So farewell Fab. And hello again Trap.
Pardon me while I pick this name up off the ground but I once found myself standing next to Pele while the great man marvelled at a great Irish goal.
“If Liverpool fans verbally attack Patrice Evra on Saturday, does that make them racists?”
MARIO BALOTELLI gave a whole new meaning to the term impact sub at Etihad Stadium on Sunday.
DAN MURRAY, one of Cork City’s favourite sons, has rejoined the club.
IT might be a different sort or comeback tothe ones which have grabbed headlines for Thierry Henry, Paul Scholes or even Robbie Keane but the re-emergence of Stephen Ireland as a quality footballer rather than a gossip item is almost as surprising.
WHEN seventies giants The Eagles broke up amidst mutual threats of “ass-kicking” in 1980, Don Henley announced through gritted teeth the band would only ever play together again “when hell freezes over”.
IT has been more of a restive than a festive season in the Premier League and, unless you’re a devotee of one of the big four or five, all the more welcome for that.
THE news that Robbie Keane is on the verge of confirming a return to the Premier League with Aston Villa comes as almost as big a surprise as his decision last August to relocate to the other side of the Atlantic.
HOW odd that, despite all those times it has been in close proximity to the bacon-slicer, Mick McCarthy’s posterior appears not to have an aperture in it.
ARSENE WENGER was well-wrapped up against the cold at the Etihad Stadium but then it was really back in the balmy late summer that he would have been shivering.
WHEN it comes to clinching an argument in football, the traditional line of last resort is “show us yer medals”.
GIOVANNI TRAPATTONI had said before the game an away goal would be 50% of the task in Tallinn.
COMING up to two years on from the hand that rocked the world, and there’s still no getting away from it.
THEY talk about the glory of the cup but, for Shelbourne, today is as much about redemption as it is about romance.
THERE were plenty of household names, old friends, familiar faces and League of Ireland veterans in the Aviva Stadium the other night for the launch of a new book about the FAI Cup.
WRITING up an Ian Turner interview this week ahead of today’s EA Sports Cup final between Cork City and Derry, I had a rare moment of inspiration.
A FEW of us spent a most enjoyable and rewarding hour in the company of three Irish football heroes of yesteryear on Monday morning as Tony Cascarino, Frank Stapleton and Paul McGrath mixed some astute analysis of the Premier League and Trapattoni’s Ireland with a few entertaining detours down memory lane.
QUALIFICATION for the group stages of the Europa League? One million euro. The emotional reward for the players, staff and supporters of Shamrock Rovers? Priceless.
THE best of times and the worst of times — in the League of Ireland it sometimes seems as if you simply can’t have one without the other.
GREETINGS from Skopje, capital of Macedonia or the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to give it its full title.
SO how do you solve a problem like Messi? Happily for the rest of us, that’s one for Alex Ferguson to puzzle out tonight. Banning him is out of the question, I suppose, so that removes one of the manager’s favourite tactics for handling tricky customers.
THE Queen might not have made it to the Aviva Stadium — or even to dear old Dalyer to doff her crown to the Jodi Stand — but Irish football had its own reasons to feel the hand of history on its shoulder this week.
THE POOR old FA Cup has been subjected to more battering in recent years than the Spanish version which Sergio Ramos let fall under the wheels of the Real Madrid bus.
JOHN LENNON had Jose Mourinho bang to rights years ago: “We’re playing those mind games together/Pushing barriers, planting seeds/Playing the mind guerrilla/Chanting the mantra peace on earth/We all been playing mind games forever”.
SO what are we to make of the upholding of that two-match ban on W***e R****y then? Right, wrong or, as leading human rights activist Rio Ferdinand would have it, the workings of a lynch mob?
RIDDLE me this? The reports of one match speak of a systems failure, of the pain endured and of the nerves of the supporters once more being put through the shredder.
I’M sure Giovanni Trapattoni doesn’t need any additional pressure going into tonight’s European Championship qualifier against Macedonia, but if he does chance to feel the hand of history on his shoulder this morning, it might just be because, on this day 25 years ago, the most celebrated period in Irish football history officially kicked off.
IN A world where we are constantly being told that everything we know is wrong, it has always been a relief to turn to the reliably comforting certainties of 11 against 11 and highest score wins. But no longer.
Hello? Excuse me? Sorry to butt in but …WILL YOU ALL STOP BANGING ON ABOUT BLOODY CRICKET FOR A MINUTE?!
AH, the wonder of Stevie. Just when we thought that Stephen Ireland might finally be ready to zip the lip and let his feet do the talking for a change, up he pops in a French football magazine with his most breathtaking verbal blitzkrieg yet.
IRELAND’S win against Wales on Wednesday, welcome and encouraging though it might have been, was placed in perspective by finding itself sandwiched between two thrilling trips down memory lane on ESPN Classic.
ONE way to put an end to a raging debate is, as they say in football, to put your foot through it.
ACCORDING to reports yesterday, Richard Keys is already in negotiations for a new gig in Qatar.
CESC Fabregas can consider himself very fortunate to have been born on May 4, 1987 rather than, say, May 4, 1967.
SHORTLY after Roy Keane took over as manager of Ipswich Town, he did a press conference in Dublin at which I asked him a question about the stunning example set by his old Nottingham Forest mentor Brian Clough.
AN IRISH website listed its most popular sports blogs of the year the other day and, lo and behold, the top three places were occupied by dispatches from the World Cup in South Africa.
WE know all about coals to Newcastle but how about ‘B’s’ to Braga and duds to Donetsk?
I GOT a call the other day to inform me that the boys who present ‘Football Crazy’ on UCC campus radio are celebrating 50 editions today and, as I relayed my congratulations, it struck me that, in a week which began with Chris Hughton getting the elbow at Newcastle and ended with his replacement Alan Pardew being handed a five-and-a-half year contract, they might well boast the most aptly named show in sports broadcasting.
YOU might have noticed that so grim are things in this country — with what few assets we have left now well and truly frozen — that it actually took the news of a man’s death this week to raise a genuine chuckle.
A FRIEND of mine once told me that he’d briefly toyed with the idea of joining Friends Of the Earth but then decided against it. “You know me,” he explained, “I’d want to be more than just friends.”
FOR the Ireland manager, the draw in the hand is always worth more than the win in the bush — until that is you end up with neither.
THEY’VE always been one of the biggest draws in world football but it’s wins Manchester United need right now.
THE climax of the domestic season is almost upon us and, for once, we find ourselves hoping that the storm precedes the calm.
SO happy birthday Maradona, 50 today. And a belated happy birthday to Pelé, who turned 70 this day last week.
I KNOW we shouldn’t laugh but, a bit like the spectacle of a top banker having his gleaming motor repossessed, the sight of everything that can go wrong going wrong for Man City is a guaranteed source of schadenfreude in these bleak times.
THE economies of these two islands may be going south at a rate of knots but, let’s face it, there’s been only one story in the news this week.
FORGET about Keano in Saipan, Anelka in South Africa or all those rebellious Dutch players down the years who have seen it as their birthright to rail against the perceived idiocy of football’s powers that be. When it comes to both getting mad and getting even in football, none of the above could hold a candle to Bela Guttman.
WHAT’S your favourite piece of Irish football commentary? I’ve always had a soft spot for Jimmy Magee luxuriating in hat-trick hero Don Givens’ demolition of the USSR in 1974: “It’s a beautiful goal. Isn’t it a beautiful goal?”
WHEN Christian Martinez of Andorra ripped a perfect half-volley into the roof of the Irish net on Tuesday night, I believe I may have been heard to exclaim two words, one of which was “me”.
SO farewell then Yerevan, and apologies to sensitive newspaper readers and television viewers at home who might have been exposed to disturbing glimpses of the milky white thighs of the travelling Irish press corps over the past 48 hours.
IF THE prospect of a long, dark winter ahead fills you with gloom, there might be some consolation in reflecting that, while it seems like only yesterday Ireland’s 2010 World Cup campaign came to a shuddering halt, by this time next week the first match of the 2012 European Championship qualifiers will already be part of history. A game for all seasons, football’s big wheel is ever in spin.
EVEN the hype which always attends the early days of the new season can’t mask the fact that English football is going through another of its periodic bouts of soul-searching and self-flagellation.
IS there a more accomplished juggler of carrot and stick in football management than Alex Ferguson?
HERE’S an authentic text exchange which took place between myself and a fellow football fanatic last Monday morning.
HE might be just 12 but, already, Charlie Purcell is following in the footsteps of some famous football names.
WELL it curdled and curdled but just when we thought the final of the 2010 World Cup would leave us with a sour taste in the mouth, the cream eventually, and mercifully, rose to the top.
AND SO, rubber aprons donned and meat cleavers sharpened, English football’s by-now traditional World Cup post-mortem goes about its grisly business, not that, after what we witnessed from her finest sons in South Africa, one can truthfully say there was a whole lot of mortem to be post about.
SO, on the eve of renewed battle with the old foe, the big question for England: is the glass half-full or half-empty?
We’re all a bit more South African this morning than we were this time yesterday. A bit more ecstatic, a bit more relieved and, after a night’s sober reflection, just happy to live to fight another day.
TO begin with, a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to the 2010 World Cup, a life-saver for those who will not be able to devote their every waking hour to football for the next four weeks.
WITH just six days to go to Johannesburg and almost eight months since Paris, it is time to look on the bright side, time to move beyond the recognised five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and that “low-down, no-good, cheating b*****d Henry” – time to acknowledge that defeat in the play-off was the best thing that could have happened to us, that nothing good could have come of our boys going big game hunting in South Africa and that, all things considered, the nation has been spared a World Cup of pain.
BUMPED into a man in my travels this week who sounds like he might have a hot prospect on his hands.
WHAT a week of snarling, no-holds barred, edge of the seat, competitive drama – and, no, I’m not talking about the Irish senior side taking on Paul Doolin’s Irish U23s.
NOSTALGIA hanging heavy in the air above Dublin 4 just now, the other day I dug out my old copy of Simon Inglis’ definitive ‘The Football Grounds of Europe’ to see what the expert had to say about Lansdowne Road back when his sumptuous tome was first published in early 1990.
THE maths might argue that it could still end up as the most nail-biting finale in years, but football logic strongly suggests that this year’s Premier League will end with more of a whimper than a bang. The bookies also say the same thing and, let’s face it, they know more about maths than Stephen Hawking.
NOTWITHSTANDING the one about the risen Lord, it is perhaps the greatest story ever told.
IT WAS one of those moments where you hold your breath and fear for the life of a colleague.
I expect this one to be settled by the narrowest of margins, what Giovanni Trapattoni – no stranger himself to footballing sub-atomic particles – likes to call the “leetle details”
OVER the past couple of days, it’s been hard to avoid those doleful images of Tony Mowbray, head in hands while the rain sheeted down, barely able to watch as mighty St Mirren ran riot against his battered Bhoys.
ON THE face of it, to lose by the odd goal in three at the home of the champions is no disgrace but, for Liverpool, yesterday’s defeat at Old Trafford can’t be interpreted as anything other than another nail in the coffin of the Rafa Benitez era.
IF YOU don’t want to know the results of the Champions’ League quarter-finals, look away now...
SO what was your gut reaction when you heard the England team hotel had been bugged last week?
SO in London on Tuesday, it’s the boys in green versus the boys who will be going green.
AS Fergie might have said, and as Arsenal as well as Ireland now know to their cost: ye cannae win anything with Hanssons.
IT’S reassuring to see that, as usual, England’s preparations for a big tournament are going swimmingly.
IN Dublin Castle on Thursday for the launch of the city as the European Capital Of Sport for 2010, Marco Tardelli was invited to turn his thoughts to another European capital, Warsaw, and the draw for the Euro Championships which will take place there tomorrow.
AS ONLY Sky can, they blasted yesterday’s big match coverage to, well, the sky.
WITH Tom Coughlan being edged towards the door and a new consortium ready to enter, Cork City’s future once again hangs in the balance.
HERE’S one for your next pub quiz: what do Archbishop Tutu, The Edge, Salman Rushdie, Al Pacino, Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Alex Ferguson have in common?
WHO’D be a gaffer? Well, you, me and millions of others is probably the correct answer. Whether we’re in the press box, on the terrace, in the pub or even all alone in front of the domestic box, we’re never slow to express an opinion on the actions of the man in the dug-out, especially when he seems to have got it all wrong.
PELE’S visit to Ireland this week reminded me that I’ve been lucky enough to meet with the five footballers I consider to be the greatest of all time: George Best, Maradona, Johann Cruyff, Zinedine Zidane and ‘El Rei’ himself.
FORGIVE us our trespasses, not to mention our sloppy passes, but with those other Blues fetching up these shores at the end of the week, it was hard not to view yesterday’s grand slammer at Stamford Bridge against the backdrop of altogether more high-stakes games to come in Dublin and Paris.
ON the day of the draw for the World Cup play-off, a few of us found ourselves in the company of a brace of Irish football heroes of yesteryear.
THE biggest surprise about Eamon Dunphy’s hatchet job on Ireland’s performance against Italy last week was that anyone was surprised.
FOR A guy who isn’t even getting his game, you’d have to say that Andy Reid is playing a blinder for Ireland.
NOT for the first time where Rafael Benitez and Carlo Ancelotti are concerned, it’s the Liverpool manager who finds himself three down – except it’s not even half-time yet.
SINCE we’re so desperately short of reality television, here’s an idea for a new one – Gaffer Swap, which is just what you think it might be, except with the added, exciting twist that the managers involved don’t exchange jobs, they exchange personalities.
AND so the last Sunday in September is almost upon us and there’s just a nerve-tingling 24 hours to go to one of the biggest events in the sporting calendar, as two ancient rivals and neighbours prepare to renew battle in the presence of a massive crowd and with millions more tuning in on television all over the world.
IN the great tradition of ‘Private Eye’ – translation: in an act of shameless ripping off – we begin today with an abject apology.
WITH thanks to the late great Ian Dury, it is my rare pleasure today to present reasons to be cheerful (part three).
CORK CITY have overcome some big name opponents in the course of their 25 year history but none has proved quite as formidable as the tax man.
NOW all of 85 years of age, Tomás Mac Giolla made a rare public appearance in the pages of Hot Press this week, reflecting on a colourful and controversial life in Republican and left-wing politics in Ireland.
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