We can shoot video with a pair of glasses now. With the same pair of glasses, we can also translate languages, search the Internet, find directions, and send text messages, if we are willing to pay $1500 and look a little foolish. I can't vouch for their optical capacity. It seems like the future, but today. It's all too fast, but we're here.
It seems strange, then, that it's taken until now, the point at which we can search the Internet using a pair of glasses, to strap a camera to a referee's head to see what they see, but that is now happening in Super Rugby, in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The footage is extraordinary and, perhaps most importantly, brings out a sense of empathy for those in charge of the game.
Referees suffer deaths of a thousand angles. Any given decision is shot from ten different viewpoints, but the referee has only one. Forget negatively weighted boots and impossibly spherical balls. Strap a camera to Howard Webb's head this weekend as he goes out to handle Manchester United and Chelsea. There's a real advancement. [Words by Max Grieve]
I went to see a film called The Hobbit. It was set before a whole bunch of other films which had already been made, but were supposed to be after this film that had only just come out – this serious chronologial blunder only furthered my irritation, having already discovered that my assigned seat was two or three rows too close to the screen. The projection was also fuzzy, but I pushed on.
The film starts with Tim from The Office being played by an old man, and then after a few minutes by Tim from The Office. There is a dragon for a bit, but we don’t get to see it. To be fair, we do see its eye, but that happens at the end of the film, which is about halfway through the story. Then Lucas from Spooks comes along, doing less shooting than he did in Spooks, and about the same amount of being temperamental and antisocial, except with a beard.
Bilbo Baggins, seen here with Dawn from The Office.
There is a lot of fighting, fighting and also fighting, and a man behind me laughed, so some of it must have been funny. They go walking in New Zealand with some other people who have beards, and then the film ends. There will be two more films in which roughly the same thing happens, stretched out over a cumulative nine hours of your life which you’ll never get back.
It’s hard to say quite what The Hobbit is in the sense that it is a film, although one thing that most critics, including myself, are entirely agreed on is that it is definitely a film. Two and a half stars.
It's as hard for me to tell you this as it is for you to read it, but it wouldn't be right for me to keep it from you until you're older, harder, and have a greater control over your urge to take out your anger on government buildings and public art. Alessandro Del Piero isn't entirely happy. I'm sorry to have taken an axe to your satisfaction with life.
It's not complicated. Simply, Sydney FC aren't very good, and Del Piero is. The Italian is cutting an increasingly frustrated figure – he could be playing for a poor team in Qatar and making millions more. The A-League is curiously competitive, and has already seen seen four different championship winners in its eight-year history, though the success of the major cities, Melbourne and Sydney, is vital to the greater success of the league – even more so now, given the international coverage that Australian football has been receiving since Del Piero's arrival. While he has been one of the most watchable players in the league this season, Sydney are diving to new depths of mediocrity.
Australian football cannot have hoped for more from Del Piero, but there is a very real sense that the sport could be getting more out of the opportunity it has been given. Having taken on Del Piero, Sydney must also contend with the immense expectations of both their fans and the Italian. He is used to winning, and must have wanted more from one of the A-League's 'bigger' clubs – should Sydney's current form continue, one would imagine that he'd be reluctant to sign on for an optional third year at the end of his current contract. What were record crowds, driven by enthusiasm for the new arrival and optimism for the coming season, have thinned considerably in recent weeks. The team may revolve around Del Piero but the team can't keep up, and as exceptional as that one individual is, it makes for a poor spectacle in all.
Before you fetch your sledgehammers and start wildly bludgeoning buildings in a Del Piero unhappiness-fuelled rage, I should probably mention that it's not all bad – just some of it. Sydney are only 13 points from the top of the table, and four from the finals, or playoff, places; benefitting from a competition as ruthless as and less blatantly rigged than the Nigerian Premier League. They have a new manager in ex-Socceroos coach Frank Farina, and if you squint your eyes, you might even make out signs of improvement in the team's collective attitude. Del Piero appears to have a genuine appreciation for Australia; its people, its culture, and its approach to sport. If only Sydney started winning, we could all go into the Apocalypse later in the month happy, knowing that the world has done all it can do to keep Alessandro Del Piero's sideburns content, and firmly rooted to the side of his head.
I can't really claim to have a solution for Sydney's woes. I don't write about tactics, and don't understand those mysterious patterns that see a football into a goal – and nobody wants to read how I'd fix something that I have no control over anyway. Stability, greater fight and a better approach to strategy should do it, but then that only seems obvious.
It's lazy, easy and often a great source of amusement to the writer to dispense brutal criticism without regard for the other side, but I prefer to be reasonable, within reasonable reason. Simply, things should get better. Put away your weapons, and go back to sleep. It'll be all right.
Since arriving in Turin dressed like Alan Partridge, Nicklas Bendtner's time at Juventus has been as action-packed as a night spent watching every one of the Die Hard films during a lightning storm with all the windows open. His request for the No. 10 shirt, then-recently vacated by Alessandro Del Piero, was promptly turned down due to concerns that he could be too good and overshadow its previous holder, so he humbly accepted the No. 17 instead, agreeing that it was best for everyone; not least and most importantly himself.
Bendtner has had a flying start to his career at the Juventus Stadium, making one appearance as a substitute in the 80th minute in a 2-0 win over Chievo Verona – that's where Romeo and Juliet is set! He had one shot, then left the field with the rest of the players once the game had ended. Club coaches have remarked on the Danish striker's weight; an issue which Bendtner has acknowledged, and is working to resolve. In response to claims that he is "fat", Bendtner tweeted 'Overweight? Yeah it’s really horrible, will need 4-5 months to get going. Ha ha,' demonstrating a clear shift in his attitudes towards a humanly acceptable work ethic.
Juventus have an option to buy Bendtner at the end of the loan period, and one man at la Vecchia Signora believes that it's an opportunity too good to pass up. 'Nicklas Bendtner is the best striker in the world. Of course Juventus would like to have Nicklas Bendtner stay at the end of the season, as would any club,' said Bendtner.
Manchester City are winning trophies, and that's annoying for anyone who isn't a Manchester City supporter. Chelsea have won trophies too, which is annoying for anyone who isn't a Chelsea supporter. Manchester United, damn it all, have also won trophies, and nobody likes them either – let's get past the fact that everybody hates everybody. I can point to Barcelona, to Madrid, to Milan and to Paris – at least, I will in the next year or so – and will be able to say that all those clubs have won trophies. Better ones than the Carling Cup, too – y'know, proper ones that people care about.
And even then, I can point to success that isn't marked by a hunk of metal. Finishing fourth is brilliant. There are those who might say that finishing fourth is as good as finishing eighth, tenth or fifteenth – if you've not won the title, why does it matter? – but you're a smarter man than that*. The Champions League, whether you've reached it from second, third or fourth place in the league, is the zenith.
Other teams are doing well, even winning things, because they've spent money. You've got enough, so why don't you as well? Jump off the bridge because everyone else is doing it. It's clear that Financial Fair Play, or even the mere threat of it, is a joke – that said, we'll be laughing like hell if all this comes off and you were right.
Weirdly, you've got to spend money to make money, which you can get considerably more of if your club is competing in the Champions League, and not that secondary tournament which, wonderfully enough, is having a final in Amsterdam this year – get along, if you can. Financial sustainability is a good thing, but there's little point if it's being achieved by spending nothing because you have nothing. The inability to scrape together an extra £2m for Clint Dempsey is pathetic, and can't be helping the manager.
I like you. I'd quite like for you to do well. More than anything though, with the exception of an unbeaten streak to the end of the season, I'd like for you to buy someone in January. Someone good.
Such is the spectrum of attacking breeds in football that it is difficult to define a striker – or any player with an inclination to attack from an advanced position, given the modern interpretation of what a 'striker' is – as simply and definitively being of one nature or another.
The second kind is that grimly determined streak of steel, blood and dirt. Carlos Tevez looks tough, and is tough. Craig Bellamy looks as though he's spent his life charging at people much bigger than him, and he has. It wouldn't be a surprise to hear that Dider Drogba's thighs were sculpted by an overenthusiastic god, and could send you into vacuum if they felt so inclined. Rampaging towards goal, Carlos Tevez is unapologetically direct and uncomplicated. These players are strong and straightforward; honest in their determination to score a goal, which we know because they "look hungry".
Not every player can be absolutely defined by these broad classes. It is, for instance, increasingly difficult to know whether Lionel Messi is an advanced midfielder or a striker, let alone a human. Andy Carroll often looks bored with the concept of football, and of life, yet occasionally finds it in himself to gain momentum enough to make a woeful lunge on some unfortunate defender. He'll try his best – bless him – when given ten minutes as the game comes to an end, but if handed a start he looks lost, and gives up on trying to figure out where he is. Zlatan Ibrahimovic can't be tied down to any specific type, and would storm off to create his own class if anyone tried.
The English football culture prefers, and often demands, this second group – it is more brutally efficient, more seemingly dedicated, and more businesslike. If a player gives the maximum effort, bleeds on the pitch, cries for the shirt and looks like it matters, they'll be worshipped and respected, at least until they decide they'd like to win something and move to Chelsea or Manchester United. Indeed, before he moved across the city and began eating children, there cannot have been many United supporters who did not admire and appreciate the rocket-powered bulldozer inside Carlos Tevez. We like players that run and sweat. If they look like they're doing something, chances are they are.
Too often, this blur of legs and gnashing teeth clouds our vision of what or who is good; or at least the vision of those football fans who only ever care about winning. Dimitar Berbatov, for instance, is good. Dimitar Berbatov is phenomonally good. Dimitar Berbatov is so good he should have played for Manchester United every week, but he didn't. He managed to divide an entire fanbase; existing as the archetypal rogue and wonder.
To compare him to the scoring records of others is to miss Berbatov's purpose. Efficiency is not all there is and ever will be, so although winning is winning and winning is fun, there is more to football than cold numbers in order on a table or a list. Berbatov is an intensely beautiful player, damned by a common belief in effectiveness and precise goals-to-games ratios. It's unfortunate that it's this that seems to matter above all to football fans.
More than his statistics – which are fairly impressive anyway – the way that Berbatov plays is the greatest thing about the man, and indeed any player of his ilk. After all, football would be tedious and near unwatchable if every forward was the same; beasts with deltoids carved out by angels and necks as strong as horses. We are blessed by these men who decide to play differently; who trot slowly about the field on boots made of stars and splendour, and disregard the concept of running, that ignoble endeavor of the peasants.
I do not blame Alex Ferguson for condeming Berbatov to the shadows. It is his job to win and he must achieve that by any means possible – it is simply that Berbatov's decieving guile and grace weren't the means required. When results are all that seem to matter, it is perhaps unsurprising that this type of player is lost to that which won't mesmerise, but will probably score the slammed shot from two yards that the team needs. We will tolerate those simpler strikers because they score and win, yet it is Berbatov, a man of impossible beauty, who provides the simplest pleasure – an appreciation of football as a game to be played, rather than won.
Let him stop time with a sudden contortion. Let him move the millions in their seats. Let him walk. Above anything, let him walk.
This piece first appeared on The Football Ramble – Max Grieve
