Tag: sport

Categories
Other

countdown: 6 giorni, 16 ore, 24 minuti, 41 secondi

You will have noticed my incredible self control in not yet mentioning the World Cup.

But I was just watching a program called ‘World Cup Goals Galore’ featuring, well, lots and lots and lots of goals (top 10 free kicks; top ten goals scored by defenders; top ten goals scored by players with moustaches etc etc). Even just watching a couple of hundred goals one after another, without the context of the game and with a rather laboured jokey commentary, was joyous.

The great moments in football, more than any other sport I watch, are just wonderful. I think perhaps it’s just the extraordinary implausibility of the fact that they’re doing it with their feet. The human foot is not designed for manipulating objects, and even after years spent watching the game, I don’t think I’ve ever quite lost the sense that it just shouldn’t be possible to intentionally kick a ball into the corner of the goal from 25 yards. Even without defenders and a goalie to worry about.

And yet when it all comes off, it looks so easy and natural that you find yourself thinking “if you can dribble past three people, swivel and whip the ball into the corner of the net, why don’t you do it more often?”

Categories
Other

Don’t mention the war

Because the World Cup is in Germany, yesterday the Guardian decided to theme a whole section of the newspaper around the subject of “our peculiar relationship with Deutschland”.

It’s certainly true that the British have a generally negative idea of Germany. But these days I don’t think it’s particularly deeply felt or deeply held. And the common suggestion that it’s all about the war is, I think, only marginally true. All those films with humourless Nazi commandants certainly can’t help, but I don’t think many people really equate modern Germany with the Nazis. The humourless stereotype is almost worse for their image than the actual war.

The real problem for Germany’s image in the UK is that there’s nothing positive to balance against the bad stuff. We have plenty of negative stereotypes of the French, but we like their food, fashion, films, and their actresses. We are often anti-American, but we enjoy their music, movies, and novels. Germany has absolutely nothing that has captured the British imagination. You’d think the blondes, beer and fast cars would give the country a certain laddish appeal, but somehow even they don’t manage to make Germany seem any more fun.

I don’t know. Perhaps I’ve got it completely backwards, and the existing prejudice is the reason the British never find anything to like about Germany.

Categories
Other

Not exactly a thrashing

It seems only fair to point out that when I said, about the cricket match between England and Sri Lanka, that Sri Lanka were “almost certainly going to get thrashed” – I was wrong. After following on, they made one of the great comebacks in the history of Test cricket to be 537-9 at the end of the game.

And, again in translation for my American readers, we played one game for 5 days and it was a draw. That’s cricket.

Categories
Culture Other

The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

The NY Times ‘sent out a short letter to a couple of hundred prominent writers, critics, editors and other literary sages, asking them to please identify “the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years”‘. You can see the list of works that got more than one vote here. I’ve read embarrassingly few of them; one that I have read is the most recent, Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which I read in Spain.

Considering the glowing reviews I read, I thought it was completely ordinary. The historical aspect of it – the speculation of how the US could have wandered into fascism under a Lindbergh presidency – was quite interesting and convincingly done. But as a literary work it did nothing for me. It felt like it could have been written by a journalist or a historian to make a historical point. I was reading it directly after some Pynchon, which probably made the style seem a bit flat in comparison, but still, the characterisation and dialogue seemed unremarkable to me. Perhaps I was just in the wrong mood for it, and I’m pretty sure that if it had been set in, say, Surrey instead of Newark it would have been more immediate for me, but I still wonder how it would have been received if it didn’t have Roth’s name attached to it.

The Pynchon, on the other hand (Gravity’s Rainbow), clearly was a remarkable bit of writing, but I’m not sure it was more than the sum of its parts. I think that’s generally a problem, though, with these sprawling, disjointed modernist novels going right back to Joyce and indeed Sterne – can the diversions and oddities justify themselves.

Anyway, I’m now rambling. I think it’s probably a mistake trying to talk coherently about literature and listen to the cricket at the same time. Jayawardene and Maharoof are doing a good job at the moment settling down the Sri Lankans but

And at that moment Hoggard took Maharoof’s wicket, caught and bowled. Leaving Sri Lanka on 129/7 in reply to 551/6 declared, which, in translation for my American readers, means they’re almost certainly going to get thrashed.

Categories
Other

Arsenal

Arsenal looked pretty damn good against Juventus last night. I’d love it if they won the Champion’s League, not just because they’re a British and London team but because it would be a bit more sand kicked in the face of Roman Abramovich.

Categories
Me Other

England vs. India

I must admit, after the humiliation in Pakistan, I was starting to lose faith, but England’s performance to tie the series in India without Vaughan, Trescothick, Simon Jones or Ashley Giles, and for the last game without Harmison and Cook as well, was seriously impressive.

BTW, isn’t Marcus Trescothick just the perfect name for the hero of a bodice-ripper? Even better than the current Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Education and Skills, whose name is Lord Adonis. I kid you not. Perhaps Lord Adonis could be the scheming, predatory English aristocrat, and Marcus Trescothick could be the swarthy, taciturn Cornishman who rescues the heroine from his clutches.

“Oh my darling, I know I’m vulnerable to well-pitched-up deliveries outside off stump, but can’t you see I love you?”