Bloody hell, it’s all happening today. And only one directly involves AFCW…
As you know by now, York is off. Probably the biggest no-brainer of the week, and then some. Your editor was boycotting it anyway (yes, really) but at least it’s another Saturday where we can rest our limbs and not use the excus.. er, reason that we’re tired.
I’m not overly concerned about the backlog that will now pile up – if we get rearranged fixtures during a purple patch, then we could find ourselves with a three, maybe even a six point gap advantage in a matter of a few days. That’s how fixture pileups work.
OK, this is the second time that the weather has buggered us about at Kitkat Bootham Crescent. At least we got fair warning this time…
Secondly, unconfirmed rumours at time of writing is that Steve Evans has quit Crawley. The scurrilous rumour mill suggested yesterday he was off to Mansfield (who got locked out today by the bailiffs due to their ex-owner being a grade A nob jockey).
If this did happen, then what next for Crawley? There have been murmurings that people in the press were starting to examine what is going down Broadfield, and that something may have come up in the New Year. Co-incidence?
I wrote the above, but apparently it’s apparently since been denied. Wait and see on this.
The big news of course is Russia and Qatar getting the 2018 and 2022 World Cups respectively. Or to be more accurate, England getting knocked out. Oh, sod it. What we really mean to say is, Wankie gets well and truly fucked up the arse. Ever the prostitute, he went around every media outlet he could find beforehand to big himself and his project (sic) up.
And now it’s all gone horribly, gloriously, fantastically wrong for him.
I decided not to lose my lunch by watching him beforehand, and I have to admit that him larging it up should England won it would have really ruined my day. I haven’t seen him afterwards, but apparently he looks like he’s going to do a Bud Dwyer…
Alas, I haven’t heard him speak, because no doubt he’s constantly powdering his nose (all that make up, eh?). Apparently though, he’s gone on record and said that despite England losing, it proves that he and the Frenzies are now “with the big boys”. Yes, much in the same way as the class bot hangs around with the older prefects in the showers.
Wankie is many things, none of them pleasant. But above all else, the guy is absolutely delusional. In the past, he’s claimed that Milton Keynes is a “can-do” place. Even today, he sees himself as the local boy done good, the man who put this new town on the worldwide map, the future…
Let’s humour the more educationally sub-normal by pretending that Franchise are actually Wimbledon FC. Even before 28/5, he was failing to bring a team up to Frenzyville. He got lucky twice – firstly, by bumping into Koppout and secondly 28/5/02. In the coke-addled world of Peter Winkelmann, it was down to his skill and judgement. In truth, he was the luckiest, luckiest individual alive.
A half-built stadium with a failing team that reportedly borrowed £28m from Clydesdale Bank recently is not the sign of a “can-do” attitude. People who are genuinely that way inclined don’t fuck it up and have to whore themselves out in acts of desperation. No, we don’t know why the FA decided to put Frenzyville on the shortlist, although we can guess to ourselves why. And yes, it would be libellous to put down in words what we think and probably know…
Did putting in Franchise actually cost England? That may sound like a smug, AFCW-fan-up-own-arse-as-usual comment (and let’s face it, we have plenty of supporters like that), but consider this comment from the former UEFA Chief Executive Lars-Christer Olsson, which was in the Guardian on April 23, 2003:
“Franchises are not good for European football. We are against franchise solutions”
Thanks to LCK for the quote.
Now, if you take the not-unreasonable line that what UEFA thinks is what FIFA thinks, and that attitudes don’t change much within a decade, perhaps the FA bumlicking with Wankie has cost them some votes in Zurich? Or at least contributed to England’s glorious failure.
The vote tallies are starting to come out, and it makes pretty grim reading for the England 2018 camp. It wasn’t a galliant pipped-at-the-post effort, it was a grand total of two votes. Yup, two. We’re not even sure if one of them was from England.
The powers-that-be in this country got humiliated today, and it deserved every single bit of it.
Forget the fact that it put in Franchise as a host town. The game in this country neither required nor deserved such a big tournament. It didn’t need the World Cup because football in this country is so ingrained that it wouldn’t make any difference. And FIFA’s attitude these days is to grow the game in places it would otherwise struggle in.
Qatar is exactly the sort of place FIFA would award a World Cup to – OK, the strict Islamic laws on alcohol and homosexuality would mess up some of our fans 😉 but it will also bring the game to nearby places like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Kuwait. The game in the US is building up legitimately solid ground these days, thanks to the 94 tournament, and it’s no accident that South Korea/Japan and South Africa were recent choices.
If this part of the world wanted the World Cup, just get Ireland and Scotland to bid for it next time. Christ, Ireland needs all the help it can get at the moment, and thanks to the GAA still thinking it’s 1916 there are no decently sized football stadia outside Dublin. They’re the sort of bids FIFA under Blatter would go for. England got Euro 96 and was a better tournament for it.
Even Brazil has a degree of underdevelopment to it – the domestic game from what I’ve seen of it doesn’t look all that, and it’s no coincidence that the bulk of the international players play in Europe. Bit like the national team too. All this talk of England “deserving” it because of 1966 has probably pissed off the rest of FIFA. Christ, Brazil last hosted it in 1950, so they probably “deserve” it more than this country. And unlike England, at least they can win tournaments in other countries.
Judging by comments you hear from people who go to World Cups these days, they’re not all they’re cracked up to be anyway. Rampant commercialism, sky high prices, more tickets go to corporates than the locals – assuming that they can afford them in the first place, that is. Most people who want to go to it probably won’t be able to afford it. That Panorama programme this week did everyone a favour when it revealed the tax fiddles required to get it. The World Cup isn’t for the people who actually want to go and watch games…
Mind you, the reaction over this has been great. I don’t know if it’s been saved on Youtube, but when the first rumours that Russia had it filtered through to Jim White on SSN, his face was a picture. Why? Because he had been building – sorry, ramping – things up so much to the point that being bookies favourites was the gospel truth of what was to happen. All the hype, all the spin, all the promises that England had done it, and he looked like his whole life had been a lie.
Look, I’m in the press business, and I have to admit I cringe at the ramping up of England’s chances in this morning’s papers (I’m not an England fan by the way). Putin didn’t turn up, and it was immediately spun as being a winner for England. Nobody ever questioned why this was so, or why a man of utter influence would decide not to turn up, and whether there was something more to it. Ditto the reaction to David Beckham’s speech – it was treated on a par with Martin Luther King’s Top of the Mountain speech, but I heard it for the first time this evening and it was actually quite painful to listen to.
Panorama and the Sunday Times didn’t hurt the England bid because there wasn’t much more to hurt in the first place. The press and other media will get some of the blame for this, but remember that the press can only write for its readership. Perhaps England fans themselves should take responsibility? Today’s Telegraph was as happy as any tabloid to go along the Putin angle. Why? Because that’s what its readership wants to see in front of them.
England fans want to be told that they’re the best, so the press give them it. Was the bid really as good as all that? Forest, Leeds, Liverpool to name but three all need to refurbish/knock down/move from their stadia, Bristol was having planning difficulty in their new ground, and Villa would need to do reconstruction work too. You can imagine the comments if say France had to refurbish as many venues.
Is it down to FIFA corruption? In part, probably. But even so, to get just two votes is a major slap in the face. Especially as the other person voting was Issa Hayatou, who got named by Panorama. If England knew how to play the politics game, it would have stood a far better chance of winning today. However, it just prefers to remain paranoid.
The authorities in Europe have to be anti England. After all, all this country ever gets is things like the Champions League final, and the Europa League final, and could get the Euro Championships again if it wanted to. All the foreign owners coming in and destroying the fabric of the English game. Yet the same people complaining are the first to pull their trousers down and part their arse cheeks for Ivor Lotsodosh or Sheik Mustapha Million when they buy their club…
And the EU’s regulations coming in that are clearly designed to fuck up English clubs, despite it being agreed by English clubs. And that Platini is blatantly anti-English, by only singling out English clubs for their spending and their violence. It’s always somebody else’s fault, never theirs.
Anyway, the repercussions will start now. We can no doubt expect Blatter and the rest of FIFA to get everything bar their underwear laundry bills scrutinised. The blame game will be in full effect now, with fingers pointing everywhere except at the individuals doing the pointing. The changes that people demand be made of FIFA won’t be aimed at the FA, who need as much of a bleaching as Blatter’s mob does. Nothing will change, except the number of years that England continues not to have a major tournament.
Arrogance, delusion, over-inflated sense of worth and ego, contempt of everyone who doesn’t think the sun revolves around you. Actually, isn’t that Peter Wankelmann in a nutshell? No wonder Frenzyville got selected, they represent England all over…