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.

There’s no Clasico next week. This is extremely sad-making. But we must make do. Anyway, of all the pre-match hand-wringing and the post-match breath-catching, the best piece — in my ever humble one — was this on the FCF, explaining why Pepe is the wrong kind of violent for Real Madrid. While you’re there, have a look at this gallery of Jose Mourinho pictures. He was 49 yesterday. Happy birthday Jose!

Liverpool signed Stewart Downing on the basis of a fake video. No, really, they did. Seriously. Presumably they signed Andy Carroll on the basis of this.

All of which buffoonery leads neatly onto this piece, by Alex Netherton for ESPN Soccernet: Moneybollocks.

The Bad Photographer takes a look at the snobbery surrounding Darren Bent, and England’s perceptions of England’s players.

One half of the Magic Spongers gets all hot under the collar about the notion of refereeing consistency. Warning: contains picture of H****d W**b.

Away from football for a moment, Meredith Alexander was, until recently, one of 13 commissioners on the board of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012. But on Wednesday she resigned in protest over the £7m sponsorship deal between the Games and Dow Chemical, who still have outstanding liabilities relating to the 1984 Bhopal disaster. Once you’ve recovered from the shock of somebody in British public life doing something principled, you can read her reasons here. (While I’m on the subject, Indra Sinha, an Indian novelist, wrote this novel about the disaster. Well worth a look.)

Dow’s name, incidentally, will be on a wrap around the stadium. A wrap. I can’t think of a single better metaphor for this country’s blind rush back to Thatcher’s shrivelled bosom than a fucking corporate snood.

Staying away from football, this piece by Brian Phillips on Grantland is wonderful. In 1810, Tom Molineaux, a freed American slave, fought Tom Cribb, the idol of early English boxing.

Finally, some heroism. On Wednesday, Equatorial Guinea — ranked 151st in the world — beat much-fancied Senegal 2-1 in the African Cup of Nations. But the highlight wasn’t the winning goal, great though it was. It was this. Sergio Busquets, Pepe, watch and learn …

Have a good weekend.

English football has its adorable idiosyncrasies, that’s why we put up with love it. There’s the cute wave of hysteria that drowns the country every two years (qualification allowing), and there’s the endearing approval of low-grade violence that hides behind the euphemism “good honest challenge”. But recently, one of the most quaint and peculiar of them all has been parading for our attention, a thing that “nobody likes to see”: the waving of the imaginary card.

It’s come up this time with a healthy does of comedy hypocrisy, as Roberto “No, I’m Fine, I’m Fine, I’m Fine” Mancini first publicly deplored Wayne Rooney advising the referee in the FA Cup then himself waved the forbidden non-object a few days later against Liverpool. He apologised, was castigated for his double standards by Steven “Diving Is The Worst Thing ” Gerrard, and then did it again last night, as Maynor Figueroa denied Sergio Aguero a clear goalscoring opportunity.

Oh no, hang on, he was in the centre-circle.

Anyway, the lunacy of the hatred of the offending square of air is obvious. Ultimately, there is simply no difference between waving an imaginary card, and shouting, “fucking book him, ref!” except for the extra opportunity for profanity it affords John Terry whoever’s making the demand audibly. Indeed, it’s more efficient in some contexts. Mancini was on the sidelines — maybe the referee wouldn’t have heard him? Best wave, just in case.

There is a wider hypocrisy here, of course, which is the persistent division between Things That Foreigners Do, which are always bad, and Things That Englishers Do, which are always good. Helpfully, in this case, there’s a trend towards a difference in action to highlight the general distinction: it’s generally assumed that those notoriously hot-blooded foreign types are more likely to gesture, probably as a result of all the sunshine, nice wine, and over-elaborate cheese. Therefore: waving bad, shouting good. Calling the parentage of the official into question is optional, and should an Englisher be seen to wave the absent oblong, well, he probably picked that up in Spain.

There are two requests that must be made, without fail, in the wake of every such clamour. The first, following on from the above, is a plea for consistency from our media, our punditocracy, and ourselves. If you think waving an imaginary bounded space of inferrable colour is bad, then condemn its verbal equivalent with equal fervour. And the second follows on from this, and isn’t so much a request as a question. Really? Does it matter that much that one footballer tells the referee that he thinks another footballer should be booked/dismissed/enter the tombola? It’s not ‘trying to get them sent off’ in the same way that diving or feigning injury is; it’s instruction, not deception. And if we think our referees are weak enough that a snarl from Wayne Rooney is enough to sway their minds, then the snarler really isn’t the problem.

But don’t worry. Help is at hand. Here are a list of things that exist in English football that are worse, in one way or another, than waving an imaginary card. In no particular order:

The lack of justice for the families of those killed at Hillsbrough; the unthinking indulgence of reckless tackles; the shepherding of the ball out of play to the point that it becomes obstruction; timewasting; shirt-pulling in the penalty area during a set-piece; the time allowed by referees for free-kicks; racial abuse; the existence of the word “banter”; diving; players wearing coloured boots; Alan Hutton; the over-protection of goalkeepers: the failure of the FA to adequately oversee and regulate the ownership of football clubs; the demise of Darlington; the weird fetishisation of the long slow crossfield pass; the Poznan; the complete and total failure to keep accurate time during games; the relentless scapegoating of officials; the fact that Twitter is the dominant source of news; the mess that is the loan system; Richard Scudamore; the savage assault of the Premier League on memory; the nonsense that is the Man of the Match award; 95% of all pundits, presenters, broadcasters and opinionistas; Sepp Blatter; the ongoing tolerance of homophobia in the stands; the blatant use of lists to pad out football writing; the existence of “banter”; the depressing decline of football in Africa; the plague of agents; the likely demise of Kettering; the wages; the fact that Liverpool fans go straight from the last syllable of “alone” to the beginning of “walk on” without observing the rest; the fact that Manchester United have an Official Responsible Drinking Partner; Colin Murray; the mysterious disappearance of halfway-line flags; Michael Owen’s app; half-and-half scarfs at derbies; Wayne Bridge.

Now, take all the energy you were devoting to giving a flying one about the furious implication of a symbol, pick one of the above, and get all seethy and righteous for a cause. And if that lot still can’t take your mind off it, then take your preferred hand, form it into a fist — thumb outside, you don’t want to hurt yourself — and hit yourself hard in the mouth, repeatedly, until you lose both consciousness and the will to complain. There you go. Problem solved.

A note. Anybody who’s read everything I’ve written — hi Mum! — may recognise this piece as being similar in theme to one I wrote in 2010, on my own blog, on the same topic. I make no apology for this. If more of you had read it at the time, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But you didn’t. Your fault. And besides, this one’s better.

There have probably been less surprising poll results. In 1962, elections in North Korea achieved the democratic dream of a 100% turnout, with each victorious candidates — they were limited to one per constituency — attaining a 100% mandate. But when the only other horse in what could only loosely be described as a two-horse race doesn’t feel the need to turn up — Cristiano Ronaldo had very important Copa del Rey practice — then it does rather undermine even the pretense of suspense. And so it came to pass: Lionel Messi, for the third time in a row, won the FIFA Ballon d’Or and retained official recognition as the best player on the planet.

Tributes have been forthcoming, most of which have focused on the undeniable rightness of the decision. But one of the more pleasing wrinkles of the newly-merged FIFA Ballon d’Or is the publication of the voting lists. Thanks to this we learned that Messi’s greatness is so emphatic and inarguable that two international captains, Aaron Hughes of Northern Ireland and Bilal Rajab of Qatar, didn’t even bother voting for a top three. Messi, then clear air.

More fun still is identifying those players who apparently didn’t grasp that the rules prohibit voting for one’s fellow countrymen. John Terry, Mark van Bommel and Denis Lavagne, manager of Cameroon, all voted for their compatriots, selecting Wayne Rooney (3rd), Wesley Sneijder (1st), and Samuel Eto’o (1st) respectively. (Messi himself, captain of Argentina, placed Sergio Agüero in 3rd). Kind of cute, when you think about it …

“See, Wayne? I voted for you!”

“Aww, John, you sentimental booby. Hug!”

… and, given that egos float around football like dirigibles over steampunk, perhaps a diplomatic necessity.

“Why didn’t you vote for me, Mark?”

“Well, er, I, the rules, I … sorry, Wesley. Oh, don’t look like that. Hug?”

Of course, there are plenty of decisions that feel peculiar. Nahayo, captain of Burundi, has clearly been paying a lot of attention to Pelé, selecting the anti-impotence activist’s favourite Neymar in 1st place. Jaffar Khan, captain of Pakistan, overlooked both Messi and Ronaldo, preferring a top three of Thomas Müller, Andrés Iniesta and Bastian Schweinsteiger. Giovanni Trappatoni, coach of Ireland, didn’t vote for Messi at all while Ibrahim Mohamed Ibrahime, coach of Djibouti, looked over the entire wide world of football in 2011 and plumped for Karim Benzema as his number one. All of the above, naturally, have attracted much chuckling, because this is football and mocking people who get things wrong is what we do.

Except, of course, that there is no wrong answer. Voting is a preferential business — what do you think? — and preferences, so long as they’re honest, are never *wrong*, however misguided or idiotic or sentimental they might be. Maybe Messi once trod on Trappatoni’s toe. Maybe Müller and Schweinsteiger were once good enough to keep Jaffar Khan company while he was waiting for a taxi. Maybe Benzema once held a door open for Ibrahim, even though it meant an unnecessary delay of a few seconds to his own journey. It was once said of Bill Clinton that he could persuade the entire of the USA to vote for him, if only he could meet them all*; maybe Iker Casillas is just a really nice bloke.

* There is the possibility that this is a line from Primary Colors. In which case, for legal reasons, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Bill Clinton.

In addition to this, we must remember that those who play football experience other footballers differently to those who simply watch. It would be gratuitously peevish to deny a captain the right to base his decision on ‘that time I marked Ronaldo, he tore me to pieces’ or a manager on ‘that game where nothing got past Casillas, it was unreal’. And we can never discount the possibility of more malign forces. Wayne Rooney’s popularity in various “emerging markets” will doubtless be a great source of pleasure to those who spend their time counting beans for the Premier League.

I suppose you could approach the question ‘who do you think is the best in the world?’ as an objective matter, but taking the subjective route is both more fun and more human. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that people are allowed to be objectively wrong for their own reasons, however petty or personal they might be. That’s the point of people; that’s what opens democracy up to such galling manipulation by those that can afford to spend money to change the way people think. It’s a problem in politics; it’s a godsend in football.

Because footballers affect different people in different ways. There are people in this world who find Messi incredibly boring and people who consider him overrated. There are people who place great significance on the fact that he plays for a team that has been built around him, others that look significantly towards his relatively disappointing international career, and doubtless there are those who are uncomfortable with his childhood use of human growth hormone. Then there are those who despise Barcelona or Argentina, for whatever reason, and those who feel that attacking players get too much attention. Some of these people will also be footballers, or coaches, or journalists; some of them will have voted. Football isn’t a game of opinions, but having opinions definitely is.

The search for objective truth in shared human pleasures is the most inhumane of all pursuits and should be defied and resisted at every turn. Last night, Arsenal fans voted Thierry Henry man of the match before he’d even got onto the pitch. It was wrong, and it was ridiculous. But it was wonderfully, sweetly, and perfectly human. Long live the sentimental idiots, and long live the right to be wrong.

Some things that I read and quite liked this past week …

AFCON 2012

The African Cup of Nations starts this weekend, which is quite exciting, unless you’re Roberto Mancini, in which case the persistent Africanness of your African players becomes just another contributing factor to that nervous twitch you’re gestating. (It’s not visible yet. But it’s coming.) My occasional paymasters at SB Nation Soccer are profiling the teams and some of the more notable players, while Roker Report have looked at some of the less well-known participants. And those brave souls at Lovely Left Foot, who will be covering the whole shebang, have made some predictions.

More specifically, the Guardian have published interesting pieces on Zambia, whose participation is overshadowed by their tragic history, and Libya, who have their own, much more recent history to be contending with. Alex Ferguson — probably not that one — wrote a fascinating piece a few months back for In Bed With Maradona, on the rise of co-hosts Gabon. “Meteoric”. Meanwhile, Jonathan Wilson did his best to harsh everybody’s buzz by wondering whether African football is even progressing at all.

Other random stuff

An interview with Mike Calvin, author of Family, for the FCF. Their post Clasico reflections are also worth a look. (Couldn’t be arsed with the accent there. Sorry, Spanish.)

A look at Manchester United’s finances by Andrew Green.

The return of the Magic Spongers podcast. Warning: contains northerners.

John McGee (for the Two Unfortunates) takes a sympathetic look at the MK Dons, because he doesn’t care what you think, the maverick.

The kits of Euro 2012, from Mao Football. Croatia rocking it again, oh yes.

On the Edge of Sanity. Archiving football’s most nonsensical nonsense.

And finally a video, which you might well have seen already, but fuck you, you’re not paying for this. Cricket. Ouch. Have a good weekend

Everton 1-0 Swansea

We came in cold from the rain with the hope that we wouldn’t get wet and that the awnings and shingles and spires and pillars and poles and wind would get in the way of the water coming in sheets.

And sheets, like everyone had said it would, over and over and over. It all happened fast and seemed like it lasted forever so we just kept running and running and hoping to outrun the rain but when we came in we were soaked and sorry and late.

Swansea 1-1 QPR; Swansea 1-1 Tottenham

Some unpleasant swarm and verve and shake
and still rollicking, still wandering, still awake,

drawn-on ageing evening, endlessly aware,
drawn back both sides broad, long and flared,

over the same flat field, in moving unchanged,
all square, all done, and all the same.

———

Swan Songs are written by Maxwell Kuhl. Read the rest here.