Call me sane, but, although intrigued, I have never seriously entertained the notion of skydiving. Unless the plane is going down or I'm invading England, there is absolutely no good reason to jump out of a plane 10,000 meters above the earth. According to one web site, the number of skydiving fatalities since 2004 is 302. In addition to the potential for dying, there is also the potential for idiocy, as these fellows can attest. Unfortunately, yesterday in France we saw a bit of both.
Last night, the French Under-18 international side faced off against the Ukrainian Under-18 squad at Saint-Denis-de-L'Hotel stadium near Orleans. The friendly was to be opened by 7 parachutists streaming into the stadium, with 1 of those, Sylvain Chabrol, delivering the match ball. Chabrol's parachute malfunctioned however, and he crashed into one of the stadium's floodlights and then fell into the crowd. Landing on top of two teenage boys who were spectators in the crowd, Chabrol was killed instantly, and the older of the two boys died later at the hospital in Orleans.
So clearly we have the fatal aspect of skydiving, but we also have the idiotic aspect. I mean really? Given the uncertain nature of the sport itself, is it worth it to have seven people parachuting into a (relatively small) stadium for a friendly between Under-18 sides? This is not the World Cup finals. It's not even the Loiret District (where the match took place) championship. I know that this is an international match, but it is one that is almost entirely insignificant other than for those playing in it. And believe me, I am sure that the players and their families/friends/supporters would have enjoyed the match all the same (well, obviously, much more given what happened) without the theatrics.
Now, I want to be clear here - I am not calling Chabrol an idiot. And the 17 year-old victim is clearly blameless. But someone made the decision to greenlight this spectacle, and now 2 people are dead because of that decision.
The Federation Francaise de Football has issued a statement of support for the family members of both victims and offered their condolences. In addition, there will be no matches played at all in the Loiret District this weekend. Finally, there will be one minute of silence at the beginning of the next round of matches in the Coupe de France.
It all seems a little hollow for a stupid accident that never should have happened.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Skydiving and Sports Don't Mix
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Blogs are bad, m'kay?
Athletes should stay away from blogs. Unless you play in the DC metro area (Cooley, Agent Zero and Clinton Portis spring to mind), you will do something stupid and embarrass yourself and your team.
Today's TMI on a blog comes from Japan, where goalkeeper Shusaku Nishikawa brags that a yellow card he received was intentional and now the league is mad at him.
Nishikawa got his fourth yellow card of the season on Sunday, and bagged a one-month suspension for his efforts. After the game, he bragged to his online friends that he got the card, and suspension, on purpose. The reason being that he is off for international duty in the Olympics, and would miss the month anyway.
The J-League got wind of the post, and dragged him into a sort of tribunal to explain himself. Nishikawa capitulated, saying that the post was in jest, and summarily removed it from said blog. The damage was done, though, and we here at UF are not so sure of his explanation.
On the face of it, intentionally getting the card was a wise move. The suspension would happen almost entirely while Nishikawa was unavailable for his squad. The timing also allows him to get rid of the three yellows hanging over him, and lets him to return to his club with a clean slate after the Olympics. Keep your mouth shut, and no one is the wiser.
The problem is, as always, Nishikawa publicizing that he attempted to circumvent the rules. Organizations that mete out punishments prefer you to take said punishment with a wince, not a knowing smile.
Besides, what does a keeper have to do to get four yellows in a season? The J-League has only played 18 games to date, and Nishikawa has seen yellow in over 20% of his team's games. Has he run afoul of FIFA's "no taking your shirt off" rule to entice the ladies? Did a series of refs sanction him for not tucking his shirt in? He's a keeper for goodness' sake. Four yellow cards are something to garner over two to three seasons, not half of one.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Open letter to Foxsoccer.com
Dear Foxsoccer.com,
We hope this letter finds you well. Quite frankly, though, we know that you are not. We would, at this time, like to present our collective self to help you re-right the ship that is your website. It's not that you have bad webdesign or don't cover enough of the sport we all love, it's that you hit "publish" without fact-checking. Please check below to see just one example of this.
Yours,
Unprofessional Foul
This was sent to us by the wonderful Mike Georger, and as he points out, in the span of four short paragraphs, whoever wrote this made three glaring factual errors. First, Mascherano would never be considered a striker, despite that one goal he scored in 07/08. Secondly, Cavenaghi does not play for Real Madrid, but for Bordeaux He has never played in Madrid. And third, Giants Stadium is in New Jersey, not New York. New Jersey will kill you for that kind of thing.
So, Fox Soccer, the ball is in your court. Our offer stands until we take it off the table. Make all offers (be sure to include the big money we are looking for) to unprofessionalfoul [at] gmail [dot] com. We will be waiting to hear from you.
Friday, April 18, 2008
It's like you just cannot trust anything you read in the blogosphere!
This is the Bleacher Report bio for Andrew McNair. I point it out not because I want to make fun of him, his tastes, his hobbies, his haircut, or anything like that, I point to it because of two things. First, his given bio states that he recently graduated with a journalism diploma. Second, three out of the four articles linked on his frontpage have titles that end with exclamation points. Both points will be made relevant shortly as I dissect one of his recent articles, Another Day, Another Chelsea Scandal, and Poor Old Sven!.
Inside, I'll break down his article (very short) paragraph by (extremely short) paragraph, complete with running exclamation count!
I thought I'd got everything off my chest in my last English football article, but it appears that players and owners are just as bad as the fans.
First of all, I'm not too familiar with Bleacher Report, so I snooped a bit before I laid into Mr. McNair for not using a link to his previous article. Unless every article I looked at was posted by dolts, BR is not user friendly enough to allow in-article links. So, boo on BR for not providing HTML for its users, and lesser boo to Mr. McNair for affiliating himself with a site that is not user friendly. As for the paragraph itself, I can't wait to see just how bad EPL players and owners are.
I woke up to read Tal Ben Haim's amazing newspaper rant aimed at his current boss, Avram Grant.
Don't just leave us hanging, get there already. Jew on Jew violence is always the best.
The Chelsea center back claimed, "I knew that nothing good would come with Grant as Chelsea coach." He went on to lament his lack of opportunities under Grant, and basically said he's Mourinho's player!(1)
Ooh, juicy. Once again, this could do with a link, but for now, I'm willing to take what the author says at face value. It's nice to know that this middling former Bolton defender thinks he should, presumably, be played ahead of John Terry, Alex, and Ricardo Carvalho among others.
So what? Shit happens Tal, and you're not contracted to a manager, but to Chelsea FC.
Oh, McNair's going another way with this. Um, yeah, he's right. Mourinho's gone, get over it Tal. But really, who does Ben Haim want to bench? That's my question.
Have footballers also lost the plot?
Excuse me? Where did this come from? We were talking about one disgruntled guy. Where is this blanket statement coming from?
In any normal profession such an outburst would undoubtedly get you the sack! What makes footballers so special?(2)
What's so weird about this? I talk shit about my boss all the time to the press. If by press, you mean co-workers, of course. What is a normal profession anyway, and why would the press ask them about working conditions? I don't think my local rag is going interviewing bank tellers after the shift to ask them is they like the teller window the manager gave them that day. Point being, if the public didn't, on some level, want to know footballer's opinions, they would not be asked or published.
I fully expect Ben Haim to pick up the maximum fine of two weeks wages for his outburst, and he 100 percent completely deserves it!(3)
Yeah, I think Ben Haim will have a little hell to pay over this, but it's not really a scandal as stated in the headline, is it? If it is, Mr. McNair must be easily shocked. "Oh God! They bagged my bread and my eggs together! If I don't fix it, I'll have a wonky-shaped loaf! Alert the press!" (as an aside, though I have never written or said it before, I really like the term "wonky-shaped loaf".)
It all comes back to the issue of respect amongst footballers. Apparently, they have none!(4)
As on Wikipedia--citation, please. Once again, a blanket statement that seems to be based on the single Ben Haim-Grant situation. I agree that footballers may not be the nicest guys on earth, but how about another couple of examples?
Not for each other, not for the referee, and not even for their managers!(5)
ibid.
Having said that how do we expect players to respect their managers, when even the chairman doesn't?
Transition alert. It would be easier to ferret out if the author used longer paragraphs. By the way, I hope I don't have to use (sic) every time McNair makes a grammar mistake. I'm just copying and pasting here.
I was just as appalled to hear that Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra is refusing to publicly back Sven Goran Eriksson after City's recent run of results.
Alright, Shinawatra is a new owner to the EPL. He is also of a different culture than the English. He may have different ways of dealing with personnel issues than what the author expects. You may have to give it some time before you try to read anything into Shinawatra's actions. Besides, as we have pointed out before, the dreaded vote of confidence is not something that SGE should be courting anyway.
I'm quite honestly shocked and appalled by this!(6)
What did I write above? Oh yeah. "Mr. McNair must be easily shocked." He must also be easily appalled. If Shinawatra dtermines that SGE is underperforming, he may replace him. Given that turnover in the EPL for managers is at 30% just since the season began, it's not that odd, is it?
He is reportedly lining up Portuguese boss Luiz Filipe Scolari as a replacement for Sven. What good is that ever going to do?
Big Phil is lined up for every job in the world above my local youth team. I don't think he's going to leave a Portugal squad with C. Ronaldo either before the Euros or after unless he is forced out. National Team coaching gigs are pretty cushy. You get paid the same or better to do less training, less matches and get free admission to any game in the country you want to see. Oh, and--citation, please. That guy you sat next to in the pub is not good enough.
You can't just throw another high profile manager at the job every season when things don't go your way.
Because that's what Shinawatra has done so far, is it? Oh, it's still his first season as owner, so we have no track record to go on. If Shinawatra does establish this pattern, then you can excoriate him for it. Until then, quit jumping the gun based on pub talk.
I believe Sven has done a fantastic job this season. His young squad held their own for a large part of the season near the top of the league, but sadly injuries and fatigue have led to a dip in form of late.
The most even handed lines in the article. Shame they are about to be tainted.
Everyone knows they will be a stronger side next season, with a few signings to boost the current squad. We are saying the same about Arsenal!(7)
Because no one else in the league will be making signings, Man City will rocket to the top. Seriously, until the summer arrives, you cannot talk about signings and their impact. I believe Man City will be outspent significantly by some teams, and will come out much the same next season. I have no proof, but the internet doesn't need proof, does it?
It's not rocket science!(8)
No, it's not, sadly. Of course, I don't know what we are comparing to rocket science, but I can assure you, nothing in the article so far has been rocket science.
It's funny how the clubs with foreign owners are the ones who seem to be constantly in the daily papers for the wrong reasons.
Uh, what? This is the one that really set me off. The following list of EPL clubs are foreign-owned:
I don't think the author realizes that the majority of EPL clubs are now foreign owned. I guarantee you that he was thinking of Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and, now, Manchester City. In other words, the clubs that get most of the press anyway. Can you really say anything about how Randy Lerner has run Aston Villa? What about Björgólfur Guðmundsson at West Ham? Can you even name the guy who owns Portsmouth (Alexandre Gaydamak)? No. Many of these people stay out of the spotlight. As an author, though, McNair seems to forget them because they don't make headlines and instead takes the easy targets that everyone else goes after. This is the state of modern journalist graduates, I fear (just like Scott Templeton).
The beautiful game has been truly tainted!(9)
Whew. The end of the article. Nine exclamatory statements. Blanket statements not backed up by anything. English-style pseudo-xenophobia in an article written by a South African. I sure do wish that Mr. McNair deigns to take a more even-handed approach in his future articles. It's not rocket science!
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Ten Facts That Might Be Wrong: Part 3
Well, we're probably only going to squeeze two more posts out of this (and this).
And it's actually not because of laziness (at least not on our part) but moreso because of what looks to be laziness on their part.
All of the old skool journalists out there—the WIlbons and the Mariottis—cry about bloggers and how any idiot with a net connection can now start publishing like it's a bad thing. In reality they are probably just scared of the competition and maybe a little upset because many of barriers to entering the field of sportswriting they suffered to get over have gone 'poof.'
Well, not to get all preachy here, but a) most bloggers understand that they are not journalists and b) the market tends to sort these things out. Bloggers that are smart, funny, informative, and accurate should survive. Bloggers who are too lazy to use a shift key or check their facts probably will not.
So I feel like I'm subverting this very belief by continuing to reward these guys with more traffic. But in the interest of completion, we'll do it reluctantly maybe a couple of more times.
Really? The media's job is to deliver an audience to advertisers. If that audience were there—specifically in this instance a soccer audience large enough to earn a profit from—the media would find it and serve it. The fact that the soccer ratings in this country are not that great (see post number two) is pretty much an indication that the media is giving soccer about the right amount of coverage. That is "not much." Yes, there is a channel dedicated just to soccer (Fox Soccer Channel) but that is subsidized across all cable subscribers. The same way you probably don't watch Lifetime, your cable bill helps keep it on the air, just as your 30-something single female neighbor whose life revolves around Rachel Ray and food porn keeps Max Bretos on your TV. Has soccer grown in the US as a spectator sport? Maybe. The attendance numbers for MLS have been trending up over the last few years. But if you look at average attendance for every year of the league it's taken a decade to get back to where it started, meaning that after ten years the league is not quite back to where it was attendance-wise for it inaugural season. Is that the only measure of "spectator"? No. And I'm pretty sure that when I go to my local bars to watch EPL matches on Saturday and Sunday mornings there are generally more people there now than there were two years ago. Do I have a reliable measure for this? No. Does that mean there has been an explosion? No. Am I encouraged by this? Yes. But it shouldn't lead to wild claims about soccer's popularity in the U.S. Claim 4 is kind of silly on its face. Again, if there is a huge market there, it will get served. Media companies are in the business of business. And if you believe in efficient markets then the Latino market is not being underserved. Again, look at the Univision numbers (again in post number two) for the US v Mexico friendlies. They know how big the market is and they are giving it what they want. It's not just big matches. There is plenty of Primera División fútbol on Spanish-language TV in the US. Some of the remaining claims are just plain stupid, the best being maybe this (and not just for the obfuscating grammar): Maybe the author meant to compare Beckham to all sports jerseys. And he makes this claim: Still, the one about adidas sales figures I might believe. But I looked, and couldn't find anything to support it. But I did find out that Becks can't even beat himself. Yes, he sold a very impressive 250,000 Galaxy jerseys through July of 07, but that is dwarfed by the million he sold at his first six months at Real Madrid. Really, this isn't even fun or interesting anymore.
Fortunately, the claims made in that post get easier to combine as they become a little more qualitative. So this post will take on claims 3-6, which basically say that the media is under-serving the soccer market."I have seen stories about the most popular NFL jerseys in sales. These reports never mention that MLS Galaxy jerseys (and for an individual player, David Beckham), and USA national team jerseys are big sellers, and in the case of the former, they sell MORE THAN ANY NFL team or player name."
You know why? Because David Beckham doesn't play in the fucking NFL! He plays in the MLS. Perhaps you'd like to also complain that his stats don't show up in MLB box scores. "Beckham’s Galaxy jersey has also been the biggest-selling of ALL adidas jerseys of ALL sports in the ENTIRE WORLD since it was first released."
Really? Okay. Data please, source it. Oh, that's right, there is no sourced data for any claim in this entire fucking piece.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wayne Rooney Is Not Destined to Master Fingertapping
Well, yet another great week of posts here at UF. Big round of applause for everyone.
All that's left is to ask: What do Eddie Van Halen and Wayne Rooney have in common? Apparently nothing. The Sun "reported" yesterday that Rooney is giving up guitar in favor of learning drums.
I guess it's the bang-bang-banging of a drum kit that really interested him, considering his infant-like faculties.
Said the bulldog-ish one:
Rooney shouldn't have given up so quickly. Everyone knows that guitarists get all the chicks."I've been trying to learn to play the guitar but it's doing my head in. It's really hard!"
A United source said on the subject:"Wayne had mentioned how difficult it was to read the music and get his fingers right for all the chords. He is a determined character but this is one battle even he thinks he might not be able to win. He fancies a drum kit — but his neighbours might not be pleased to hear that."
That's right, Wayne Rooney having trouble learning the same instrument that Noel Gallagher plays. Does this make Man City 1, United 0? Maybe.
[Ed. Note: you also hear far more "drummer jokes" than guitarist jokes]
This story's all about an expensive car
Blond idiot who loves nice cars, seeks teams that'll pay him for not doing much
Robbie Savage, the blond-haired tosser that I never liked, is in the news this morning for predictably bad reasons.
He's not been playing well for Derby since arriving from Blackburn last month, his team is on pace to shatter the record for futility in the EPL [9 points this season, with just one League victory], his teammates are low on confidence and now, he's turned up for training in a $320,000 car.
Not surprisingly, the other players weren't very happy, considering they're all making bugger-all and Derby's just under three months away from stumbling back down to the Championship.
Is it his scar that scares them? No, it's his car.
Jewell's not about to take such measures against the long-haired idiot, although he recognizes the insensitivity of it all:
As weird as this might sound, there is definitely a precedent. When Sunderland were relegated from the EPL in 2003, then-manager Mick McCarthy fined captain Michael Gray two weeks' wages and removed the captain's armband from him after he showed up at the ground in a new Ferrari."It's about having a bit of decorum. If 70 people are getting laid off, leave it a couple of days before you come in in your Ferrari....Sav had a flash car before he got here. All the players here have flash cars, it's the Premier League - 'Premier League player has flash car' shock, horror. Robbie Savage is an international footballer. He's played in the Premier League all his life, so he's entitled to earn a lot of money and to spend it how he likes. It's when some people drive flash cars ... and think they've cracked it, that's more of a problem."
The subconscious punishment for Savage is that he's likely to be dropped this weekend following a string of absolutely shite performances. At least he can cry all the way home in his shiny Mercedes and listen to the match at the same time.
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