This is Just Sad

One of Bill Shankly's more colorful if not likely misquoted lines goes something like: "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

Here's the thing about that: it's wrong. It really is just a game. In yesterday's Champions League semi-final there was a place in the final at stake. And outside of a large pile of money and and even larger trophy, not much else.

That's what makes the following story so hard to fathom:

[Suleiman Alphonso Omondi], an Arsenal fan in soccer-mad Kenya hanged himself following his team's 4-1 aggregate drubbing by arch-rivals Manchester United in the Champions League semifinal, police said on Wednesday.

According to one of his friends, they had been watching the match at a local pub, and after the final whistle Omondi left crying. Police said he had hanged himself in his Arsenal shirt.

This is just really, really sad. No other word for it.

We live and die with our teams at UF, but thankfully only do so in a figurative sense. Yesterday was rough for the Gunner-loving contingent over here (and obviously across the world) but our "death" ends at the disappointment of watching your rival have its way with you while you kind of lay there and take it.

So yeah, this is sobering. Maybe the guy had other things going on in his life. Let's hope that an Arsenal loss wasn't the sole reason for his hanging himself. Not that that would make it less sad. There's another season starting up less than four months and, unfortunately, Omondi won't be around to witness it.

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Euro Eulogy: The Netherlands

Joep Smeets has rejoined us once more, although this time, his prose is decidedly more maudlin, thanks to the manner in which Russia dismantled the Oranje this past weekend.

Joep, the floor is yours. Just limit the tears, please.

I am entirely too disappointed right now to search for the humidity level in Basel for last night, but it must have been one-of-a-kind. For this was no ordinary humidity; not only was it high enough to completely slow down the Dutch, it also appeared to have no apparent effect on the Russians whatsoever. Holland looked slow, uninterested and all around rather lethargic. Russia, on the other hand, kept up an amazing pace for not just 90, but 120 minutes.

We Dutch are at a loss for words. It is not as if we haven’t been eliminated before. We’ve gotten used to the feeling over time. But what we’re not used to is the enormous yawning void that comes with being eliminated and having absolutely no one to blame but yourself.

Last tournament, it was those dirty Portuguese, the one before that it was our idiot coach, who we were quick to renounce as one of our own – and thusly, not blaming ourselves – after substituting the best player on the field for an old has-been who was to mark Nedved. I’m no English native speaker, but I always thought that the word "marking" meant that you had to be able to at the very least keep up with a player to do so. Which didn’t happen.

In 2002 we weren’t there, but we had put the blame of the failure to qualify firmly on the shoulders of the unlikable Louis van Gaal, so no problem there then.

I could go on for a while like this, but I’d rather not mention the debacle that was the Euro 2000 semis, when we missed five (five!!!) penalties in front of a home crowd.

This year there is no-one to blame. The last time that happened was 1998, and we comforted ourselves rather successfully with the thought that we had played pretty football, and because goals are such an arbitrary manner with which to decide who is the better team, we didn’t hesitate for one second to claim the moral victory, which we could live with.

It may not have gotten us any silverware, but silverware is for the flashy, and the most common saying in Holland isn’t “doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg”, which roughly translates to “just act low-key, that’s crazy enough as it is”, so we could do without crass trash like trophies.

We briefly considered a couple of candidates; the referee, naturally, because that is every football fan’s first gut reaction.

We could bitch about the absolutely shocking decision not to send off that Russian defender – and we will, believe me, at great length – towards the end of the game, because the charge he made on Sneijder had occurred after the ball had crossed the backline.

This decision, which effectively rules any contact between players when the ball is out of play to be fair game, is the only measly thing we can think of to vindicate us.

Unfortunately for us, it isn’t even enough to claim a moral victory.

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Sven Will Save Thierry from Sad, Gloomy Barcelona, Promises Sunny Beaches of Manchester

Last week, you might have heard Thierry Henry telling Marca that he wasn't unhappy with Frank Rijkaard's system, just unhappy in general. And while he maintains seeing his daughter just five times in the last eight months has nothing to do with his performance at Barcelona, it would help his performance if he could see her more often.

Wait, what? Oh, and the accountants at Barcelona must be thrilled to learn that the club paid 24 million Euro for someone other than "Henry of Arsenal".

Whatever Titi was trying to say, Citeh boss Sven Goran Ericsson heard him loud and clear. Now Sven's #1 goal for the summer is to save Thierry from the dark cloud of sadness that envelops Camp Nou and to bring him to the City of Manchester Stadium.

This should work out well, because if the movie title is to be believed, the people of Manchester party for 24 hours at a time! And Spain is a sad, sad place – I know this because I have seen Pedro Almodóvar movies and Picasso's "Guernica".

And Henry isn't the only one in a funk at Barcelona. Knocking off Celtic in the Champions League turned out to be rather pyrrhic, with Leonel Messi going down in the first half with a torn thigh muscle again, raising questions about his long-term health. And former wonderboy Ronaldinho missed Thursday's practice and the team's trip to Almeria.

So it comes as surprise that Samuel Eto'o, the one member of the supposed "Magnificent Four" who looked to be the odd man out at the start of the season, is the only one of the quartet of high-priced forwards who's in form. And even he can't be too thrilled about Barça's current slump, which finds them closer to third place Villareal than to the La Liga-leading Real Madrid, after dropping two crucial points in a 2-2 draw at Almeria.

Now Barcelona finds itself seven points behind leaders Real Madrid and just two ahead of surging Villareal.

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