Sion Saga Resolved

The long-running saga over FC Sion's expulsion from the Europa League - as detailed in our 'Glory nights return to Scottish football' article - has finally met a resolution at CAS, the upshot being that their spurious appeal was chucked out.

It's quite apt that it's taken exactly the same amount of time as the group stage to reach this conclusion, with a series of pointless exchanges in far-flung parts of Europe with little to no interest paid by the vast majority.
In some ways, it's something of a shame that they've lost as the Europa League is a farce anyway and trying to parachute Sion back in - and Celtic back out, presumably - would add a level of nonsense that would be hard to satirise. UEFA, should they have felt a rare need to be consistent, could have dropped them straight into the knockout phase without having earned the right to be there, just like they do with the unhappy losers from the Champions League.

But sense has, probably, reigned. Back in the day, Stuttgart were turfed out for a breach of player eligibility rules after knocking out Leeds, so UEFA are doing the right thing. Sion's action through the courts first and CAS second must have cost them a fair wedge and for what? It's said that any publicity is good publicity and we certainly know more about FC Sion than we did previously. While the whole sorry episode gave us a chance for a laugh at Scotland's expense earlier in the season, we find it difficult to see what else the Swiss club have achieved.

Barça Cruise Through To Final

Al-Sadd 0-4 FC Barcelona

Barcelona have booked their place in the FIFA Club World Cup final an easy 4-0 victory over Qatari side Al-Sadd. It was be nothing more than a training session for the reigning UEFA Champions League winners as two first half goals from Adriano set Pep Guardiola's team on the road to victory. Second half strikes from Seydou Keita and Maxwell wrapped up the vitory but it was marred David Villa's broken tibia.

With Lionel Messi, Villa and Pedro leading the charge, Barcelona dominated possession but with twenty five minutes gone they were gifted the lead. Former Portsmouth man Nadir Belhadj passed the ball back to goalkeeper Mohamed Saqr and the keeper simply blasted the clearance into Adriano and the ball ended up in the back of the net.  Then six minutes before the break, came the injury to Villa as he appeared to catch his studs on the turf and fall to the ground in agony. A blow not only for his club side but his national side with UEFA Euro 2012 only six months away. It didn't deter Barcelona as Aadriano doubled the lead just four mnutes after the departure of Villa. Belhadj switched off and allowed Thiago Alcântara to gain possession his suiperb pass found the well timed run of Adriano and the Brazilian full back smashed the ball home passed the helpless Saqr for his second of the game.

It was business as usual in the second half as the Catalan giants dominated possession and made it seem like the Al-Sadd side, clearly out of their depth, were constantly chasing shadows. Just after the hour, Lionel Messi set up Seydou Keita for the third with a fantastic through ball from the Argentinian superstar. The with eight minutes left substitute Maxwell capitalized on a super through ball from Thiago Alcântara and some more generous defending and goalkeeping from the Qatari side as Mohamed Saqr did best to avoid the ball rather than stop it from going into the net. Santos now await Barcelona in Sunday's final, who will hopefully provide better opposition than the AFC Champions League winners. Al-Sadd will face Kashima Reysol in the 3/4th place play off, a game they are likely to lose unless they play a hell of a lot better

Careful what you wish for

Life hasn't been kind to Monaco fans recently. Dumped from Ligue 1 last season after a year-long struggle to do anything other than draw, they now find themselves bottom of Ligue 2 with one win from 18 games. But, lo, is that a light on the horizon in the shape of Russian fertiliser magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev? Well hold on and make sure that it's not a train coming the other way.

There are plenty of Russian owners around. By contrast to many, Roman Abramovich seems to be one of the best - well, he did right up to the point at which he forced Andriy Shevchenko on Jose Mourinho. It's been a bit of a mess since. Then there's Ramzan Kadyrov at Terek Grozny, the Chechen leader, noted warlord, ballot stuffer and overseer of gross human rights abuses. Still, he got Hilary Swank to go to his 35th birthday, so he can't be all bad, right? Ruslan Chagaev takes the biscuit though. Another Chechen, he took over at Neuchatel Xamax - a solid enough if unspectacular club - and started with a bang, sacking the entire coaching staff a mere month after hiring them to replace the previous lot. Today, reports come in that Neuchatel have had four league points deducted for non-payment of wages. The club's former president, Gilbert Facchinetti, said at the time of Chagaev's takeover of the stricken club "We are not familiar with these people. But we have to be honest with ourselves: we have no other way".

Rybolovlev may be the saviour that Monaco are looking for as he promises €200m of investment. But for crying out loud, Monagasques, do some due diligence. It'll be worth it in the long run.

That's Conference! #1

Reviving a theme from the blog of one of our contributors from some years ago, a celebration of things that make all of us feel better about not being professional players.

First up, Edgar Prib of Greuther Fürth in a top-of-the-table clash away to Eintracht Frankfurt in what is becoming a really good tussle in 2.Bundesliga. How has he missed from here?





That's Conference!

Brainless

When you get sent off, after coming on as a substitute, for being booked twice in the space of ten seconds.

Stand up, Jeremain Lens of PSV Eindhoven who acheived this in his sides 1-0 victory over NAC Breda on Sunday. Booked needlessly for kicking the ball away after conceding a free kick, Lens then compounds this by not retreating ten yards from the resulting free kick and he's promptly shown a second yellow and dismissed by referee Bas Nijhuis.

The fun and games being in this video about 4 minutes and 30 seconds in.

We also recognise and acknowledge the KNVB as the rights holder in this video.

The Languid XI

You know the sort. The player who looks like football is just a bothersome task that gets in the way of looking effortlessly cool. Like exerting oneself is the worst thing a person can do. Like they could take to the pitch with a cigarillo and a brandy, do something amazing without spilling a drop or knocking the ash off the end.
Here's our Languid XI, lining up in the formation of languidity, 3-4-3:

Goalkeeper:
Vitor Baia
Goalkeepers are normally highly strung individuals, bawling and shouting a lot, flinging themselves about and blaming everyone but themselves for their failings, which made our search for a suitable custodian difficult. But the former Portuguese number one gave off such an air of calmness that he was the obvious choice. No histrionics, no pretending he was really a midfield general but was just helping out by going in nets, economy of movement and stylish hair.

Defence:
Paolo Maldini
Mats Hummels
Gerard Pique
All three of our defence exude casual brilliance. It's one thing to be brilliant, quite another to be brilliant while looking like you just don't care, like the fact you're better than the rest is actually quite banal. Hummels being flagged for offsides is not uncommon, and we all love a centre-back being offside, though his obvious delight in the Netherlands falling apart in front of him betrayed his lack of inner languidity. Pique is very similar - a midfield stroller trapped in a centre-back's body.
What else is there to say about Maldini? Just look at him...

Midfield:
Andrea Pirlo
Sócrates
Juan Sebastian Véron
Rui Costa
Sócrates is the coolest person ever to pull on a pair of boots and the captain of the coolest team the game has ever seen. His grace of movement was completely at odds with his gangling frame, but it was off the field that he became cooler still with the drinking, smoking, philosophising and democracy activism. What a guy.
The renaissance in Pirlo's career since leaving Milan has been quite staggering. The movement has become even more economical with age, but if anything that's made him more dangerous as a player. Feared, respected, admired, bearded. It doesn't get much better than that.
The latter pair exemplify the archetypal midfield stroller. Socks half-way down shins, pads flapping, cruising around the middle of the park like they owned it and spraying passes around for fun. Those are the guys young lads aspire to be, the players that make you fall for this often stupid game in the first place.

Forwards:
Giorgios Samaras
Dimitar Berbatov
Bryan Ruiz
Sleeves down below hands? Check. Lank-haired (or formerly lank-haired) masters of the stroll? Check. Routinely shouted at by fans for not doing enough and then go and do something totally bloody amazing? Check. If you want any more than that from your front three, you have a heart of stone. Of course, Ruiz and Berbatov are now team-mates, regularly competing for the award for doing the most brilliant thing while also looking a bit bored by it all. And they have that dreamy away kit - the black with the white and gold sash. All properly languid teams should wear the sash, the kit of cool.
Samaras is a lot better than people give him credit for. Like many of our team, his apparent lack of effort weighs against him in terms of image, but he's alright, y'know, and stylish with it which is, of course, far more important.

Would this team win many games? Who cares.

Barcelona aim to emulate Anzhi

After Samuel Eto'o claimed in a major broadsheet interview that his new club, Anzhi Makhachkala are aiming to emulate the Barcelona model, Barcelona president Sandro Rosell told us "that's funny, because we're trying to emulate Anzhi".

In a candid interview, Rosell explained his vision for how the self-styled 'mes que un club' could go about achieving this. "For starters", began Rosell, "we're going to totally scrap that outdated mechanism by which we're owned by our members and somehow remain responsible to them. To this end, like Anzhi, we're going to find a trumped up gangster-turned-oil baron and flog the club to him. Anzhi have Suleyman Kerimov, Chelsea have Abramovich, Terek have Ramzan Kadyrov and Neuchatel Xamax have that loony Bulat Chagaev. I know that sounds like all the Russian warlords are spoken for, but I'm sure we can find another one".

Another feature of Anzhi is that they play in an impoverished region with the constant threat of attacks by Islamic separatist terrorists. "We will relocate the club to somewhere where we can maximise the difference in the wages of our players compared to the local average, just so the whole exercise looks as grotesque as possible", Rosell went on, "and we'll fly the players in from their gilded mansions in northern Spain for matches and straight back out again in case they have to mix with the hoi-polloi". Our man probed further to see if any locations had actually been scouted and Rosell responded by saying "We've had positive talks with the town of Castleford in West Yorkshire. Grinding poverty, a constant threat of low- to mid-level violence - I tell you, the people of Makhachkala haven't seen anything like this".

Blatter declared polio "ended"

After declaring racism over yesterday, the head of FIFA, Sepp Blatter, today also eradicated polio. "It is over", said Blatter whilst wearing a Zeus costume. "I decree it, therefore it shall be so".

"While I'm here", Blatter continued, "you see that Eurozone debt crisis? Gone. It is ended by the power of the word of Blatter!".

Other things that Blatter wiped away with a swipe of what looked like a toy magic wand out of one of those crappy magic sets for five-year olds during a bizarre and rambling address to the press corps included gravity which Blatter said "has been holding us all down - literally and metaphorically - for far too bloody long" and the concept of light and dark. "Night and Day are ended", he said, "instead we have a universality of grey which I call Blatter-time.

All hail Emperor Blatter, ruler of the universe!" he garbled as several men in white coats wrestled him to the floor and administered haloperidol.

Helmes dropped to Wolfsburg reserves

Wolfsburg striker Patrick Helmes has been banished to the reserves by autocratic boss Felix Magath. "He has not learned how to do defensive work" said Magath of the 98-goal striker.

"Also", continued Magath, "Diego Benaglio's frankly pisspoor goal-scoring record means he's going to the reserves as well and the less said about Josué's tap-dancing the better. He's out too".

Getting into his stride by this point, Magath went on to say that Alex Hleb "had better work on his foxtrot" if he were not to suffer the same ignominy and that Tomas Hitzlsperger had better "learn how to prepare a proper tarte tatin by the time the transfer window opens or he's gone".

Our reporter asked whether central defender Alexander Madlung's defensive shortcomings might be in more urgent need of remedy than that of Helmes, Magath fired back saying "he's too busy learning how to juggle chainsaws while unicycling across a high wire. Now get out of my way. This interview is over"

Man is 'older than he was 25 years ago'

A Scottish man has this week been celebrating being 25 years older than he was this time in 1986. During this period, he has maintained an almost unsurpassed record of becoming older to the point now, where it's impossible to think of him doing anything else.
The man was born in Glasgow 70 years ago and started getting older from a very young age. Those close to him at the time say that he was a natural ager, but when his first choice of career was cut short by injury it looked like his ageing days may be behind him.
But the man reinvented himself and continued to get older in a completely different way. In many ways, he's defined what it is to get older and he's become a mentor to other people who wish to get older in the same way.
Not that it's always been plain sailing. Others have always sought to wrest the man's crown away from him, but he has endured while many of them have fallen by the wayside.

It really has been a remarkable period of success for the man. He's become the template for what it is to see time pass and when he does finally stop getting older, then there is a huge - nay, impossible - act to follow for whoever succeeds him.