I remember when I was a kid playing catch in the backyard I’d make an ordinary catch and then practice diving afterwards, to see if I could sell it as an extraordinary catch. It never worked.
Here’s a soccer linesman getting bumped and then going flying approximately 3000 yards. But sure, the hit was that hard.
Across the water in jolly England towne, Newcastle United’s Charles N’Zogbia has announced that he will never play for the team again as long as Joe Kinnear remains the club’s manager. It seems that during a post-match press conference Kinnear couldn’t remember N’Zogbia’s last name, calling him “insomnia” twice and then just referring to him as “Charlie.”
The actual quote from Kinnear goes, “Shay [Given] pulled out with a knee injury as did Insomnia . . . Insomnia . . . er, Charlie…” Pretty innocuous to me…
Being rational and reasonable, N’Zogbia issued a statement saying, “First of all, I wish to apologise to the fans for wanting to leave the club. However, having been insulted by Joe Kinnear, I will never play for him again while he remains Newcastle manager.” Sure, because you’re an adult and a well-paid professional athlete, so you should totally overreact about this.
Kinnear, in response said, “OK, I got a little tongue-tied — but if I had a pound for every time I’ve mispronounced a player’s name down the years, then I’d be a very wealthy man indeed.” Now, I agree with Kinnear, but at the same time, dude doesn’t even know the players on his team’s names? That’s low. Either that, or he’s trying to send a message to the pain-in-the-ass N’Zogbia who has been seeking a transfer, and who opposing fans nicknamed “Insomnia”…
So, I’m not 100% about what is going on in this video, since I don’t speak Italian, but from what I can gather, the yellow team scores a pretty goal, but it gets disallowed, presumably for off-sides. Then, while the yellow team celebrates what they think is a goal, the red team gets the ball rapidly in play and gets downfield and scores their OWN goal. The yellow team then seems to think that is unfair, flipping out on the ref with the original goal scorer receiving a red card. All of this in the span of about 20 seconds.
While I’m sympathetic to the yellow team, maybe running away from the action to celebrate a goal is unnecessary? Maybe listen for a whistle? Maybe PAY ATTENTION IF YOU’RE OFFSIDE? I do however, love that his teammates kinda tackle the goal scorer and throw him to the ground. Anyhoo, enjoy the video, as after the second goal everyone goes crazy and start chasing the ref around the field before he just leaves completely. Ah, soccer.
In a touching moment, 2,000 fans of the Bishop Auckland soccer team stood for a moment of silence in memory of Tommy Farrer, who played for the club from 1945-1953. There was just one small issue with the moment, Farrer isn’t dead!
As the fans stood heads bowed, Tommy Farrer, 86, was at his home, 300 miles away alive and well. The team also placed a tribute to Farrer in the local Bishop Auckland paper as well as mentioning it in their Wednesday program, saying “We have just learned of the death of Two Blues legend Tommy Farrer. Our thoughts go to his family and friends.”
The team only found out that their mistake, after they had paid their respects en masse, when the team president called Farrer’s wife, Gladys, to express his condolences. The very surprised Mrs. Farrer told the club’s president he could pass on his comments to her husband himself, adding: “He will be back in a minute. He’s only popped out to get a paper.”
Tommy Farrer who was a bit bemused by the whole affair had this to say, “I feel sorry for the fans who stood freezing in the stadium. My wife and I go for a half hour walk every day and are still fit and well.”
“I’m very moved that they went to such trouble for me, I played for them a very long time ago.
“Whoever it was who told people I had died obviously contacted the local football ground and they decided to go the whole hog by arranging the silence.
“We are not upset, but we did think it was a bit of a joke at first.”
We saw recently NBA players get distracted and disoriented by a whistle from the crowd, but during a soccer game in England a similar situation was taken in quite a different direction. While contending for the Hertfordshire Senior Centenary Trophy, which I’m sure is VERY prestigious, the game kept stopping and starting due to a whistle that turned out to be coming from the crowd. This time it wasn’t a fan blowing a whistle though, but a parrot!
Before the game began, the bird had already attracted attention when its owner brought it, in a cage, to the game. During the first half it remained quiet and there were no incidents. However, about 10 minutes into the second half, as Hatfield Town and Hertford Heath continued to battle out on the pitch, the bird started mimicking the ref’s whistle, leading to mass confusion on the field. Ultimately, the game was paused and the woman, and bird, were ejected from the stadium.
The man most affected, referee Gary Bailey had this to say after the game:
I’ve never known anything like it in my football career. It was a big game and there were quite a lot of people there. This woman was standing right by the touchline and suddenly unveiled a big cage with this big green parrot in it. I didn’t mind at first. But then every time I blew my whistle the bird made exactly the same sound. The players all stopped so I had to ask her to move the parrot. It was bizarre. The crowd were all laughing. Looking back I should have made far more of it and got out my red card to show to the parrot.
At first, this just looks like another goal, nothing particularly interesting or special about it, that is until I watched it in slow motion. Yoanne Gorcuff makes a couple sick moves before burying this ball in the back of the net. Touché monsieur Gorcuff, touché.
Everything comes in twos today it seems…
Despite being the greatest female soccer player of all time, Mia Hamm wasn’t able to eke out a victory over her husband’s team at the second annual Celebrity Soccer Challenge at the Home Depot Center on Saturday. Nomar Garciaparra, or Mr. Hamm, led his team, Nomar United to an 8-7 victory over FC Hamm, erasing the embarrassing stigma from losing last year 13-12.
“I was just glad to get that game-winning score, because I didn’t want to have to hear it for another year,” said Garciaparra, he followed up immediately by tearing his hamstring while scratching an itch.
The event, which raised nearly $200,000 for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Mia Hamm Foundation as well as encouraging hundreds of fans in attendance to sign up for the National Marrow Donor Registry.
Among the “stars” in attendance were actor C. Thomas Howell (star of the greatest beach volleyball movie, Side out), actors Josh Hutcherson and Mark Consuelos, Donald Faison of ABC’s “Scrubs,” Jimmy Jean-Louis of NBC’s “Heroes,” Angus Jones of CBS’s “Two and a Half Men,” Josh Henderson of the CW’s “90210,” Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and skateboarders Tony Hawk and Ryan Sheckler. A real powerhouse of stars. Faison endeared himself to the crowd when, after accidentally scoring on his own goal earlier in the game, made up for it by scoring a proper goal later in the match.
Fortunately, the crowd was able to see some real soccer players too, including Brandi Chastain, Kristine Lilly, Joy Fawcett, Tisha Hoch and Abby Wambach. Other current and former male soccer players who participated included Cobi Jones, Chris Seitz, Matt Reis, Brian Dunseth and Alexi Lalas.
[MLS.com]
As the winter season drags on for German soccer fans, anxious for the Bundesliga to get back to playing, turned out in droves to see a friendly between Hannover 96 and Osnabruck. In order to excite the fans even more, a corpulent gentleman decided to strip down to excite the crowd for the game.
I love how much the crowd gets into it, although, they seem more excited when he pulls his pants back up. I wonder if it was his fanaticism that got them going or just not seeing a fat man’s balls anymore made the other fans happy. I guess it’s just one of life’s little mysteries.
David Beckham is widely considered an attractive helium-voiced man and a Chinese condom manufacturer is taking advantage of that attraction by slapping his face onto their condom boxes. The condom company is saying that using their condoms will help users score in the bedroom like Beckham does on the field. I guess that means that you’ll prance around and then leave the game early with an ankle injury…
Some Chinese fans of Beckham though are less than pleased with these condoms, “We do not want Beckham to think the Chinese people are disrespecting him. We love him here,” the Sun quoted one as saying.
Beckham’s representatives had only this to say, “It’s not an official brand.”
I look forward to the day when the Slanch unofficial condoms go on the market. Of course, I’m more looking forward to the photo shoot where they drench my chest in oil, but that’s a whole other story…
[Yahoo!]
A Dutch soccer team has taken the extreme step of banning one fan for life from their stadium for taking an illicit photo. The photograph in question (right) features the fan and the former mayor of the Hague, Wim Deetman and of course, the fan’s penis outside his pants.
Fresh off a meeting with the club directors of ADO Den Haag, the unnamed fan met Deetman and asked for a photograph. Ever obliging, Mayor Deetman had no second thoughts, until the photograph was circulated on the internet and he saw it several days later. Deetman has since taken legal action against the fan, although I cannot imagine what kind of recourse he expects, after all, the photo is on the internet forever, also, how has he been truly harmed? It’s not as though the penis is ON Deetman or anything…
ADO Den Haag have found the incident distasteful enough to have banned the fan from their stadium for life. “To us, the incident is now closed,” said chairman Ronald Langenbach.
I for one hope this catches on in the US, I’ll pay big bucks to anyone who can get a similar photo with Joe Girardi, Herm Edwards or Ozzie Guillen.
As hard as it is for me to believe, there are people out in the world who DON’T religiously and obsessively follow Argentine soccer. I feel sorry for those people, they missed this piece of awesome. You see Gaston Aguirre plays for San Lorenzo, and while in the middle of what was eventually a 2-1 game against Tigre he went to take a shot on goal. The only problem was that at the exact moment he struck the ball, a group of pigeons were on the field and in a freak accident, he hit a pigeon, exploding feathers everywhere. The rest of the birds flew away, but the hit bird remained. Several players tried to scoop it up as it tried valiantly to fly away, it soon collapsed to the ground, dead. The referee picked it up and took it off the field so that play could continue. “I kicked the ball and, poor pigeon,” the Gaston Aguirre said. “Now I will be remembered as the pigeon killer.”
You bet he will! Because it is totally and completely awesome. I think we all remember Randy Johnson completely destroying a pigeon with a pitch and how cool that was. I think Aguirre is looking at this the wrong way, he’s a hero! Well, to those who hate pigeons. I know someone who is TERRIFIED of pigeons, and she’d probably celebrate Aguirre, so at least you’ll have ONE fan.
And after the jump for memory sake is that awesome Randy Johnson pitch.
You know how you know you’re a really successful soccer coach? When you can ask the various girls on your college team important soccer questions like:
’Who [her] fuck of the minute is, fuck of the hour is, fuck of the week [is],’ whether there was a ‘guy [she] ha[dn’t] fucked yet,’ and whether she ‘got the guys’ names as they came to the door or whether she just took a number.’” He routinely commented on players’ “nice legs,” “nice racks” and “breasts bouncing.” Among other things, Dorrance also asked one player if she “was going to have sex with the entire lacrosse team,” advised another to “keep [her] knees together; you can’t make it too easy for them,” inquired of another whether she was going to have a “shag fest” with her boyfriend, and told the trainer within earshot of team members that he fantasized about having “an Asian threesome” with his Asian players.
The man in question is University of North Carolina women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance who has led the UNC team to 19 out of 27 possible NCAA championships with a win percentage of .943 (career record 625-28-20) which is staggeringly dominating. He’s been the NCAA coach of the year 7 times and this past March was elected to the National Soccer Hall of Fame (a place that keeps sending back my donations of my teenage shin guards as “not relevant to soccer excellence.”) So, clearly he’s been pretty good, and UNC, a school that loves it’s championships is not in a rush to kill the golden goose.
Unfortunately, that means that he’s been able to get away with this gross inappropriateness to his players. One of the plaintiffs, Melissa Jennings who brought her case of sexual harassment to the courts explained,
“I was 17,” Ms. Jennings recalled, “when he asked me [“Who are you fucking?”] in a dark hotel room, knee-to-knee….” By this time, Ms. Jennings had already reported her discomfort with Dorrance’s behavior to a school official, but the official took no action and instructed her to “work it out” with Dorrance.
That’s great UNC, I mean, why would you want to pay attention to any claims from the students that they are being harassed, by a university employee no less. I can see why they’d want to ignore it. After all, those soccer player girls are always asking for it, haven’t you seen all those games where the girls trap the ball with their chest? I mean, they’re just ASKING for it, why else would they be attracting all that attention to their boobs?
Of course, the courts have thrown the case out, (thanks Bush appointees! (the two judges who wanted it thrown out were each appointed by a Bush)) because clearly these women deserve to have a man whom they should be able to trust, and who has incredible power over them continue to harass them and make them uncomfortable. Seems fair to me. As the only dissenting judge accurately noted, “the power [Dorrance] implicitly wielded over his players to stifle protest against his behavior was ‘tremendous.’ He ‘controlled everything.'”
The majority judges though whitewashed the whole affair, saying Jennings’ claims of harassment were merely “‘sexual banter,’ ‘vulgar language’ and ‘second-hand harassment’ insufficient to amount to unlawful discrimination.” Yeah, because my soccer coach telling me I’m a slut and that I fuck everyone on campus is HILARIOUS banter.
This of course is coming from someone who almost never gets offended by anything. I am offended by this. More than anything I’m offended by the courts, who are by law required to look at the issue from the side of the victim, and still opted to throw this case out of court. Despicable.
Then, because these judges are so concerned with morality and the welfare of others, in the writing of their decisions, the two judges used asterisks when quoting the sexual profanities Jennings detailed. It seems that while these words weren’t offensive for Jennings to hear, they would be MUCH too offensive for the rest of the world to consider, even in just print form. Thanks judges! I’m glad to know you have the true interests of all good Americans in mind.
The Slanch Report has started an online petition asking the MLB Network to air the Dock Ellis no-hitter he threw on June 12, 1970 against the San Diego Padres. The moment was a seminal piece of baseball history and is certainly worthy of being rerun.
Please join us in this cause and sign the petition below so we can all share in this special and fantastic moment of baseball history. THANKS!
SIGN THE PETITION HERE! AND PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND PASS THIS ALONG!
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