*No reason

.

Ben (Benglorious):

Last game of the season!  At bloody last!  Haven’t written this much stuff since that time I had to make a list of Katie Price’s husbands.  At least my contract will be finally fulfilled and I can rest my weary bones.  I seriously doubt this season thing happens every year, so I’ll finally be free of this room.  Once I’ve gnawed through my wrist to get out of these handcuffs.

Southampton are another of those weirdly named teams.  To my knowledge, there’s no “Northampton” or any other Hampton with a compass point attached.  I DO know that there’s a Hampton Court Palace, so that must be where today’s opponents call home.

If Southampton have a palace as their stadium, they must be one of the richest clubs in the world.  Therefore, their players to watch out for MUST include Zico, Zidane, both Ronaldos (fat and thin), plus most of the Spanish national side as they won the country of South Africa in a game of football four years ago, which apparently makes them the best team in the world.

Prediction:  Giggsy’s last game in charge will bring out the best in our boys today.  Mata’s vision is going to be so visionary that he’ll play with an eyepatch in the second half just because he thinks it’s fairer for Southampton’s defence.  Unfortunately for them, he’ll have already set up four goals and scored two himself.  Robin will be on fire, scoring the aforementioned four goals before also handicapping himself by extinguishing the flames on his shirt that so bemused the defenders.  Giggs will come on to thunderous applause, score and then immediately sub himself off for New Kid 1 and New Kid 2.  Nobody will complain that we now have twelve players on the pitch because c’mon, it’s Giggsy’s last game.  1-0 Southampton.

About the author:  Finally found out the dimensions of a football pitch this morning, hence no Rooney goal in my prediction.

.

Brett:

Still bored of talking about football.

Though, as I’ve heard from someone who knows someone, that it’s going to be Danny’s last game for us this season, I’ll predict he’ll get his customary two.

Prediction: 2-0. Danny with his customary two.

.

p.s Here’s a thing about a thing I’m doing in Bristol in a few weeks…

I’ve been organising a festival: www.fofi.org.uk

It’s called the Festival of Football Ideas and it’s a celebration of football through the medium of art, music, literature and film.  The tag line I came up with sums up the spirit of the festival quite nicely, I think:

People who like football are people, just like us. Some of these people have other interests too. Some of them creative ones. It turns out artists like football. Poets like football. Academics, writers, comedians and even musicians; they all like football.
Many of them even love it.
Sometimes they all overlap gloriously. Imagine.
This is the Festival of Football Ideas.

I’m incredibly proud of what my small group of friends and I have managed to accomplish so far. It’s already exceeded any expectations we had when I first put the idea to them. Each one has bought their own individual skills to it. Whatever happens in the next couple of weeks, whether things run smoothly, or not so much, above all else, this is already a triumph of friendship.

Anyway, I won’t be writing and/or blogging much for a while ‘cus of the festival I just mentioned (keep up), but I will be blogging about the festival here:  FOFI BLOG

Ben (Benglorious):

When Mr Bifurcated (I don’t know his real name) asked me to contribute to his website, I immediately asked about the remuneration package.  After getting some very evasive responses, I finally realised that I was supposed to do it for free like all the other “writers”. This struck me as odd, particularly with regard to @tom_mcghee as I know him in real life and he charges me a Queenhead every time he texts me (it’s a plumber thing); but if that corporate shill does it for nothing then I suppose I can give it a go.  Until something better comes along.  Or I get bored.  But what if they don’t do it for free?  What if I’m being mugged off and they’re all laughing at me for being such an idiot?  Oh well, just like real life, then.

I thought I’d start by doing some research on the site, and came to the horrifying realisation that I would be expected to write about football; in particular, MAnchesTA United (pun #1).  I did not see that coming.  Particularly because I know for a fact that I’ve never said anything serious on Twitter about the beautiful game.  Or any other topic.  Ever.

Anyway; football.  I’m supposed to preview the Cardiff game but I’m refusing as I feel that a Welsh team shouldn’t be playing in an English league.  Not for nationalist reasons, mind you, but purely based on travel complications.  Why should we have to take our passports for domestic league and cup games?  They should be saved for those special occasions when we tour the Far East or the States on important shirt-selling missions.  Champions League?  Not a league and far too many non-champions playing so that’s irrelevant.  The upside of this Welsh segregation is that, in my mind, we’ve never played/never will play Cardiff or Swansea and so results against them don’t Mata (Boom! That’s #2).  I’m still outraged that United are out of the FA Cup due to an administrative error/lost ball during the ITV draw.

I imagine that Mr Bifurcated (note to self: find out his name) is pulling his hair out at my “short match preview” so I’ll wrap it up and do the only bit that will actually make it online…

Prediction: 3-1 to United, with a brace for RVP, both set up by our new number seven EIGHT who also bags the third before being subbed off to a standing ovation so he can get suited and booted for the press conference.  Romantic, eh?

About the author: I’ve never been to Wales.

Dislcaimer: All puns contained herein remain the intellectual property of @PaulGunning1.

.

Brett:

Mata.

As for Cardiff…

Ole has breezed into the Premier League with the assurance of a man who’s never attempted to exit a coffee shop by pulling the push door. No doubt, as a child – “the foetus-featured, L-plated sniper” – he’d mastered potty-training well before his teens. What?!

Tis, on the surface of it, a strange job for Ole to have taken. But the reality is, the expectations of the fans are relatively low, he’s got money to spend, and if it goes wrong everyone’s going to blame that bloke wearing the massive baddy outfit, with the massive baddy face, who behaves like a massive baddy, with a massive baddy neon sign bolted to him reading ‘MASSIVE BADDY THIS WAY’, and not Ole.

When we played them earlier in the season – when everybody’s favourite spoonerism Malky Mackay was still in charge – we couldn’t beat them then, even with the away advantage. So, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them limit Mata to just two brilliant goals.

Prediction: 2-1. Having received the signal, Ole to suddenly get up from his seat and calmly make his way towards the centre-circle, where he begins removing a patch of loose turf, revealing the rusty box where he’d some time before stashed his Remington Model 700 rifle. It all now becomes clear: *flashback waves* the incident with Rob Lee was a carefully orchestrated distraction. Haven’t you always wondered what Ole was doing as last man back? As Rob Lee had made his way over the halfway line, Ole had been busy burying an object – we now know to be the rifle – but the onrushing conventionally attractive footballer had disturbed him; and thus threatened to give the whole game away. Thinking on his feet, Ole gave chase, and brought GQ chops down, just outside the area, creating a hive of activity well away from the middle of the pitch. Ole was, of course, sent off, but as Newcastle prepared to take the free-kick, Ole, having now disguised himself as a discarded crisp packet (a costume he’d had on under his kit, in the event of something like this happening), returned quickly to the pitch, finished hiding the fire-arm, replaced the turf and disappeared on the next zephyr… *flashback waves* Ole (now back in the present – keep up!) loads the rifle in two slick movements (which gets a round of applause from the Old Trafford crowd, which he acknowledges), and with one shot he takes down his target. Meanwhile, Chris Woods and Phil Neville have removed their masks, to reveal they were themselves all along.

Danny to give his permission for Mata to score his customary two for him.

A squillion synchronised cameras all trained on Zinedine Zidane – what’s not to like?!

The directors, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, I think, are attempting to address the awkward question of Football as Art? And they certainly put Football in its best clothes. But suitably lo-fi soundtracks (provided by purveyors of the craft Mogwai) and quasi-gonzo camera work do not art make. Just ‘cus it looks and feels like art, you shouldn’t always be fooled. The production may be new to the football, but it’s an old trick art has been playing for a while. Having said that it’s also hard to argue that this isn’t a successfully realised piece of cinema.

I believe an artist (who creates art) is someone who brings something in to the world that wasn’t there before. Then, Zidane is artist. In beautifully crafting a new perspective from which to view something that we’re so familiar with, there is definitely an argument to cast the film-makers as artist too. (There’s a football as art thing, in relation to this film, I wrote here)

The wild (almost other-worldly) look in Zidane’s eyes (captured in extreme close-up) could curdle milk, so be mindful not to watch with a cup of tea. It is eerily compelling and curiously emotive.

It beats Sky Player-Cam hands down.

p.s Look out for cameos from Real Madrid Beckham and Real Madrid Owen (Lol).

Where were you when we were sh…sitting there.

This past week me and David, the other half of Bifurcated, had a day out at the Arnolfini arts centre in Bristol to watch a footy double-bill of the Zidane film and the documentary The Referees. We were speculating in the cafe beforehand, upon noticing our tickets were No.15 and No.16 respectively, if the allotted numbers might represent the potential audience in attendance. When we finally entered the auditorium we discovered we had been a long way off … there were two people sat separately and a young father with his two sons. By the mid-point of the first film there was just us left. Curator of the event, and deliverer of a wonderfully articulate opening introduction, Dr Mike O’Mahony, from the University of Bristol, turned to see who was left, and then to us, and uttered, “Just the die-hards left then?!”

The Arnolfini in Bristol does have a reputation for being a bit ‘stuffy’  (other people’s words, not mine). Without being archaic it certainly has an ‘old-fashioned’, almost obsolete, vision of contemporary art at times, stuck in a cliche almost. However, this still for me felt like contemporary art inviting football in to its home just for the opportunity to humiliate it. “But we’re full of examples of artistry” says Football. Art just replies by searching its pockets. “I’ve got something for you”, Art says, before unfolding its hand to reveal a one finger salute, which it shoves in Football’s face, while blowing a raspberry. “Jog on” says Art, “and don’t darken my door again”.

Terry is forever having his portrait done…

A.C Grayling believes that “‘Art might by our language’s most controversially difficult word to define” and I’d agree: it’s subjective. We don’t live in times where writers, the likes of Clement Greenburg, tell us what to like, we do our thinking for ourselves, for the most part. Although we are inevitably influenced by our interior and exterior history and by the ‘market society’ we find ourselves in, what we think of as art may, in a lot of cases, be relatively ambiguous, but it is very personal to us.

Within football I can clearly see the creativity and artistry apparent in almost every game Stoke don’t play and I’m also moved by it, but I don’t see it as ‘art’. As football has, as we all know, become commodified, its true, pure, artistic expression, artistic endeavour, has been all but swallowed up by the rapacious nature of the monster it now exists as. The same perhaps can be said of much of  mainstream art. Art created primarily for material gain, for me is not art. That’s not to say I think this is the fault of art or the artist. As Lewis Hyde observes in his book ‘The Gift’, “[…] the exploitation of the arts which we find in the twentieth century is without precedent”.  I’m a purist in many ways although of course art and indeed football challenges my preconceptions all the time. And that’s the way I like it.

Jody Craddock an artist on and off the field.

Not long into my art degree a tutor told me that I would soon realise that there weren’t actually that many ideas in art, which at the time felt uncomfortably pretentious. The further I progressed/regressed I came to realise he’d exaggerated wildly and that in fact there was only one idea in art; identity. The more time I spend on the planet, the more I’ve come to realise that in fact I was guilty of embellishment too. It wasn’t just the only idea in art, identity was the only idea in everything ever.

This is a little plug for my friend Matt from University (Click on the picture for more)

People have an in built propensity to fight for the ownership of a given subject or interest and they keep it so tightly clasped to their chest that no one else can share it with them, apart from the select few they believe to be of kindred spirit who reinforce their own persuasions. This is certainly true in my own experience within the spheres of football; and without question art. It’s no surprise that this happens with our personal interests because we all need an identity. When intellectualising football, art, whatever, by giving it its own special language, its own code, we define it, we give it its meaning which gives us our meaning and defines us. Our identities (our lives) are defined by the meaning we try and give to them. It’s a shame that we find that in some cases the most effective way of protecting our identity is in the form of thinly veiled bullying through snobbery, inverse or straight forward, or more commonly through a form of passive aggression.

Perversely, sharing, engaging with and discussing our interests with someone not of our ilk (perceived equal intellectual level, social strata, postcode etc), whose views appear in direct opposition to our own individual sensibilities on the subject would ultimately provide a much more enriching experience for everyone involved.

If you can work out how to do that successfully then please let me know.

Martin Creed has a personal message for United fans

p.s. Below is an example for me of when art is good…

An Oak Tree by Michael Craig-Martin in simple physical terms is a glass of water on a shelf with an accompanying text (an intrinsic part of the piece) explaining what the artist has achieved.

Here’s an edited version, highlighting the main points, I got off of Wikipedia (where else)…

“[…]I have changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree. I didn’t change its appearance. The actual oak tree is physically present, but in the form of a glass of water.It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree”

The artist and spectator have to both invest belief equally in it for it to be successful and in that respect the message is universal, transcending the boundaries of the art institution, speaking to us all.

Another way of looking at it, if you’re not a fan of conceptual art, is with absolute disdain. You decide.