Our favourite things this week: from Zinedine Zidane to ugly wallpapers
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Version 0 of 1. 1) What happened to England’s lost football grounds? Some of these stories about old football stadiums are sadder than others. The Manor Ground in Oxford became a hospital, which is respectable. Eastville Stadium in Bristol became an Ikea, which is bordering on the depressing. And Burnden Park in Bolton was paved over so Asda could put up a parking lot, which will have upset Joni Mitchell. At least Robert Pires can still play on the pristine grass at Highbury. 2) Four shots for $10,000 You already know what happens in this video. The student makes four shots – a layup, a free throw, a three-pointer and a half-court shot – within 30 seconds to win $10,000 towards his college education. The video wouldn’t have been included here if he had missed. But, just because you know what is going to happen doesn’t mean you won’t start rooting for him as he lines up that final shot. 3) Rubbish football wallpapers These are brute ugly. 4) The nostalgia trap, the Springsteen conundrum and baseball You will not read a better article about nostalgia and how remembering old baseball games is like listening to Bruce Springsteen than this piece by Andrew Forbes in The Classical. Here is a little taster: Memory functions like this, when it functions. Rotary dial phones, Betamax machines, old TV shows, the 1985 Kansas City Royals: the past can be comforting because it doesn’t change, because it is so resolutely the past. Our own pasts are like this, so interesting to us and only us. They smell to us like the still atmosphere of an attic, or the rich, damp, earthy scent of earth long undisturbed, while to others they’re the unfamiliar air of somebody else’s weird old house: musty carpet underpadding, urine of cats long dead, mothballs in dresser drawers. Our own nostalgia is luxurious; someone else’s is someone else’s, and something else. When I say that games from 25 or 29 years ago seem somehow better to me – simpler, or cleaner, or more exciting, or whatever – I am, in effect, listening to Bruce Springsteen. I’m conjuring a moment Before The Fall, a time predating life’s hinge, the point where The Past drops off into The Present and things cease making sense, or exist in stubbornly unresolved form. They are yet changeable, and mutability can make difficult a lazy comfort of the sort offered by nostalgia. That’s why the best heroes are dead ones. 5) This guy changed basketball forever By now we all know how statistics changed baseball. But did you know the story of how Kirk Goldsberry revolutionised basketball? Goldsberry had two advantages over most of us: he is a cartographer who understands space and he is a basketball nut. So when he discovered statistics for every shot taken in the NBA, he went to work on mapping them. With those maps he was able to work out where players excelled and struggled. He found that Kobe Byrant is at his weakest when on the baseline, that Dwight Howard has a remarkable ability to prevent the opposition from getting shots away and that Luis Scola does not block enough shots. Needless to say, that information was very useful to NBA teams. It also makes for a fascinating read from Wired magazine. 6) In praise of cheating The headline says it all. Paul Lees of Sweet Left Foot has eschewed the usual sanctimony offered by pundits to give a refreshingly honest perspective on the art of finagling an advantage in football: When I used to play I wouldn’t be averse to using a bit of foul play now and again to gain an advantage. A few times I’ve managed to con the referee into awarding a penalty by going down a little too easily (once, I am proud to admit, when no player was within five yards from me) and a few times my attempts have been waved away. The same goes for free-kicks. But the illicit acts I have undertaken have not been merely restricted to simulation. You name it I have done it and sometimes I would take good pleasure from it too. 7) The night Wrexham floored the mighty Porto What is the greatest result achieved by a British club playing in Europe? Nottingham Forest beating Hamburg in 1980 to win consecutive European Cups? No. Norwich City humbling Bayern Munich at the Olympic Stadium in the Uefa Cup in 1993? As if. Celtic becoming the first British club to win the European Cup with a group of players born within the four stands of Celtic Park? Of course not. The honour goes to Wrexham’s stunning 1-0 victory against Porto in the European Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1984. Nick Rippington was a young reporter on the Wrexham Evening Leader at the time and, 30 years later, he remembers it well: “Somehow one of the Wrexham party managed to persuade the authorities to open the airport bar, and the celebrations were in full flow for the next three hours – while I stayed sober and tried to tap out my report on a portable typewriter amid the chaos... Since that famous night I’ve covered many big sporting events, but none more dramatic. It’s an honour to say: I was there.” 8) Some entertaining stories from Alan McLoughlin’s book While most of the media were scrolling through the index of Roy Keane’s new autobiography to find some juicy gossip, Conor Neville at Balls.ie was reading A Different Shade of Green, the new book by Keane’s old Republic of Ireland team-mate Alan McLoughlin. From the excerpts published here, the book sounds like a cracker. Here’s one story about Jack Charlton’s preparation for a big match against Holland: To my surprise, as the camera scanned across the two teams standing for the anthems it showed 11 anonymous faces in orange shirts surrounded by an empty stadium. I squinted at the Dutch team on screen, unable to make out Kluivert, Bergkamp or any of their other stars. After five minutes it became abundantly clear to everyone that this was a video of the Dutch under-21 team. Everyone, that is, apart from Jack and Maurice. The lads started nudging each other, laughter rippling, as we waited for Jack to realise. Another five minutes passed. Still Jack hadn’t clocked what was going on. Another few minutes passed. Up Jack leapt, pausing the video. He’s finally realised, I thought. But as Jack started lecturing us, I realised I was wrong.‘Now, watch Bergkamp’Jack was pointing at the Dutch under-21 striker, who just happened, like Denis Bergkamp, to have blonde hair.‘Now watch the way he pulls away from his defender here’Cue hoots of laughter.‘What the hell do you think you’re laughing at? What’s so fucking funny?’Jack’s question was met with more howls of delight. Eventually, Andy Townsend told him what had happened. Jack blamed Maurice and gave him a bollocking. Maurice, in turn, blamed the Dutch. Sabotage! Jack’s final word on the matter was ‘fuck ‘em, we’ll beat ‘em anyway’. It didn’t bode well. 9) Football managers on their summer holidays When not standing on touchlines or sitting in front of microphones to answer the same questions they answer every single week, football managers like to go on holiday. While on holiday, they all try to look as suave as Fabio Capello. 10) Zinedine Zidane’s penalty in the 2006 World Cup final Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt at the end of the 2006 World Cup final has been immortalised in bronze, but the most artistic thing he did that day was to chip a penalty past Gianluigi Buffon and into the top corner of the Italy goal. Case Jernigan has done his bit for art history by creating this stop motion animation to commemorate one of the greatest penalties ever scored. |