Untold Arsenal is published two or three times a day. There’s an list of recent articles on the right in date order, followed by a month by month drop down menu. At the end of the main piece there’s an abbreviated contents section (just in case we published something while you weren’t looking.)
Stupidity Week
By Walter Broeckx
Who on earth invented this kind of stupid week ?
All over the world the leagues are moving towards their last few games. All the players in top teams are facing a very difficult and overloadeded agenda. Most of the top clubs face a schedule of a weekend game and a midweek game till the end of the season.
And in case we have forgotten, the Champions’ League is about to start in earnest.
And this in the year when the best players after that competition have to go to South Africa to play the World Cup in order to make more and more money for FIFA.
On the issue of the World Cup I just want to say that I don’t give a toss about who will win it at the end. And if I had to pick a winner I hope Honduras wins it. The only reason why would even look at the world cup would be to cross my fingers whenever one of our players comes on the pitch and from that moment on I will be praying to every possible God to prevent him from injury.
But back to the present and in that present some highly enlightened person has ordered that this midweek a lot of friendlies should be played by national teams.
And at Arsenal we all know what this means. In the EPL we lose about 2 players each game. If it is not by violent attack from opponents then someone will pull a muscle somewhere and be out for a few weeks.
Playing for a national side has caused us also a lot of injuries. Last season Van Persie fell out with a knee injury sustained on duty with Holland. This season once again he got a very bad injury when playing for Holland. So who will be next? It will be another week of sitting waiting in fear for another player to get injured.
We all know how Man IOU deals with this. Their top players all will have a sudden injury and at the weekend they will have visited some kind of wonder doctor and they will be fit and run on the field as if nothing has happened. R Giggs, the hero of Wales, went for 10 years without playing a single friendly for the country he is so proud to represent, being injured on each and every occasion.
We on the other hand are too honest to do such things. We send our players out, wish them the best and hope they come back in one piece. Usually they don’t.
So who on earth has invented playing international friendly’s in this time of the season? It can’t be anyone who has any common sense in his body. So it must be one of the big guys from Fifa. They are the only one who can come up with this kind of nonsense.
There are 3 months before the world cup and you can be sure that some of the players who are fit now will miss the world cup because they get an injury between now and the end of the season by playing for their club teams.
And between the end of the season (May 9th) and the start of the World cup there is one month for the national teams to play as many friendlies as they wish to play. So how on earth is it possible to play those games now this week?
If I found the English refs, the FA and the EPL guilty of perpetrating the injury that has happened to Aaron, I think Fifa will be as guilty as hell if one of our players, and even if a Chelsea or Man IOU player, gets a serious injury this week and messes up the rest of the season for his club.
You have to be a mental, delusional, and desperate to try and ensure that your latest crooked ticket selling scheme makes you another few million, to come up with a system like this.
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ARSENAL IN THE PAST…
The days when football journalists could write, entertain and make us laugh (a true newspaper report about Arsenal in the 1930s)
Charlie Buchan’s first appearance for Arsenal.
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ARSENAL IN THE FUTURE
Predictions for the rest of the season: the start of the new golden era.
Almunia: are we being honest?
The manager’s resigned, the league’s ending… Where next for Arsenal?
Wellington Silva is the future of Arsenal
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THE SHAWCROSS DIARIES…
It is time for a thorough investigation of all that is wrong with football
Tony Attwood immediately after the end of the Stoke game
Was the assault on Ramsey linked to money
Why Stoke type thuggery is not allowed in Spain and Italy
Stoke and Arsenal: the referee’s views
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The sound of a billion fans saying “Oh bugger” as football destroys itself is copyright © Untold Arsenal 2010.
Serial cunt Sepp Blatter to scrap off-side rule in football… I fully agree with Guy Ritchie- Never underestimate the predictability of Stupidity.. You could perhaps have added this in your article Walter.. I have been watching this game since I was a boy and now, just cos someone like Septic Blatter is at the helm am slowly losing my faith in the game.. I hate to say that… when will a change come?
Walter
I think you’re being a bit unfair here.
Football grew up in a culture where players were normal ‘workers’ for their club and representing your country was a great honour. That system worked for half a century.
Since 1990 and particularly since 2000, football become a totally different entity. Players were paid huge amounts by their clubs, but still paid little for international football. The body which controls world football, FIFA, has as its sole income stream, international tournaments and sponsorship associated with them. Clubs are solely interested in their own. FIFA’s role is to be a regulator. But it needs money to do that……..
In my opinion, what is happening now is that clubs wish to abolish international football, unless they can control it. They are becoming as powerful financially as FIFA and may well soon be more powerful. The UEFA Champions League becomes a surrogate for the European Championships. Power is not yet spread sufficiently wide for a global club tournament to yet mimic the World Cup….
No-one asks the fans what they think. No-one asks them whether their national side is important to them or not. To you, clearly, it’s not. To others, it still is. Maybe to the players: it’s not so important anymore. But to some it is. Where national pride still means something.
There are two ways this can go: players can shift from 55 – 60 games a year to 40-50. They can be paid a little bit less. And international football can remain. Through a new joint approach where clubs and FIFA are partners in hosting tournaments. For which selected internationals are paid the going rate……
Or the clubs can destroy international football for their own ends, maybe not playing any more games but just squeezing the lifeblood out of internationals through pulling out their players.
There’s one constituency which is NOT asked about this choice and that is the global fan base.
I respect your thoughts, Walter, but I don’t agree with them. In any way.
What I do agree is that the current situation is unsustainable……
For a totaly disgusting, thoughtless shit headed point of view you should have heard that fat git Alan Brazil on Talkshit on Monday morning, if anyone had any doubt about that stations view on Arsenal Football club and Arsene Wenger they would have been totaly dispelled, they hate us with a passion that is scary, just ask Darren Lewis of the Daily Mirror who was subjected to ridicule and distain for aggreeing with Arsene Wengers point of view, as he left the studio they laughed and said there he goes with his tail between his legs!!!!
Thats how much talkshit hates the Arsenal !!!!
Jazbo,
when I wrote a piece on the media hating us a few months ago some said I was a bit to hard on them. It seems I hit bulls eye with my opinion then.
Rhys,
Yes I know there are a lot of people who think WC and national teams are very important and maybe I expressed my self not clearly enough. It is not that I am willing to forbid a world cup. No it can have his place in the calender somewhere like in the summer. The thing I can not understand is playing meaningless friendly’s in this part of the season. They can play a friendly every day starting from may 10th if they like. No problem for me. But not now, for heavens sake.
It would even be better for the national teams itself if the players can have a rest in midweek when they don’t have to play a league game or CL. The more rest they get now, the better they will play at the world cup for their country.
For the rest: Go Honduras, go. 😉
Walter – I agree with you on Rhys’s very valid point. I have always thought that ALL international matches could be played in the offseason. When you think about it the concept makes huge sense. Without international breaks during the season the club season would be a month shorter, therefore you could run the club season from the middle of September to the beginning of May. Players could then have a couple of weeks off before selected players (those called up for international teams) went off for their summer tournaments. Every four years the cycle in the summer would go: World Cup, EC Qualifying, European Championships, WC Qualifying. Friendlies could be played in the two or three weeks prior to the tournaments. There would be no fewer games but the congestion in the season would be completely different. Right now the entire season gets messed with for the 1% (or less) of players that get international recognition. The rest of the professional footballers have to twiddle their thumbs for a week or two at a time when games could be played.
I think this would suit fans of all types. Both those that hate international football (like Walter and myself) and those that dont. It would also present a TV bonanza for FIFA and UEFA as the whole qualifying tournaments would become mini World Cups and mini European Championships during the otherwise empty summer months. That would truly fulfill FIFA and UEFA’s goal of creating a year-round fixture list of high-class football to sate anyones desires!!!!
Paul C, you never will make it to the top in Uefa or Fifa. You just are far to clever.
Those higly payed top c*nts in Uefa and Fifa could never come up with your simple but o so smart idea.
It would make everybody happy and players would not get injured during the season by playing for national team and so if a player gets injured it will be in the league he playes and for the club that pays him and no other party is to blame.
But I still would like to see Honduras win the world cup. 😉
SORRY TO BRING UP THE AARON RAMSEY SITUATION AGAIN BUT NOBODY HAS USED IN THEIR ARGUMENT THAT SHAWCROSS IS A RIGHT FOOTED PLAYER AND HE MADE THE CHALLENGE AS IF TO SAY HE WERE LEFT FOOTED. THIS TO ME SHOWS THAT HE WAS BEING RECKLESS. TO GO IN WITH THAT MUCH FORCE WITHOUT BEING IN CONTROL IS A JOKE. I KNOW HIS TALENT ISNT BALANCED WITH HIS LEFT AND RIGHT. DOES TONY PULIS EMPHASISE WORKING HARD ON YOUR WEAKER FOOT.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/24/sports/24iht-rob_1.html. This link was posted on the blog A CULTURED LEFT FOOT by a blogger named J.The article is from 1993. YOU HAVE TO READ IT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWQp2bg7zEU There is a Wellington Silva interview towards the end of this video.
Intresting link on the NYtimes Mediation. We are almost 20 years later and some things have not changed…
When world’s biggest Idiot in form of Sepp Blatter is president of FIFA, what else can we expect. I don’t understand why national Football Associations don’t protest it. Isn’t it really foolish to take players from all around the globe when they have played match on weekend then are going to play one one next weekend. Even these National coaches should understand. If one of these players get injured seriously due to stress, for ex. Rooney gets injured seriously while playing in these sandwich games? How much that will cost to England more than to MU.
I agree with you but i really wanna see how english media take when rooney get injured because of bad tackle by one of the egypt defender.
why arsenal is so honest? Even when seemingly no one likes them in england? Why wenger wants to prove that he is the honest of them all?? Can’t he see bodies of arsenal players are too fragile to bear that amount of games?
i hope rooney gets a injury and then people will see how biased is media for arsenal and damn utd…
Paul C:
Excellent suggestion for all internationals to be played out of season – but do all leagues all over the world have the same duration of season? Needs checking.
Gooneraside – great point and obviously this would have to be a world-wide approach through FIFA and UEFA. In Europe there are countries like Russia that have more of a summer season due to their winters and obviously in the southern hemisphere things are the other way round but SURELY there must be ways to do something like this!?!?!?!?!