Up, Down and Round and Round

The last few days have been quite eventful sports-wise. We have seen the quarter-finals of the cricket World Cup, the start of the 2011 Formula 1 season, another round of European Championship qualifiers and the always anachronistic Boat Race!  Add to that another depressingly familiar defeat for Swindon Town and you have a weekend packed full of ups and downs.

Saturday was the busiest day, with the last of the cricket quarter-finals taking place, along with a host of international football matches and the aforementioned Boat Race. It was a day of mixed fortunes for England, as the cricket team were soundly beaten by Sri Lanka to exit from the competition, whilst the football team performed well for 20 minutes in their qualifying match in Wales, which was enough to secure the 2-0 victory. That means that England are now back on top of their qualifying group, and seem to be stumbling their way towards making it into next year’s tournament.

 John Terry, Photo by John Dobson

Talking of the football team, did you see the mess that Fabio Capello made of reinstating John Terry as the national team captain? Whichever way you look at it, it was poor management from Capello. You can argue whether the actual decision was correct, whether John Terry should be captain at all, but whatever you think the handover of the armband was a farce from start to finish. It does seem to be a trait of the Italian’s though. David Beckham was dropped via an ITV interview after many years outstanding service for the England team, and now Rio Ferdinand finds out he has been dumped as the latest England captain also via the media. Mind you, he also apparently found that he had been appointed as captain in the first place via watching TV, so maybe he shouldn’t have expected anything else!

I do have respect for Capello as a coach, but his man-management skills leave a lot to be desired, and let’s face it, the England manager/coach/whatever doesn’t actually need to do a lot of coaching. Good interpersonal skiils and motivation are his priorities and it is exactly here where Capello appears to fall down. Of course, none of us know exactly what goes on behind the scenes, and the media have a vested interest in playing up any story of this kind. But hopefully this will be the last such controversy and both “coach” and players will be able to concentrate on matters on the pitch for the remainder of the qualifying campaign.

Elsewhere, the F1 season finally got under way in Australia after the postponement of the Grand Prix in Bahrain. A convincing victory for current champ Sebastian Vettel will have been very ominous for his rivals in this year’s championship. The F1 roadshow now moves out to the Far East with Grand Prix in Malaysia and China before heading back towards Europe in May. If this year’s battle for the Championship is anywhere near as close as last season then motorheads everywhere will be very happy.

Oh, and Cambridge didn’t win the Boat Race. And Swindon are hurtling fast towards League 2 with no apparent prospect of even winning one match, let alone winning enough games to stay up. Ho hum. Sport – it enthrals and appals in equal measure.

Up for the Cup!

So, here we are midway through March and the football season is starting to build towards its climax. This last week saw the quarter-finals of the FA Cup and the culmination of the “round of 16” in the Champions League. The finals of both competitions will take place at Wembley Stadium, London in May.

Wembley Stadium, London, England

In the European matches most games went the way you would expect, and the quarter-final line-up will include 3 English teams, 2 Spanish, 1 Italian, 1 German and 1 Ukrainian team. The draw for that next round will take place tomorrow (Friday) and could see some interesting match-ups. From what I have seen so far, Barcelona stand head and shoulders above the other teams left in the competition and everyone will be hoping to avoid them if at all possible.

The surprise team of this season has been Tottenham, who have gone one better than their North London rivals Arsenal in this year’s competition. Who is to say that they won’t go even further? Under Harry Redknapp’s expert direction, they have entertained hugely throughout their campaign, and goals and comebacks have been in plentiful supply. It would be a refreshing change to see a different team in this year’s semi-finals, and I would not bet against Spurs being that side.

Domestically, the FA Cup is one stage further on than the Champions League, with the semi-final line-up already decided. There were some very entertaining matches in the quarter-finals, especially those games involving the less fancied teams. The semi-finals will take place on the weekend of 16th/17th April at their new home of Wembley Stadium, despite the fact that all 4 competing teams come from north of Nottingham. I understand that finances dictate that the FA needs to use Wembley Stadium as much as possible, but the finances of the cash-strapped supporter never seem to be taken into account – or don’t matter!

Back in the day, both of these matches would have taken place at a neutral club venue – maybe Hillsborough for the Manchester derby and Villa Park for the Stoke/Bolton game. But now, because the FA overspent on rebuilding Wembley, all of the fans of those clubs will have to traipse their way down to London for the semis – and, for 2 sets of supporters, back again for the final in May. Once again, the fan in the street is the last person to be considered amongst the high finance of modern-day football.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Without The Good!)

I step away from my blog for a few days and all hell seems to break out!

First off there was the Rooney incident at Wigan when he ambushed James McCarthy – flooring the Wigan midfielder with an elbow to the head. Somehow Rooney managed to escape without any punishment at all. The referee gave a free-kick but handed out no cards – which means there is no way he could have actually seen the incident because, if he had, then Rooney would have played no further part in the game. Then Alex Ferguson, who won’t speak to the BBC because one of their reporters looked at him funny one time, or something, sent out assistant Mike Phelan who whimpered that “we can’t dispute the referee’s decision”.

This farce was then made worse when the FA kowtowed to the “mighty Man Utd” and refused to apply any subsequent punishment on Rooney because, they say, the referee saw the incident and dealt with it at the time. I have to suspect that if it had been a different player, playing for a different team that a different outcome would have occurred somewhere along the line. Either the referee would have sent the player off, or admitted afterwards that he did not see the offence, or the authorities would have seen fit to apply a more proper and appropriate punishment after the fact.

Ironically it was Manchester United who were moaning about the officials in their very next game, when they slipped to defeat against Chelsea. No talk now about respecting the match officials’ decisions. Ferguson was angry that the ref failed to send off Davd Luiz and commented that he had “feared the worst” when he saw who the referee was to be. He also said that “you want a fair referee .... and we didn’t get that”. The irony couldn’t really get any thicker. Ferguson has a habit of disrespecting match officials when he doesn’t get his own way, and has a suspended 2-match touchline ban from last season for a similar offence. The FA has charged him again with improper conduct, but they seem incapable of applying any suitable and effective penalty. I don’t expect a different outcome this time either.

And further disciplinary controversy was to follow in midweek, this time north of the border. A very fiery Old Firm clash resulted in 3 Rangers players being sent off, 13 bookings, a series of touchline flare-ups and a very angry confrontation between Celtic manager Neil Lennon and Rangers assistant Ally McCoist. So bad was the atmosphere and behaviour at this match that the Scottish Government have intervened and announced that they will be holding a summit meeting between the two clubs, the Scottish FA, the police and themselves. 34 arrests were made inside the stadium, with plenty more outside. I am all for a bit of passion in football, but I think things may have gotten a teensy bit out of control up there. Wish I’d seen the game, mind!