there's no clock in the forest

I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own page, And therefore look you call me Ganymede.

[oedipalrivalry]

Michael A. Messner

[shihlun]

Photo from the 1975 football match between the crews of Pasolini’s SALO and Bertolucci’s 1900. The player on the far right is Carlo Ancelotti.

[oedipalrivalry]

[m--bloop]

Dirk Bogarde & James Fox as Hugo Barett & Tony

The Servant dir. Joseph Losey (1963)

[fraudcelona]

i still think this is an all-time great intro to any piece of sports writing idgaf

[gabriellelestat]

Foreword to Elfriede Jelinek’s Sports Play by Karen Jürs-Munby

[lascitasdelashoras]

Chris Steele Perkins - Disco, Wolverhampton, England, 1978

[christianrichardrice]

Chris Steele-Perkins, Schoolboys looking at stereo equipment on Tottenham Court Road, 1980.

[oedipalrivalry]

The match as text is necessarily incomplete. Not everything can be captured or mentioned and it is hard to know what to notice. Not every action or movement is obviously crucial, though, similarly, as in any interrelated, complex system, it is impossible to know the effect of the absence of an event or the importance of one that has happened. A defender casually strolling across to the left-back position may not be recorded or remembered, but his lethargy could be the reason that a goalkeeper launches a long ball rather than playing it short, which in turn leads directly to a goal. The importance of an event is always determined retrospectively and written records or spectator memories will misremember things, see what has not been seen because of what then happened. The text is incomplete: the major details are captured one way or another, but the reason, the decision-making process, the truth if you will, is obscured because a certain action escaped the record. The transmission of texts is also a haphazard affair, privileging some readers over others. In this way, football is the same as any discipline: only some people get access to the Bodleian or the British Library. Only some people can get to certain games, others have to rely on television or match reports. It is not just what is available, but what is chosen. Some people will watch anything, or have to because it is their job; others will only choose to watch their team or a certain player. Some will watch teams if they are hipster, some if they are non-league. The choices that broadcasters make are inflected by an appreciation of their market, and so, of course, some teams will be available to see more than others, assuming TV is your primary medium of consumption. A fan of Arsenal watching MOTD will have a more complete ‘text’ over the course of a season than a fan of Crystal Palace. It is also worth noting that the records themselves, the recording generated by television before editing and transmission, are unavailable and may not even be kept past a certain point. The point is that the body of work that constitutes ‘football’ as has happened is fractured, incomplete, and subject to whim and fashion and choice and so on.

Alex Stewart, Writing Football, Writing History (x)

[feldfrog]

Children would be so jealous if they knew how many stickers we have in dive bar bathrooms

[zinesbycee]

(nods sagely) (nods basily) (nods rosemarily) (nods saltly) (nods star anisely)

[bensdavies]

turn around djed spence every now and then he's called upon turn around djed spence EVERY NOW AND THEN HE'S CALLED UPON

ENGLAND NEEDS NOW TONIGHT ENGLAND NEEDS MORE THAN EVER IF YOUR BROKEN JAW WAS TIGHT NOW IT'S FULLY BACK TOGETHER AND YOU KNOW HE CAN PLAY LEFT OR RIGHT DOWN THE WING YOU'RE SO STRONG

YOU TAKE A PLAYER ON AND DO AN EXCELLENT JOB YOU SHOULD'VE HAD A PEN FROM BEING TACKLED BY BOBB

WE REALLY LOVED YOU NIGHT OH DJED WAS SUCH A STAR TONIGHT OH DJED WAS SUCH A STAR

once upon a time he was loaned out to rennes now he's one of england's men solid in defence total eclipse of djed spence

[papayajuan2019]

theyre taking me out back and turning me into a 7 minute dance track

[lovetechnique]

i've decided 24 hour party people is a perfect film

[charl0ttan]

do you think the pieces from chess are all actually mad at each other or are they just like actors

[oedipalrivalry]

Last week, Leonardo observed that England's problem was precisely that its team does not believe that it can succeed. Brazil, Leonardo said, take to the field assuming that they are the best. 'That's because you are,' Gary Lineker interjected, completely missing the point, which was that belief is a precondition for success, an existential act of faith, not an empirical representation of a fact. In the case of the successful nations, the assumption of superiority functions as a kind of hex on less confident teams. In the second round match between Brazil and Ghana, for example, in which the Brazil team performed like bored, highly paid actors only willing to read the few pre-scripted lines essential to the plot before returning to their trailer, it was clear that the Ghana side was fatally hamstrung by its inability to believe that it could win. Powerful and skillful in midfield, the Ghana team disintegrated whenever they had a serious opportunity on goal, hopelessly miscuing their shots. It was as if the Brazil goal was protected by a psychic forcefield - which of course it was. The fact that the Ghana players could not believe that they could score meant that they were unable to.

England's repeated failure in penalty shoot-outs is not down to bad fortune, as the English media, with its empiricist presuppositions, insists. To lose once might be an accident, but to lose five times demands a psychoanalytic explanation. Some clues as to the nature of the libidinal disorder which afflicts the England side were provided when Rooney was sent off yesterday. From being disjointed and tentative, England suddenly looked purposive and effective. That was because Rooney's dismissal gave England the opportunity to achieve what it is most comfortable and familiar with, a heroic defeat. England players are so accustomed to failure that they would find success traumatic and unimaginable, so it is as if, time after time, the team contrives to lose one of its key players - Rooney yesterday, Beckham in 1998 - in order to set up the conditions for the desired 'heroic defeat'.

England, however, never seem able to escape these fatalistic nets. That is partly because Defeat has been transcendentalized in English culture, transformed into a basic presupposition of experience. The problem is that a failure of belief - 'We cannot win' - has been transformed into a desire for failure - 'it is better not to win'. This kind of libidinal switch was what Nietzsche famously described in his analysis of slave morality. Unable to act, the slave eventually comes to think that it is better not to act, that those who are successful are Evil oppressors, that it is the weak and the destroyed who are the Chosen.

Mark Fisher, To Lose Once Might Be An Accident, To Lose Five Times Demands a Psychoanalytic Explanation (2006)

[junk-thunder]

[citation not needed. no prablem]