Sports Card Blogs

Mails: If Hell exists, Atletico Madrid is its favourite team

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Eight CL thoughts
Here’s a list of my random Champions League thoughts, since no one asked;

1) While I agree that away goals don’t count as two, technically, surely the Liverpool case is an expection? If Liverpool score one away, Bayern will have to score two – so it counts as two to them. In a way. Kind of.

2) I really don’t want Real in another final!

3) I really do want Atletico Madrid in another final – which they hopefully win!

4) As Daniel Storey said, this Lyon team is on the upward curve, but surely the more upward this curve goes, the worse their future will be given the vultures will start circling with their chequebooks? If they aren’t already. Monaco 2017 anyone?

5) Speaking on Monaco 2017, Mbappe is lovely, isn’t he? I’ve always wondered when we’d be watching the next Messi/Ronaldo level footballer come to the game. Who knew we’d barely have to wait? On a side, if PSG win the CL, Mbappe could wait around until he gets the Ballon D’Or, then retire at the grand old age of 20 with a WC medal and CL medal to booth, and go a live a hedonistic lifestlye. Ah, to be young again!

6) Despite what Spurs fans will think, throwing away a 3-0 lead and being eliminated would have to count as a ‘bottle-job’ by definition.

7) That Sane free kick is as good, if not better, than the Ronaldo won vs Portsmouth!

8) Don’t really have an opinion on Roma/Porto tie, just that I hope they both have a nice time!
Néill, Ireland

Political/ref bias
Interesting piece today on political bias affecting referee performances. So are European refs going to have it against British teams in the CL post Brexit ? Asking for a friend…
Sandy (MUFC)

If Hell exists, Atletico is its favourite team
Watching Atletico vs Juve last night, I couldn’t help thinking of the old biblical story of God creating man in his own image. There are thousands of football clubs in the world but I doubt there are any where the identities of club, fans, players and manager are so at one with each other. The stadium is a cauldron, the players are masters of bastardry (as Daniel Storey pointed out), and the manager is like Lucifer himself as he patrols the touchline with his wild hair, decked out in black. If Hell exists, Atletico is its favourite team.
Mick (hope they win it if Liverpool don’t), Stockholm

Picking a fight with picking which fight to fight with VAR….
There were so many fights to pick with last night’s VAR handball decision in the (Super) City game last night that everyone has gone for the wrong one. In my opinion, it was handball but City should have got off on a technicality and that should have been the fight.

Let’s, start with whether it was handball or not. The ref bloke on BT sport was right. Otamendi knew exactly what he was doing. If you really watch it in slow motion you see that he had plenty of time to get his arm out of the way. In fact,he used that time to lean into the ball with his arm away from his body (making himself wider) and then to pull away his arm at the right moment that it still hit him but when his arm was accelerating backwards. We’ve all done it in the playground and the lack of VAR has helped us.

Now the reason why we should have got away with it. The reason it took so long to get a resolution was because the TV review screen at pitchside was broken. The VAR implementation that UEFA have opted for is to keep the subjective decision making on the pitch with the referee. The VAR official will make decisions on clear cut things like on/offside but on subjective decisions he will ask the referee to view it again. As the screen was broken the ref could not look at it. So on the fly they adopted the Premier League VAR rules where the VAR official makes those decisions. The ref should have, therefore, stayed with his (wrong) ruling of no handball. That’s where the fight, VAR should not have been in operation and the systems to support it were not available and how crap are UEFA that they couldn’t get it to work.
Phil Wood (Fighting the good fight against, Fighting the wrong Fight.)

VAR and subjectivity
I was fully expecting a large amount of VAR related anger in this morning’s mailbox and I wasn’t disappointed.  It’s funny that it seems to rear its head in certain games, and that when it does it’s often multiple incidents in the same match.  Which does make me wonder if the referees themselves are somewhat culpable in their misuse of the technology, or just simply the way in which they manage the review situations.

However, notwithstanding that, I think we’ve all seen enough of VAR to appreciate its limitations.  Of course there are good arguments in favour of it as well, but it’s obvious (surely to everyone?) that it does not work as well as it does in other sports and the reason is very simple: IF IT’S A SUBJECTIVE CALL, THEN TECHNOLOGY CANNOT PROVIDE THE SOLUTION!  If the whole of football can all just agree on this one basic fact, then we can just focus on making better and smarter use of the technology available to deal with the objective calls.

Ball over the goal line?  Easy.  Player is offside?  Should be able to get that right 99.9% of the time.  Even ball in/out of play could be VAR-ed if the decision can be virtually instantaneous.  But anything that requires any kind of judgement or interpretation, be that of what the pictures are showing or the laws of the game themselves, seems utterly pointless to me.
Rob, London

A bit tired at the moment to write a long mail so my pro-VAR argument would be this: I rather the referee have a chance to review decisions than not.

A lot can be debated about whether is or is not but way too many times in my life I’ve seen blatantly wrong decision no way to overturn them. Yes, many parts of football is subjective but it is precisely because of that reason that I want the judge to have a chance to get a second look especially for big decisions like handball in a penalty area as well as goals.

For me, that is the part that makes VAR decisions more valid because I know the referee can take a second look and that all decisions can be seen by SOME officials. While referees and linesman are very good at their jobs, we know that there are times where they have had to guess due to the speed of the modern game. With VAR, the main referee at the end of the day still have the final say if the replays doesn’t convince him or her. A popular line that’s usually said during 50-50 is that the “referee is entitled to his opinion” and yes he can form a better opinion if he gets to rewatch it again.

Referees already have the power to stop the game and consult their linesman on what they saw. There was a Liverpool and Spurs game last year where they did precisely this and awarded a penalty to Kane twice. The difference is with VAR is that referees now have better tools to actually judge the incident than consulting another human who watched it at lightning speed.

VAR is here and I couldn’t be happier. Even if I disagree with a certain referee’s opinion (because again some rules are subjective), knowing that the referee saw a replay of it goes a lot towards making me accept the decision knowing that he got a good look. I know many don’t feel the same way but for me its made football way more fun and exciting to watch despite there being more disruptions. Long may it continue.
Yaru, Malaysia

As someone who welcomed the introduction of VAR and eagerly awaited games being won by the better team rather than the one that got a dodgy decision, last nights debacle in both games has completely turned me around.  Surely Morata’s and Sterling’s contact with the defenders were the same, yet they produced two different decisions, worse still, one was reviewed and the other wasn’t!

And even worse than this was Peter Waltons’ analysis, he demonstrated everything that is wrong with referees and their high and mighty attitude.

Firstly, Citys handball, “he has made a fist to make his arm stronger” was the utter tosh spouted by Sir Mr Walton Sir (as this is no doubt how he expected players to address him).

Then comes his masterpiece, he acknowledges that the Schalke player is offside as the free kick is taken but then says…..wait for it……”he hasn’t committed an offence, therefore he’s not offside”……WTF WTF WTF!!!!!  I don’t need to go on about how the player is trying to get to the ball and is therefore “active” (oops, I just have) or have they changed the rules again?

I’m not a City fan, so this mail is not written from a “we were shafted” perspective, but the inconsistency demonstrated is exactly the thing VAR was hoped to rectify, all it’s done is made things worse.

Lets keep it, but only for factual and measurable reference, e.g. was it inside/outside the box.
Howard (apologies to the grammar police if misuse of apostrophes) Jones

Matchday experiences
I was hoping to start a bit of a thread about what each matchday is like for fans watching on television to hopefully get a sense of what makes football so much fun in different parts of the world.  My upcoming Sunday is going to involve getting up at half five in the morning to get to the Abbey Tavern in time to get a table.  They’ll all be full up and it’ll be standing room only by half six 30 minutes before kickoff between Liverpool and Manchester United.  The former supporters will outnumber the latter by two or three to one given it’s a Liverpool bar in the heart of Denver at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

The forecast calls for snow, which makes me nervous that the skeleton staff required to serve drinks (coffee at first, but then Guinness, which is the only beer a lot of us can put down before the sun is up) for the first half might be running a bit late, which will mean standing outside in the dark waiting for shadows inside to start moving towards the door to unlock it for the 20 or 30 of us shivering outside to come in to the warmth of the pub.

The build-up will happen with everyone happily introducing themselves with Liverpool fans paying compliments to United’s improving form with Ole’s offensive tactics and United fans saying Liverpool should be proud keeping pace with this City side, but never able to say they’d prefer Liverpool to win it.  A few songs will be sung, but thankfully none touching on Munich or Hillsborough because that sort of thing just feels a bit strange with dawn barely on the horizon outside.

The game will pass by with noise building with each attack.  Goals are cheered with lines of tequila shots on the bar for anyone brave enough to take one.  The cooks come around eight to get the food orders at halftime, which is a good thing as the beer orders pick up steam.  Cigarettes and weed (Colorado is magnificently strange) are smoked outside as cars driving by stare wondering what could unite all these too-tight red shirts at this ungodly weekend hour.

The game eventually ends before nine as the fans file out happy to have their sports out of the way for the day so they can go up skiing or maybe for a hike with family and friends and dogs.  But first a quick sleep until the Guinness wears off.  Hope both sets of fans enjoy the match and have a nice weekend with new friends and grand adventures.
Niall, Denver