time ago that he thought Arsenal could still win the Premiership this season. Do I give a damn? Yes - slightly.

I read somewhere this week that England's Premier League clubs have more debt than the rest of Europe's clubs put together.

Portsmouth FC were officially declared bankrupt this week.

We've had fake sheiks, fake billionaires and people like the Glazers who somehow managed to buy a prestigeous club by borrowing loadsa cheap money and then making the club itself liable for its repayment. This is all bullshit. I hate the Premier League, and the people who run it.

It's a vile state of affairs. In Germany, for example, clubs are still owned by the supporters, as are Barcelona and Madrid. The cost of tickets is such that the children of less well off families can still afford to go to matches, and in fact buy season tickets without too much sacrifice. Does this matter? Yes it bloody does. I don't really care too much about prawn sandwich eaters going to matches, just as long as the pie and chips eaters can also still afford to go. In other countries they don't, generally, pay players insane amounts of money, and they don't generally buy them for ridiculous amounts.

The Premiership stopped being interesting at the point where the richest clubs bought up all the best players, and were themselves bought up by fat cat billionaires. Yes - there have been exciting matches, and incredible levels of individual skill - but so what? Who cares apart from the hard core supporters?

What neutrals want to see is clubs nurturing their own talent, not borrowing massive amounts of money in order to snaffle up the established stars. Personally I hate seeing the so-called Championship clubs being denuded of the talent they've raised themselves - enticed away by the bribes that are successfully offered by the biggest clubs, or even the moderately big clubs, in the Premiership.

Arsene Wenger has been castigated by so-called afficionados of the game for refusing to give up on his youth policy and for insisting that the young players he's trained and raised himself should be allowed to play in the first team. Most people laughed when he said his team could still come top. Well they're not laughing now. Chelsea and Man Utd must be crapping themselves.

What's more, Arsenal have done so well in spite of having key players like Van Persie and Walcott out with long-term injuries.

The thing I really like about Arsenal, though, is Wenger's philosophy of the game.

On the Internet coachkev wrote this:

"Arsenal uses a 4-4-2 system. Wenger is constantly working to refine this system on the levels of both group and team tactics.

The team's defence is very attack-oriented. They attack their opponents early with a midfield press that alternates between a diamond formation and a back four. This tactic represents a calculated risk that the coach and his players are willing to accept (since most of the players are English and French, they have been playing without a sweeper since they were children).

Wenger demands aggressive, ball-oriented defence from his players and cultivates it with lots of practice games in tight spaces. When Arsenal gets the ball, its attack is very forward-focused. Square passes and runs parallel to the endline are to be avoided.

However, contrary to the "typical English" playing style, Arsenal relies mainly on short passes in the opposition's half - until they get close to the goal, where every player is encouraged to take risks and go for the goal with confidence and determination. Errors are allowed, but playing carelessly and losing the ball is forbidden.

Wenger places special emphasis on communication within the team. Every exercise is accompanied by shouts and commands that are loud and clear - aggressively so, if the situation requires it - and successful plays are greeted with cheers and applause. Players are expected to be actively engaged with one another and to cooperate in building team spirit, morale and enthusiasm for the Arsenal style."

"Actively engaged with one another." "Spirit". "Cooperate". "High morale". "Enthusiasm." All words  and concepts associated with emotional, interpersonal and spiritual intelligence.


Alex Thistlewood wrote this:

The club has become a preeminent destination for talented youth the world wide, and has established a footballing ethos the envy of every team in Europe but Barcelona. Arsenal is a club unique in their philosophy of bringing along a cadre of players who grow up together and want to win for each other, prizing an attacking style, while competing at such a high level. It’s an almost unprecedented venture in modern football. In terms of finances and talent, Arsenal is better positioned for the future than any other club in the League, and perhaps Europe.

Chelsea have been inconsistent this season, and I'm sick of reading about the antics of John "The Penalty" Terry, who's crap this season, and Ashley "Text Sex" Cole. Lampard's generally been off colour. Cech had a very poor start to the season and is now injured. Joe Cole hasn't regained his former brilliance. The replacement goalkeeper's called Hilarious. Balack must surely be ditched soon. I feel sorry for Drogba and Anelka, who've been superb. And who gave JT his tragic haircut? Vanessa Perroncel? Has he looked in a mirror?

As for Man Utd - they've had lots of injuries to their defenders, and have done very well in spite of that. But they're also inconsistent. Their defence has been pretty crap. I feel sorry for Rooney, who's been brilliant all through the season, and has really grown up this season. I hope he gets the player of the year award.

On Match of the Day just now even Alan Hansen said he's becoming an Arsenal supporter. They're a team that's greater than the sum of their individual parts. Man City did them a huge favour today by humiliating Chelsea 2 - 4. It has to be Arsenal's season. What a story that would be.

.............................................................................

"Polymath James Riordan can list Professor of Russian Studies, international children's author, translator, Radio 4 broadcaster, editor, sports historian, sports coach and Moscow Spartak footballer as just some of his hats.

One of his aims at Worcester is to combine work in both sport and children's literature, cooperating with the Children's Literature, Literacy and Creativity Reseach Centre and the School of Sport and Exercise Science."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Riordan

Jim Riordan has watched Portsmouth for 66 years but has seen them wrecked in just a few seasons.

Pompey embodies the passion, hopes and companionship of a working-class community and the fans will not let their club die

by Jim Riordan

My Pompey are going to rack and ruin. The club are so deep in debt through mismanagement that they have had to sell everything saleable, from the 112-year-old stadium to half-decent players. Today, administration. Tomorrow, oblivion?

As one of the oldest fans (I saw my first game at Fratton Park in 1944: having first pick on servicemen such as Ted Drake, we won 9-1 against Crystal Palace), I'm lucky. I witnessed the double-championship years of 1949-50 when Portsmouth were probably the best team in the world. I followed the club from First to Fourth Division and back, then down again under Alan Ball. Less than two years ago I "lived the dream" of winning the FA Cup. But that dream turned into a nightmare. Who is to blame?

The oligarch who cut off all funds? The chief executive who paid himself an alleged £1.4m a year, which we couldn't afford? The manager who asked for more, and more, and more?

Or are the Premier League and FA responsible? In their rush to rake in the millions that TV brings, they have perhaps turned a blind eye to what has been happening at our club. Dick Turpin would be more fit and proper than some of Pompey's recent board members.

A football club is far more than those that run and ruin it. The club represent the community, thousands upon thousands of fans throughout the world. Like virtually no other club, Pompey embodies the passion, hopes and companionship of a tight-knit, working-class community that regards the club as theirs. In desperation, these real fans sing "Portsmouth till I die!" and "Please don't take my Portsmouth away". So when the FA does FA for FA (Fans Always), remember that we will not let our club die.

These are not empty words. Fans have formed the Pompey Supporters Trust to bring together fan groups from up and down the country and try to gain a voice and an ear. Such is the eagerness to help that in less than three months the trust has gained well over a thousand members (at £5 a time) and generous financial support from all over the world, especially Australia and North America. It has its own bank account and website. Trust members are more than willing to take part in talks about the future of our club. But we have also drawn up our own Plan B for forming a new club if things go pear-shaped in administration. This has involved negotiations with local football clubs, coaches, builders etc. And agreement on a ground share with a local club, Havant & Waterlooville, increasing ground capacity to accommodate an estimated 8,000 core support from Pompey.

The new club would recruit players from academy and Football League cast-offs, and a manager with extensive local knowledge. If that means starting out again in, say, Conference South, so be it. At least the club would be run by and for real Pompey fans. I may not see top-class football again in my lifetime. But I'd like my children and grandchildren to have the chance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/feb/26/portsmouth-football-club-future

Comrade Jim
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/31/comrade-jim-riordan

....................................................................................

Barney Ronay is one of the Guardian's best writers.

Do the press want a World Cup disaster?

Thanks to John Terry we have a narrative for England's World Cup failure, with a villain, sex and a tempting notion of hubris

This week brought the World Cup abdication of Wayne Bridge, who has decided his position in the England squad is "untenable", a brilliantly grave and high-minded use of a word you might more normally associate with elite public office rather than sitting next to Aaron Lennon on a coach and occasionally standing up to do some special jumping on the touchline. It's a shame for Bridge. As a quite-good left-back he will be a loss. On a personal note I'll miss him because he's part of a dwindling band of sportsmen who resemble the kind of skinny, beaky, moist-eyed, old-fashioned 1970s-style youths you might have seen shouting something out of the window on the top deck of a bus, or hanging around near some swings in 1981.

My first thought was that this is not the right move for Bridge. You should always go to the party. Get out there. Even though you know it's going to be painful and you're going to spend the whole evening "being fabulous" in a slightly hysterical way, laughing too loudly and ultimately making an exhibition of yourself on the dancefloor by appearing to be too into the lyrics of I Will Survive. It's still much better than spending June on the sofa eating Galaxy and watching Midsomer Murders through a haze of tears and snot.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect has been a swell of support – including one entire radio show devoted to the subject – for the idea that the Bridge/Terry affair is part of a conspiracy by The Press to stop England winning the World Cup.

One theory is that The Press can't help it. They're like a veteran indie band called Stumbledork or Deathfinger or Bogusfringe. They only know one song: and it's a really depressing one (whereas I imagine in Germany the press are more like a triumphant old-school hair metal franchise, all fist-pumping spandex positivity).

The point is that The Press have only two stories here: England win the World Cup or England don't win the World Cup. One of these is a lot more likely, and so The Press is already diligently turning it into a coherent story, with a villain, some sex and a tempting notion of hubris. The Press now has a narrative for failure. We have a story arc, even if it's the same one – debauchery, decadence, pitfalls of celebrity – as last time around.

It's also worth noting there really is no such thing as The Press, no brotherhood of red-faced, sherry-stinking men and women gleefully tossing Wayne Bridge's roughly scissored scalp about like an office stress ball. There are just individual red-faced, sherry-stained men and women, jammed together out of necessity. The England team itself is like a vast, creaking, timber-lashed raft of the Medusa, with its own laptop-clutching parasite crew scattered across its back, huddling, fighting, building tiny shelters, hacking bits off, carving their initials and generally servicing their own petty short-term needs.

England won't win the World Cup, because other countries have better players. And when they don't it's all going to be about Terry. This is the only story left now: The Man Who Shagged Away The World Cup. From a purely press angle Bridge has carried out a passive-aggressive act of self-immolation, a World Cup suicide bombing. It's quite clever really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/feb/27/wayne-bridge-world-cup-press-conspiracy

Horribledisturbingmentalimagegate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/03/the-fiver-john-terry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/nov/02/premier-league-ledley-king-tottenham

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/barneyronay

...................................................

Owen Gibson wrote this in The Guardian:

Curious Links In A Twisted Chain of Ownership

When Sacha Gaydamak bought a 50% stake in Portsmouth from Milan Mandaric in 2006 he set in train a complex sequence of events that ended yesterday with the formal announcement that it had become the first Premier League club to go into administration.

Throughout his tenure there were questions about whether he was merely acting as a front man for his billionaire father Arkady, who was convicted in his absence in France last year on charges of illegal arms trading and sentenced to six years in prison. He fled to Moscow.

..................................................

by David Conn

Portsmouth's collapse must prompt football to examine itself

The Premier League rejects the idea that this is a major embarrassment that should prompt a bout of soul-searching. Portsmouth's collapse is due to rank bad management and overspending, they say. That is true, and it is the administrator's job to decide whether the problem results from even worse practices than that. But as far as we know, Portsmouth did nothing against any rules; they followed the accepted Premier League model for a club – overspending, beyond the club's true means, financed by loans from an owner and banks.

Portsmouth's core problem at the end of Sacha Gaydamak's ownership last summer was that he, who had passed the fit and proper person test and satisfied the league he owned the club rather than his father, the now convicted gun-runner Arkadi Gaydamak, had become simply not rich enough. Then the overspending became unsupportable and Pompey, three owners later, have collapsed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/feb/26/portsmouth-administration-premier-league

..............................................................................

Stoke City announce they are debt-free

Stoke City have announced that they are externally debt-free on the day that Portsmouth went into administration.

Figures announced for the year 2008-09, the club's first season in the Premier League, show the Potters made a net profit of £503,000 at the end of the last trading year, after transfers, and had an increased turnover of £54m – up from £11m in their last season in the Championship.

Stoke's manager Tony Pulis, who counts Portsmouth among his former clubs, said: "This is a great testament to the Coates family, who have put so much into the club.

"The chairman, Peter Coates, has been a fan since his boyhood and he knows this club inside out. He and his family have put so much into the club.

"This is a family club, run for the fans, and by local people. There should be an inquiry into how Portsmouth has been run."

The Coates family have already invested £17m, interest free, and plan to inject another £24m. Pulis said: "It must be unique for a club like us to be free of external debt, and that underlines how indebted we are to the Coates family.

"The most important thing about this club is that it stays in existence, and we have had success on the pitch to match the investment."

...............................................................................

Arsenal announce £35.2m profits and slash club debt

Arsenal have announced that they have slashed their debts by over £100m after making pre-tax profits of £35.2m for the six months ending 30 November, 2009.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/26/arsenal-financial-figures

..................................................................


http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/audio/2010/jan/13/manchester-united-debt-glazers

Manchester United fans prepare to show their true colours at Wembley

http://www.bcst.co.uk/aggregator/sources/104
.

Layer 43 Having A Laugh

.
One of the benefits of retirement from headship is the intellectual stimulation that’s suddenly available, and accessible, and very, very enjoyable. I love my days being filled with conversation, books, newspapers, music, the Internet and Radio 4.

Ever since head teachers were bludgeoned into the role of bureaucratic functionaries who just do as they’re told - who just exist to ‘drive up standards’ - they were no longer required to think about the needs of children and teachers, and they were no longer allowed to be alternative centres of thinking about pedagogy, teaching and learning. Their independent action research into how to improve attitudes to learning, to reading, to mathematics and science, etc, was no longer welcome, and in many cases no longer tolerated. Talk about ‘Leaders of Learning’!

Teams of ‘experts’ had devised the National Literacy Strategy, for example, and the role of the head was to ensure the strategy was implemented in their schools. So no more nonsense about holistic learning, reading and writing across the curriculum, the integral role of speaking and listening, genuine purposes for writing and research, a sense of audience for creative writing, and so on. No more rubbish about children enjoying school, or developing a love of learning.

Al of those strands of thinking now had to be abandoned, and the teachers were to be directed to do whole-class teaching and decontextualised and meaningless exercises to practice ‘grammar for writing’, ‘connectives‘, adjectival phrases, and “wow words”! Not just a return to ‘basics’, but a kind of turbo-Victorian approach to children learning by rote to operate within the dominant culture.

These are the intellectual depths to which teaching was supposed to descend - the idea that good writing consists of long sentences full of ‘connectives’, multi-syllable words (whether or not the children fully appreciate their meaning), fancy descriptions, and the kind of vocabulary that may be quite common in some middle class homes but certainly isn’t in the majority of working class homes, where, incidentally, the language is nevertheless, more often than not (because not all of the working classes are thick and ignorant, you see) vivid, lively, colorful and witty. It also tends to be concise, direct and appropriate.

I used to despair of teachers who started out in their careers, and often went through their entire careers, thinking that working class language and expression was inferior and unfit for purpose. I well remember a snooty teacher that I had for ‘A’ Level French who hated the Midlands accent that was prevalent in my school and scolded us for our ‘lazy’ and ‘slovenly’ pronunciation, and for our ways of speaking. I remember asking myself why I should have any respect for this self-made toff (RIP Mr Hottot) who clearly had no respect for (or understanding of ) me and my vast extended family, my friends and my neighbours. I felt a very real need to give him at least a sharp verbal slap, but of course I also wanted to get through my French exam.

The only thing I remember learning from this guy was the word ‘palimpsest’ (See Layer 1). He obviously loved the word, and thought it made him sound educated and terribly bright when he used it. The second time he tried to teach it to us he started off by asking our small group of ‘A’ Level hopefuls (only half of whom passed the exam) if we knew what it meant. When I told him the meaning he asked me how I knew it (!), and was somewhat taken aback when I explained that he’d already introduced us to the word - the previous year. It’s still not exactly a word that’s always on the tip of my tongue. I reckon I could get through life without it.

I’ve known plenty of teachers (and head teachers) down the years who had a built-in conviction that non-standard English needed to be driven out of the classroom and replaced with ‘correct’ English. They found it very hard to come to terms with the idea that if the community they work in has its own modes of speech, its own local grammar and syntax, and its own vocabulary and pronunciation, then it was perfectly entitled to have those things, and entitled to resent any teacher whose attitude was elitist, snobbish and discriminatory.

It seems incredible to me that as part of their basic training young teachers aren’t made aware that their job is to validate and show respect for children’s current usage of language, and to work towards children becoming aware of ‘Standard English’ and ‘Received Pronunciation’, and to be able to use them appropriately when any situation requires it, such as in tests. (Though one might argue that examiners have no right to penalise any child who chooses to write in the vernacular in a test.)

Teachers who see themselves as missionaries, or elocutionists, who descend on working class communities with no respect for the local culture and a determination to impose their fundamentalist beliefs about speaking and writing on the children they work with, and attempt to make the children feel ashamed of their community languages, accents and dialects, should be sent packing. To the contrary, the system goes on encouraging them in their self-appointed role.

However, I digress. All I’m really saying is that the life of head teachers in the current climate is intellectually stultifying, and the biggest challenge on offer is to learn how to work the system and survive in their job, whilst dealing with a daily diet of problem-solving, administration and supervision that is hardly very intellectually stimulating the first time around, let alone the 10th or 20th.

Not that most heads are looking for intellectual stimulation, of course, but wouldn’t it be NICE if the education system offered them some possibilities and encouragement to think at a high level about what they’re actually doing to and for children. Like, for instance, providing for all the developmental needs of children and enabling them to grow their emotional, social, physical, instinctual and spiritual intelligences, as well as their intellects. The system still doesn’t promote intellectual development and critical thinking, of course - just memorisation, fact acquisition, and test-passing ability.

And as for developing curiosity, creativity, imagination and a love of learning for its own sake - you’re ‘avin a laugh!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Football - the great working class pastime cum plaything and business opportunity for oligarchs, tycoons and rich scumbags from around the world - available free on ITV last night (if you don't count the cost of the brainache adverts): the Champions League Cup Final, live from Moscow. Manchester United v Chelsea.

Football’s become a bit like language really - once the humble property of ordinary people, but lately colonised and now ‘owned’ by those who like to consider themselves the elite, the good and the great, who consider they have the right to make the rules and to impose the terms on which it’s practiced and enjoyed.

At least this is the case in funky old Britannia, where no-one has any qualms any more about selling their souls and their assholes to the devil, or the Murdoch corporations, or Sky TV, or whatever. Mass culture in Britain is increasingly the BBC v The Rest. The People’s Media v Commercial Interests.

Which is why just a few hundred thousand ‘subscribers’ can now watch Test cricket live, or most football matches live, instead of the millions of people (children included, since they also have ‘rights’) who would like to, and indeed feel they ought to be able to.

Though there are increasingly few members of the populace who were brought up on the notion that everybody - regardless of class or financial means - has the right to share in the riches of our national cultural life: even humble street sweepers, shelf stackers, labourers, child minders and others on minimum wages and part-time hours, who may not have two pennies to rub together when all their bills and taxes have been paid.

(They don’t pay Income Tax? Well they DO pay near enough 20% VAT every time they buy a bog roll or a pair of shoes or a pen or pencil. Which means they pay proportionately more in tax than middle class folks, who in any case are able to afford accountants who show them how to avoid paying tax. So stick that in your anti-egalitarian pipe and smoke it.)

Interestingly the football clubs of Spain and Germany are still at least 51% owned by the fans themselves, joined together in ‘sporting associations’. (Was this the origin of our ‘Association Football’? I’ve never really thought about it.)

In those countries they have maintained a member-owned tradition and a commitment to allow young people to experience being football fans in some of the finest stadiums in Europe. They still have ‘affordable’ prices for entry - 100 Euros can still buy you a ticket for the entire season at Barcelona’s Camp Nou.

Well that’s where a political tradition of anarcho-syndicalism gets you, Mr Scudamore, Mr Abramovich. But you’re not really interested in that, are you? It’s just noses to the trough, as far as you’re concerned. And those that can’t get near to the trough can just fuck off as far as you’re concerned.

I just wish Bill Hicks, who was satirizing the shit out of commercialism and its domination of cultural life, 20 years and more ago, was still around with his courage and his explosive wit and his insightful wisdom. I miss him badly. He was a good man. He made me laugh - like no-one else ever did, or probably ever will again.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can read David Conn’s excellent column on the state of football, its finances, and the impact of the ’free market’ on the national team, in yesterday’s Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/may/21/premierleague.championsleague

As for the match last night - it was brilliant. As it would have been had the players been ‘earning’ less than half of what they currently gorge themselves on. As it would have been had Barcelona and Bayern Munich been able to afford those particular players, and been in the final instead of Glazer’s United v Abramovich FC.

Well done the Uefa president, Michel (Liberty, Fraternity, Equality) Platini, for continuing to draw our attention to the fact that the success of the top English clubs has been “built on an unsustainable level of debt which, in all fairness, is distorting the level playing field in Europe”. In all fairness, I reckon they should just kick us out of Uefa.

So don’t laugh about the German teams not doing well in the Champions League any more. At least Germany insists on keeping football as the people’s game, and keeping live football affordable. It’s not the decent and egalitarian social-democratic Germans who are the nationalist neo-fascists these days - it’s us.

We‘re the ones who consider ourselves entitled to all the power, the prestige and the glory, at any cost. To ourselves, (our own people, our own game, our own national team,) or others. (Yes folks, I can bring politics into anything, even Uefa and the Bundesliga!)

Though by all means have a damn good laugh that there aren’t any decent German footballers any more. Over the years I think they’ve had more than their fair share of luck and good fortune. The wheel of fortune has certainly turned, in more ways than one. So sorry Herr Ballack - you were the only German in the Final, and you were crap. Your glory-seeking off-target shooting from free kicks and from miles out of range was rubbish. You were having a laugh.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

PS John Terry is a wuss. Fucking hell, man. You just missed a penalty, that’s all. I can’t feel sorry for you. Think of all the money you’re earning. Fuck the glory. Fuck your ego. I’ll save my pity for the poor fuckers who can’t afford to get into Stamford Bridge, and will never be able to afford to watch you and your vastly over-paid pals kicking a football, except on a screen, of course. Down the pub, maybe. The few that still remain in working class Britain, that is, and can afford a pub license for Sky.
.