I would be interested to see the Premiership's plan to play a number of games in foreign cities come to fruition for at least one season. I would like to see the whole circus (players, managers, media, sponsors and wealthy supporters) pack its tents and head off to Tokyo or New York. (Obviously it won't be Nairobi or Mumbai, because nobody's interested in taking the game to those supporters.)I would like to see it because I think they would find that they'd left the key element of their world-beating "product" at home. They'd set sail without the thing that makes the Premiership madhouse work as a spectacle and that's the crowd: the howling, hydra-headed hate machine that is Anfield or White Hart Lane or Upton Park in full cry as twenty-two hired hands scrap over the bones of ancient emnities. That's what makes the Premiership. It isn't Nike or Cristiano Ronaldo. It's the fact that the loathing is in our blood, as is the loving.
Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan on Saturday's result:
ReplyDelete"We played very well early on for a team that has not been having results go for us and we built the platform for a victory by taking the lead.
Sadly the second half came and I'm baffled by what happened because it was the same players but we never really got going after the break.
Their first goal was a hammer blow and our goalkeeper got injured at the same time and when they got their second we had a mountain to climb."
I should think the last thing Kev and others under the cosh need is yet another moneymaking distraction. 'Sadly the second half came' (as it always will) indeed. Intercontinental Nervous Breakdown anyone?
"It's the fact that the loathing is in our blood"
ReplyDeleteExactly, which is why I didn't want either team to win yesterday's Derby v Spurs encounter. Still, Spurs do have Jenas and Dawson I suppose...