Carbon footprint of football matches

It's music festival season and there has been much comment about the carbon footprint of such events. Many tens of thousands of people travelling many miles to attend surely do create a lot of CO2 (and pollution, which seems to have been pushed down the pecking order of things to worry about by greenhouse gases). Events like glastonbury have made a certain number of tickets available only to those who travel there by bus. Bands like Radiohead are only playing at venues with good public transport links.

All very good. But... The last round of premier league football matches was attended by about 365'000 people. There are 38 such rounds in a season which adds up to just under 14 million people per year attending matches. The Championship (the second most highly attended football league in the world) gets about 5 million attendees a year if last weekend is anything to go by (bear in mind it is end of season which attracts more fans but weigh this against declining attendance figures across football). A lot of football fans don't travel far to the match but some fans travel a long way (Man Utd fans). Even so, we are talking a good proportion of 20 million people are travelling to football matches each year. This must dwarf the music festivals in terms of CO2 generated.

Favourite poll result of the week; 15% of Americans think Barak Obama is a muslim.

FA Premier League Abroad

The Football authorities here in England are considering the idea of staging some extra league games abroad. The fundamental flaw with this is that some teams would have to play each other three times instead of the usual twice. This undermines the whole idea to such an extent that the plans must be shelved. The league table should be a completely objective measure of how a team performs over an entire season. In a cup competition there can be anomalies where a team can get a lucky goal or a strange refereeing decision. But in the league these random blips get ironed out. Everyone plays everyone else home and away and the best team on average tops the table. If extra fixtures were added then the integrity of the league would be comprimised; some teams might have to play more matches against difficult sides and others might get lots of easy games.

The second argument against this idea is that it isn't fair to the fans. A Sunderland season ticket holder would not be able to attend a match versus Fulham in Los Angeles. Their team would be taken away from them just to make money. And that is the big motivation here; money. And because money is the motivation the fixtures that get scheduled abroad might magically turn out to be Man Utd vs Chelsea or Liverpool vs Arsenal rather than Fulham versus Sunderland. In the same way that the Manchester derby was magically scheduled on top of the 50 anniversay commemorations for the Munich air disaster.

Jose Mourinho

Chelsea football club manager Jose Mourinho has left the club. It's not a surprise. He was not allowed to run the club the way he wanted. He could not choose who to buy and, more importantly, who not to buy. Good luck to him. He was fun and a likeable and capable manager.

On the other hand this is superb news for fans of Chelsea F.C. (I don't support Chelsea). Mourinho is more suited to getting smaller clubs with average players to gel as a team and punch above their weight. His style of grinding results out didn't suit a team full of superstars. If I was Abramovich I would want to spend my money on a team of galacticos. A bit like Real Madrid from a few seasons back. They might not consistently win as much but they would be much better to watch. Which is what Chelsea are for Abramovich; entertainment.

The future for the club looks bright. They are in a far better position than in the bad old days of Ken Bates etc. And that is solely down to Abramovich and not Mourinho. It will be interesting to see who they get in to manage them and if they now go on to build a team around Ronaldinho and Shevchenko. Chelsea should be a team of galacticos. With Mourinho gone they might now go on to become this. Better to lose in style.

Lee Hughes

Football player Lee Hughes killed a man and severely injured another in an RTA in which he was drunk and driving recklessly. In court he showed no remorse and behaved with total arrogance. After 3 years in prison he is now out and has immediately been signed to play for Oldham athletic. How has he been able to stay football sharp whilst in jail? Should he have been allowed to continue his football career upon release? Should the inevitable abuse he will suffer from away fans be quietly applauded or has the guy been punished enough? The question is the same one that we had to think about when the guy who stabbed Phillip Lawrence was released earlier this month; did the punishment fit the crime and should the offender be granted their full rights as a free man upon release? For starters Lee Hughes should have a lifetime driving ban. And a percentage of his earnings should go to his victims and their families. He should also be allowed to continue his football career.

In other motoring news a banned driver who led police on a high speed pursuit risking lives was caught and the judge gave him.... a driving ban. Sigh.

The football association (again)

The FA really burn my waffles. There is huge controversy at the moment because one team got relegated from the premier league costing them £60 million ($120 million). The team that didn't get relegated survived because their star player almost single handedly saved them. But that player was fielded illegaly because the team did not declare that he was owned by a third party, which is illegal in the UK. The team in question were fined £5 million but were not deducted points as the rules state and they survived relegation. Cue uproar. The FA could have fixed this. When a club wishes to field a player they should sign a piece of paper that states who owns that player. The small pring should say "I declare all this information to be correct and if it is later found to be incorrect then we accept a 10 point deduction." Problem solved. But the FA didn't do this and only later found out that West Ham had witheld paperwork (lied). West Ham are quite a historic and prestigious club and many ex players are powerful within the game. The FA now has to face allegations of bending the rules to save one of the special kids in the class from being expelled.

Av It

News Roundup

Last night the BBC Horizon science programme was fantastic. It was about the Large Hadron Collider, a $6 billion machine built underground to look for the Higgs particle, which is responsible for some particles having mass and others (like light particles) being zero mass. The content was superb, the explanations clear and interesting and the usual overegging of the CG effects was toned down. Great TV. Why don't horizon do programmes like this all the time (see my earlier posts about skyscraper fire safety and what if the dinosaurs were alive today).

I was at the Crucible yesterday to watch a quarter final session of the World Snooker Championships between Shaun Murphy and Matthew Stevens. I saw two century breaks and a comeback from 3-0 down. The BBC has an article up today describing what a visit to the crucible is like. Seeing snooker live is an absolute joy.

If English football fans are attacked tonight in Italy then Italian teams should be evicted from Europe for a few seasons. There is no excuse. AC Milan shouldn't be in the Champions League this season anyway after all the corruption last year. Travelling English fans have been warned not to use the subway, not to speak English in public and not to wear England flags or Man Utd shirts. I do hope the Italian police do their job and that they have some English speakers amongst their number this time. We shall see...

Football gossip

Rat faced England football captain John Terry hired top chef Marco Pierre White to cook a meal at a cost of thousands of pounds. What did he ask for? Steak and Prawn Cocktail! This proves that a) John Terry has more money than taste and b) that Marco Pierre White is a pretentious git for complaining that his skills were being wasted.

In other news the BBC have positively discriminated against shrieking football commentator Jacqui Oatley by fast tracking her to become a commentator for Match of The Day. This is PC hell. I've heard her commentate and she is just rubbish. Not because she is a woman, not because I fear change just because she is really bad and has an annoying voice. Gabby Logan is great as a presenter, a good journalist and belongs in football. Not Jacqui Oatley. There are some good commentators (Mark Lawrenson always spots things before I do) and some bad ones (droning sit on the fence man John Motson) and some compete dead ends (Mark Bright and David Pleat) and I think Jacqui Oatley belongs with the latter based on her Radio 5 performances. Shame on the BBC and credibility points deducted.

David James looks like Denzil

Portsmouth goalkeeper David James and his new beard look like Denzil from TV show Only Fools and Horses. Portsmouth beat Man Utd 2 -1 over the weekend but Man Utd beat Roma 7 - 1 last night in the best Champions League game since Liverpool came back from 3 - 0 down. Denzil used to carry around a ghetto blaster on his shoulder. The modern form is kids who play music from their mobile phones on the bus and in Meadowhall and the Trafford Centre. It's really annoying and doesn't make them look cool because a) they have poor taste in music and b) a discreet iPod is way cooler.

England football and the FA

People go mad over the England football team, especially when a big tournament is on even though they never do anything. In international terms we are the equivalent of Newcastle United - always a chance but never any silverware. What really gets me mad is how the FA sell the rights to show the England games on TV. It should be the right of everyone in England to watch their national team at no extra charge. But the FA cup and England games have just been sold to sky and ITV (which is full of adverts and crap commentary). The FA is a business. They change the shirts every so often not to freshen up the look and give the team a different identity at each tournament but to increase their profits. It makes me sick that the proposed youth training academy at Burton has been scrapped through lack of funds. What is £5 million to the FA?

Sven Goran Eriksson is still being paid £7000 per week. Why didn't they give him a contract that stopped after the World Cup? Wasn't it obvious what was going to happen when we got knocked out? Sven tried to make England play like an Italian team, which was never going to work. McLaren has us trying to play like Middlesborough. We have the best defence in world football and some excellent strikers at the minute. It's the midfield that sucks. The wide players aren't really doing their job. In the middle we have Gerrard who is good as an individual but who doesn't work well with the vastly overrated Lampard. OK he gets 20 goals a season for Chelsea but that's not hard with the quality they have. He shoots far too often. His passing is nothing like that of a Gerrard or a Beckham. We have trouble getting it into the box either as a through ball or a cross. We should have Gerrard and an ankle biter in the midfield. All the great squads had a fancy player and a tidier in the middle; Keane and Cantona, Zidane and Makelele and so on. So McLaren should play Hargreaves who is such a hard worker. And he should stop smiling and saying everything is OK. You're going to ruin it again you second choice incompetent sod. The truth is that the national side are rubbish and international football is too tight. Congratulations to Doncaster Rovers on their 3-2 win in the JP Trophy at Cardiff today. Saw the match on Sky and it was excellent.

Football: the powers that be

Three interesting stories have emerged recently about the organisations that govern football. Manchester United were fined £6300 because of violent and improper conduct by their fans in the Champions league game against Lille. Lille were fined £42000 for improper security and organisation. What really happened was that the section of the stadium alloted to United fans was only half opened. A fence was left closed so that the fans were squashed into an area half the safe size. Some fans climbed the fence to stop being squashed and were hit with batons by the police who thought a pitch invasion was occuring. UEFA don't seem to know what really happened that night and their information seems to have been provided by Lille football club, who felt bitter about the manner of their defeat that night. A fine for United seems bizarre.

My home team Rotherham got into financial difficulties last year and the FA punished them by deducting 10 points. The people who got the club into trouble have since left and the legacy is a struggling club doing its best to survive. The team have had a good season and were mid table at one point despite the ten point handicap. Things have since proved too much and the team has slowly sunk down the table. They now sit at the bottom of the table and look certain to be relegated. Why has the FA done this? With those 10 points Rotherham would survive the drop and would not suffer further hardship by being relegated. The fans and players are being punished for something the money men did in the backroom.

The other story was the plan by the FA to settle score draws in the league by a penalty shoot out. All commentators on the game have derided this ludicrous suggestion. A drawn game is often more exciting than a win. Small clubs would play negative against the big clubs to try and get to penalties. Silly FA.

Cream rises to the top or s**t floats?

Harriet Harman has just announced her intention to stand as deputy leader under Gordon Brown. One of the reasons she cites is that she believes a woman is needed at the top of government. Really? Why? Is there something unique that only a woman could bring to the job or is it just to fill the quota and make sure the balance of the sexes at the top of government matches that in wider society? A person should not get a job based on positive discrimination. The best person for the job should always be chosen and no other factors should be considered.

Another thing about Harman is that she has been given a second chance in frontbench politics. Her first stint at the Social Security department was a disaster. We've seen this in politics before with Mandelson. We also get to see it in the world of football. A few years ago rat-faced England captain John Terry was involved in a spot of bother and I remember some commentators saying he should be booted out of football for good. Now, all is forgiven and he is the responsible face of the FA and all the merchandise and crap that goes with it.

I'm all for giving people a second chance but they better not screw up again. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Grampa Simpson gets an award for the cartoons Lisa and Bart wrote under his name 'It is a tribute to this great country that a man who once took a shot at Teddy Roosevelt could win back your trust'.

You'll Never Walk Alone (pending good dividends)

Two american investors has just spent about £500 ($800 million) on Liverpool FC. When this club was established in 1892 six states were still to be admitted to the union with another six states having been added shortly before in 1889/1890. Grover Cleveland was elected President in the election of 1892. The Indians were still putting up a fight; the massacre at Wounded Knee was in 1890. The first US movie was made in 1889. In Britain Gladstone was elected Prime Minister and Arthur Conan Doyle published 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'. Given the history of this football team the new owners Gillett and Hicks have pledged to respect the history of, and I quote, "the franchise".


Some facts about the new owners. David Gillet has made his money out of processed meat and ski resorts. He was declared bankrupt in the early 1990s but has since bounced back. Tom Hicks made his money from venture capital, investment firms and soft drinks. He also donated money to Ann Richards, the Governor of Texas, in the early 1990s but shifted his donations to George W. Bush when Ann Richards lost an election in 1994. Hicks has since become the number 4 career patron of Bush during his career. In 1998, Hicks made Bush a multi-millionaire by buying a Texas baseball team from a consortium headed by Bush.

The new owners have expressed an interest in selling the name of the new stadium to an advertiser "If the naming rights are worth one great player a year in transfer spending, we will certainly look at that as a serious option." Yeah, right. The name of the old stadium, 'Anfield', conjures up rich images of football heritage and success whereas modern 'branded' football stadiums have names like 'kit-kat crescent' which conjures up images of over-sugary chocolate bars mass produced in factory production lines staffed by workers on low wages in York whose jobs have been taken away and moved abroad where the cheaper workers are.

On the news tonight a Liverpool fan was heard to mutter that he preferred the club to be in American hands rather than the club be owned by the consortium from Dubai who recently expressed an interest. He never explained why. Maybe the fact that the Americans are white makes it OK that they are running a club in the hope of gaining "on-the-pitch success and economic success". The latter is the prime reason for investing in top-flight English football. They definitely don't know anything about football judging by the comment "this is the most important club in the most important sport in the world".