It’s not the winning but the losing that counts

Originally published on 90minutesonline on 21/04/09

As football seasons across Europe come to a close, everyone is supposedly neglecting the rear parts of their seats and experiencing bouts of incontinence.

But why? Most seasons ended a long time ago, when certain teams decided to lose the odd game or two.

The Portuguese league was decided in favour of Porto when Benfica lost at home to Guimarães in March and Sporting lost at home to Braga in February.

The Premiership is supposedly wide open, but you know Manchester United are going to win it. This was decided when Middlesbrough popped a cap in Liverpool’s ass in February and Chelsea were guffed on by Tottenham in March.

Even if you disagree with that, you can’t take umbrage with the suggestion that losing is inherently more exciting than winning.

How excited were you when Manchester United lost two games in a row, to Liverpool and Fulham? Probably more than you were when they beat Sunderland 2-1.

And how excited were you when Everton beat them this weekend? More than you would have been had they won.

Many may argue that one of the news stories of the weekend was Wolves winning and getting promoted to the Premiership, but the real story was Charlton losing and booking a place in League One next season.

You already know what will happen with Wolves: they’ll be relegated next year.

But Charlton’s fate, like that of Leeds and Manchester City when they dropped into the third tier, is anyone’s guess. Consequentl,y their future is about 638 times more interesting than Wolves’.

Losing is where it’s at, and as the European leagues draw to a close, it only takes a cursory glance at the tables to see that the bottoms are much more congested and unpredictable than the tops, with the possible exception of the German league.

The only thing in the Premiership making me leak streams of piss on to my underwear and down my legs is Newcastle’s attempts to lose enough games to ensure relegation. If they go down, a lot of people will find themselves in much more of a frenzy than if they’d won a few more games and finished mid-table.

Liga Sagres

All of this is why this week’s Liga Sagres was, despite what the scorelines might suggest, more boring than a night in with Glenn Roeder.

Porto didn’t lose, Benfica didn’t lose, and despite nearly losing, Sporting scored two late goals and didn’t lose.

Everyone’s least favourite team Paços Ferreira disappointed their fans by travelling all the way to Estrela da Amadora and winning.

Things are better for Trofense fans, whose team have now lost so many games that they find themselves bottom of the league. They inherited the accolade after Rio Ave foolishly decided to beat them on Sunday to move within one point of safety.

However it is Leixões who are arguably the most exciting team in the league at the moment, having lost five of their last six.

Nacional, Braga, Marítimo and Belenenses all came close to losing but only managed to draw. Tossers.

Results

Académica 0 – 3 Porto; Setúbal 0 – 4 Benfica; Guimarães 1 – 2 Sporting; Naval 1 – 0 Leixões; Rio Ave 2 -1 Trofense; Amadora 0 – 2 P. Ferreira; Nacional 1 – 1 Braga; Marítimo 1 – 1 Belenenses.

The top

Porto – 57

Sporting – 53

Benfica – 49

Nacional - 43

Braga - 42

Gdańsk – A Culture Capital

Originally published on Fingertips on 07/12/09

Perched in the north of Poland on the Baltic coast, Gdańsk is arguably Poland’s most politically and historically resonant city.
It is where the communist dictatorship over Europe began to topple, firstly with the strikes in the Lenin Shipyard and the creation of Solidarność (Solidarity) in August 1980, and then with the re-legalisation of Solidarność in April 1989 after its banning under martial law in December 1981. This was followed by the first semi-free elections since World War II in communist Europe in June 1989, when Solidarność took 99 of the 100 seats it competed for in the Senate.
Gdańsk is also where World War II began on 1st September 1939, when the Germans bombarded the Westerplatte peninsula – as documented in Günter Grass’ “The Tin Drum”. Back then the city was called Danzig by its mostly German-speaking population and was annexed by Nazi Germany.
It only became known as Gdańsk again after its liberation in March 1945 and return to Poland as part of the post-war Potsdam Agreement.
All of these upheavals make Gdańsk something of an epitome of the trials Poland suffered in the 20th century, and it is therefore somewhat appropriate that the city also stands out as the embodiment of everything good that is happening to the country in the 21st century.
It blends its history – the tall and narrow merchants’ houses – with the capitalism that is prospering in Poland in the face of the global financial crisis. A recent survey by CB Richard Ellis ranked Poland as the fourth best place for retail expansion in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2010, and Gdańsk is very much at the heart of that, with a glut of shopping complexes spreading from its centre down the coastline to its Tricity partners Sopot and Gdynia.
It is one of Poland’s host cities for the Euro 2012 football championships, and its top drawer transport infrastructure – trams, multi-lane roads (a rarity in Poland), ferries, and a train station throbbing with national and international connections – is what Poland’s other major cities all aspire to.
The city is also a candidate for the 2016 European Capital of Culture, is saturated in art – both in its museums and in its streets – and its Open’er music festival offers four days of live music for the bargain price of €76. The last few years have seen performances from the Arctic Monkeys, Björk, Sonic Youth, Erykah Badu and Kanye West to name but a few, and this year it made the final of the UK Festival Awards in the Best Overseas Festival category.
It is also one of Poland’s greenest cities, boasting 250 square metres of greenery per inhabitant and has a thorough cycling route reaching the other parts of the Tricity. The city’s eco-credentials are further boosted by its participation in the European Week of Balanced Transport, European Car Free Day and the Clean up the World campaign.
As Poland strides confidently into the next decade, the boots with which it strides are strapped firmly onto the feet of Gdańsk.
What makes these boots so remarkable is that they were once the boots that Orwell immortalised in “1984”, the boots “stamping on a human face – forever.”
Gdańsk pushed those boots from its face in 1989, squashed the final word in Orwell’s sentence with them, and now moves forward with a swagger in its step.

The Noughties: The Decade of “Bestism”

Originally published on Fingertips on 27/11/09

As the noughties draw to a close, people inevitably try to wrap up the decade in a convenient package, slap a label on it and sell it off as a profitable Christmas book that no one will read.

Summarising 3653 days of news, culture and everything else in processed chunks of bland generalisations is a prospect that many people, mostly journalists, find irresistible.

They make such generalisations at the end of every year, but with the closing of a decade, they think they have a licence to freak out.

There are endless Top Tens and Top 100s all over the internet that no-one in their right mind would either read or pay any serious attention to.

Just do a Google search for “noughties” and any other word, and you will be met with a list of some kind about the decade that almost was.

Even “noughties crap” brings up the highly enlightening Sexiest Women of the Noughties (So Far) on Hecklerspray, with its title which implies a woman may still be born this decade who could oust Jessica Alba from her top spot.

Hecklerspray’s list does have some hint of originality about it however, as it contains only 24 entries, rather than a round number.

The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph and the rest would never dare produce a list that wasn’t made up of ten, 50, or 100 entries, a fact which shows not only how eager they are to fill column inches with this easy-to-produce nonsense, but how generic they are.

It’s not as if there aren’t already more than enough awards ceremonies every year that are desperate to tell us what is the best and what we should be spending our money on.

Take books for example. There are, to name but a few, The Man Booker Prize, The Costa Book Awards, The Guardian First Book Award, The Orwell Prize, and what must be the most eminent of the lot, The Galaxy British Book Awards.

The Times’ recent list, The 100 Best Books of the Decade, is little but an amalgam of the winners and shortlisted books from the last ten years of the aforementioned prizes, from 2008’s Booker winner, Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger at number 80, to 2003’s Whitbread (now known as Costa) winner, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, at 25.

What exactly constitutes being “the best” in the eyes of The Times is left open to conjecture. Is it breaking down narrative walls in fiction? Providing insights into unknown areas? Selling the most copies?

No-one at The Times seems to know or care, but just to be safe they’ve thrown in some populist numbers — Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code at ten – some political stuff — Naomi Klein’s No Logo at 50 — and even some historical stuff — Peter Ackroyd’s London: the Biography at 45.

There really is something for everyone here, and that is why it's so dire. It’s nothing but bookcase fascism that tells you what should be on your shelves for everyone to see next time you have a dinner party.

To make a generalisation of my own, if anything, the noughties was the decade that spawned the culture of what could be called “Bestism”.

Reality TV gave us Big Brother, The X-Factor, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and Strictly Come Dancing, all of which are based on the premise of finding out who is “the best” and dismissing everyone else.

The newspapers’ noughties lists are lodged deeply in this vein. What they are saying is that if you don’t own or aren’t familiar with the contents of these lists, you’re not suitable to mix it with the rest of us and should be voted off the social, intellectual and hipness circuits.

Or, to turn out a phrase that somewhat epitomises noughties exclusionism, “you are the weakest link, goodbye.”

The Joey Barton brochure

Originally published on 90minutesonline on 24/06/09
In a desperate ploy to live for a few more years on a footballer’s salary, Newcastle’s Michael Owen has got his PR cronies to stick out a brochure pimping his wares.

This kind of head-on approach to matters is much more suited to his teammate Joey Barton, who is never short of word or two to say about the state of the world.

So with no further ado, here is the Joey Barton brochure.

· Barton is 26 years old and supposed to be approaching the peak of his career.

· Barton has razor sharp judgement. He told Alan Shearer in May 2009: "You’re a shit manager with shit tactics." No Newcastle fan could argue with that analysis.

· Barton called Iain Dowie "a prick" on the same occasion.

· In two years at Newcastle, Barton has racked up 32 appearances and two goals.

· Barton loves a challenge, so we asked him to figure out his goals per game record at Newcastle. After explaining the word "average" and running him through the basics of calculator usage, he took just four days to calculate a ratio of 12 goals every four games. We took the calculator back and figured out it was in fact one goal every 16 games, but you can’t knock the lad for trying.

· Barton has seven GCSEs.

· Barton, often known as "the defendant", won his first and only England cap in February 2007 when he came on as a substitute in the 1-0 defeat by Spain at Old Trafford. He is unlikely to win any more.

· In fact, Barton doesn’t want to win any more. He said after winning his one cap: "If England comes then so be it, but I have played for them once now and that'll do for me. I am more interested in winning domestic honours.” Therefore Barton will be 100% dedicated to helping your team gather some silverware, by any, and we mean any, means necessary.

· Barton is a gutsy and passionate player who literally lives, eats and breathes football. Unluckily for him this gutsy passion often spills off the pitch and in May 2008 he was sentenced to six months imprisonment for common assault and affray.

· You might think Barton is an unpopular character, but he actually has his own fan site. It might not have been updated since May 2008, but it still exists.

· Barton is currently suspended after getting a red card for a two-footed sliding tackle on Liverpoo’s Xabi Alonso. This was in Barton’s first game in over three months, proving that he doesn’t take long to get back into his stride after a lack of first team football.

· Barton was Manchester City’s number one tackler in the 2004/05 season.

· Barton once stubbed out a cigar on a reserve player’s eye during a Christmas party, but can you honestly say you’ve never done anything at a Christmas party that you didn't later regret.

· If Barton believes in something and has a passion for it, he’ll pursue it insistently. In July 2008 he received a four months suspended sentence after causing actual bodily harm to former teammate Ousmane Dabo.

· Newcastle United have suspended Barton “until further notice,” are examining employment law and "gathering evidence" for the possible termination of his contract. If Newcastle manage to effectively sack Barton, he will be a free agent.