YoG No. 4 – The Fans Fight Back

p160206-092-liverpool_sunderland-729x483

Saturday was a bad day for Liverpool FC. But it was a great day for Liverpool fans and the wider football community. It’s not the first sign of dissent from football fans, but it certainly was the most vocal, most noticeable, and as time goes on, it may turn out to be the most effective tactic in the fight to bring football back to the people. And by football, I mean English football. In most of Europe this is not an issue. A season ticket for Bayern Munich was €140 this season and €130 at last season’s runners-up Wolfsburg. In the 1970’s and 1980’s football hooliganism was known as the ‘English disease’. Today’s ‘English disease’ is the daylight robbery of the fans that built this sport. And unlike hooliganism, it is completely legal; completely supported by the elite; and if it goes unchecked will – eventually – destroy English football.

It may take a decade for the scales to fall from the eyes of the Premier League, the Football Association and the clubs, but you cannot have walkouts like Saturday. It cannot be allowed spread. The fans have to be listened to. I’m a Liverpool fan. From Dublin. I’ve been to Anfield twice in my life. Twice they won 3-0. In 1993 I sat on a roofless Kop during a downpour as they crushed Wimbledon. Great atmosphere, great scouse wit on display in the face of a monsoon. In 2011 I sat in the Anfield Road end as they battered Newcastle by the same score. Surrounded by tourists (like me?) I felt I had to keep a bit quiet. Every exasperated “for fuck’s sake ref!” was almost frowned upon by the crowd around me. There was no craic at all. No atmosphere down there. I really wished I’d been on the Kop. Or in Tallaght at a Dublin derby.

Regardless of your background, you know this sport is for everyone. I know that the people that can make football matches the best 90 minutes of your life that week, even that year, are drawn from all places. It’s not like Rugby in that way. The craic and the banter is of a different shade – more cynical, more fatalistic and more cutting. And funnier. The anger is different too, in that it exists. What makes football crowds around the world the most energetic, heaving masses of equal parts joy and borderline violent, depending on what they are seeing, is because many of them see those 90 minutes as a glorious release from the rest of their lives. Many people simply need it.

Anfield, Liverpool is a poor place. The ground is surrounded by rows and rows of small terraced houses. The people in these areas are not rich. A 3-bed house on Arkles Road, 3 minutes walk from the Kop, is currently for sale for less than £80,000. 2-beds can be bought for less than £50,000.

The people who live on Arkles Road, the people who have lived on Arkles Road and surrounding streets since the houses were built, are the heart and soul of Liverpool Football Club. And Everton Football Club. And the same people on the same streets in Moss Side and Salford are the heart and soul of Manchester football. But the clubs don’t think they need those people anymore. Not when there’s thousands of Thais, Chinese, Americans, and yes Irish daytrippers, willing to pay the price the owners want.

But you can keep that English league with its English disease. It’s not for me. And it’s not for the 10,000 leaders of the fightback on Saturday. I was proud to be a Liverpool fan this weekend, albeit from the armchair. And I hope that one day soon this English disease is defeated. Perhaps the miracle of Leicester City is part of the solution. Dozens of individual players in England cost more than the entire Leicester team in transfer fees. Maybe Liverpool and other clubs don’t need to squeeze every last penny from their fans to be successful. I hope the fight continues. I hope it spreads, or at least threatens to spread, to other clubs. And I hope the clubs listen.

Owners come and go. Directors come and go. Managers and Players come and go. But the people of Arkles Road and the city of Liverpool, one of the truly great football cities on Earth, remain. And they need to be able to pay in to see their team.

You can see them, their great grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers in the clip below. A different world, but the same game. On the same pitch, with the same Liver bird on the chest…

 

Read more here http://www.spiritofshankly.com

 

YoG No. 3 – Players You Love to Hate

The announcement by John Terry at the weekend that he was leaving Chelsea was typical of the man. Unnecessary, unwarranted and unapproved by his club, it was just another in a long line of incidents that has made him a disliked individual for many football fans. Even Chelsea fans – those with a moral compass – must agree that in many ways he is not the soundest individual. And it’s not just his footballing activity that is hateful. While donning his full kit to celebrate a Champions League win he played no part in was a sign of his lack of self-awareness, his racist taunting of Anton Ferdinand; his assault case; parking his Bentley in a disabled parking space; and alleged affair with a team-mates wife, all point to a fairly nasty individual. A magnificent player, but in my eyes, he epitomises the slow descent of the modern footballer into the gutter. And he’s far from alone. Here’s a few of the worst:

El Hadji Diouf:

Nasty nasty El Hadji. As a Liverpool fan he brought me nothing but shame. Spitting at Celtic fans while wearing that jersey was simply unforgivable.

Ashley Cole

Alongside Terry in the most despised (and most successful) Mourinho inspired Chelsea defence, everything he touched turned to rage. Remember why we called him “Cashley Hole”? It was the extract from his autobiography in which he stated he nearly crashed his car when he heard he had only been offered €55k a week to play football. Now watch him absolutely hack into the Spurs player below and then do his, and Chelsea’s, trademark petulant, aggressive harrying of the referee. Screaming at the injustice of it all. How could Ashley be booked for this? He deserved a red.

Mario Balotelli

A nightmare. An out and out nightmare. Useless at Anfield and clearly not liked by his team-mates, evident from the lukewarm response to his penalty goal in the Champions League game against Besiktas. He took the ball off Jordan Henderson to take it. Why always you? Is it because you’re an arsehole maybe?

Diego Costa

Another Chelsea player. Another one who epitomises the vulgar side of football. Look at the stamp on Emre Can at about 0:35 below. A reason to turn the football off and watch something else.

There are more out there. Gary Neville, just for being so damn Manchester United; Suarez, not just for his racism and biting, but also for that celebration in the tunnel against Ghana in the 2010 World Cup; Roy Keane for his abuse of referees and for Saipan; Joey Barton; Craig Bellamy; Arjen Robben. The list goes on. And on.

While we all need an enemy, and there’s a lot to be said for it, I often wonder would football be a better place without these characters. They’re not dirty players. They’re just a bit nasty. They dive; they pull jerseys; they stamp; they chase refs; and they sometimes spit and bite. Personally I think we could survive without them.

And we’d be better off with more like this man:

18 goals. 4 penalties. 13 from outside the box. 2 from inside his own half. A football genius.

YoG No. 2 – Under-rated Irish – Tony Galvin

eire-tony-galvin-435-panini-italia-90-fifa-world-cup-trading-sticker-60327-p

A full 3 years before the USSR collapsed, the process was begun when Ireland’s Tony Galvin dismantled their magnificent football team in Hanover in a EURO 88 group game. His degree in Russian Studies from Hull University may have helped him play such a key part in this landmark game for Irish football. To this day, it remains probably the greatest Irish performance of all-time, if not the greatest result. The 1-1 outcome may push this game down the pecking order compared to better days and nights for Ireland, but the overall performance has yet to be bettered. Ireland were outstanding, and against a team who were edged out in the previous World Cup in an epic 2nd round match which finished 4-3 after extra-time. They lost out on that occasion to an excellent Belgian side, who were themselves only knocked out by Maradona in the semi-finals. This USSR side also went on to the final of EURO 88 itself.

But in that group game, Ireland were far superior and Tony Galvin was our star. He tormented the Soviet defence, which included Khidiyatullin, Kuznetsov, and Demyanenko, protected by the likes of Aleinikov, Belanov and Vasyl Rats in midfield – a fairly solid bunch. Run after run down the Irish left led to chances for Aldridge and Stapleton. While Ronnie Whelan’s volley/shinned screamer is deservedly the most memorable moment of the game, giving Ireland the lead in the first half, it should not be forgotten that Galvin was completely upended in a one-on-one by Soviet keeper Rinat Dasayev in the second half, with the match still at 1-0. Had Galvin not been poleaxed, he most certainly would have finished it to make it 2. As it happened, the collision ended Dasayev’s participation eventually, after hobbling around for a few minutes as Ireland – with Galvin to the fore – kept up the bombardment.

While Galvin’s performance has gone down in history, let’s not forget that other Irish legend which was created that night. As a Charlton-esque hoof from the back landed at the feet of Oleg Protasov at the edge of the Irish box, the young George Hamilton let out that infamous cry of “danger here”. The ball went through Packie Bonner’s legs and the phrase has been a dreaded part of the Irish soccer commentary folklore ever since.

In 2012 the Irish Independent published “The Legends” magazine listing the top 50 Irish soccer players of all time. Galvin came in at 36 just behind Chris Morris and ahead of Tony Cascarino. And when you consider the exalted cult status of the latter, it jars slightly with the under-rated tag I give Galvin here. Perhaps, but Cascarino’s status has as much to do with his media appearances, eye-opening biography and his exuberant personality, than anything he did on the pitch.

Galvin’s club career is defined mainly by his years at Tottenham Hotspur. Signed by Keith Burkinshaw on the recommendation of Bill Nicholson in 1978 from non-league Goole Town, Galvin is still remembered fondly by Spurs fans as a major part of a very successful side which won 2 FA Cups back-to-back in 1981 and 82 and the UEFA Cup in 1984. En route to the latter, he scored 3 goals over 2 legs against Feyenoord in the second round. That Feyenoord team included Ruud Gullit and Johan Cruyff.

Galvin left White Hart Lane in 1987 to go to Sheffield Wednesday. Hit by injury there he went on to Swindon Town in 1989, and with former Spurs team mate Ossie Ardiles in charge he became assistant manager the following season. He followed Ardiles to Newcastle in the same role until the Argentinian was sacked in 1992.

As I mentioned earlier, Tony Galvin has a degree in Russian Studies and he also studied teaching at Trent Polytechnic. He now teaches at a London College.

It’s not usually fair to distill a great and hugely successful career down to one match, but sometimes a game just stands out and will stand out forever in the hearts and minds of those who saw it – Richard Dunne in Moscow for example – and when I think of Tony Galvin now, it’s the socks down around the ankles almost goading one of the world’s best defences into even attempting to dispossess him that I think of.

And to end, here he is in all his glory, having been absolutely creamed by Dasayev… It was all they could do to stop him that night…

tony-galvin-390x285

YoG No. 1 – Welcome to A Yard of Grass

 

This is a brand new football blog from Dublin, Ireland. And it starts with an acknowledgement of the inspiration for the title…

Of course it was Brian Clough who inspired the Sultans of Ping in the first place, with his description of Forest winger John Robertson, but moving on…

I’m a town planner by day, a job, like any other, that gets in the way of watching and reading about football. In these posts, I’m going to try to get across the love of the game that so many of us feel but that rarely gets a look-in in the mainstream media anymore. Football is so damn cynical these days. And when it’s not being cynical it’s overly and insincerely sentimental. Football coverage is generally atrocious. For every Ken Early and Graham Hunter, there’s 50 tabloid hacks sucking the life out of the game. Scandal after scandal is manufactured by these people. Grealish drunk; McClean ravaged for his admirable stance on the poppy; Raheem havin’ the “crack”. All bullshit. All irrelevant to the game. It’s January now and we are being bombarded by outright lies on an hourly basis, known as the transfer window. Stories are created; the hopes of the gullible fans raised and dashed every day; and behind it all Rupert Murdoch is laughing, and an elite band of billionaires with him. Football is a dirty little business.

But we love it. We love it because it’s the single most unpredictable thing in our lives. We love it because a combination of Shane Long’s right foot and Jonathan Walters’ arse can topple the world champions; because Exeter City could and should have beaten Liverpool last week; because Leicester City topped the Premier League at Christmas 12 months after being bottom; because Iceland and Albania will be in France in June, and the Dutch won’t; because every so often, just when you’re getting tired of the whole damn pantomime, something happens that pulls you back in and starts you dreaming again. Liverpool in Istanbul. United in Barcelona in ’99. A scoreboard during a competitive European fixture in White Hart Lane that read – for a glorious short-lived few minutes – Tottenham Hotspur 0 – 1 Shamrock Rovers. Damn that shaky cameraphone but I know what it said.

IMAG0125

 

But mainly we love it because we still believe we can do what they do – those overpaid lucky bastards. Every mistake made by a player is cursed to high heaven because you know exactly what he should have done and you know you have the ability to do it. Clear the f***ing thing, don’t pass it out of defence! Play it outside, don’t dribble in!! And as a former fairly useful dead-ball expert meself, I know for a fact that I can knock in a better corner than 90% of those taken in the Champions League. And I can’t for the life of me understand a free-kick ballooning way over the bar! Clowns!! All of this despite the fact that I never climbed the football ladder beyond the low reaches of the Dublin District Schoolboy League. And neither, most likely, did you.

We love it because football is everything. It can range from drama to comedy to farce and to tragedy in 90 minutes. In 5 minutes.

So why start writing this? Well it’s probably a combination of things, but mainly ego, if I’m to be honest. I want to share my views and the internet lets me.

But also because 2015 was a year where, despite (or maybe because of) not seeing as much football on TV as perhaps in the past, it once again began to occupy the same part of my brain as it did when I was 12. Football excited me again. I walked out of Lansdowne Road after that German match with the same mix of a permanent smile and tears behind the eyes as I had in 1990 after the Dutch game. It wasn’t a game of football. It was a country arriving at, or returning to, it’s proper place in the footballl world. It was also a country falling back in love with their Boys in Green. For the first time in a long, long time, the Irish soccer team contained bona fide national heroes. For all the hype over the Rugby team going into their World Cup as back-to-back 6 Nations champions, much of it merited, and for all the column inches devoted to GAA and another Dublin All-Ireland victory, and then to Conor McGregor, for a huge number of us 2015 will always be remembered as the year we beat the World Champions in football and qualified for our third European Championships.

I hope over the coming months and years to get that across; to counter some of the pointless nonsense that envelops the beautiful game these days and to focus on the great things about it, the worthwhile over the sensationalist.  And to make you laugh a bit along the way too. It won’t be very regular, but keep an eye out for it…

Thanks for reading

Clemo (3)

14218484790_582e906e22_b