Being bright like stars falling
or rain on leaves;

Everywhere the lights leaning
like wilting flowers;

The last quiet cold of winter
quickly fading;

The last of the still-soft
orange evenings;

Angled and reaching like
like long branches;

outstretched, eager.

Turning back, and then again,
as though lost;

Or leaving too much and too soon
and flustered;

Even flustering like rushed
wind in doorways;

Flushed, red faces and stiff
hands jammed

In pockets; unsure, anxious,
before anything

changes, unchanged.

And the un-moored ships,
softly bobbing;

So setting out and away
always the same;

Slowly building inertia
with every gale;

In the broad eyes overlooking
the grey white water;

And the once-ageless, dying
evenings;

so still, so strange.

All your restless birds,
ruffled and fluttering;

Their lillied wings like swerving,
ghostly things;

Like someone singing
or someone lost;

Like some sprawling light in
the window;

Broken, breaking like stars falling
or rocky lees;

outstretched, away.

———

Swan Songs are written by @MaxwellKuhl. Read the previous instalments here.

by Danny Fitzgerald

A promising striker from a small German club, a combative midfielder plucked from a city whose last flirtation with kitsch came more than 30 years ago; a troublesome sub notable heretofore only for the contempt in which he was held by his team-mates; a mad-fringed full-back masquerading as a centre-half; a Barca player, but the last one on anyone’s lips; the second best player on the third, fourth or at times even fifth best team in Spain; and another shit-stirring substitute whose starring role at his team’s treble winning exploits was conspicuous for how little he had to do with their success and the real sensation that the myth is no bigger than the man, a man, moreover, who was ousted by — oh jesus — Dimitar Berbatov!

Since their initial fascination with the man of the moment, Kaká, City’s signings over the last few years have looked more and more like the playlist of a middle class hipster, (a little tautology never did anyone any harm). A laptop warrior Joyceanly unfettered by the nets of creed or culture, genre or gender, he (there are, of course, no women on the internet) scoffs at Time and shifts effortlessly from street jazz to Shatnerian spoken-word operas, from intricate Caged plinks and plonks to soaring stadium rock; wont he is to dabble and splash in the clear-running rivulets of the barroco before loosening his belt, donning a bib and coolly kicking it for half an hour in the company of rap’s most delightfully obnoxious supervillains.

The boardroom, Eastlands

Most important, however, building on all this culture, this considerable pirate booty he has amassed, is his painstaking selection of material for his extensive playlist collection. Oh my, what a lot of work, the hours, the dedication, the attention to the subtleties in the mood changes, now soft, now loud, now gently whispering through the ether like glaciers through your speakers chugging down your spinal cord; the very lights adjust themselves automatically according to the sound levels. It’s not just about eclecticism, however, it’s about finding lost jewels.

This is a cultured man; he understands these materials; he is a detective righting the wrongs of a criminal world. Any artist with a plaque marking the place of his birth is to be scorned. Likewise the exalted DJ, whose insouciant jamming he regards as a frivolous affront to the much more profound possibilities of the medium. No, the compilations must be storyboarded, symbols rise and fall, themes explored, emotions plumbed then cut off abruptly as the case may be but always with a knowing intelligence, far from the abhorred excrescence that is the Random button. There’s not enough scorn in a piss-drenched thornbush in Cornwall to express how he feels about ‘best of’ albums. He loathes these sickly, studio-picked singles lists that lack the loving, knowing touch of the artisan’s hand. ‘Tis a gaudy galáctico policy. Yea, he spurns the anthologists’ work, instead panhandling his way through the hours of ill-conceived and/or poorly-executed tracks, jams and random ditties to rescue nuggets of gold from the silty waters.

Yet gold is too vulgar. Gold is the mark of decadence, gold is colonialism, cheapness, the trashy haul of sweaty soldiers smashing through the walls of ancient tombs. Gold is avarice; gold is mere glittery filth. Gold are the gaudy statues on the bridges in the streets of Paris and London thronged by the phantoms of their bloodthirsty pillaging, their resplendent domes cackling their depravity to the heavens. Gold are the egregious baubles of a corrupted faith glaring in the gloom of monstrous cathedrals built ostensibly to honour a carpenter.

Garry Cook, c. 2009

Or so Manchester City’s former chairman, Garry Cook, liked to say. It is a sadly underreported fact that Cook was a courageous visionary. Fed up with trying to reach the pinnacle of success through signing world-class players at the peak of their game, fed up with the clear, friendly megabucks jingles of This is the Grammys 2011, the Cookster ditched his iPod, put on his beanie and set off to Camden market to rummage for some crackly vinyl white labels. One afternoon with hillbillies by the canal spent betting rollies on how many takes it took Gil Scott-Heron to record his obscure Christmas ’78 duet with Jackie Onassis, and the road was clear: people like to feel smart but they also like shiny things and money; ergo, we spend €32,000,000 on Edin Džeko. He saw that the media now revolved around twitter: its moods were determined by the peculiar brand of humour common to men with one too many screens in their bedrooms. The (non-European) opposition didn’t matter too much: they too were susceptible to the meeja’s murmurings and would duly fall by the wayside in craven deference to money’s destiny.

The genius of Cook’s achievement is that he managed to convince us all that Manchester City were abhorrently mainstream. Using all the tools in the hipster’s satchel he created a marketing monster that convinced even its own protagonists they were Big Time instead of piss-pots on pedestals anointed by the artist’s wad of meaningless petro-dollars. More than anyone else, arguably, he ushered in the current era of hipster-ball — Bielsa at Bilbao, Juve’s tiny stadium, an unashamedly retro Chelsea, Newcastle turning St James’s Park into CBGB’s, Uruguay third in the world rankings, the Libertadores trumping the Champion’s League for skill, drama and excitement, Guardiola benching stars for children in the semi-finals before riding off to spending his days gardening and penning alexandrines extolling the Catalan nation like a bald Percy Bysshe (stay away from Naples, Pep). This hipster era is that of the volitional error, the one that ravages. Hence the email to rare b-side Nedem Onuoha’s mam. His legacy has been to open our eyes to our reality. So next time you hear his name being run-down, pipe up and defend the man who subtly defended nerdish obsession. For the Cookster it was who opened a new portal of discovery, with a song.

Danny writes about Argentinean football on Pegamequemegusta, and can found on Twitter here.

Swansea 1-1 QPR; Swansea 1-1 Tottenham

So many parts in motion, and straining,
it’s what’s working, making, or building,
or bending, or blinking and brought together,
or better drawn apart the finer with the rough,
if not so close then buried just below the surface,
if not so strong then flickering forward,
far enough to stay just out of reach.

———

Aston Villa 0-2 Swansea; Swansea 3-2 Arsenal

At the foot of the door of the church
where our hands
from our angels all un-tethered,
hysterical, and sleepy,
sprang forth and reckless,
at once and up and out and rattling,
held for a moment
the holy bodies
in the godly sky.

———

Sunderland 2-0 Swansea; Swansea 1-1 Chelsea; WBA 1-2 Swansea

Of the things unwritten, nothing un-writes itself like pain,
and nothing has more faith, or strength, or strangeness.
There’s no staying-power so broad and unabiding as sitting idle,
so harsh as watching everything around you turn.
And no light so long and mirrored and bright as the one
that cleaves and cuts our better from our best.

———

Swan Songs are written by @MaxwellKuhl. Read the previous instalments here.

This afternoon, as I was gazing idly at Joleon Lescott’s name on my computer screen, I noticed that you can nearly break his name into four complete, separate names: Jo, Leon, Les, and Scott, with just a tiny overlap on the last one. I then noticed that you could also get Leo, and Ole, and proudly told Twitter that I thought six names might be some kind of record, assuming you disallowed (a) surnames, (b) anagrams/moving of letters, and (c) names that were part of the actual name, like “Joleon” itself.

What followed was an object in lesson in why you should always and/or never tell Twitter anything, as further suggestions poured in, taking us up to a grand and slightly ludicrous total of seventeen eighteen, some of which appear to exist only in America. Here they are for posterity, along with examples for the less obvious of them.

1. Jo

2. Jol —  not just Martin’s surname, apparently, but the first name of Jol Dantzig, who Wikipedia tells us is an “artist, businessman, songwriter, designer, luthier, author, and one of the founders of Hamer Guitars”. A luthier is somebody that makes and repairs lutes, but you knew that. And yes, Jol is short for Jolyon, but fuck it: the man’s a luthier, and can call himself what he wants.

3. Jole — an Italian name, derived from the Greek jon, meaning violet, which was Latinised into iole. Iole was the name of one of the lovers of Hercules, and their inappropriate naughtiness eventually led to his death through one of those hilariously unlikely mix-ups that Greek myths go in for. So she married his son.

4. Joleo — there are two people called Joleo in California, obviously.

5. Ol — an acceptable shorter relation of Oliver, apparently. Means either elf warrior or olive tree, which sound like fairly exclusive things to me, but I don’t speak Germanic.

6. Ole — Gunnar Solskjaer, duh.

7. Le — for boys and girls! Means pearl in Vietnamese.

8. Leo

9. Leon

10. Eon — a variant of Ian, of Scots Gaelic origin, meaning “God is gracious”. If your parents called you Eon, though, I suspect gracious wouldn’t be the first word that sprang to mind.

11. Les

12. Escot — a name of Old English origin, meaning “hut near the stream”.

13. Escott — a more common (relatively) variation of the above. Neither is as common as Ascot, which is itself most famous as a racecourse, but it’s on a baby names website which means that somewhere, some time, some placenta-sniffing lunatic hopped up on the sheer amazingness of their own fundamental biological purpose has insisted, despite of the misgivings of the registry clerk. We live in a world where people call their offspring Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii. America’s next President might be called Mitt. It’s hopeless.

14. Scot — a short version of the below. Means “from Scotland, a Scotsman”, you’ll be stunned to hear.

15. Scott

16. Co — a Dutch name, short for Jacobus. Notable examples include Co Adriaanse, former manager of (among others) Porto and Ajax, recently dismissed from FC Twente, and Co “The Matchstick” Stompé, who does arrers.

17. Ott — see Estonian poet Ott Arder, or “medieval Austrian grappling master” Ott Jud.

18. Esco — as nominated below by Almajir. The internet doesn’t appear to know what it means, but various sources agree that it was the 887th most popular name in America in 1901, constituting 0.007% of the population. They probably all have the same source, mind, so who knows.

And there we go. Seventeen Eighteen of them, via ancient Greece, medieval Austria, Vietnam, and that night in Barcelona. If you can find anymore, stick them in the comments with links and I’ll update accordingly. And if you can think of others — Antonio Valencia and Alexander Oxlade-Chamberlain have been suggested — then go for it.

With thanks to @OnTheRoadajtas, @chroniclesofal, @MattSavage7, @goonerathena, @StanLCFC, @benmschneider, @theftblproject, @SeatPitch, @RushianLFC, @Callum_TH, @FootballCliches, and plenty others.

I do still find it slightly disappointing that his first name isn’t Edison.

Panic on the streets of London! Wenger in/out! Andre Villas-Boas in/out! Ooooooooooh, hokey-cokey! Ahem. Here’s Iain Macintosh on ‘Arsenal in c****s’. Calum Mechie reckons that both Wenger and Villas-Boas are victims of tactical circumstance. Meanwhile, Barney Ronay gazes longingly toward “the undimmed, and even austere, majesty of Cole the footballer”. That’s Ashley Cole. Aye, that one.

When Ryan Rosenblatt closes his eyes, he sees Jose Mourinho at the World Cup …

One of the most questioned/questionable results in World Cup history — Argentina 6-0 Peru, 1978 — has been in the news, as allegations surfaced that the match was thrown in exchange for the transfer of thirteen political prisoners. Pegamequemegusta isn’t convinced.

And staying in South American, Jack Lang has a look at third-party investment in Brazil.

John McGee gets all cultural for the Two Unfortunates, thumping a tub and singin’ a revolution.

It’s Denis Law’s birthday. The FCF has pictures and song.

And finally, in the nothing to do with football department, you can listen to a stream of the new Dirty Three album on the Quietus. Take a moment to admire the hair in the photo as well.

Things that I’ve written this week: Roy Keane, Comedy Genius; England’s Euro 2012 Excuses; and a Carling Cup final sort-of preview for ESPN. Here’s James Corden interrupting Hitler (h/t @AmhRichardson). Have a good weekend.

Thanks to Steve @miniboro_dotcom.

Yay Herve Renard! Yay fitted cotton shirts! Yay for the grand narrative! Sometimes — and if you’re Ivory Coast-inclined, then apologies, but come on — football just gets it right. Here’s Spirit of Mirko on Zambia’s Cup of Nations victory.

Arsenal, meanwhile, got skelped in Milan. Before the game, Miguel Delaney examined Arsene Wenger’s obsession with Europe; an itch that, on Wednesday’s showing, looks some distance from the scratching.

Lanterne Rouge looked at sustainability in football for The Two Unfortunates.

The remarkable story of Tony Hudd, a journalist banned from Gillingham Town since 1998 for something Tony Pulis said in an interview somebody else did.

Andy Hudson looks at the struggles faced by Swedish youth players that move to England.

Alex Hess compares Stewart Downing to a steaming pile holds forth on the iniquity/inadequacy of statistics.

From the ever wonderful Two Hundred Percent’s series of European Championship Stories, here’s two long-but-worth it pieces about the magnificent 1972 West Germany side, and the origins of the penalty shoot-out. (Panenka!)

And if you only read one of these, then make it this one. Rob Smyth looks back at 17 November 1993, the last day of qualifying for the 1994 World Cup. (Bodin …)

Finally, two things that have nothing to do with football, but are still pleasing: American Psycho rewritten in the style of PG Wodehouse (“The affair of the inferior business card is one which casts rather a gloom over the otherwise illustrious annals of Bateman family history …”) and the book Martin Amis wrote, but won’t admit to, or talk about: a guide to arcade machines entitled Invasion of the Space Invaders (“The phalanx of enemy invaders moves laterally across a grid not much wider than itself.”)

Nothing from me this week, yet. Here’s Herve Renard carrying injured full-back Joseph Musonda to the celebrations. Have a good weekend.

So the Champions League is back. Are you excited? A bit? Yeah, me too. The football’s decent, though there is the ever-present sense that it’s all a charade, played out to line the pockets of men that are already insensitively rich. Plus, Heineken’s shite.

Anyway, following a suggestion from a reader — not you, Mum, the other one — we’re revisiting the One By One game, with an entirely predictable European twist. Sixteen teams means we need a first XI plus a bench of five, one from each team. No managers.

Here are some examples; one from me, then a few from other people I found lying around the internet. Put yours — along with any abuse you might have — in the comments, and let’s kill time until the whole circus gets going again. Go to!

Team Twisted Blood

First XI (4-2-1-3): De Sanctis (NAP); Cissokho (LYO), Koscielny (ARS), Thiago Silva (ACM), Maicon (INT); Schweinsteiger (BAY), Bender (LEV); Mata (CHE); Messi (BAR), Cardozo (BEN), Ronaldo (RMA).
Subs: Mandanda (MAR), Steinhofer (BAS), Honda (CSK), Danny (ZEN), Ailton (APO)

Team @MacAree

First XI (4-2-3-1): De Sanctis (NAP); Javier Zanetti (INT), Thiago Silva (ACM), Lusiao (BEN), Cesar Azpilicueta (MAR); Bastian Schweinsteiger (BAY), Lars Bender (LEV); Cristiano Ronaldo (RMA), Juan Mata (CHE), Lionel Messi (BAR); Robin van Persie (ARS).
Subs: Igor Akinfeev (CSK), Xhedran Shaqiri (BAS), Paulo Jorge (APO), Danny (ZEN), Aly Cissokho (LYO).

Team @UFJamesT

First XI (4-2-3-1): Malafeev (ZEN); Maxi Pereira (BEN), Reinartz (LEV), Mbia (MAR), Cissokho (LYO); Thiago Motta (INT), Schweinsteiger (BAY); Messi (BAR), Ozil (RMA), Mata (CHE); Van Persie (ARS)
Subs: Chiotis (APO), Thiago Silva (Milan), Xhaka (BAS), Dzagoev (CSK), Cavani (NAP)

Team @andrewcharding

First XI (4-2-1-3): Neuer (BAY); Maxi Pereira (BEN), David Luiz (CHE), Thiago Silva (MIL), Cissokho (LYO); Zanetti (INT), Ballack (LEV); Özil (RMA); Messi (BAR), Cavani (NAP), Van Persie (ARS)
Subs: Malafeev (ZEN), Mbia, Manduca, Shaqiri (BAS), Doumbia

Team @calucm

First XI (4-4-2): Lloris (LYO); Lahm (BAY), Thiago Silva (MIL), Bruno Alves (ZEN), Zanetti (INT); Ronaldo (RMA), Xavi (BAR), Bender (LEV), Mata (CHE); Van Persie (ARS), Cavani (NAP)
Subs: Akinfeev (CSK), Paolo Jorge (APO), Aimar (BEN), Valbuena (MAR), Frei (BAS)

A note. You may have seen something similar on SB Nation. Rest assured that they are plagiarising bastards, albeit blameless /forgetful ones.

———

In the end, amid rumours that the entire of Queen’s Park Rangers’ side were set to “snub” John Terry’s limpid and outstretched foreleg in solidarity with Anton Ferdinand, the FA did the sensible thing, and sent both sides onto the pitch without insisting that they line-up in front of the director’s box and wobble one another wrists. The disappointment from the assembled media was palpable, as both sides of the delicately stoked either/or, will he/won’t we narrative collapsed into “oh, we’ll never know”. A thousand opinion pieces cried out, and were suddenly silenced.

Given the dispiriting events of the rest of the day, perhaps that was for the best. And the fact that anybody not called Anton Ferdinand was arrogant enough to have an opinion on the should or the shouldn’t was, of course, as depressing as it was inevitable; special mention here must go to Andre Villas-Boas, who was driven to describe a handshake as “extremely important, extremely important”, adding “This game is based on good values more than anything else. These players should continue to promote these good values.”

[A brief pause while we all think of the most appropriate retort to that.]

The compulsory pre-game handshake is a relatively recent innovation for England. Previously, unless there were nationalistic jingles to be mumbled or dignitaries to be blinked at, players were thought to be entirely capable of going from dressing room to pitch without needing to formally greet one another. Chances are they’d met before. Captains shook hands with one another and the referee at the coin-toss, of course, but that makes a certain symbolic sense: here are the figureheads of each team, formally acknowledging the other.

Like so many things that weren’t broken, the Premier League fixed it. Since 2004, teams have followed the international model of lining up either side of the centre-line, standing to attention for a ceremony that entirely by coincidence lasts exactly as long as one advert break. I suppose we should be grateful that the Premier League haven’t yet seen fit to bowdlerise a coronation march in their own honour.

It’s not as though footballers don’t have any opportunity to shake hands if they want to. They stand next to one another in tunnel, after all, and you can see ex-colleagues, national teammates and friends exchanging handshakes, hugs, and backslaps. Jose Mourinho memorably kissed Carles Puyol before knocking his Barcelona team out of the Champions League, and the habitual ‘good luck’ acknowledgements of the goalkeepers’ union are always heartwarming; two men who know that, whatever happens, theirs is a shared, strange existence.

Handshakes themselves aren’t the problem, we should be clear. The handshake is a social multitool: a proffered paw that will stretch to salutation, forgiveness, respect, acceptance, leave-taking, congratulation, agreement, solemnity, the benediction of peace upon a fellow worshipper, and the removal of stones from horses’ hooves, as determined by context. It’s the requirement of same. By making something that should be both individual and optional into something generic and compulsory, the FA and the PL have performed the miraculous feat of shafting the thing in both directions: it’s completely meaningless most of the time, except on the rare occasions when it’s cosmically overblown. If you make somebody do something, then it means nothing. And if you make somebody do something, and they don’t, then it means too much. These are empty conventions; they mean nothing in the observance and everything in the breach.

There’s a simple test that you can run on anything in the world: does that fact that it exists (a) make the world prettier, or (b) make the world funnier, or (c) make the world better? If something fails on each score, it’s not worth having, and can — no, should — be placed gently aside, then set on fire. The handshake ritual? No, no, and thrice no.

Already, the pencils are being sharpened, the lenses wiped, the country is bracing for Handshake-gate, part 68468126. Rio Ferdinand, brother of Anton, lines up against Terry this Sunday. Will he? Won’t he? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

It means nothing.

The transfer window, eh? Not with a bang, nor even a whimper, but a gentle click of mutual skintness and prudence. Premier League clubs being sensible? Lunacy.

Anyway, the tragedy in Port Said overshadowed everything else this week. Initial reports that this was ‘just’ a straightforward, if unusually large, slice of football violence have been generally placed aside — see this piece on Whispers From A Seeker — and a more complex story of political vengeance is beginning to come out. The New York Times’ Lede Blog collated the emerging story in video clips, articles, and tweets, while the excellent (and oh-so-aptly named) The Turbulent World Of Middle East Soccer wrote this on the political background of Egypt’s ultras. A writer at Soccer Politics blames Egypt’s current ruling body, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and Moacir P. de Sa Pereira’s piece on the parallels between ultras and Anonymous/Occupy is also interesting. Finally, here’s the peerless Dave Zirin from last year, on the role the ultras played in the revolution.

Some other stuff? Who Ate All The Goals wrote this on the problems with the media getting things wrong. (Includes ‘The Magdal Busuv Affair’, which is always a fun story to revisit.)

Ruud Gullit Sitting On A Shed, which I only discovered this week, not only has a magnificent name but wrote this, last year, about an episode of 6-0-6 from November 1992. Best read in the company of the Guardian’s preview of the 1992/93 season (or, the First Season of the Premier League, or The Day The Football Died).

Over on SB Nation, Calum Mechie did some words on the magic of the FA Cup. He found some! Hero.

And on Cartilage Free Captain, Kevin McCauley, with some help from a dead bloke who wore a sheet like it was actual clothing, learned to love the transfer window.

Good corporate man that I am, here’s some stuff from the FCF. Ethan Dean-Richards explains Jack Wilshere’s mysterious injuries, and a revisit of the Goal of the Season line-up for 1983/84. Includes that Glenn Hoddle goal against Watford, which you can never watch too many times.

Finally, I’m going to start putting the things that I write at the bottom of these, because I was asked to by a couple of people too lazy to use Google and too self-respecting to use Twitter. So, for the FCF: What are footballs really made of?

Here’s Ivan Zamorano singing the Chilean national anthem. Have a good weekend.