2012: Six Countries, Six Stadiums

This year I managed to get out the house a bit more than usual, taking me to some new places, and also back to some more familiar ones. It's sad but true - the easiest way for me to remember where I was, and when, is to mentally archive the football games I went to.

Nakivubo Stadium, Kampala - the
 crowded section (pic: SAHIP)

1. Saturday May 5. Nakivubo Stadium, Kampala, Uganda. Competition: Bell's Ugandan Super League. SC Villa v KCC. Entrance: 5000 Ugandan schillings ($2).
I enter the former national stadium at 2.45pm for a 3pm kick-off, because I'm always prompt, and you never know if there will be a rush on tickets. No worries, I'm the first person there in the 15,000 capacity ground, and the only way I know there's a game on is because there are two teams warming up. The match kicks off at 3.15, and a few hundred profoundly unenthusiastic fans drift in, reacting only to goals with begrudging applause, but never cheering good play. By half-time, a few lads have finally affixed the sponsors' boards to the perimeter fence. At the final whistle no one moves, maybe because there's lots of space in here compared with the cramped, chaotic city beyond, or maybe because someone's setting up a sound system next to a barrel of cold beers. Final score: SC Villa 2 KCC 0.

Hand-crafted seating at the national
 stadium in Bujumbura (pic: SAHIP)

2. Wednesday May 9. National Stadium, Bujumbura, Burundi. Competition: A cup game between two unidentified teams. Entrance: free.
After a meeting in one of the government buildings close by, I walk across the road late in the afternoon to take a look at the ground. The gate's half open, so I peer in, expecting to be shouted away by a groundsman, as would happen in England. Except there's a game on, with about 150 people watching. It's a neat ground, surrounded on three sides by mosaic stone seating, with a less alluring covered main stand. I see the last 20 minutes of the match, then it goes to penalty kicks, at which point, strangely, half the spectators leave. One goalkeeper aggressively taunts an opponent who's missed his kick. Bad karma, dude - the goalkeeper's team goes on to lose, prompting wild celebrations among the victors, while the remaining spectators shuffle out wordlessly. One man hits the fence in frustration, the only visible display of fan emotion. Final score: someone won on PKs.

Bukavu's Stade de la Concorde: Built in Mobutu's
 name, on this day host to honky house-dads (pic: SAHIP)

3. Saturday May 19. Stade de la Concorde, Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. Competition: Great Lakes Peace Cup, DRC quarter-final, second leg. Espoir du Grand Lac v Umoja. Entrance: free.

In the sparse but spacious former President Mobutu Stadium, two teams of former combatants and community members battle it out on a testing surface. As by far the whitest person there, I am invited to take the ceremonial kick-off, for the first and possibly the last time in my life, praying that the anti-diarrhea tablets I had to take earlier that morning will remain effective. A clutch of small boys spend the entire game staring at me while I make small talk in broken French with the South Kivu Minister for Sport and Leisure in the VIP section (six plastic chairs on the concrete terrace cordoned off from the masses). "Tricky surface," I venture. "They're used to it," he replies tersely. Final score: Espoir du Grand Lac 1 Umoja 0 (3-1 on aggregate). More pictures here.

Go on, go on, ask me. Ask me how I got on.

The ball was placed therein, 5 times

There are days when you have some news, but no one to tell it to. It may not be very important news, but you want to get it off your chest. I have this particular urge to share after I’ve played football, and my team has won, and I’ve scored.

The other night I played in an eight-a-side game in an outdoor league. It was one of those dark, sodden, autumnal nights when you really question your own sanity for making a 40-mile round trip just to play football for an hour. You feel like it’s going to be one of those games when you get shellacked, and then think it’s time to give up football for good. And then, the goals come. Your team wins 6-2, and you score five. You leave the field aglow, and climb into your car in an unstoppable mood. Now all you need is someone who wants to know how you got on. If you get stopped for speeding, you won't mind - you'll just tell the cop all about the game until he lets you off.

“We won 6-2 and I scored five goals.” That’s the sentence in your head that you want to

The Football Field - Where Parental Screams Come True

Swearing at football on the television from the safety of your armchair is all very well, but there’s no substitute for absorbing a little abuse yourself and getting some cardiovascular exercise at the same time. To this end, I recently took the necessary exam, and am now qualified to blow loudly on a whistle and give a stiff-arm salute without fear that my German in-laws will think I’m taking the piss out of their history.

A few dozen games giving vent to my latent authoritarian streak have confirmed what I always suspected about youth football - there’s nothing wrong with the players, just the parents who watch it and the coaches who coach it. When I played as a kid, you rarely heard from either. The parents were either absent, or quietly observant, and you learnt to tune out the odd hysterical mother until her mortified son banned her from watching. The coaches told you their thoughts before the game, at half-time, and afterwards. This was your 90 minutes of escape from the class room and parental oversight, when you had the chance to run free and express yourself with limited instruction.

Nowadays, children’s lives have to be micro-managed, while many parents and coaches think they absolutely need to be centre stage, all the time (although needless to say, it's the loud ones you notice most). To rescue football from this intrusive plague, I plan to develop a range of referee’s products that will aid in cleansing the game of its brash, loudmouthed egos who think they have the right to control every move of a child’s recreational time. They are as follows:

For the linesman on the spectators’ side of the field
*A luminous shirt that will, when pointless parental shrieking reaches a certain volume, automatically flash the words SHUT IT NOW! And (prevailing winds permitting) trigger an emission from a capsule blasting out a noxious gas that will force them at least 20 yards back from the touchline. The display will alternate with questions like Have You Ever Read The Laws Of The Game? or You’ve Never Actually Kicked A Ball In Your Life, Have You? Or, Do You Really Think Repeatedly Shouting KICK IT HARD Qualifies As Useful Advice? (I’d add some qualifying labels at the end of these too, if this weren’t a family blog.)

*A Retractable, Idiot-seeking Flag that will fly sharply backwards out of the linesman’s hand and poke in the eye anyone who claims to have spotted an offside while standing 40 yards behind the play. Or who insists on telling you that the throw-in should have gone the other way. Or who yells for a foul just because their kid fell over or got tackled. The flag will zip back into your hand quicker than the human eye can see (I have Spiderman’s people working on this), thus saving you from litigation, while disabling the irritant for the remainder of the game.

 
For the referee:
The pocket-sized Bench Blaster will despatch any raging coach who encroaches on to the field of play back to his or her bench with a single zap. The Deluxe Model will coat them in an adhesive substance to prevent them from standing up or opening their mouths for the remainder of the game. And the Platinum Model will implant a microchip in their brains containing a copy of the FIFA Laws of the Game. Ad slogan: The Bench Blaster - Because Sometimes A Red Card Just Isn’t Enough.

There have been many advances in the science and philosophy of youth coaching over the past two decades that I would certainly have benefited from as a teenager, but I definitely missed the memo that said shouting at kids will make them better footballers. When you shake their hands at the end of the game, you always like to tell them that they played well. But you also feel like adding, “Could I just apologise for my generation too?”

Actually, The LA Times Called My Writing "immaculate"...

An interesting footnote to Thursday's Beckham piece. In one of seven (yes, s-e-v-e-n) pieces that the LA Times printed yesterday about the Beckham transfer to the Galaxy, Chuck Culpepper wrote in his column 'With Beckham, what you see is what you get', the following:

The Guardian's Ian Plenderleith wrote immaculately, "Due to his limitations as a player, Beckham may actually fit in very well in U.S. soccer."

Which is an accurate quote, but taken completely out of context in order to support the writer's angle that British commentators were largely cynical about Beckham's move (they were, but I wasn't one of them). Still, why let context get in the way of a shoddy article when you've a deadline to meet.

The full quote was: "Due to his limitations as a player, Beckham may actually fit in very well in US soccer. While his name reaps sponsorship money, merchandise sales and enhanced media attention, we all know that on the field he's brilliant at what he does - but that that includes little beyond crosses, free-kicks and probing long passes. This will be ideal: he won't dominate games, but he'll produce the kind of highlight moments that can be easily packaged to a sporting audience that loves short, sharp thrills."

Mind, if he'd printed all that, I might have demanded a cut of his fee. And at least I can play the counter-distortion game, should I ever have a book published again, by having on the jacket: "Plenderleith writes immaculately" (LA Times). Sure, it would involve tinkering with the word 'wrote', but clearly the LA Times doesn't mind about technicalities on matters of mere accuracy.

'LA Story Is Just Right For Beckham'

That's the headline on my Guardian blog piece today, although I would have modified it to 'could be just right for Beckham'. As I write, the 'comments' section is filling with undoubted experts telling me how wrong I am.

Major League Soccer is damned whatever it does. For years it was told to relax its rules so that it could sign marquee players, and that by failing to sign big names like Beckham, it had no ambition or marketing nous. When it changed the salary cap rules, as it did last November, to sign him, people immediately protest that MLS is wasting its money, while people who've never seen a US league game in their lives condemn Beckham as a mediocre player (he's not, in many respects) for a mediocre league (which may be true right now, but only in the sense that every league in the world has its great share of mediocre games thanks to negative tactical mores).

My view is that it's a potentially healthy signing for a still developing league. To damn the league, and Beckham, in a fit of internet tub-thumping is easy enough, but as short-sighted as saying that Americans will never 'get' soccer. Millions already do, and many more will in the years to come. Some, even, thanks to Beckham.

Is Freddy Adu Any Good?

As he heads off to Manchester plc this weekend for two weeks of training, I offer this appraisal of his first three years as a professional at DC United.

Soccer In The US Is Here To Stay

Today saw my debut on The Guardian website blog with this overview of the state of professional soccer in the US. Last time I looked there were 83 comments in response, which is 80 more in the course of a few hours than this blog has attracted in the past three years, and about 70 more than respond to my MatchNight columns on a good day (except the time I called Leeds United 'Dirty Leeds' and half of West Yorkshire took its time to send me some charming e-mails).

Not that I expect anyone to read this blog, because there's not much in it but links to my columns, and I mainly use it for myself as a reference point to find articles I wrote a year or two back. I'm unsure the world wants to read about what I had for breakfast (though if it is, for the record today I had Special K with bananas, black grapes, strawberries and plain yoghurt, washed down with freshly brewed coffee. You still with me?). And I rarely read anyone else's, because I'm not interested in what they had for breakfast either.

Still, it's all a bit terrifying, and simultaneously invigorating, to be catapulted into the medium of a national daily newspaper that people actually read. Later today I might even pluck up the courage to read the 83 comments.