by Sabre » Sun Aug 20, 2006 5:19 pm
Not directly related to Liverpool, but it's a good footie read about the context in which LFC is moving, the english football.
Barney Ronay
Saturday August 19, 2006
The Guardian
It was clear the Chelsea attack would be dangerous this season, but few can have guessed at the true extent of its scariness. "Teams in the Premiership will be up against the rocket, a steaming attack that cannot get enough . . . The rocket is loaded," Michael Ballack told The Sun this week. Wow! Not just a rocket, but a steaming, loaded one.
That really does sound like a dangerous attack. In the past teams might have been happy with a front line made up of marksmen and sharp-shooters, with perhaps a baby-faced assassin or a wily hitman waiting in the wings. At Chelsea, however, nothing less than missile technology will do.
Is there something sinister going on here? The fear is that the Chelsea attack could soon become simply too dangerous for its own good. Andriy Shevchenko, for example, bears a strong physical resemblance to the main bad guy's henchman in a James Bond film, the one who also has nifty gadgets, is almost as tough as Bond, but ends up being horribly dismembered by a steak and kidney pie packing machine during a fistfight with Roger Moore ("I never did find out what his beef was . . .").
Of course, football has a long history of dangerous extremes: goalkeepers who become so adept at "making themselves big" they end up consigned to a life of lonely, hermit-like gigantism, mournfully pacing an imaginary six yard box in the depths of some remote forest; and defences so solid they eventually fuse together to become fossilised human remains (tiny fragments of Steve Bould are still being found scattered about the fields and motorway verges close to Arsenal's training ground).
On a striking theme, the "telepathic understanding" between Liverpool strikers John Toshack and Kevin Keegan became so intense during the 1970s that both players were driven irretrievably insane. It's a credit to football that the pair have since been cared for within the game, even enjoying lengthy stints in coaching and TV punditry.
The situation at Stamford Bridge is more extreme. Backed by its owner's vast wealth, there is no upper limit to how dangerous the Chelsea attack might become. The Premiership has begun to resemble the cold war arms race, but with only one side buying any weapons. How long before we see Didier Drogba paraded through the capital, flat out and monumental on a 200 metre rocket trailer, flanked by a squadron of goose-stepping teenagers?
What we need is a competing superpower to even things up. Perhaps Aston Villa's Randy Lerner could provide an uneasy counterbalance, stockpiling his own reserves of finishers, poachers and single-minded goal machines. Chelsea buy a fleet of proven European goalscorers: he responds with a platoon of pacy front-men with an enviable international scoring record.
In time we could see calls for unilateral striking disarmament. Summits, treaties and ultimatums will come and go. Sting might write a sad song about it. As a goodwill gesture both sides could eventually agree to the controlled destruction of Salomon Kalou and Milan Baros. And in time we might even live to see the entire Chelsea first team squad buried beneath 500 metres of concrete on a remote Pacific atoll. We can only pray that the world sees sense before it's too late.
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From the outside it's just amazing the amount of money is moving in the english football. And billionaires seem to appear from everywhere to take control of the teams. I know that buying the best players around isn't the way to success (watch Real Madrid) but even then I don't like the current path footie is taking.
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