Match Review: Borussia Dortmund 3 Shakhtar Donetsk 0 – The general awesomeness of Robert Lewandowski

Prior to recording this week’s Sound Of Football podcast we speculated as to what would happen if the World actually stopped moving. I was reliably informed that the results would depend on whether it was day or night when it happened and that both eventualities had the same grizzly outcome.

Mercifully the World did not stop although it did preoccupy itself with the moral centre of a high foot attached to the leg of a Manchester United winger. This is just as well because the thought of this Borussia Dortmund team being cast into a deep freeze by a bout of histrionics at Old Trafford is enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

Rampage

The pre-match Twitter chatter was all about Dortmund defender, Mats Hummels and his pesky virus. The German international had missed the weekend's Bundesliga fixture against Hannover with the flu and was poised on the fitness frontier. However, there was a problem with his papers and Hummels didn't even make it to the team coach. Gone was his assured positional sense and rampaging runs through the middle of the park that proved so effective in the first leg and so too, in some people’s minds, were Dortmund’s chances of progress.

Hummels deputy is Felipe Santana, a no nonsense center half rather than a ball player who has looked out of his depth at times. Against the rapier like seasoned campaigners that are Shakhtar Donetsk, he may struggle. But he didn't and he allayed the concerns of worried fans with pretty much and error free display and a meatball header to open the scoring from a corner at the Westfalenstadion.

Bender break

Shakhtar, with their wealth of experience and wily coach made a tactical blunder and were way too conservative. This was in part understandable as coach Mircea Lucescu has eyes and can see the danger posed by İlkay Gündoğan’s deadly passing, Marco Reus, Mario Götze (Reutze?) and Jakub Błaszczykowski’s quick transitions and Robert Lewandowski’s general awesomeness.

But Lucescu  could have made more of his own attacking threats in Fernandinho, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Taison and Douglas Costa. The latter's impact was not felt until the second half because he'd started from the bench. Sven Bender was immense in breaking down any attacks before they troubled the weakened Dortmund defense but he is only one man and was beaten on one occasion by Fernandinho who released a crisp shot from the right towards the end of the first half. A more ambitious strategy may have influenced the result. Despite their early second half flurry, Shakhtar did not turn up and in that respect the game was a disappointment.

Languid 

In every other respect it was a triumph for coach Jürgen Klopp’s tactics and for his roster. The Dortmund squad has powerful eddies but is shallow, relative to their competitors. But after this games BVB have confirmed that they have defensive cover at centre back, although goodness knows what would happen if either of the two fullbacks, Marcel Schmelzer and Łukasz Piszczek, went missing.

Lewandowski’s cross for the second goal was an exercise in languid deception. As the Sky Sports summariser Gary Birtles pointed out in commentary, the Shakhtar defense looked to have everything under control but the Polish striker’s cross was like a slower ball in cricket. It looked easy to defend until it found Götze  like a middle stump between the two centre halves and was in the back of the net before you could say ‘solid forward defensive.’

Balls

The third goal from Blacyakowski settled what remaining fluttering nerves there were in the Dortmund camp. His goal symbolised the team’s tenacity in winning the ball back, resilience in finding enough space and confidence in the finish. Game over and the Dortmund journey continues for another round. After knocking out a seasoned European team and given their group stage performances, the odds of a trip to the final will be shorter than the road to Wembley itself. I suspect, however, that the balls will need to be kind in the forthcoming draw.

1. FC Köln 2, Union Berlin 0: The Land Of Gluvine and Chocolate

Last weekend I travelled to FC Köln v Union Berlin to watch a bit of football and drink beer. Here's how it went.

1. FC Köln striker Stefan Meierhoffer presents the appearance of a World’s Strongest Man contestant performing a Truck Pull only without the truck. He is enormous but slow and the springs in his legs have gone plunk. If the X-Men villain Juggernaut ever lost his powers he’d be just like Stefan Meierhoffer, a man with little or no inertia and despite looking like it, decidedly incapable of running through walls. Quite simply he was probably the worst number nine I have ever seen play professional football.

So needless to say having spent the entire first half and the break at the RheinEnergieStadion slagging him off, he only went and scored in the second half. I managed to mask my embarrassment with the knowledge that everyone I was with had been just as disparaging as me. We were too red faced with our Gluvine induced hysteria to look ashamed and for his part, Meierhoffer, celebrated like a man who had heard every word.

The German football supporter’s relationship with alcohol is different to the English. In Premier League and Football League grounds, booze cannot be consumed within sight of the pitch. Consequently alcohol is binged in the hours leading up to the match in pubs outside of the grounds or in stadium bars facing away from the pitch. Fans live of the fumes for 45 minutes before piling back into the bars at half time and then back to the boozers at the final whistle. In Germany it is possible buy beer without leaving your seat. As an English football tourist, the novelty of drinking beer while watching a game is too compelling and despite the sub zero temperatures I quickly swapped the warming gluvine (a cross between mulled wine and Bovril) for a chilled Kölsch. This is the stuff of dreams for many an Englander. It’s like being Homer Simpson in the Land Of Chocolate.

Despite the oncoming snow, there was no yellow ball. This is another improvement on the game in Germany. Perhaps not up there with supporter ownership and progressive club licensing but all it takes is the ruffle of hair from an unkempt spectator and the snow ball is out in England. You'd think there was some sponsorship deal or something.

There is no doubt that FC Koln are a traditional Bundesliga club. Their modern stadium held 42,000 on Saturday which is mind boggling for a second division match outside Germany. Reasonable ticket prices have contributed to a loyal fan culture that keeps the punters  rocking up. The booming anthem sung by all before the game maintains a big match spectacle despite the football being pretty ordinary.

listen to ‘1. FC Köln Anthem’ on Audioboo

Koln’s opponents, Union Berlin, played their City rivals Hertha a couple of weeks ago in front of 75,000 at the Olympic Stadium. Union have a reputation for a vociferous support reinforced by their clubs strong commitment to their supporters and a well defined left wing ideology. Union were based in the old east Berlin and identified themselves as an anti-Stasi club, a position that saw their traditional rivals, Dynamo Berlin, profit greatly at Union's expense.

On the field, however, they're not much cop despite being relatively high up the table. However, given their sharp rise through the leagues it would be unkind to be critical and they would be a welcome addition to the top flight should they continue to progress.

Kevin McKenna scored the opener in a 2-0 win that was impressive by being routine. Coach Holger Stanislawski's team may be unspectacular but they have survived a troublesome start to the season after relegation and are now looking to snatch third spot from a faltering Kaiserslautern. Whether they can gain promotion via the play off with the third from bottom team in the first division is another matter. They may need an upgrade on their striker.

Follow me on Twitter if you like and check out our weekly podcast: The Bundesliga Show.

Match Review: Arsenal 1 Bayern Munich 3 - Humming a different tune

Re my Wenger-must-go comments on @bbc5live - yes, it does feel like putting the family dog down. But sometimes you must be cruel to be kind.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 19, 2013

On reflection the pre-match caution from Bundesliga watchers seems a little silly. On paper, this was very likely to be an away win but such is the respect for Arsenal that it was hard to conceive of a club with such a proud history and European pedigree to allow themselves to get turned over like they this, on grass. At times like this it’s tempting to lay down markers but football is not really like that. There are no blue plaques nailed to the side of football grounds stating “This is where Arsenal became better than ordinary rather than top class.”

Despite their much publicised issues and shrill protestations from the David Dienites, Arsenal still remain a top European club who are just having a below par season. Maybe a change of coach is required, maybe that would be a mistake. One thing is certain: Piers Morgan knows no more than you or me about football.

This could get biblical.
— Terry(@bundesbag) February 19, 2013

But teeth gnashing and axe grinding aside this was not a pretty sight for Arsenal fans. Not necessarily because they were blown away in the first half an hour. Bayern are obviously a cut above most teams in Europe this season so getting blown away by them is no disgrace. What was more vexing was that the Gunners seemed unable to sustain enough pressure on their opponents when they obviously took their foot off the gas. After Thomas Müller capitalised after some ordinary corner defense to double Toni Kroos’ cracking opening strike, it looked like things could get Biblical and the Bavarians would rain down some hurt on Arsene Wenger’s players. But as if suddenly stricken with a caution virus, the current Bundesliga leaders dialed down the intensity and looked to contain.

Perhaps coach Jupp Heynkes felt that it was wiser to hold back in the event of getting caught on the ball from a troublesome Jack Wilshere ball from deep to the dangerous, if slightly flaky, Theo Walcott. Or maybe the players, mindful of the speed of the journey they’d traveled in such a short space of time, adopted a conservative stance in order to draw breath. In any event, it kind of backfired after conceding that comedy goal from Lukas Podolski after the Bayern ‘keeper, Manuel Neuer failed to take control in his six yard box.

I don't understand some people's analysis.So not starting Giroud is the problem?How would he get the ball in the first place?
— Cristian Nyari (@Cnyari) February 19, 2013

With the belief that can only come from a jammy goal, Arsenal’s quest for the equaliser was nearly completed thanks to the maligned Olivier Giroud who shot straight at Neuer with a strike which was bizarrely characterised by ITV’s Andy Townsend as too good. With the moment passed and the chance blown, Bayern regained enough composure for Mario Mandžukić to turn in a cross by Phillip Lahm from which even a Grandmother could have scored.

We round up another action-packed evening of #EuropaLeague football - uefa.to/YbJCHZ What was your highlight?
— UEFA Europa League (@EuropaLeague) February 15, 2013

If Bayern can maintain a high tempo for 90 minutes then a third final in four years should be an expectation rather than a hope. Arsenal, on the other hand, may have to reconcile themselves with a period in the relative doldrums for the time being. Those Emirates ticket holders should consider the possibility that the next European game they watch  will start with a different tune.

Watford 2 Palace 2 Match Review: The three interventions of Ian Holloway

Watching a Championship football match in a pub located within a relatively short train ride of the ground is not exactly hard core. But the lure of the beer, hotdogs, good company and a roof over the head supported by actual walls proved too alluring for this football fan. Such are the evils of modern football.

Crystal Palace and Watford offer up something of a conundrum for the TV schedulers. Both clubs do not enjoy a widespread national support and both have old stadiums ill-suited to the myriad paraphernalia required for broadcasters to set up their gear. A combination of both factors make either club an unattractive prospect  so by putting the match between the two on the telly, two crows are killed with a single high definition stone.

Heads up

The conundrum lies in that despite an shortage of TV eyeballs, both teams are actually worth watching. Both teams are play-off contenders on the back of some cracking football. The home side have joined the Pozzo family and are enjoying the benefits of their sister club Udinese with some promising youngster coached by professional nice guy, Gianfranco Zola. Palace meanwhile are ran by a consortium of fans turned businessman who insist upon running the club sensibly and recently pledged to put the money from the transfer of Wilfried Zaha towards the reconstruction of the stadium. In Ian Holloway they have a coach who is committed to attacking football and sets his team up with an agreeable playing style. All terribly right-on.

Somewhat unexpectedly then Watford v Palace on Sky has become a game for football heads everywhere and it was a game that did not disappoint.

Trauma

Watford have taken some stick for their recruitment policy this season after being taken over by the Pozzo family who also own Udinese and Granada from Italy and Spain respectively. Many of Watford's players are on loan from the Serie A club and critics complain that this is unfair and not in the spirit of the game. I personally see no problem with three clubs under the same owner pooling their resources and if the end result is the blistering and crisp football that Watford played, especially in the first half an hour of the game then I reckon more people will set aside their misgivings.

The home side set the tone for the game with an aggressive pacey attack on a Palace defence not yet attuned. They played with a high tempo with clean and precise passing that blew the visitors away. If the English game adopts this style of play as a model for the future then the future is a good place to be.  Alme Abdi is one of a number Swiss youngsters breaking through the professional ranks in Europe. A zippy attacker his goal after seven minutes was a cut inside from the flank after a shocking attempt clearance from Palace's Jazz Richards. His run and shot was as much about his technique as it was the Palace back line's trauma. After 14 minutes Nathaniel Chabolah's second goal was totally reflective of the balance of play and I took a long swig of beer in preparation of what was likely to be a slaughter.

Rather than turn to the dubious company of Bacchus, Palace manager, Ian Holloway, was in a position to do something. For a moment I wondered if he'd try to take the pace out of the game or maybe garner  a few more yellow cards by kicking Abdi, Chabolah and nineteen goal striker Matej Vydra up in the air but no. Instead he maintained the game's ludicrous pace and more significantly moved Wilfried Zaha off the flank and played him through the middle. This ploy worked an absolute treat. Zaha, revelled in the extra space while the Watford defence figured out who was supposed to be looking after him. In my mind's ear I imagined a conversation between Sir Alex Ferguson and Ian Holloway after the sale of Zaha to Manchester United and subsequent loan back to the Selhurst club. He would have told Holloway that he could see Zaha playing in the middle one day and bolstered by this insight, the Palace boss thought he'd give it a crack. Fantasy, I know, but then the beer was flowing freely by that point.

Larrup!

Eventually, Palace regained their composure and by half time the match, if not the score, was even. Then came Holloway's second intervention: the half time substitution of Jonathan Williams. None of the pub-mates I was with had seen the Welsh Under 21 player but by the final whistle they knew exactly who he was. The 19 year old dubbed "Joniesta" by the Palace fans took full advantage of the tiring Watford legs down the flank and through the middle. Williams can run with the ball and has the imagination to choose the right pass. He made a mess of the opposition and finished the game with the Man Of The Match Champagne despite having only played in half of it. Between him and Zaha enough pressure was put on the home side and finally a breakthrough was made thanks to what can politely be described as a moment of hesitation by Watford keeper Manuel Almunia which allowed Peter Ramage to larrup the ball home from all of two yards, give or take.

Old Dude

Holloway's final intervention came through the introduction of Kevin Phillips who is on loan from Blackpool. The former Watford striker will be 40 in July but despite the years he still knows how to pop up at the back post, especially late in a game. He met Richards' redemptive cross in characteristic fashion and finished off a memorable comeback after 70 minutes. What a guy.

The pace of the game had wilted with about ten minutes to go but neither team seemed satisfied with a point. There were no further goals however and this would have pleased the football gods as there was no worthy loser in this match.

Tickets Please

The BBC Sport report on ticket prices in the Premier and Football League is most welcome. The price of admission to a football match is one of the most important and relevant aspects of football because of the direct financial consequences it has on supporters.

At its core, football is about going to matches. In fact the very definition of a supporter hinges on them turning up at games, paying through the turnstiles and supporting the team. If for whatever reason, you don’t or can’t then you’re not a supporter, you’re a fan. This is why the cost of admission is so important: it is part of what sets the parameters of the relationship that an individual and a community has with their club.

But I don’t believe the Premier League looks at things in the same way. They look at the relationship between a club and a supporter as similar to that of a business and a consumer. Have a look at Cathy Long’s (Head of Supporter Services for the Premier League) piece for the BBC as an illustration of this perspective. Long talks of adding value to the supporter’s experience (through the creation of “family zones” it seems). To me, this seems like another way of saying “Get ‘em in early and get ‘em spending” although I may be a tad cynical there.

The advantage the Premier League has over other leisure industries is a higher than usual sense of customer loyalty. English football club supporters are prepared to make additional sacrifices to follow the team due to the strong connection to their club. This allows the clubs to set their pricing structure with considerably less caution than a cinema or theme park, for example. After all, who ever heard of an Odeon Supporter? On what channel is the weekly radio phone in show for disgruntled Alton Towers fans?

There is an argument that the Premier League offers world class entertainment because the high calibre players the clubs employ and that costs money, lots of money. This is true to a point. But the fact is that football, usually, does not guaranteed entertainment. Sometimes, even the best teams lose or draw or just play badly. If you follow Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man United then it is unlikely that you’ll leave your home stadium unhappy but the same can’t be said for the rest of the clubs in the league, much less for the clubs in the Championship and below.

With TV revenues significantly lower in the Football League, Championship clubs need to keep the cash coming in to try and maintain a manageable gap in the quality of players between the League. Is it any wonder then that it costs more considerably more money to watch a team like Crystal Palace than two times Bundesliga Champions, Borussia Dortmund? This may not be the actual reason why it costs around £30 to enter Selhurst Park on a match-day but it must surely be a factor.

Ultimately, the reason why it costs as much as it does to watch football in England is because enough people are willing to pay. In fact, football has an in built mechanism to keep the prices high and that is set by supporters themselves who regard non-attendance as disloyalty. If the relationship was one of club and supporter then that would be fair enough but it’s not: it’s business and consumer. To be blunt, clubs are exploiting a relationship between themselves and the fans that either does not exist or is not reciprocated.

So what is to be done?

In Germany, there are frequent boycotts by supporter groups in protest against rising ticket prices. However, most clubs in Germany are owned in the most part by the supporters. This has contributed to a culture whereby supporters have a greater influence and whose voice is taken more seriously. Clubs are clubs and not businesses  They are run for the benefit of themselves and their own ends. This culture and the relationships it creates do not exist in England, as far as I can make out. The notion of organising any form of boycott would be regarded disloyalty not just by the clubs but almost certainly by significant sections of the supporter base. Reflect for a moment on the situation at Cardiff City where supporters are divided over the club’s recent change of colours and crest. It is easy to imagine similar unpleasantness occurring about direct action over ticket prices.

Another option is to form a breakaway club. Ultimately, AFC Wimbledon and FC United Of Manchester were formed as a reaction to corporate excess ruining their match day experience. Why not form a new club at a lower level? The trouble with this idea is that it too is divisive and denies the supporters top quality football.

Then of course there is regulation (thank you, I’m here all week). But seriously, a practical suggestion may be compel the Premier and Football League clubs to take a slice of their TV revenue to offset against ticket prices. A “TV Subsidy” if you will.  This idea has the virtue of being straightforward and something that every supporter can get behind, irrespective of club.

While top slicing the Sky money and giving back to the supporters in the form of subsidised ticket prices will negatively affect club’s bottom line, it will make it harder for them to criticise the idea. They’ll probably start by saying that they would have to reduce solidarity payments to the lower leagues but this too can be protected with better regulation.

The final (and most likely) option of course is to do nothing. Perhaps, sooner or later, the middle class forty-somethings who can currently afford a ticket will get bored, suffer one moral outrage too many, lose their jobs or just figure that they're getting too old for this sort of thing and go an find something else to do with their time instead like go to the pictures, maybe. That might do the trick. 

I can't believe he missed Andy Gray: A foreword

As a leaving present for Chris Oakley upon his departure to New Zealand, Graham Sibley and I published a book containing his complete Friday List Of Little Or No Consequence posts for Some People Are On The Pitch and the Football Fairground. Below is the foreword, penned by myself. 

“Anything with Garlic.” replied Archie Gemmill to the now classic “What’s your favourite food?” question asked of all professional footballers honoured to be the subject of the now defunct “Shoot!” magazine’s Q and A section. The answer immediately conjures images of the rampaging Scotsman, wilting the Dutch players on that infamous night in Argentina in 1978, with his garlic fuelled breath, as the wee man met his destiny and Scotland met their end.

I never read “Shoot!” as a boy and only found out about Archie’s appetites through that stalwart of mental ephemera that is The Friday List Of Little Or No Consequence which for five years ran in Chris Oakley’s football blog, Some People Are On The Pitch and later the Football Fairground.

Every week, the list would provide a portion of empirical factitude delivered by the author. The list was aptly named and exemplifies the true spirit of a fan’s passion for the game. For most of us, football is a matter of little or no consequence but the the lists demonstrate the power the beautiful game has over us when we choose to seek knowledge and understanding for no reason other than because it is there.

As much as chalkboards, tactical breakdowns, player profiles and historical & cultural contexts allow us to understand football, the accumulation of hitherto buried trivia gives the game substance. From the sixteen teams in the 2008 Africa Cup Of Nations in Nickname Form to England one cap wonders to ten stickers missing from his “Football 1981” Panini album to 27 Statistics mentioned during the Guardian Football Weekly podcast of 29 December 2011, every Friday the List gave the reader possibly one of the greatest gift anyone could receive: consequence free knowledge; innocence on a web page.

As Chris embarks upon a new chapter in his life, he leaves his disciples these lists, collected in a single volume, as a fitting legacy and tribute to a man for whom no fact was too small, no event too obscure and no genre too niche.

Happy trails, Oakers.

STRIKER: Raging Against The Machine

This post was originally published on 8th September 2012 for the Football Attic.

Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road, Socialist Worker, Ernest Hemmingway’s Men Without Women, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lethal Weapon Pinball, Selhurst Park, Guinness and Super Nintendo (SNES). If you were to evacuate my conscious mind in the early Nineties and reassemble its elements as some grotesque Mental Pinterest then those fragments of ephemera are what would be displayed. But if I were to place an extra large pin on one of those elements to give it extra significance it would be the Guinness. However, I’ve not been asked to write about Guinness. I’ve been asked to write about an old video game, so for the purposes of this tortured preamble, I’ll say it would be my SNES.

Purchased from the Virgin Megastore in Tottenham Court Road, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System introduced me to NHL Ice Hockey, the glory of World League Basketball (NCAA for readers in the US) and the worst Rugby video game in the history of all games ever created (everyone knows time is not up until the ball goes dead. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT!)

Then of course, there was the king of all football video games, the timeless classic: Sensible Soccer. However, SS looked stupid with its plan view pin pricks for players, stupid sound effects and rubbish player names (who the fuck is Alan Shiarer?) After a week I’d decided that this was a game for people who took this sort of thing far more seriously than me and took up STRIKER instead.

The first thing to say about STRIKER was that it was produced by a company called RAGE Software. For angry Trotskyite class warriors, as I claimed to be at the time, anything produced by something called RAGE was brilliant. RAGE was a force for good. RAGE made a difference. RAGE would kick the Tories out. RAGE would smash the State and end injustice. Whatever else you can say about the name RAGE, it was ideologically sound.



The next thing to say about STRIKER is the gameplay which had an agreeable 45-degree view, sticky balls (if you’ve played Kick Off or listened to the latest Attic Podcast then you’ll know what I mean) and crunching tackles. If there was a normal tackle button, I never pressed it. The sliding tackle was designed to clean out the opposition player and emerge with the ball at your feet. The action generated a satisfying squelchy slippy noise which elicited a feeling of great and surprisingly wholesome satisfaction. There was no commentator (thank Christ!) but whenever something extra cool happened an electric scoreboard would pop up with encouraging exclamations like “OFF THE BAR!” and “WHAT A TACKLE!” and “PENALTY!” and “GOAL!!!”

The games were accompanied by an “authentic” crowd noise which responded to the shifting patterns of play and had a curious reverb that was a little freaky when you played the game on your own. However, when the ball hit the back of the net the crowd would go wild and once you’d figured out how to strike the ball with the correct amount of backspin, straight in front of goal and from just outside the area that net took one hell of a beating.

Having found the game's weakness, I took Palace to League and Cup glory. England won the World Cup averaging nine goals a game. The game had customisable kits and clubs but I didn’t go in for that. I was only interested in the glory of pummelling Arsenal and beating the Germans 9–0.

Football game purists will be spinning in their graves (especially the alive ones) to read this but what made STRIKER so appealing was that it was easy and conveyed a sense authenticity without being authentic. It had an indoor training mode where the players' trainers squeaked which may have been a first for non basketball games. Granted, STRIKER was not as clever as Sensi Soccer but it made you feel a lot better about yourself when you played it. Like left wing politics, STRIKER kept it real and had easy answers. Sensi Soccer, where the basic graphics disguised the realistic game play and advanced engine was more suited to working class Tories for whom, all suffering is necessary. Neither game was entirely healthy and if you’re still playing either today, stop.

But the final thing to say about STRIKER is the theme tune. This game's release coincided with the birth of the FA Premier League. Football was entering its modern era and much of the old game was being swept aside for all-seater stadia, satellite TV, Richard Keys and high ticket prices. The one link to our past was Match of the Day and Barry Stoller's classic theme tune which was played at Agincourt, if the legend is to be believed. The STRIKER theme (still in use today as the theme to the Sound Of Football podcast) evoked that old anthem, and its reassuring subtext, beautifully. Here was a game that looked ahead to a world of football that demanded its gratification in instant form or sack the coach. But it also knew the value of nostalgia and a compelling melody. Truly it was a product of its age.