Bandung Europa

In the early 1980s, while living in Bandung in Indonesia, I played for the Bandung Europa soccer team. The picture below was taken early in 1983, when the team were played 17,won 14, drawn 1 and lost 2. I made a note of the team names on the back of the photo and noted that we were getting an average attendance of 2,000 people at our games in what was I suppose the equivalent of the Conference South!

Yan - Jacques - Simon - Brian - Frank - Tom - Yours Truly - Freddie - Baban - Juan
Alberto - Dave - Momo - Ray (capt.) - Martin - Hans - Gustaman

I played on the left side of midfield in a 4-4-2 or, more usually, on the left wing in a 4-3-3. My main talent, given that I had no pace, was that I could cross quite accurately (generally in the direction of our centre forward, Frank the Tank). I did score occasionally, and one of my most treasured possessions is the only existing photograph (as far as I know) of me scoring a goal...

As this was in the days long before Facebook, I don’t have many photographs or memorabilia. If by any miracle of Google, any of the people shown in the picture above ever stumble across this picture, I’d be delighted to add your reminiscences to this page!

I’ll add a couple of my favourite memories over the next couple of weeks.

Shirty

The news that Manchester United shorts are to be banned in parts of Malaysia because they lead people down a path to sin...

Muslims have been told by religious leaders in Malaysia to stop wearing the famous Manchester United red jersey because of the "devil" emblem on their team crest... United and the rest of the Premier League clubs are massively popular in the Muslim-majority country, but conservative religious scholars said the jersey is forbidden in Islam... .

[From Muslims in Malaysia ban 'devilish' Manchester United shirts | inside World Soccer]

...once again demonstrates the wisdom of the Archbishop of Canterbury in recognising the inevitability of Sharia Law in the UK.

When the question was put to him that: "the application of sharia in certain circumstances - if we want to achieve this cohesion and take seriously peoples' religion - seems unavoidable?", he indicated his assent.

[From The Archbishop of Canterbury - 'Sharia law' - What did the Archbishop actually say?]

Not only as a Manchester City fan -- although possibly not for much longer, because of my growing revulsion at the money-driven perversion of the Premier League -- but also as a football fan, the sight of people wandering about in Manchester United shirts is nauseating. Roy Keane may well be a sociopathic nutter (by his own admission) but he was surely on the ball (yuk yuk) when he was ranting on about the "prawn sandwich" brigade.

But at home they have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches, and they don't realise what's going on out on the pitch. I don't think some of the people who come to Old Trafford can spell 'football', never mind understand it

[From 10 classic Roy Keane rants | Football | guardian.co.uk]

As noted, it isn't only Manchester United shirts that have fallen foul of the Mufts of Johar and Perak. They've also banned the shirts of teams including Brazil, Portugal, Barcelona, Serbia and Norway, all of which carry images of the cross on their team emblems. I think the Archbishop should pop in for a chat about cohesion and taking people's religion seriously.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Inflation

In the excellent, excellent movie "The Damned United", Brian Clough has a run in with his chairman in 1969 because he signs Sunderland midfielder Colin Todd for £175,000 which the chairman thinks is outrageous, but not as outrageous as his £300 per week wages! Just for comparison, the equivalent player today (someone who can hold the ball and not waste it) would cost around £5-10 million with wages of £75,000 per week. In fact there are players in the Premier League whose wages are already approaching Colin Todd's transfer fee EVERY WEEK.

By the way, I wasn't that bothered about watching Dammed United, but I was bored on a plane so I just started watching it out curiosity and within two minutes was completely hooked. It's brilliant, and Michael Sheen's performance as Brian Clough is awesome: he doesn't try to imitate Clough like an impressionist but instead captures an essence that I found totally absorbing. Brilliant film, in a week of brilliant films.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Just the facts

There's a really interesting article about football by Danny Finkelstein in this month's Financial World. His piece, which is about using data and statistics instead of punditry in soccer, contains a number of interesting snippets, but the most interesting part to me was the graph relating wages (as a proxy for total wealth of the soccer club) and the premier league points gained. The curve is clear and asymptotic: money does buy success and, exactly as you would suspect, the more money you spend the lower the marginal return.

Teams above the curve (eg, Portsmouth) have something (generally speaking, a manager) that enables them to outperform the players alone whereas clubs below the curve (eg, Manchester City) will have to spend a huge amount of money to get additional points that the players aren't earning them. Fortunately, Manchester City have absolutely the hugest amount of money imaginable and they apparently bid ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE MILLION POUNDS to bring Kaka to Middle Eastlands (as the City fans were signing earlier in the season, "fill up your car, we're buy Kaka").

As well as a world-record transfer fee, City’s owners are reported to have offered the player a £75 million signing-on fee and wages in the region of £250,000 a week.

[From How can AC Milan spend £100m on Kaka in a recession? - Telegraph]

As a lifelong blue, I have to say that I hope they fail to get him. There is something utterly obscene about spending that much money on a footballer, something just plain wrong.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Thumping

I went off to Twickers (Twickenham) to see the rugger (rugby union football). See, I think I learned the lingo. Then I saw the Boks (South Africa) inflict the Berk's (England's) biggest ever home defeat. It was total mauling -- after about five minutes it was clear that we never had a prayer. Still it was an excellent afternoon out. Mainly because I was being served free drinks in an executive box, but nonetheless.

Marvelous spectacle. And when I made it back home, I watched Man City beat Arsenal 3-0 on Sky to round the day off nicely.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

New hope

Having taken over the reins at the Robins, I decided to move to the 4-5-1 in favour at many clubs and opt for more direct wing play as the way to get round opponents. Building on a solid defence, around stalwarts Ifil and Hasjofree, and bringing in some energetic midfielders to support the decent strikers I already had, I made a great start to the new season despite limited resources. Let's hope I can consolidate a mid-table position and then build on it next season.

Hurrah, Football Manager 2009 has arrived! When I was walking past W.H.Smith on Friday, I was subject to an unsolicited approach from an attractive young lady who told me that if I bought anything over £25 in the shop, they would give me a £10 gift voucher. That seemed like a good deal, so I wandered in and the first thing I saw was FM2009 for £28 (ie, £18). What a pleasant distraction in these inflationary times.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

It's a guy thing

When you're a Dad, you rarely get a better phone call than this.

No.2 son: "Just wanted to tell you about the game".

Me: "Great, how did it go? Where did you play?".

No.2 son: "[The Manager] asked me to play as the holding midfielder and make smart passes to set things going."

Me: "How did that go?"

No.2 son: "I think I played really well and we won 10-3."

Why does this feel infinitely better than playing in a game and winning 10-3 yourself?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Put your shirt on it

The market never lies. I was out shopping with no.2 son today and we noticed there was an England football shirt sale on at a local sports shop. Since it was a good deal we wandered in and it turned out that the shirts all had numbers and names. Most had already gone, but the ones that were left comprised a few John Terry (explicable, since he hasn't played in the last couple of games because of injury), a few Wayne Rooney (I don't know why, maybe they over-ordered them) and lots and lots of Frank Lampards (but no Stephen Gerrards). Hhhmmmm.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Oranges and total lemons

I'm so jealous of the Dutch. The useless English football team failed to qualify for the European Championship, so they've all gone off to somewhere in Italy for Wayne Rooney's wedding. Meanwhile, proper footballers are fighting it out in Austria and Switzerland. I was in Amsterdam last Monday night, when the Dutch beat (in fact, battered) the current world champions, Italy. It was 3-0, and the Italians were lucky to get 0. Everywhere you looked in Amsterdam there was bright orange, carousing in the streets, happy drunken people (with none of the menace that would be associated with same in the U.K.) and flag-bedecked bicycles and mopeds going up and down the road. Brilliant, but tinged with bitter envy from the Brits in the bar.

I noticed an interesting sartorial difference between our two great nations when in thrall to international football competitions. In Eng-ger-land, everyone goes to the pub to watch a big match wearing the national team shirt. In Holland, everyone goes to the pub dressed in orange: orange dresses for the ladies (or jeans, T-shirts and hi-visibility jackets with bright orange stripes), orange shirts and pants for the men, but relatively few team shirts. Wearing the colours is paramount, wearing the official Nike £50 team shirt isn't.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

Seven up

I'm in Hong Kong and we went out for a walk to have a beer and get something to eat. The streets were absolutely packed.

Now, at first it didn't strike me as odd that I couldn't walk on the pavement for people, until I noticed that these people included sombrero-wearing Aussies, very drunk Irish persons dressed up as leprechauns, bar girls who could (as Raymond Chandler famously said) make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window and assorted cavorting Brits, Kiwis and others. Then I remembered: the Rugby Sevens finished today.

I have to say I'm really enjoying myself here. There is a real buzz to wandering in Hong Kong, a buzz of stuff happening. Right outside my hotel room window there is the biggest crane I've ever seen in my life helping to erect yet another gargantuan modern structure on reclaimed harbour land. When all of the port traffic has transferred to China in a few years, I imagine that they will fill in the harbour completely. I'm not saying that in a bad way: the skyscrapers and office blocks here are beautiful, multiple tribes of neon-powered aliens that have touched down for an intergalactic pow-wow on the neutral ground of Earth. It's a pleasure to walk among them, especially on our way to the restaurant just past the Crazy Horse and San Francisco bars. Very colourful.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]