#graham hunter

[yesterdaysprint]

Graham Hunter in The Gaffney Ledger, South Carolina, July 21, 1928

[neptunefairytales]

I was searching in my files and found this old gem XD

Seriously I’m dead laughing XD Why use that title and picture to talk about Graham? Is no one working for that article realised it make it appear… idk… a little… GAY?

It’s just like:

[thebristolboard]

Original strip by Graham Hunter, source unknown.

[ciiromessi]

A couple of months ago I was interviewing Thierry Henry and we got to talking about Lionel Messi. Like most of us, even this superlative French athlete is left gasping for breath when he watches his former teammate play and grasping for superlatives when he talks about him. But he shared a little anecdote.

Henry mentioned that part of Messi's magic is that even in training he'll provide performances, skill, sporting aggression and explosiveness like those which won Sunday's amazing Clasico. Effectively there was a Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk moral from Henry's tale.

"Don't make him angry. You won't believe what he's like when he's angry," was the gist of it.

The ratio of training sessions to matches must be approximately five to one so if Messi has played just short of 600 times for his club, that's 3000 training sessions, give or take, as a senior player. Time enough to get bored, for things to get stale or time to tick over; time to tell yourself that so long as you're intense for about 75 percent of them, you're fine.

Not Messi. Not according to Henry.

He told me tales of when Messi might take a kick in a training match, or when whoever was refereeing the training match didn't give a foul, or gave a bad offside. Messi might lose his temper, and the way he'd take that out on those who'd imposed that perceived injustice was to run around like a mad thing, winning the ball back, dribbling past everyone and scoring. He'd do it again and again until he calmed down.

The media and general public don't get to see these things happen. But players do. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Now, when the dust settles from Real Madrid's defeat, it's something that Marcelo could have done with realizing.

Football's a contact sport and when I say that the Brazil international, a wonderful player and notable good guy that he most certainly is, knew just what he was doing when his elbow connected with Messi's mouth, I'm just noting what my eyes tell me was indisputably true. These things go on; it doesn't make Marcelo a criminal and I suspect that the refereeing team simply missed it rather than outright ignored it.

What happened next, however, was the Bruce Banner moment. Messi came to life. Furious. Intent on making someone pay.

But first, I want you to take note of something if you haven't already. When his mouth was split open, when he was lying there dazed and bleeding, when he had to play with tissue stuffed around his mouth and nose to ensure that he wasn't bleeding so much that he had to leave the pitch, what kind of fuss did Messi make?

Did he lose his temper at the ref? The linesman? Did he go looking to stick his studs in Marcelo? No to all those questions.

When Sergio Ramos did his Bruce Lee impersonation on Messi, risking a serious ankle or knee injury to Barca's all-time genius, did Messi lose his temper at an opponent who's previously been sent off for precisely the same crime? Did he complain to the officials along the lines of "How many times?" "Are you blind?" or "Are you on their side?" -- precisely the kind of insults you hear from oodles of players in his situation and which then get the offended party banned.

No. He didn't. Not a bit of it. He just stored up his anger and then cut loose.

I've told it before but for those who don't know, my first interview with Messi was in late summer 2006. He'd just changed to Adidas as his kit sponsor, and they were delighted to have this promising kid. But when they did a product launch and put Messi on the roster of four or five footballers available for interview, they didn't treat him like a superstar. There was a little curtain over the interview booth and no queue. Nobody moving me along after five minutes. Looking back, it was a bit quaint.

I asked him about the fouls he was already taking. As a fiery Scot, I wasn't asking him about his glacier-like sense of calm. (To date, he's only ever been sent off once, and it was a total miscarriage of justice even then.) I was asking him, I admit, why he didn't go seeking personal justice with boot or fist? I really thought it was inevitable that he'd one day lose the plot completely and get some "equalizing" done.

Messi told me that if he was kicked in the first couple of minutes of a match, it could hurt like hell; he's actually human in that respect. But thereafter he said, "I'm so involved in the game, I hardly feel anything, and all I want to do is get the ball back and punish them that way."

So it was here on Sunday night, and the goal that followed the Marcelo elbow was pretty glorious. He'd been catalysed into a reaction of such ferocity and intensity that we saw one of the better goals of his long Clasico career, a fixture in which he's now the career top scorer.

Dani Carvajal is a fine footballer, arguably the best right-back anywhere right now. But the image of him taking a fresh air swipe at the ball as Messi dragged it past him with his weaker foot before finishing is one that'll live long in the memory.

Now this might be controversial but for my way of thinking about things, there's more that binds Sergio Ramos and Messi than most might initially acknowledge. Ramos is something of a magician too. He produces acts of defiance and last-minute glory of  a sheer, naked will to win that are from the same generic family as what Messi conjures up.

Each of them plays off their own personal comic book scripts. They don't see games as we see them; they see contests as incomplete until they've written the dramatic ending. The difference is that when Ramos has his Bruce Banner moment, it comes out of nowhere and usually with no reason. A gushing reservoir of blood to the head and then a similarly coloured card. I think it's 22 red cards now, maybe more.

All of the above from Messi and Ramos helped turn this game.

Yes, it's quite true that Madrid looked like they would use this game as a metaphor for the entire Zinedine Zidane reign. It wasn't the manager's fault that Ramos did what he did, nor was it Zidane's fault that Casemiro ran out of credit, playing right on the razor's edge of a red card for the second consecutive match.

James coming on after the red card looked odd, too. But when Madrid equalized, take a look at what has happened to get them there. Caution hasn't so much been thrown to the wind as it's been shredded up like confetti and thrown into the path of a hurricane.

Madrid, at this stage, are playing three at the back with Ramos off. A 3-3-3. But, hold on: of those three at the back, two are Marcelo and Carvajal. And as James produces his absolutely wonderful goal, a little gem of invention, determination and technique, Carvajal is playing right-wing and Marcelo, crossing, is the left winger. Madrid are playing one at the back. Nacho. It's a delight to see, and that shuffling of the pack when Zidane is able to bring on a talented "backup" player who changes the game -- be that Lucas, James, Alvaro Morata, Isco or Marco Asensio -- has been emblematic of his reign.

But when Sergi Roberto sets off on that purposeful, lung-busting, intelligent run that uses space so well, I wonder where Casemiro is. Well, he's on the bench because Zidane's taken him off for his own good. When Barcelona play the left wing overlap and the ball's cut back to Messi, would Ramos have been there to try and block it? Might he have been able to advance and help close off Roberto's run?

We won't ever know, but what we do know is that he and Marcelo used physical bullying to try and subdue Messi. Instead, they turned him from a mild-mannered genius to an indestructible superhero who stripped off his shirt and held it up, name clear as day, to the Santiago Bernabeu crowd in a gesture that will now became one of the great iconic moments in Spanish sport for a century and more.

So, take the lesson. Don't make Messi angry. You won't like him when he's angry. +

[barcastat]

Madrid. Tuesday, April 26, 2011. Champions League press-conference.

Real Madrid went first, holding their press conference at 2.45pm in their training centre, Valdebebas, out near Barajas airport. Barcelona were to train at the Santiago Bernabéu (helpful given the huge debate raging about the playing surface) following which, at 8pm, Javier Mascherano (now widely called the“Little Boss”) and Guardiola would give their press conference. It was the third of four Clásicos in 16 days – football fans and media around the World were losing it. By the time Guardiola sat down to talk, he was ready to hit us with a 2 minutes and 27 seconds thunderbolt of controlled aggression and indignation which was at least as well planned as any tactic his team enforced during the following night’s game. Earlier that afternoon, the Real Madrid manager had made a mistake. Mourinho’s sardonic press conference diatribe against Guardiola was, in turns, snide, extravagant, colourful and dripping with sarcasm. It was all about Guardiola’s tame ‘Two-centimetre decision’ comment regarding Pedro’s disallowed goal in the Copa del Rey final. “Until now, managers could be divided into two groups, the small one comprises those who don’t talk about referees at all and the other, huge one, in which I figure, is made up of those who only criticise refs if they make important errors. We can’t control our frustration when they get it wrong, but congratulate them when they get it right. But, now, there’s a third group with only one member – Pep! It’s a new era – never seen in world football – someone who criticises referee for getting it right! The explanation is that in Guardiola’s first season coaching Barça, he experienced the scandalous refereeing at Stamford Bridge during the Champions League semi-final and, since then, he’s never happy when a referee gets it right.” No reference to how Guardiola gave a compliment to Madrid on a merited win, no admission that Guardiola had not criticised the referees or even suggested that he thought the goal was onside. The mere mention of an offside goal and a linesman, by Pep Guardiola, was enough to send the Portuguese spinning off into his own dark universe. Mourinho believes: “The game starts in the press room the day before kick-off” and he has had some success with his calculated statements. So, having left the world’s media drooling at his performance, he was no doubt reaching round to pat himself on the back as he left the press conference. He’d have grinned to himself. Job well done. However, it turned out he’d misjudged Guardiola. That evening, in the Santiago Bernabéu stadium press room, was a thousand times more riveting. Guardiola, and the majority of his squad, had watched Mourinho’s mid-afternoon press conference live on television. Andoni Zubizarreta, Barça’s director of football and nominally the coach’s line manager, was also his team-mate during the Cruyff era. “More Than ever, this is when we have to stick to talking about the football.” Zubi cautioned Guardiola after Mourinho’s pantomime villain performance. The former Barcelona and Spain’s goalkeeper knew a line had been crossed. Following the previous two bruising Clásicos, this was the time when his manager might cut loose. Guardiola made the right noises to placate his former team-mate, but he had decided that enough was enough. Mascherano spoke first in the press conference and was typically eloquent, trying to focus on the football, getting away from the debate about the playing surface in Madrid. Guardiola gave him an appreciative nod and a pat on the back: “Nice work fella.” The Barça manager didn’t need anybody doing his work for him. He was ready to pull the trigger on his own. Then, everything began to build towards ramming speed. Barça’s senior press officer, Chemi Teres, selected the aptly named David Bernabéu for the first question. Barça is a Catalan club, yet instead of the dozens of print, radio and television Catalans who had travelled through, the first question was given to a Spanish speaker from a Madrid television station. David had an early deadline and had asked for that to be considered, but this suited Guardiola, also. The performance he had prepared was aimed at a Spanish-speaking audience: maximum voltage, maximum exposure.  The journalist asked: “I don’t know whether anyone has notified you what Señor Mourinho said in his press conference this afternoon, but I’ve noted some parts of it down for you. It surprised him that you criticized the referee for getting something right, in relation to the offside decision against Pedro in the cup final last week. He even asked how you lived with the scandal of the semi-final at Stamford Bridge two years ago and whether, because of it, you are accustomed to referees favouring Barça? So, 24 hours ahead of the big game, is there something you’d like to answer Mourinho with?”The following lasted precisely 2 minutes and 27 seconds: “Well, first of all, good evening everyone. Given that Señor Mourinho has chosen to use ‘tú’ [the less respectful form of ‘you’] and call me ‘Pep’ all through his conference, I’ll be referring to him as José tonight. I don’t know which is his camera here [Guardiola looks down the barrel of the television cameras at the back of the room, rather than at the journalists], probably all of them. Tomorrow at quarter to nine, we are going to play a game of football out on that pitch. Off the pitch, he has already won, he’s been winning all year, all season and he’ll continue to do so in the future. I’m happy to award him his personal Champions League trophy off the pitch. He can take that home with him and enjoy it with his other stuffs. As for us, we just play. Maybe we win, maybe we lose. Normally he wins, as his CV shows. We will settle for our ‘smaller’ victories which seem to inspire admiration all round the world, and which make us very proud. I could produce a list of comparable complaints for you all, but then we’d never get finished. He talked about Stamford Bridge and I guess we could drag up 250,000 complaints of ours, but we don’t have secretaries and ex-referees or managing directors on our staff to note those kind of grievances down for us, so we are only left with going out there at 8.45pm tomorrow and trying to win by playing the best football we know how. In this particular press room,he’s the fucking boss, the big fucking chief. He knows the ways of the world better than anyone else. I don’t want to compete with him in this arena for one instant. I’d only remind him that we were together, him and I, for four years [at FC Barcelona in the late 1990s]. He knows me and I know him. That’s enough for me. If he prefers to ‘go’ with statements and claims of newspaper journalist friends of Florentino [Pérez] about the Copa del Rey and prefers to put more weight on what they write than on the friendship, well, no, not quite friendship, but working relationship him and I had then, that’s his right. He can continue reading Albert [Einstein, who Mourinho claimed to quote in speeches to his players]. Let him do all that with total freedom, or let him read the thoughts of the journalists who suckle on the teat of Florentino Pérezand then draw the conclusions he wishes to. I am not going to justify my words for one second. I said that we were defeated by a minute detail because of the smart vision of a linesman who got it right. That night, I simply congratulated Real Madrid for winning the Cup, deservedly, on the pitch, against a good team on the pitch – the team which I am proud to coach. So José, I don’t know which is your camera [scans the back of the room] but here we go. This had been a long time coming.” I worked alongside the Spain team at the 2010 World Cup and by the time they brought the trophy home, the Barcelona Contingent were already sick of fielding questions about Mourinho’s arrival in Spain. All Mourinho had to do was cough and raise an eyebrow for the Catalan media, never mind the rest of Spain, to pester Barça’s players about the ‘Special One’. My first interview of the new season was with Gerard Piqué and I simply asked whether he was already tired of hearing the man’s name. Piqué replied: “It’s really difficult to go to every interview, every press conference and they ask you about ‘him’. I understand he’s new here and he’s the coach of Real Madrid, but that’s it. I think we have to talk about us – about Barcelona! About how we can play this year and to forget about Real Madrid and Mourinho. We won a lot of respect and titles showing the world how we play we will try to play the same way this year.” Throughout the year, the Barcelona players felt more and more disrespected by Mourinho, even after their comprehensive 5–0 win in November. He stated that other clubs ‘handed’ Barcelona the league by not trying to win at the Camp Nou but, instead, playing to minimize their defeat. Mourinho consistently stated that Barcelona were heavily favoured by refereeing decisions and then, the day before the semi-final, added that Guardiola couldn’t live with referees not giving them an advantage. Though the Barça players largely followed the club’s orders in not sniping at Madrid, not entering into the traps Mourinho was laying for them, these are warriors, not shrinking violets. They had long wanted to bite back and, finally, when Guardiola felt personally disrespected, he chose that night to unleash some of the anger and frustration which had been gnawing at him, his squad and his staff. The players loved it. Guardiola had lanced the boil. It set their minds on simply playing football the next night, not entering into more polemic about kicking, diving and angry confrontations. Estiarte lifts the lid for us: “The team were travelling back from training to the hotel when mobile phones started bleeping – mostly SMS messages like: ‘The boss has really started something this time.’ As soon as we got back to the hotel ourselves, the players gave him a massive ovation. It was one of the most special nights of the last three years.” However the ‘night before Christmas’ feeling didn’t end there. After dinner, the team salon had the lights dimmed. The majority of the players immediately expected another of Pep’s inspirational motivational videos, although they were usually part of the game day preparation. Instead, they had a treat – Víctor Valdés had prepared a DVD of himself imitating a wide range of characters both within the Barça squad and more widely in Spanish football. His team-mates loved it, Messi, Mascherano and Milito in particular split themselves laughing and took their ‘imitations’ in great spirit. However, it wasn’t all about rabble rousing – there was a defined game plan. I’m not saying Pep is actually a genius, but in football terms he is extremely talented. I go to all the tactical meetings and at the beginning I didn’t know that much about football. There he is, with a huge screen showing 25 minutes of footage. He says to his players: ‘Gentlemen, we’re going to win because you are all here.’ By the end, they feel as if they have already played the match because his instructions are so clear cut. Pep shows them their opponents’ weaknesses and says: ‘This is what’s going to happen here and here.’ He doesn’t say: ‘You have to score a goal in such and such a way’. It’s more like: ‘If we can open up this space, we can get through easily.’” Publicly, Guardiola still betrayed the fact that he saw no connection between losing the cup final and Barça having diminished chances when returning to the hostile Bernabéu. “We are going into the semi-final knowing that things are tight. Everything is against us and very few people are backing us. Public opinion seems to think they’ll win, but we are looking forward to it immensely, all of us are fired up and enthusiastic.” Meanwhile Barça’s captain, Carles Puyol, was winning the race to be fit. It felt significant. Until that point, Piqué and Puyol had played 18 matches together that campaign, with 15 wins, three draws and no defeats. In fact, their last defeat starting together had been the previous season’s semi-final of the Champions League against Mourinho’s Inter. However, the 32-year-old was going to have to draw on all his vast experience and competitive hunger. He would end the season playing only four times in 30 matches, managing 90 minutes just twice. Each time it was in the heat of battle against Madrid. It was amazing commitment and bravery. He wasn’t fully fit and had it been anything other than a Clásico, he’d likely not have played. Vilanova: “It’s true. Probably no one else could achieve what Puyol does. He deserves enormous recognition because he went through a very difficult time and then played the semi-final against Madrid having hardly trained at all. We weren’t sure if he would make it or whether the injury would cause him problems. What Puyol did last year is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen in football. For that reason, we all felt so bad that he couldn’t start the final.” Word emerged that the match official would be Wolfgang Stark. Initially, those at FC Barcelona who analyse such things were underwhelmed.The German had sent of the Barcelona players Thiago Motta and Javier Saviola against Celtic in the 2003–04 UEFA Cup. And in the home leg of the 2009 Champions League semi-final against Chelsea, Guardiola’s players had found him to be referee who allowed ‘northern European’ levels of physical contact. Barça had won one of their five matches with Stark. So the match cast would include Puyol and Stark, plus a healthy 3,590 Barça fans – probably 10 times more than for a Liga Clásico – but Andrés Iniesta would not take the stage. Injury robbed him of the moment, just as it had, crucially, in the previous season’s semi-final, when Mourinho and Inter knocked Barça out. Omens, omens. Wembley seemed like a long way away. In the end, it was a stunning night.

[Barça, the making of the greatest team in the World by Graham Hunter.]

[neptunefairytales]

This is the only time he will witness her on her knees in front of him, I’m sure of that  XD 😏

[barcastat]

When Barcelona bought Dani Alves for €30m in 2008, a Greek chorus dissented at the price. What immediately became apparent was that, above and beyond his evident football skills, there was extra value in his joie de vivre, which would have a major impact in the dressing-room. He is irrepressible, funny, full of the joys of life – things that were conspicuously absent from the Camp Nou by the end of the Frank Rijkaard reign. Obviously, none of the money they paid Sevilla was originally intended to go on witty repartee, dance moves or that infectious smile – they were bonuses. Barcelona fought of Chelsea and other clubs willing to outbid them for the right-back. They did so because their analysis told them Alves was a player who could mesh perfectly with the speed of thought and movement that Lionel Messi was beginning to demonstrate. They have been proven correct. It is hard to argue that there is another footballer in this squad who links better with Messi than the Brazilian. Alves’ marauding runs down the right get all the attention, and then the focus is often on whether the cross or shot at the end is productive enough. That risks underestimating other parts of his game. He loves inter-passing in tiny spaces, particularly if it becomes a test of who has the quickest feet and minds. He and Messi frequently play this game of “Do-you-really-think-you-can-box-us-in?” against three or four defenders, and usually win. The tighter the space, the more the two little entertainers relish it. They also sometimes cut through opposition teams covering massive swathes of the pitch and one of the best examples of that came in Barça’s 5–0 demolition of Real Sociedad in December 2010. Messi and Alves move the ball between them from near halfway to just outside the six-yard box, from where Messi scores. They exchange passes three times in the tightest of situations. Hordes of Sociedad defenders can’t stop them. The two of them produced another knife-through-butter move when Barcelona beat Madrid 3–1 from 1–0 down at the Bernabéu in December 2011. For their side’s third goal, Messi breaks out of midfield and feeds the overlapping Brazilian, who crosses expertly for Cesc Fàbregas to head home at the back post. Everything about the Brazilian – his pugnacious attitude, his physique – is as if he had been scouted and developed within the fútbol base system at Barcelona. He is the same size and shape as Xavi, Iniesta and Messi. He has the same belief – shared by everyone at the club – that small, talented footballers are better than bigger, stronger automatons. Even after the game is over, Alves delivers. Sometimes he’ll pitch up in the mixed zone to talk to media wearing a sensational velvet smoking jacket, winklepickers, a white-on-white shirt and pencil-thin tie. Style, Inc. He’s also the guy who, when I asked him about Xavi, produced this fantastic quote: “You and me, we live on the same planet but Xavi’s from another world.” Pep Guardiola’s team would have been less adventurous without the purchase of Dani Alves – and and the rest of its players would have had a lot less fun. [Barça: The making of the greatest team in the World by Graham Hunter]

[en-prosa]

“World watches Ronaldo and Griezmann but ignore Torres in the Champions League Final at your peril”

“(...) It’s worth making a case for Fernando Torres. El Niño.

Indeed it’s worth arguing that this guy is a modern classic, misunderstood, undervalued, much criticized - but a great all the same.

This is a man with an appetite for pressure, tension, stress. They don’t consume him, he gobbles them up. (...) Not just ability, a magnetic attraction between crucial matches and his knack of finding the back of the net.

About this challenge tonight what more can he say, really, than: “It’s the most important match of my life.

“Our opportunity to write a page in the history of my club’s 113-year history.

“For me, it’s the chance to fulfill a dream which I’ve held since I was a little kid - win the most important competition for Atleti.”

Madrid win European Cups. Ten of them.

All of their starting XI, and their manager, have won this trophy. At least once. They should be bookies’ favourites, they’ll be the punters’ favourites.

They may well open their legs and show their class, as athletics commentators used to say.

But if Torres and Atleti face adversity in the San Siro while he might not actually enjoy it, it’ll be a familiar, even comforting experience.

El Niño, you see, is the footballer in the Champions League Final who’s most like you or me.

He didn’t choose football, or Atleti. They chose him.

They were brought to him early, they took an unrelenting lifelong grip on him and they’ll never let go.

Atleti aren’t simply a club he likes, a club to whom he owes a debt having started there. He’s an ultra-loyal, died-in-the-wool supporter. They lose and his weekend’s down the pan.

They win something and the world’s a beautiful place. Colours are brighter, bird song sweeter.

You know the feeling, exactly.

“My family weren’t massive football fans going up - we didn’t sit around the TV watching games together when I was a little kid,” is how he recalls it.

“My dad’s from Galicia and when I was young he was drawn towards the Super-Depor era when Deportivo were winning trophies and thrilling people.”

“But my grandad on my mum’s side, when I was about five, took me aside and said, ‘How can you grow into a Depor fan when we live here in Madrid? No way!’”

“On weekends we all went to his house where he had Atleti stuff everywhere and one plate on the wall, with the Atleti badge, caught my attention.”

“I wanted to know about it and he began to tell me the history of this club. I sat at his feet as he told me about Atleti’s tradition of struggling against adversity, about having to cope with Madrid being more famous and powerful.”

“I was riveted.”

“He began to take me to his local bar to watch the Atleti games on television ... even though EVERYONE there was a Madrid fan.”

“I watched my granddad, so sure of himself, so unintimidated, so firmly attached to his club and its history - and it made such a massive impact on me.”

“So at school I did the same thing as he did in his bar. Most of the other kids were Madridistas but what I noticed, really quickly was that when Madrid lost, those kids didn’t continue wearing their first-team kits or scarves to school.”

“I simply couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t be visibly or vocally loyal to their team when times were bad - but then be arrogant or noisy when things were going well.”

“For example, when Atleti won the double in 1996 I didn’t wear my shirt around the neighbourhood more often because we were Spanish champions!”

“My understanding is that if you’re a real supporter of a team you are with them, you ‘feel’ them for ever - during success and during hard times just the same”.

European champion, world champion, Champions League winner, Europa League winner - Fernando Torres’ career has been truly great.

What does he lack aged 32?

To lift a trophy with the club he loves and will love for ever.

As they say here in Italy, 'Questa volta, forse..'

This time, perhaps.”

- Graham Hunter, The Daily Record.