Come Blow Your Horn, Just Not That One.

I know what you are thinking... Heidi took the picture.

Austria is banning the Vuvuzelas that invaded the Confederations Cup last month. That's rich for a country known for the love of blowing giant horns! But it's not the noise that the Austrians are worried about. One of their reasons is quite frankly bollocks. The other makes perfect sense.


So what's the reason? Apparently the Austrian professional football league says that the famous bee sounding horns "can be used as projectiles. Furthermore, they can incite aggressive behaviour amongst other fans."

No shit...Right, on those grounds I demand that the foam finger also be outlawed as I was poked in the eye once while a small child celebrated a goal against Stockport County and I am sure that could also happen in Austria. Also they will need to ban tea, apart from being housed in a dangerous plastic missile, the t-bags can be thrown at players or security staff. Oh no people. I have seen it. QPR away, that's what they got for selling the beverage cold!

In fact you would have to ban all items from coming in, money is a much more dangerous missile than a light weight plastic trumpet surely? Lets also ban that. Oh that's right, no money? No beer, burgers, pies, or replica kits. can't have that.


Culture? Not mine. I don't want my elders to travel across the country for a visit, thanks!

While Austria are certainly creative with one of their excuses,(it's a pretty shit missile) the second claim has validity. That's 'inciting aggressive behaviour'. The vuvuzela is as irritating as being sat on a bus full of mosquito's while small children sing the hokey pokey with Elmo. These trumpets, horns, plastic demons need to be stopped. The one tone drone that emits from the nasty buggers would turn a saint to sin. Personally if I ever find myself next to someone who is blowing one, I will react with a violence usually reserved for an episode of Friday night Smackdown. If I had my way, I'd make the ban law. Offenders would be locked in a bee filled chamber while I practice heavy metal classics with a Kazoo. See how they like it, bastards.

Well done Austria. Let's hope the rest of the World can follow suit.

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Cher Philippe Mexes: Va Te Faire

These two have a lot in common.

World Cup 2010. South Africa. All of us here at UF would love to attend some matches there, particularly if we were able to root on our favorite team. For qualifying matches, France was placed in Group 7, receiving a relatively favorable draw. Their opponents within the group include Serbia, Lithuania, Faroe Islands, Romania, and Austria. Their first qualifying match was yesterday, against the latter, a team so poor that its own fans petitioned to have it drop out of Euro 2008 for fear of embarassment. What could possibly go wrong?


Well, I suppose we could always lose 3-1 to a shitty team to start our WC 2010 qualifying push. We could give up a cheap goal (thanks, Philippe!) just 9 minutes into the match, and then give up another one right before half-time. When we pull back within a goal (thank you, Sidney. Really), we can then give up a PK just 10 minutes (thanks again, Philippe!). Want to see how it all happened? Check out this fantastic video.




In a stunning turn of events, Mexes actually acknowledged that he played like shite and was responsible for the loss. In a not-so-surprising turn of events, Domenech acted like nothing was wrong. It is generally believed that Raymond was given a minimum number of points to be achieved from the first 3 qualifying matches, and it is likely that the total was 5 points. So, I'm torn - engage in "fan-tanking" and root for another loss (or for 2 ties, or for a win and tie) in the next 2 matches and hope that leads to Domenech being fired, or hope we become a little more successful in qualifying matches and deal with Raymond for 2 more years.

I can't bring myself to root against Les Bleus, so I have to hope that Domenech pulls his head out of his ass and starts to actually manage this team. A good start would be to FUCKING PLAY GAEL CLICHY!

I hate you Domenech, and Mexes, you're now on the watch list.

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The Good, The Bad, The WTF: Euro 2008 Edition

This post, my friends is going to be a mess. As long as you know that going in, we'll all be okay. Inside, we will break down each competing country's home and away jersey and file it into the categories Good, Bad and WTF. Pretty simple, huh?
For ease of my poorly HTMLing soul, I will only provide links to each shirt instead of trying to force them all into the Blogger template. Trust me, if you've seen how Blogger can mangle posts by screwing up pictures, this is a good thing.

Onwards and upwards, my friends. Here we go.

Group A
Switzerland Home Away Switzerland wear Puma jerseys. In what will quickly become a theme in this post, Puma jerseys all look cookie-cutter. They have a template, switch colors where necessary, and affix the necessary badges. Boring. What I like about the Swiss shirt is the badge. That kind of artsy rendering of their national association where they also fit in the white cross. However, these are Puma jerseys, so the verdict is:
Home and Away: Bad
Czech Republic Home Away Plain. Boring. Go home. I do like the blue piping on the home shirt, and the Czech badge is one of the more interesting entries, full of history, for those into that. But it is simply not enough to overcome the crappiness of being a Puma shirt.
Home and Away: Bad
Portugal Home Away There is something wrong with the Portugal home shirt. We here at UF could not quite put our finger on it, but we hate it. It could be the wrong hue, or it could just be the too tight fit. We hated it all the same. On the other hand, we were much more sympathetic to the white shirt. It looks a lot better, but, in the end, we found it a little plain.
Home and Away: Bad
Turkey Home Away Now we're talking. It may still be a hangover from their unbelievable victory over the Czechs on Sunday, but these are both very nice shirts. The home shirt can look a little like a 'Boro effort, I'm sure, but it dazzles nonetheless. And that away shirt, my goodness. Two teams made solid use of baby blue accents this tournament, and Turkey is one of them.
Home and Away: Good

Group B
Austria Home Away A mixed bag. Once again, we are stuck with Puma templates, but Austria does something a little right here. It's not in the home shirt, really, though it should rate a "meh" instead of its final grade. The winner here is the away shirt. Menacingly black with a little flag flair thrown in at the collar.
Home: Bad; Away: Good
Croatia Home Away Did we even get to see the all-checkerboard shirt yet? I don't recall. You have to give them respect for sticking with such and irritating-to-the-eyes shirt for all of these years. As for the blue away shirt, man, I don't know. And for that, it perfectly fits the WTF category. Safe to say I would not want to sport either one of these walking around my town.
Home and Away: WTF?
Germany Home Away Poor Germany. Forever saddled with a white shirt that they are not entirely happy with, so they fuck around with it. This year's entry feels unbalanced. Too much black in the striping, not enough red or yellow. At least it keeps us away from the away shirt. Seriously, this is not a look for top tier international football. This is a training top. Even though I kind of like the gold stitching on the black background, I hope they never have to wear it.
Home: Bad; Away: WTF?
Poland Home Away Poland, the home of unattractive football. They never looked good playing in the Euros, and these shirts did not help. Blandest of them all.
Home and Away: Bad

Group C
Romania Home Away Romania's shirts this year felt like a throwback to USA '94. Sadly, the team did not perform in the same manner. The worst part of it all is that they totally rip off the New York Cosmos badge. Anyway, 14 years is too soon to do a throwback jersey. Well, I write that, but I can't hate on the home jersey. I like it.
Home: Good; Away: Bad
France Home Away I am not a fan of the extra crap going across the middle of the French home shirt. They do, however, get credit with me by having their flag pop up inside the adidas stripes on the arms. Throw in that nice, newish badge of the rooster and you have a winner. God help me, I like the garish red away shirt as well. Two winners.
Home and Away: Good
Netherlands Home Away The Dutch are always hard to figure out. They have to use that bright orange which pays homage to a royal family line that no one likes. Sometimes they pull it off, and sometimes it is painful. This tournament, they pulled it off, sometimes. The Dutch were the second team to tastefully use Nike's new baby blue accent by pairing the orange shirt with baby blue socks. And it totally worked. However, when they reverted to orange socks yesterday, it all looked horrible. Also, nice try, but you can't work in your flag on the collar without it looking like you won First Grade attendance medals. As for the away shirt, it divides us. But, I'm the one writing here, and I hate it. So, there you go. We do seem to be unified in liking the cyborg numbering though.
Home: Good, with qualifications; Away: WTF?
Italy Home Away Italy stick with the basics. Once again, this is a Puma top, but it's not quite as bad as the red and white ones. This gets a passing grade for the gold at the neck. The away jersey, though, is run of the mill and boring.
Home: Good; Away: Bad

Group D
Spain Home Away I think we were a bit undecided by these. The home jersey is nothing out of the ordinary, but it works well. That light gold away shirt, though, is rather atrocious. Hopefully, Spain will not be required to trot it out on their way to winning this year's tournament.
Home: Good; Away: WTF?
Russia Home Away These had potential, especially the away shirt, but the execution is off. I am all for integrating you nation's flag into the shirt. I don't like it when doing so means that I have to fill in the blanks for you. The white shirt loses the top stripe of the flag and the red shirt loses the bottom stripe of the flag. Why not go with a blue away shirt so that one can easily make out the flag running across the torso? Nike FAIL.
Home: Bad; Away: WTF?
Greece Home Away Thanks for coming and bringing the same kit from 2004. Did you think that would work? Okay, the sublimated flag print on the away shirt is nice, but no dice.
Home and Away: Bad
Sweden Home Away It's always tough to deal with the Swedish shirts. The combo of yellow and blue is a nice one, but they just use too much yellow sometimes. If only I could get a reason to really like a bunch of yellow Swedish shirts. Oh, here's one. The away shirt is a tough one. In some pictures, it looks black, which would be a bold move, but in others it looks navy, which is kind of boring. Still, since Swedish girls will wear them and get pictured in them, they are both winners.
Home and Away: Good

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Euro Trash Day 2: "Electric Boogaloo"

Croatia 1 - Austria 0

Add Croatians to the list of people not to invite over. For the second day in a row a former communist country showed up as a guest to the Euro party and started to steal shit from the host. And by "shit" I mean "match." Heavy favorites Croatia got a debatably gift penalty call (see what we did there... who doesn't love a party theme?) inside of 5 minutes then held on for the three points.

A bit reckless on the contact? Yes. Penalty? Maybe. Yellow card? No way (turns out the card was given to Emanuel Pogatetz for the protest, not to Rene Aufhauser for the challlenge). But Luka Modric converted, and the single goal held up.

The 90-something ranked Austrians probably deserved better, save for the critical fact that they neglected to score but, silver lining, they disposed of the notion that they would embarrass themselves as they flat outplayed Croatia in the second half.

Croatia, who often will just punch a team in the face until they relent found that the Austrians were happy to punch right back. In fact it was while Pogatetz was carrying the yellow and still pulled at [I think] Olic's shoulder not once but twice before clubbing him across the face with his forearm—should have been a second yellow and an ejection—at about the 30th minute that Croatia realized they might have to win on skill alone. And somewhat surprisingly, they didn't seem like they had enough of it (I know Eduardo led the qualifying group in scoring but is he really that important?).

Austria peppered keeper Pletikosa with chances, but failed to get a couple of headers down that might have netted the equalizer. My $.02, this was the most exciting match of the tourney so far. It was far from pretty, buy fuck if these two teams didn't run at each other for 90 straight.

Germany 2 - Poland 0

The really sad part about this is that with each successive encounter, Poland seems more convinced that they are going to beat Germany. Today's 2-0 quasi-methodical defeat brings Germany's running record to 12-0-4. Lukas Podolski had a brace off a fortuitous bounce and a couple of good looks at a hatty (Oh wait, the really, really sad part about this is that Podolski was born in Poland).

I didn't see the second goal live because my ESPN2 went out (along with ESPN, but Classic was still raging, strange). Was that national?

Anyway, Poland created some chances, but keeping with the letimotif of all teams having been shut-out, couldn't finish. I think that might be a tautology.

Too bad Johnnie Cochran is dead or he could have made a killer pre-game pep talk. "If Lehmann is in goal, you must score if you're a Pole." Yeah, shit that rhymes is always true.

Despite Jens showing in the first minute (ah, shades of the EPL opener against Fulham) that he was apt to blunder, Poland couldn't take advantage. They actually outshot Germany 11-9 (with a good number of the German shots coming late) but didn't make Jens have to handle enough of them.

Germany looks like a lock to advance, but given the other three teams' performances, Group B's bridesmaid derby is wideopen.

Linkage:

Looks like Spain won't be having any Cesc on the field. Not for starters anyway. I don't have the coaching credentials of Aragones (I'm also not quite as racist either) but this seems like a very bad idea.

Shocker. People drinking at the Euro.

Didier Drogba can't stand not being the center of attention.

If I weren't such a HTML 'tard I would have given the two photos cutlines of "My name is Luka" and "My name is Lukas" respectively. Go ahead, laugh. That shit is funny.

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Euro 2008 Open Thread: Croatia v. Austria

The other co-host for Euro 2008 Austria opens its tournament today against Croatia. Austria is the lowest ranked nation in Euro 2008 and will be lucky to get any points in group play. But, being in your homeland always has some positive effect. So, maybe they can shock the world. Their fans don't seem to think so, since some started a petition to keep the team out of the tournament.

Croatia, on the other hand, is veteran of international tournaments having qualified for the last 3 world cups and taking 3rd in 1998. Croatia has young midfielder Luca Modric who will play for Tottenham next spring that is picked to have a breakout tournament. Hopefully, the racist neo-Nazi Croatian fans don't ruin this tournament.

Lineups after the jump...


Austria

21 Jurgen Macho (G)
3 Martin Stranzl (D)
4 Emanuel Pogatetz (D)
12 Ronald Gercaliu (D)
15 Sebastien Prodl (D)
10 Andreas Ivanschitz (M)
6 Rene Aufhauser (M)
2 Joachim Standfest (M)
19 Jurgen Saumel (M)
9 Roland Linz (F)
20 Martin Harnik (F)

Croatia

1 Stipe Pletikosa (G)
3 Josip Simunic (D)
4 Robert Kovac (D)
5 Vedran Corluka (D)
11 Darijo Srna (M)
19 Niko Kranjcar (M)
10 Nico Kovac (M)
22 Danijel Pranjic (M)
14 Luka Modric (M)
21 Mladen Petric (F)
18 Ivica Olic (F)

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