After spending a fine Sunday afternoon in the wasteland that is Ohio watching West Ham take the on Columbus Crew, we figured a few of you might appreciate this documentary from 1985 regarding the infamous ICF–especially in light of the rumblings regarding the so called riot between the Crew’s Hudson Street Hooligans and the infamous bastards in claret & blue. Its long, and many of the lads could use a haircut, but its quite worth your time…

Posted: July 24th, 2008 under football, soccer.
Comments: 4

I recently picked up David Goldblatt’s The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer from my local book shop, and I cannot recommend it more. Hulking out at over 1000 pgs, the tome represents three years of intensive study of the worldwide phenomenon of the beautiful game–presenting one of the best surveys of the sport I’ve yet to find. I recently stumbled across John Turnbull’s excellent review of the book as well as accompanying interview with Mr Goldblatt over at The Global Game and figured it’d be of interest to some of you lot. In other footie news… Read more »

Posted: April 20th, 2008 under book covers, football, soccer.
Comments: 2

Oh the game! The beautiful, beautiful game! Of course, we’re talking about football–and not that steroid fueled thick necked yawnfest the NFL–but rather the most popular sport the world over, the one true love of any self-respecting byrd and the joy of every youth on the street. I know we’ve promised you more coverage of the leagues, but just getting boys away from the pubs long enough to scribble or pound the keys has been more of a hassle than we anticipated. The pull of lager, whiskey and cider is too great!

Hopefully you’ve been keeping tabs on neck and neck horse race that BPL has turned into, with Arsenal and Man U scraping and clawing over each other for the glory, every point being worth more than its weight in gold. Meanwhile, amongst the dregs, Fulham struggles to stay clear of regulation–turning it on in the last minute this week to clear three, keeping the dream alive. Then there is the African Cup, with the seemingly unstoppable Cote-d’Ivoire’s thrashing of Guinea and Ghana’s startling ten man upset of African powerhouse Nigeria–will they meet in the final? And finally, I cry myself to sleep over the nightmare that my beloved FC Barcelona’s season has become, so much promise coming in, only to spend most of the year sniffing around Real Madrid’s refuse. Speaking of which, me and some of the geezer’s hit up a viewing of the rather brilliant Zidane, Un Portrait Du 21e Siècle, and I can’t recommend it enough… Read more »

Posted: February 5th, 2008 under football, movies, photos, reviews, soccer.
Comments: 2