Post by Salem6 on Jun 17, 2005 16:12:06 GMT
The Fiver
17 June 2005
Guardian Unlimited's tea-time take on the world of football
guardian.co.uk/football
In today's Fiver: Lennart Works Up a Sweat
* * * * * * * * * * * *
OH LENNART
Whenever women's football rears its pretty little head, your
bra-burning, debt-dropping, lentil-eating, fair-trade
coffee-drinking, block-printed kaftan-wearing Fiver is never sure
what line to take. It's quite a dilemma: while our deeply-ingrained
pinko-liberal Guardianista tendencies make us natural bedfellows, the
standard of the women's game means we won't be cha-chaing from the
rafters just yet. But Uefa president and gourmand-at-large Lennart
Johansson has no such qualms, and has managed to big up women's
football while simultaneously contriving to sound like a creepy old
souffle-eating letch.
"There are so many companies who could make use of the fact that if
you see a girl playing on the ground, sweaty, with the rainy weather
and coming out of the dressing-room, lovely looking, that would
sell," panted lusty Lennart, pointing out the obvious commercial
value of women's football but stopping short of insisting on see-thru
T-shirts for all. Ironically, Lennart's musings came shortly after
he'd gallantly criticised Fifa president Sepp Blatter's call for
"tighter shorts" for female players. "Some people are only happy if
they have something being published about them every day in the
newspapers," he said of his colleague at a press conference, before
carefully spelling his name out for the assembled hacks.
Not surprisingly, Lennart's comments have gone down like ration books
in the Uefa HQ canteen. "For him to have come out with that sort of
derogatory comment is, for a female footballer like me, quite hard to
take. People have to appreciate us from a football point of view and
come to see us because of the way we play rather than the way we
look," sniped Sue Smith, the Leeds and England winger with the
Limahl-from-Kajagoogoo hair. And to be fair, she has a point - if
it's comedy goalkeeping, slapstick defending and missed sitters
you're after, why pay through the nose to see England's men playing,
when you can go to women's matches instead?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I'll never forget Sir Alex. At Christmas, everyone at the club was
invited to a dinner, and the manager and his coaching staff all
worked as waiters. I was served by Ferguson himself. I have nothing
but good words for the people at the club for the way they treated
me. I hope they feel happy for me right now" - Sadly Diego Forlan,
now European golden boot winner, doesn't reveal whether Fergie spilt
the soup over him.
*********************
ADVERT: ORANGE Keep up to date on the transfers, tempers and the
tantrums. Click here to get email on your phone:
ad.uk.doubleclick.net/clk;16132284;11305059;u?http://www.orange.co.uk/emailonyourphone/
*********************
THE RUMOUR MILL
They've laughed all the way to the bank and back, but Marseille are
now showing more cheek than a holidaying Jade Goody by asking Chelsea
for a year's loan of Didier Drogba.
Wayne Routledge is a wantaway Crystal Palace player no more after
THFC agreed to shell out GBP1.5m on the winger.
Benni McCarthy has given the thumbs-up to Newcastle's proposed swap
deal for Hugo Viana, as have Geordies across the land.
Flushed by their status as only the fourth worst Premiership team last
season, West Brom are confident of getting the signature of Barca's
Javier Saviola.
In response to being linked with Fulham's Steed Malbranque, Aston
Villa boss David O'Leary today insisted: "W dnt wnt hm".
Having being relegated with appalling French Ligue 1 outfit Istres,
Senegalese defender Abdoulaye Diagne-Faye's luck has taken a turn for
the better. Or has it? He's being courted by Bernard Cribbens and Sam
Allardyce.
Gordon Strachan has used his chalkboard to persuade Bobo Balde to stay
at Celtic.
Wigan could yet land a world-class player after Real Madrid midfielder
Guti declared his desire to play in the Premiership.
And word is that Derby want Italy legend Walter Zenga to replace
George Burley, which won't please Gary Johnson, who's currently
hot-footing it back from a Mediterranean cruise, via Yeovil.
* * * * * * * * * * *
CAN YOU HELP
Do you know when players first got nutmegged? Were you a Mackem before
1991? And does the phrase 'back to square one' really come from radio
football commentary in the 1920s? The BBC is making a major new
series on where words come from. If you'd like to help, click here:
www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt
* * * * * * * * * * *
NEWS IN BRIEF
Wayne Rooney's Mr 10%, Paul Stretford, has been charged by the FA
relating to when and how he won the right to represent the England
star.
Fresh from his man-of-the-match-winning display in Brazil's 3-0
Confederations Cup battering of Greece, Robinho is heading for Real
Madrid. "I will get to Madrid on June 24 to finalise the details,"
said his agent, Wagner Ribeiro.
No wonder Ashley Cole wanted a bumper pay rise; he's forked out
GBP50,000 on an engagement ring for new fiancee Cheryl Tweedy.
Crack open the Chang: Everton have marked their new GBP6m contract
extension with the Chinese beer merchants by confirming their
attendance in the pre-season Premier League Asia Trophy, alongside
Bolton, Man City and the Thai national side.
Giovanni Trapattoni has been named as Stuttgart's new coach, where his
first job will be to resist Arsenal and Chelsea's GBP8m interest in
Alexander Hleb.
Warming the bench in Big Cup has proved more tempting a prospect than
leading Gerard Houllier's line at Lyon for Milan Baros.
Brentford's supporters' trust, Bees United, have launched a 'Back the
Bees' campaign in an attempt to raise the GBP1m necessary to buy the
club back from Ron Noades by September. For more information, go
here: www.backthebees.com.
* * * * * * * * * * *
STILL WANT MORE?
Steven Wells discovers how a racial divide continues to blight
grassroots soccer in the US:
football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1508828,00.html
Counting down to Sunday's Euro 2005 final with Georgina Turner's blog:
blogs.guardian.co.uk/euro2005/
Disturbingly, Owen Hargreaves in a wig and Robbie Savage dominate our
women's football Gallery:
football.guardian.co.uk/gallery/0,8555,1507166,00.html
Win a car - it's even new and shiny - in our top competition:
www.guardian.co.uk/competitions/page/0,13349,1498678,00.html
Sign up now for FREE news alerts, sent FREE to your desktop - for
FREE: www.guardian.co.uk/alerts/0,15907,1457082,00.html
* * * * * * * * * * *
DON'T MISS THE WIMBLEDON SPECIAL IN MONDAY'S GUARDIAN, CONTAINING:
- Martina Navratilova giving her picks for the titles. - Boris Becker
looking back 20 years to his first Wimbledon win. - And Tiger Tim
Henman on coping with the pressures of Henmania.
* * * * * * * * * * *
FIVER LETTERS
"Re: Dean Best's hammering of my good self in yesterday's Fiver
letters. Yes, he did raise my hackles by highlighting a spelling
mistake that didn't exist, but I've restrained myself from hitting
back after finding out that Mr Best is the news editor of two of the
most well-respected trade publications in the UK. With a combined
readership of three men and a dog, I am humbled that such a
high-flying hack took the time and effort to abuse a PR numpty like
me" - Daniel Kennedy.
"Fantastic entertainment in this week's Fiver letters! Hacks and PR
types having queeny pops at each other. Bet they didn't think it
would come to this when they were getting their 2:2s in media
studies. Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, is it lads?" - Kevin
Coleman.
"Seeing as celebrity fans are endorsing their local clubs, we at
Middlesbrough can have, em, Chris Rea to bring in the big names.
Great" - Jon Cartwright.
"Re: Neil Reeve and the non-existence of Cannes airport (yesterday's
Fiver letters). Maybe you can't catch an easyJet flight there, but it
certainly exists. Neil just needs to buy his own plane" - Andrew
Hodkin (and many others).
"Neil Reeve has obviously never been to the film festival as Cannes
does indeed have an airport. That doesn't change the fact that
Rangers are paying GBP20K a week to Hemdani when only a few weeks ago
he was rejected by Celtic, Betis and Bolton when he was looking for
GBP10K a week" - Jude Kelly.
"Can I correct a common misuse of the English language, namely the
phrase 'head-butted' (yesterday's Fiver), due to tautology. To butt
someone is to attack them with the head, so you are saying 'attacked
him with his head, with his head'" - Richard Warr.
"To alleviate the mind-numbing boredom of the close season, myself and
a group of friends have started a Fantasy Fiver Letters League. It's
three points if we get a letter published, one point if someone
responds to our letter, plus three points for a full TV and Radio
section tale. Printing this would get me off to a flyer" - Johnny
Johnson.
"Re: The Kewell libel case. May I be guilty of libel if I write what I
really think? Where does fair comment end and libel begin? The
message appears to be 'whatever you think, write nothing'. Is the
following statement libellous? 'If it looks like a duck, has
feathers, swims and quacks, you may assume (unless it's a dodo) that
it's a duck'" - M. McLaughlin. [You can't libel the dead, so you can
say what you like about dodos - Fiver Ed].
"I recently had a packet of a well known brand of salt and vinegar
crisps and was horrified to find two 'bad' ones lurking inside. Are
there any tan-tastic, crisp-guzzling former England strikers I can
sue for this inconvenience?" - Phillip Jackson.
"Re: D Pricecoal's letter (yesterday's Fiver letters) re: 'all those
letters correcting Mr Lewis (Monday's Fiver Letters)' correcting
Richard Mitchell's correction of Simon Lewis's letter regarding
coastal climates. It wasn't Monday's Fiver Letters, it was Tuesday's"
- Paul, Bristol.
Want to get something off your chest? Send your letters - a paragraph
at most please - to the.boss@guardian.co.uk.
**********************
TONIGHT'S TV & RADIO
British Eurosport: Confederations Cup Football (11.15pm)
Here's Lee Coltman, setting the scene for your latest tale of holiday
hell: "Lloret de Mar, northern Spain, 1978: on the first day, me and
my mate decide to go pony trekking.
Channel 4: South American Football (4.30am)
"Sans shirt and aboard huge, extremely old and bolshy horses, we rode
into the hills, where I promptly started to cook big time from the
blazing hot sun and, because the horse was trotting so roughly,
developed atrocious blisters in the nether regions," writes Lee, all
too evocatively.
BBC Radio Five: Sport On Five (7pm)
"Burnt to a crisp and with huge welts between my cheeks, I pulled the
horse up and stopped to rest. This was totally unacceptable to Pedro,
our 'horse wrangler', who immediately started kicking my horse but,
wouldn't you know, missed his gut and caught him right in the
cobblers.
Talksport: Evening Kick Off (7pm)
"The horse bolted and at about 50mph with me hanging on for dear life
as he galloped towards home via a motorway; we passed several
truckers who gawked wide-eyed at the bizarre sight of a half-naked
and totally red Englishman racing the traffic and screaming in agony.
Newstalk 106 (www.newstalk106.ie): Off the ball (7pm)
"I haven't been near a nag in 20 years." Great stuff. If you can
match that, email the.boss@guardian.co.uk - marked: Seasons in the
Sun.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
SUBSCRIBE TO THE FIVER
You can subscribe and unsubscribe at
www.guardian.co.uk/football/fiver
* * * * * * * * * * * *
CONTACT THE FIVER
If you want to contact the Fiver, email the.boss@guardian.co.uk.
* * * * * * * * * * *
SUNNY DAYS
The Fiver was written by Barry Glendenning. Guardian Unlimited (c)
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005. Registered in England and Wales.
No.908396
17 June 2005
Guardian Unlimited's tea-time take on the world of football
guardian.co.uk/football
In today's Fiver: Lennart Works Up a Sweat
* * * * * * * * * * * *
OH LENNART
Whenever women's football rears its pretty little head, your
bra-burning, debt-dropping, lentil-eating, fair-trade
coffee-drinking, block-printed kaftan-wearing Fiver is never sure
what line to take. It's quite a dilemma: while our deeply-ingrained
pinko-liberal Guardianista tendencies make us natural bedfellows, the
standard of the women's game means we won't be cha-chaing from the
rafters just yet. But Uefa president and gourmand-at-large Lennart
Johansson has no such qualms, and has managed to big up women's
football while simultaneously contriving to sound like a creepy old
souffle-eating letch.
"There are so many companies who could make use of the fact that if
you see a girl playing on the ground, sweaty, with the rainy weather
and coming out of the dressing-room, lovely looking, that would
sell," panted lusty Lennart, pointing out the obvious commercial
value of women's football but stopping short of insisting on see-thru
T-shirts for all. Ironically, Lennart's musings came shortly after
he'd gallantly criticised Fifa president Sepp Blatter's call for
"tighter shorts" for female players. "Some people are only happy if
they have something being published about them every day in the
newspapers," he said of his colleague at a press conference, before
carefully spelling his name out for the assembled hacks.
Not surprisingly, Lennart's comments have gone down like ration books
in the Uefa HQ canteen. "For him to have come out with that sort of
derogatory comment is, for a female footballer like me, quite hard to
take. People have to appreciate us from a football point of view and
come to see us because of the way we play rather than the way we
look," sniped Sue Smith, the Leeds and England winger with the
Limahl-from-Kajagoogoo hair. And to be fair, she has a point - if
it's comedy goalkeeping, slapstick defending and missed sitters
you're after, why pay through the nose to see England's men playing,
when you can go to women's matches instead?
* * * * * * * * * * * *
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"I'll never forget Sir Alex. At Christmas, everyone at the club was
invited to a dinner, and the manager and his coaching staff all
worked as waiters. I was served by Ferguson himself. I have nothing
but good words for the people at the club for the way they treated
me. I hope they feel happy for me right now" - Sadly Diego Forlan,
now European golden boot winner, doesn't reveal whether Fergie spilt
the soup over him.
*********************
ADVERT: ORANGE Keep up to date on the transfers, tempers and the
tantrums. Click here to get email on your phone:
ad.uk.doubleclick.net/clk;16132284;11305059;u?http://www.orange.co.uk/emailonyourphone/
*********************
THE RUMOUR MILL
They've laughed all the way to the bank and back, but Marseille are
now showing more cheek than a holidaying Jade Goody by asking Chelsea
for a year's loan of Didier Drogba.
Wayne Routledge is a wantaway Crystal Palace player no more after
THFC agreed to shell out GBP1.5m on the winger.
Benni McCarthy has given the thumbs-up to Newcastle's proposed swap
deal for Hugo Viana, as have Geordies across the land.
Flushed by their status as only the fourth worst Premiership team last
season, West Brom are confident of getting the signature of Barca's
Javier Saviola.
In response to being linked with Fulham's Steed Malbranque, Aston
Villa boss David O'Leary today insisted: "W dnt wnt hm".
Having being relegated with appalling French Ligue 1 outfit Istres,
Senegalese defender Abdoulaye Diagne-Faye's luck has taken a turn for
the better. Or has it? He's being courted by Bernard Cribbens and Sam
Allardyce.
Gordon Strachan has used his chalkboard to persuade Bobo Balde to stay
at Celtic.
Wigan could yet land a world-class player after Real Madrid midfielder
Guti declared his desire to play in the Premiership.
And word is that Derby want Italy legend Walter Zenga to replace
George Burley, which won't please Gary Johnson, who's currently
hot-footing it back from a Mediterranean cruise, via Yeovil.
* * * * * * * * * * *
CAN YOU HELP
Do you know when players first got nutmegged? Were you a Mackem before
1991? And does the phrase 'back to square one' really come from radio
football commentary in the 1920s? The BBC is making a major new
series on where words come from. If you'd like to help, click here:
www.oed.com/bbcwordhunt
* * * * * * * * * * *
NEWS IN BRIEF
Wayne Rooney's Mr 10%, Paul Stretford, has been charged by the FA
relating to when and how he won the right to represent the England
star.
Fresh from his man-of-the-match-winning display in Brazil's 3-0
Confederations Cup battering of Greece, Robinho is heading for Real
Madrid. "I will get to Madrid on June 24 to finalise the details,"
said his agent, Wagner Ribeiro.
No wonder Ashley Cole wanted a bumper pay rise; he's forked out
GBP50,000 on an engagement ring for new fiancee Cheryl Tweedy.
Crack open the Chang: Everton have marked their new GBP6m contract
extension with the Chinese beer merchants by confirming their
attendance in the pre-season Premier League Asia Trophy, alongside
Bolton, Man City and the Thai national side.
Giovanni Trapattoni has been named as Stuttgart's new coach, where his
first job will be to resist Arsenal and Chelsea's GBP8m interest in
Alexander Hleb.
Warming the bench in Big Cup has proved more tempting a prospect than
leading Gerard Houllier's line at Lyon for Milan Baros.
Brentford's supporters' trust, Bees United, have launched a 'Back the
Bees' campaign in an attempt to raise the GBP1m necessary to buy the
club back from Ron Noades by September. For more information, go
here: www.backthebees.com.
* * * * * * * * * * *
STILL WANT MORE?
Steven Wells discovers how a racial divide continues to blight
grassroots soccer in the US:
football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1508828,00.html
Counting down to Sunday's Euro 2005 final with Georgina Turner's blog:
blogs.guardian.co.uk/euro2005/
Disturbingly, Owen Hargreaves in a wig and Robbie Savage dominate our
women's football Gallery:
football.guardian.co.uk/gallery/0,8555,1507166,00.html
Win a car - it's even new and shiny - in our top competition:
www.guardian.co.uk/competitions/page/0,13349,1498678,00.html
Sign up now for FREE news alerts, sent FREE to your desktop - for
FREE: www.guardian.co.uk/alerts/0,15907,1457082,00.html
* * * * * * * * * * *
DON'T MISS THE WIMBLEDON SPECIAL IN MONDAY'S GUARDIAN, CONTAINING:
- Martina Navratilova giving her picks for the titles. - Boris Becker
looking back 20 years to his first Wimbledon win. - And Tiger Tim
Henman on coping with the pressures of Henmania.
* * * * * * * * * * *
FIVER LETTERS
"Re: Dean Best's hammering of my good self in yesterday's Fiver
letters. Yes, he did raise my hackles by highlighting a spelling
mistake that didn't exist, but I've restrained myself from hitting
back after finding out that Mr Best is the news editor of two of the
most well-respected trade publications in the UK. With a combined
readership of three men and a dog, I am humbled that such a
high-flying hack took the time and effort to abuse a PR numpty like
me" - Daniel Kennedy.
"Fantastic entertainment in this week's Fiver letters! Hacks and PR
types having queeny pops at each other. Bet they didn't think it
would come to this when they were getting their 2:2s in media
studies. Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, is it lads?" - Kevin
Coleman.
"Seeing as celebrity fans are endorsing their local clubs, we at
Middlesbrough can have, em, Chris Rea to bring in the big names.
Great" - Jon Cartwright.
"Re: Neil Reeve and the non-existence of Cannes airport (yesterday's
Fiver letters). Maybe you can't catch an easyJet flight there, but it
certainly exists. Neil just needs to buy his own plane" - Andrew
Hodkin (and many others).
"Neil Reeve has obviously never been to the film festival as Cannes
does indeed have an airport. That doesn't change the fact that
Rangers are paying GBP20K a week to Hemdani when only a few weeks ago
he was rejected by Celtic, Betis and Bolton when he was looking for
GBP10K a week" - Jude Kelly.
"Can I correct a common misuse of the English language, namely the
phrase 'head-butted' (yesterday's Fiver), due to tautology. To butt
someone is to attack them with the head, so you are saying 'attacked
him with his head, with his head'" - Richard Warr.
"To alleviate the mind-numbing boredom of the close season, myself and
a group of friends have started a Fantasy Fiver Letters League. It's
three points if we get a letter published, one point if someone
responds to our letter, plus three points for a full TV and Radio
section tale. Printing this would get me off to a flyer" - Johnny
Johnson.
"Re: The Kewell libel case. May I be guilty of libel if I write what I
really think? Where does fair comment end and libel begin? The
message appears to be 'whatever you think, write nothing'. Is the
following statement libellous? 'If it looks like a duck, has
feathers, swims and quacks, you may assume (unless it's a dodo) that
it's a duck'" - M. McLaughlin. [You can't libel the dead, so you can
say what you like about dodos - Fiver Ed].
"I recently had a packet of a well known brand of salt and vinegar
crisps and was horrified to find two 'bad' ones lurking inside. Are
there any tan-tastic, crisp-guzzling former England strikers I can
sue for this inconvenience?" - Phillip Jackson.
"Re: D Pricecoal's letter (yesterday's Fiver letters) re: 'all those
letters correcting Mr Lewis (Monday's Fiver Letters)' correcting
Richard Mitchell's correction of Simon Lewis's letter regarding
coastal climates. It wasn't Monday's Fiver Letters, it was Tuesday's"
- Paul, Bristol.
Want to get something off your chest? Send your letters - a paragraph
at most please - to the.boss@guardian.co.uk.
**********************
TONIGHT'S TV & RADIO
British Eurosport: Confederations Cup Football (11.15pm)
Here's Lee Coltman, setting the scene for your latest tale of holiday
hell: "Lloret de Mar, northern Spain, 1978: on the first day, me and
my mate decide to go pony trekking.
Channel 4: South American Football (4.30am)
"Sans shirt and aboard huge, extremely old and bolshy horses, we rode
into the hills, where I promptly started to cook big time from the
blazing hot sun and, because the horse was trotting so roughly,
developed atrocious blisters in the nether regions," writes Lee, all
too evocatively.
BBC Radio Five: Sport On Five (7pm)
"Burnt to a crisp and with huge welts between my cheeks, I pulled the
horse up and stopped to rest. This was totally unacceptable to Pedro,
our 'horse wrangler', who immediately started kicking my horse but,
wouldn't you know, missed his gut and caught him right in the
cobblers.
Talksport: Evening Kick Off (7pm)
"The horse bolted and at about 50mph with me hanging on for dear life
as he galloped towards home via a motorway; we passed several
truckers who gawked wide-eyed at the bizarre sight of a half-naked
and totally red Englishman racing the traffic and screaming in agony.
Newstalk 106 (www.newstalk106.ie): Off the ball (7pm)
"I haven't been near a nag in 20 years." Great stuff. If you can
match that, email the.boss@guardian.co.uk - marked: Seasons in the
Sun.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
SUBSCRIBE TO THE FIVER
You can subscribe and unsubscribe at
www.guardian.co.uk/football/fiver
* * * * * * * * * * * *
CONTACT THE FIVER
If you want to contact the Fiver, email the.boss@guardian.co.uk.
* * * * * * * * * * *
SUNNY DAYS
The Fiver was written by Barry Glendenning. Guardian Unlimited (c)
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005. Registered in England and Wales.
No.908396