Last night I faced a difficult choice. Should I watch Ireland play Poland in the European Championship qualifiers, or watch episodes of Bojack Horseman on my laptop?
Bojack won, and if anyone tries to tell you the theme music isn’t one of the best theme musics of all time then they’re quite mad indeed. In the football, Ireland drew 1-1 with a goal from Shane Long in the 90th minute but Bojack took a load of drugs and had a Burroughs-esque trip through his messed up life. I think I made the right decision.
It means Ireland stay ahead of Georgia and Gibraltar but trail Germany and Scotland by 2 points and the group leaders Poland by 3. It’s all pretty tight in there. Mesut Ozil played for Germany as they beat Georgia 2-0 while Olivier Giroud scored for France as they beat Denmark by the same scoreline.
At the Emirates yesterday Brazil beat Chile 1-0. I didn’t watch that either so I can’t comment on any of it or how Alexis played but we can say with some certainty that he didn’t score as the Chile 0 part of the scoreline is a dead giveaway.
So now, with the competitive fixtures out of the way, you’d think the players would allowed ‘home’ but for some there’s a round of friendlies taking place tomorrow night. Italy play England so I’m guessing Gibbs and Walcott could be involved, with Danny Welbeck already back at the club after tweaking his knee last week.
Tonight Colombia face Kuwait in a friendly so I assume David Ospina will be involved there; Santi Cazorla will probably be involved as Spain face Holland in the Dutch Netherlands; Tomas Rosicky is in the Czech squad for their game against Slovakia; but apart from that I don’t see games for Germany, Chile or France so Ozil, Giroud and Alexis look like they’ve got a week off to prepare for the game against Liverpool at the weekend.
All of which is, if I do say so myself, some of the most tedious and yawn-inducing football information that has ever been imparted on this site. And with a dearth of anything Arsenal related we’ll have to look elsewhere for today’s guff, starting with yesterday’s column in the Observer by Daniel Taylor. There’s a bit involving a former Arsenal player which is, frankly, bizarre.
To set the scene, there’s a Whitehall summit, arranged by the minister for Sports to discuss why there are so few black managers in the game. Sol Campbell, who has been quite outspoken about the issue has questions:
On this occasion he wanted the FA’s technical director, Dan Ashworth, to explain why Gary Neville had been fast-tracked through the system to become one of Roy Hodgson’s assistants with the England team. Ashworth started talking about the favourable impression Neville had made on Hodgson and the players and was running through the processes that were involved when Campbell put out his hand to interrupt him. This is when things started to get a little strange.
“But I am Sol Campbell.”
You can read the rest of it here.
Also from the Observer yesterday, a ‘Manifesto for a better game‘ touches on various areas of the sport which which resonate with most fans. From ticket prices to club ownership, safe-standing to the living wage, it covers a multitude of issues that the game faces and seems either unwilling, or unable, to deal with properly.
This, I love:
Above all, football is not a business. Even in the most conventional terms it fails, for the industry as a whole, despite the exponential growth of income, loses money and is swimming in debt. It is a collectively produced popular culture and its form of ownership and regulation needs to reflect that.
Except it’s the part of me that loves the idea that people should just get along with each other regardless of all the invented reasons we have to divide us. The idea that football is not just a business but something deeper is fundamentally correct, but it’s gone way too far to be able to turn it around … certainly at the highest level.
It is business, huge business, and business calls the shots for the benefit of business, with the fans, the game, the clubs and everything else as an inconvenient afterthought. I don’t know if there’s any way back from it now without measures that might appear draconian in the short-term, and I’m not sure any of the turkeys will end up voting for Christmas. Still, it’s well worth a read.
Right, that’s about that for this morning. For better or worse James and I will be recording an Arsecast Extra for you this morning, and with Arsenal news so light on the ground, you lovely people might be the ones to provide us with the talking points. If you have any questions or topics for discussion, please send to @gunnerblog and @arseblog on Twitter with the hashtag #arsecastextra and we’ll do our best to get as many of them in as we can.
That will be available for your listening pleasure before lunchtime, so stand by for that, with more nothing here again tomorrow.
Until then.
