You’ll Never Win Anything With Kids

Every day, a small group of people share their televisions subscriptions to sporting events with others. They are, undoubtedly, breaking laws, and they are, arguably, disrupting the system that funds modern football. However, they supply football fans, who probably pour money into the football machine through other areas, with the opportunity to watch games that they would otherwise miss. They are those who stream, or more concisely, the streamers.

Beyond the fact that these streamers supply football to those who would not ordinarily be able to see it, they also provide an online service, one that, in the UK at least, is not provided by the Premier League itself. Fans can view multiple games from their computer, and further, they can learn Chinese

The downside is the lack of reliability, streams die of natural causes, and they also die at the hand of the copyright owners. The world’s top leagues rely on the sale of television rights, however, no football fan relies on streams alone, they don’t replace the experience that ESPN or Sky Sports can provide, and every fan who watches them is aware of this, and more than likely, already pays for these services.

Returning to the streams, they are inconsistent, and often, fans find themselves chasing these mini-gold-pots through various portals across the internet. Occasionally, for big games, fans will have several streams in reserve, just in case their current steed falls. The chase, alongside the low quality, adds to the character of the football stream. Arguably.

So, a thank you to those who stream — you risk the wrath of the world’s leagues and their televisual revenue sources, and you provide football fans with more options, as long as they can find an internet connection.

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A quick review of the past week in the Premier League:

Biggest Winners:

Spurs. Biggest winners, both with regard to their performance, and the fact that, well, they were the biggest winners.

Biggest Losers:

Wigan. See above.

Best Player:

Jermaine Defoe, see above. No, I will write a bit more — the Spurs striker joined Alan Shearer and Andy Cole as the only Premier League striker to score five goals in a game, and (despite the cliche) he could’ve had more.

Best Goal:

Darren Fletcher’s screamer against Everton has to win it.

Question of the Weekend:

Have Hull turned things around with four points from their two games in the past week?

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Shay Given, France v Republic of Ireland, 19/11/2009

Says it all — crushed.

Discuss your thoughts on tonight’s events below.

You can view more of Ryu’s photography on his Flickr here.

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Diego Maradona, Spain v Argentina, 14/11/2009

Argentina lost 2-1 to Spain, and Maradona’s blurry career in management was added to by a two month ban for his mad, verbal attack on journalists last month.

You can view more of Ryu’s photography on his Flickr here.

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Pro Evolution 6 was arguably the last great edition of Pro Evo, every subsequent edition has decreased in quality whilst Konami’s competitors, EA Sports, have gradually caught up and arguably completely taken over. However, as a console gamer who has only just moved to a new generation console, Pro Evo 6 was, for a long time, the best game available to me when it came to football, and I played it religiously, and will continue to do so until I buy FIFA 10 for my Xbox 360.

So, if PES 6 was the last great bastion of Konami’s football legacy, what made it great for me:

1. A destructive German striker by the name of Schwarz

The Master League became an obsession for me during my second year of university, and my team, Italia 90, were massively successful, mostly behind this ambidextrous German who I signed as a 17 year old. Strength, height and pure shooting ability made him unstoppable, and when I enforced an under-23s only policy he was the sole World Class player in the team and scored buckets. I used to talk about him as if he was real.

2. The way in which it was easy to score goals that are impossible in real life, but difficult to score bog standard goals

Want to beat five players, run into the box, pass it ten times, then score a goal — easy. Want to score from a flick on header and easy finish — very difficult. Hence, seemingly amazing goals draw quiet celebrations, whilst goals from long balls result in living room Klinsmanns.

3. Long balls

Learning to use long balls, lobbed through balls and deep crosses effectively makes the PES 6 experience much more entertaining, especially if you’ve got Jan Koller up front causing mayhem.

4. Creating stupidly themed fantasy teams and pitting them against each other

This was something sometime YNWAWK contributor Tom Oiller and I perfected, it started with us using a draft system to pick ultimate teams, and ended with us creating two teams; my team had to be under 175cm tall, and Tom’s had to be over 185cm. He had an advantage in height, but nobody was any good at crossing the ball, I could dribble past much of his team, but all too often, his players could muscle me off the ball. Oh, and the only keeper I could find under 175cm was an unknown Columbian with a goalkeeper rating of 76 or something.

5. Winning the World Cup with Peru

My last great achievement on PES 6, I ended up in a tri-way bromance with Nobby Solano and Claudio Pizzaro after that famous victory. Beat Brazil in the semis and Italy in the final.

I haven’t bought either FIFA 10 or PES 2010 yet. FIFA generally seems to win out in reviews, and I think I’m going to head that way. However, apparently it’s a lot closer than it has been in the last couple of years — should probably buy both.

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Toulouse v Rennes, 08/11/2009

Toulouse won 3-2 at the Stadium Municipal. They currently lie 9th in Ligue 1, Rennes are two points behind in 12th.

You can view more of Ryu’s photography on his Flickr here.

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The influence of refereeing decisions, is for me, at times, not as large as it is perceived to be. There are of course occasions, when decisions are not only clear mistakes but also have a real effect upon the game, for example, when penalties are wrongly given, or when a player is wrongly sent off. In contrast, there are refereeing decisions that are mistakes, but are all too often perceived to be the sole reason for a goal, even though they happened in a previous phase of play.

By this I mean, wrongly attributed free kicks that indirectly lead to goals, or the awarding of a corner in place of a goal kick. The thinking, of course, is: ‘Well, if that corner/free kick hadn’t been given then we wouldn’t have conceded that goal.’ But, what is often ignored in these situations is the events that take place between the bad decision and the goal.

On Sunday, Chelsea’s goal, and the build up to it, was the perfect example of this. Chelsea won a contentious free kick, with Fletcher arguably winning the ball fairly from Ashley Cole. Lampard took the free kick and John Terry headed it in without much trouble. Here’s the problem, United didn’t defend well enough to prevent the goal, the free kick would usually be defended with ease, and as much as the potentially incorrect decision for the free kick didn’t help matters, United still had the chance to defend their goal.

This example is made further apt by the other controversies surrounding the goal, the potential offside and the foul on Wes Brown. These two events, if you believe them to be officiating mistakes, would’ve meant that no goal had been scored, and therefore are more worthy of post-match focus.

In short, I prefer to focus on the immediate phase of play only, and I think it would be better for football if managers and players did the same.

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If you’ve got a spare footballing moment on the internet, I highly recommend loading up Wikipedia and tapping in ‘Tomas Brolin’. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be presented with one of the most thorough football entries on Wikipedia. Even if you don’t want to read it all, just scroll down and ingest the pure volume of text on the page.

The entry takes you from Brolin’s beginnings as ‘The Golden Boy of Swedish Football’ to his latter years and his ‘End of Elland Road Nightmare’. As well as extended amounts writing on the player, there are also some beefy quotes for the football fanatic/Brolin fan to enjoy, the longest of which clocks in at 330 words.

Brolin was one of the great wasted talents of the nineties, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic is probably the only Swede in recent memory who can match Tomas in the enigma stakes. And the article explains this by describing how Brolin managed to involve himself with an array of footballing legends/oddballs, from losing his place to Asprilla at Parma, to clashing with George Graham, and finally, acting as an interpreter for Attilio Lombardo at Crystal Palace after Mark Goldberg got rid of Steve Coppell as manager, Tomas was always involved with something, just not always a healthy diet.

This Wikipedia article is one of the true football gems on the internet, read it here and celebrate its odd brilliance.

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Ryan Babel, Lyon v Liverpool, 04/11/2009

Babel scored what was probably his best goal in a Liverpool shirt, but it was the chances missed by Liverpool earlier in the game that cost them. Lisandro equalised late for Lyon, and Benitez’s men looked devoid of any optimism as the final whistle blew.

You can view more of Ryu’s photography on his Flickr here.

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