Our coverage begins at 11:55am EST on Saturday with UDINESE v AC MILAN, followed by THE FOOTY SHOW with all the day’s Premier League highlights & more.

Then on Sunday see INTER v NOVARA at 9am EST followed by PARMA v FIORENTINA.

Simon Borg goes there:

Arena has more World Cup experience than Harry Redknapp and a lot less baggage. Aside from his recent spell at Tottenham, Redknapp’s resumé doesn’t blow anyone away.

Arena has plenty more international experience, including management of star players, than second-division coach Sam Allardyce.

And let’s not flatter Stuart Pierce with a comparison to The Bruce.

This is about as flimsy as an endorsement as you can find, in addition to the fact Borg seems under the impression that Beckham has an FA hotline (if he does, England is well and truly bunked).

But beyond that, the cultural mind-fuck that an Arena appointment would engender is too delicious to contemplate. File this under “will never happen, even in alternate universes.”

Future England manager Alex McLeish

How it works: every Friday, I will look at several weekend matches and and assign points to various items you’ll have to find surrounding the match and then post up in form of links in the comments section (please provide links where you can and names for commentators).
Commenter with the most points wins! The prize? Nothing, because no one ever seems to want to play, or complains when I don’t mention the winner on Monday.
Let’s “kick off.”

Manchester United v. Liverpool

Announcer mentions Sir Alex Ferguson as a possible Capello replacement (5 points).

Announcer mentions Kenny Dalglish as a possible Capello replacement (5 points).

Patrice Evra and Luis Suarez shake hands, embrace, cry for a few moments, then Suarez moves in for a kiss put Evra backs off and it gets awkward (1000 points).

Sunderland v. Arsenal

Announcer mentions Martin O’Neill as a possible Capello replacement (5 points).

Announcer mentions Arsene Wenger as a possible Capello replacement (5 points).

Announcer mentions Arsene Wenger as a possible Harry Redknapp replacement (1000 points).

Tottenham v. Newcastle

Announcer mentions Harry Redknapp in relationship to the England job within the first ten seconds of the telecast (100 points). Thirty seconds (50 points). One minute (1 point).

Pundit “congratulates” Harry on beating his tax evasion rap (50 points).

Pardew’s Newcastle wins, Pardew backtracks on his remarks about taking the England job (25 points).

Aston Villa v. Manchester City

Protesters urge board to fire McLeish, board acquiesces within the day (10000 points).

Villa wins (1000 points).

Villa wins, McLeish mentions he’d be interested in the England job (10000 points).

Villa wins, McLeish mentions he’d be interested in the England job, FA calls him for interview on Monday (100000 points).

If all of the above happens and I cry a little out of gratitude to the unseen fates (5 points).

I’ve been on the job here full-time since August, and I have yet to pull on the rubber gloves for a good, old fashioned Fisking. Well, the time has come. Behold, Der Spiegel features Marc Hujer’s moronic puff-piece on Jurgen Klinsmann’s time in charge of the United States of America (cheers or boos to Jason Davis for the link). Where to begin? With our beginnings. The article is too long to include in its entirely, so I’ve tried to stick to the most offensive bits. Feel free to read in full for context.

First, the headline: “Jürgen Klinsmann Tries to Teach Football to America” Oh hell no.

He could easily lean back in his seat, relax and let the film speak for itself. It is a documentary about the Panama Canal, its history and construction — a project the Americans completed after the French had given up. It is a hymn to America, his country. But Jürgen Klinsmann, the new coach of the US national soccer team, is sitting bolt upright in his seat. When the lights go on and the question-and-answer session begins, he immediately asks the first question.

“How many ships pass through the Panama Canal every day?”

[INANE FILLER]

“Thirty-nine ships pass through here every day,” the tour guide replies. “Wow,” the German coach exclaims.

First of all, for a two-page article, this introduction is incredibly long on nothing, and short on anything. The author attempts to bank off Klinsmann’s single question to a tour guide as some sort of metaphor for his Socratic approach to the US national team. And since when is the Panama canal a “hymn to America?” A marvelous feat of engineering and diplomacy, sure. But hardly the stuff of American dreams…

Klinsmann is sitting at the pool at his hotel in Panama City. Three American journalists who write for news websites have come to interview him. There is no camera team, and there are no photographers. The tone of the conversation is polite and respectful. The journalists don’t address him as Mr. Klinsmann, and certainly not as Jürgen, but simply as “Coach.”

This is the first of several attempts to hammer home to the reader that the US is not Germany, or indeed, most Western European nations, in that we do not send a massive press scrum to follow around a national team coach on tour with the team. Surprise! The author however repeatedly insinuates this means the press “doesn’t care” whether the US team wins or not, which is guff.

Klinsmann has found his dream job in the United States. The American national team is a perfect test laboratory. For Klinsmann, everything in America is different from the way it was in Germany. When he was the coach of the German national team, he had to spend two weeks dealing with an out-of-control debate over his use of rubber exercise bands in training. And it’s also different from his stint as coach at Bayern Munich, where he was let go after 10 months because the team’s chances of qualifying for the Champions League were in jeopardy.

The author conveniently forgets to mention Klinsmann has yet to helm the US national team in World Cup qualifier. So the comparison to Bayern is moot.

When it comes to soccer, the United States is considered a developing country. Conditions there are “like in the Wild West,” says Klinsmann. College soccer has been separate from professional soccer and the US Soccer Federation for years. A soccer academy has only been promoting new talent for the last four years. Everything is proceeding very slowly. But this is precisely what provides Klinsmann the opportunity to make a big splash as a reformer.

“A soccer academy”? Which one? And in what sense is professional soccer “separated” from NCAA? No mention made of Generation Adidas (a German company), nor the fact active MLS academies are making college selection a thing of the past. And few in the US regard Klinsmann as a “reformer.” Not even Ted Westervelt.

He wants to build a team that corresponds to his image of America: an open-minded, multicultural country. He wants it to be a team that also reflects his own story, namely that of a soccer player who played in Stuttgart, Milan, Monaco, Munich and London, and who speaks English, French and Italian in addition to his native German.

Klinsmann believes that the American national soccer team should be more American than every baseball team, in which most of the players are white. “In America, no one is completely American,” says Klinsmann. “Everyone somehow has ancestors in Europe, in Africa or in South America. A national team always represents a little bit of the character of a country.”

Klinsmann was not hired to play racial politics with the national team, nor does he need to. Both the United States and Canada have long reflected the diversity within our soccer communities, long before Klinsmann showed up. While these remarks imply the team was white bread before he took over, they’re really a Smiley Face cover for picking players with only a tangential relationship to the US.

He sounds a little like President Barack Obama, who promised to unite the United States, including its political adversaries, races and cultures. Obama also said that America has to learn from others — a remark his political rivals used as an excuse to call him a traitor.

Yup, Klinsmann is Barack Obama, and his critics are the Republican Party. That’s not incredibly simplistic at all. Incidentally, Obama’s political rivals would call him a traitor no matter what he did.

Klinsmann knows that his new freedom has a lot to do with the relative unimportance of soccer in America. There are Americans who say that soccer isn’t a sport for men, but for girls and pansies who don’t have what it takes to play American football. In this sense, America isn’t too weak for soccer; rather, soccer is too weak for America. These attitudes have helped American soccer, especially the national team, carve out a comfortable niche for itself. The team has never been under the unconditional pressure to win. “In this sense, the environment is different in the United States,” says Klinsmann. “If you lose a match here, nobody cares. Then people say: ‘Oh, you lost yesterday. No problem.’”

Ah, the old “Americans think soccer is gay” line. Fine. But since when does “nobody care” in America if the national team sucks? Again, he’s yet to do anything meaningful with the team. If Klinsmann fails to do well in Round Three of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying, a great many Americans—including sports journalists—will care. A lot.

He needs a lot of optimism to maintain such hopes. Klinsmann’s advisor, Roland Eitel, says that if players from the United States were ever hired to play for clubs like Everton or Hannover 96, they would think to themselves: “Wow, we’ve really made it.” But then, says Eitel, Jürgen tells them Everton isn’t the future, nor is Hanover, but that the future is Liverpool and German powerhouse FC Bayern.

Did this person do any research, at all? Any player of any nationality would regard an opportunity in the Premier League as ‘making it.’ It’s also not the case that Americans have yet to break into the top four clubs. It’s the goal of any red-blooded American soccer player to play for the best clubs in the world. Also, calling Liverpool the “future” isn’t doing much for Klinsmann’s street cred.

Now Klinsmann’s biggest objective will be to qualify for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The first elimination matches are scheduled for this summer. He recently said that he hopes to discover America’s Messi. It made some players on his team cringe, because they feared that the expectations were getting too high. And yet the things that count for Klinsmann’s team are still relatively minor, like its recent 1:0 win over Venezuela or the friendly match against Panama, a country with less than half as many people as New York City.

Hey, Hujer. Look up USA v. Spain, Confederations Cup 2009.

The final two paragraphs don’t really make much sense, so I won’t bother. This sort of thing wouldn’t normally bother me so much except Der Spiegel has a lot of readers, and so Germans will continue to snicker at US soccer because it’s being filtered through someone who doesn’t know how to use the Internet.

Stupid America, with their use of the word soccer, inferior league, gross commercial hype, and embrace of aging West Ham players. While he technically first “managed” with Bournemouth in 1982, Harry was player-coach with the Seattle Sounders in 1976.

Not only that, but he was fit. Fitter than most of the Supersonics at the time. From the June 22nd, 1976, Sarasota Journal:

Photo Credit: NASL Jerseys

“Purist” is a word that gets bandied about a lot in football these days, like “bankruptcy” or “racist.” It’s usually used as a pejorative, as in, “Leave it to the football purists to try and transform a man’s game into a chess match.”

Perhaps it’s time though we start using the word with a measure of pride. I’m thinking specifically here of the general disgust among Cardiff City fans over the fact music was played over loudspeakers when Joe Mason scored the opener at home against Blackpool in the Championship.

As one blogger wrote:

Goals do not require a theme tune, fans do not need a reminder of when and how to celebrate. Supporting your team in the flesh is an instinctive and emotive experience, the ebb and flow of the game dictates your mood and reaction. It’s not the NBA, we don’t need music to sustain our interest or prompt involvement.

Needless anti-American basketball-bashing aside, let me add a “Damn right!” Goals are beautiful, perfect. Like pizza, even when they’re bad they’re still pretty effing good. Danny Welbeck scored one when he was 18 for United and said, “When the ball went in, that feeling … if that feeling was a drug I would be dead.”

While it’s watered down slightly for attendant fans, that’s generally the idea. Look at that Higuita strike above. Could you imagine if the stadium played some Kool and the Gang to ‘augment’ a packed stadium going absolutely shit-house mental over a goal-keeper scoring a monster of a free kick? No one would hear it anyway, of course. But if they did, it would defile the moment, undercut the sublime that’s so fleeting in a game characterized by few chances and even fewer goals.

Cardiff, thank god, won their battle with the sound system:

There’ll be no goal music any more, all gone. CCMB feedback a big help >> RT @H_paz: any news on if the horrible goal music will carry on?

— Barrie McAuliffe (@MAcMcAuliffe) February 10, 2012

Now, how to convince TFC to end their little confetti goal shower at BMO…

The Lead

It’s Friday, which means there’s nowt going on save for the soft-ball-of-a-story we already knew was on its way: ‘Arry ain’t gonna share jobs between Spurs and England, no way, no how. And, clearly aware he’s the current flavour of the month among the press and the wider partisan world of club football (Ferguson bigged him up as well), he’s content to play Mr. Humble:

Asked if he was flattered to be the popular choice to lead England, he said: “Yes of course. It’s nice if people put me in a position where they think I’ve got a chance of getting the job.

“It is flattering, other managers have come out and said nice things and I appreciate everybody’s support really.”

In other words, right now ‘Arry is the Anfield Cat. Springing on the scene in an otherwise boring news cycle, with his lovable face and cute cockney accent, we’re content to watch him wander round a bit before England gets on with the serious business of whether Luis Suarez will shake Patrice Evra’s hand, or vice versa.

He’ll run out the season, finish efficiently in third place, be heralded as a tactical genius for avoiding St. Totteringhams Day, and then up-sticks and take over the world’s best/worst job. Until then, we have to wait until the steward gets near enough to pick him up and find him a nice home.

Canada

The Ontario Soccer Association NEEDS YOUR HELP.

Joey Saputo leaves it a tad late to go to Europe in search of a Designated Player for the Montreal Impact.

Some Whitecaps humour at the expense of a certain television sports commentator.

Toronto FC players need to step up.

And some TFC academy kids go back to school.

England

What you won’t read about elsewhere regarding Redknapp’s tax evasion trial.

The comedy stylings of Kenny Dalglish.

Ryan Giggs inches closer to the day when he reveals he’s a robot sent to us from space.

‘Stuart Pearce was a racist’ story gains some steam.

We know when Thierry will leave Arsenal again.

Patrick Viera claims refs are singling out Man City.

Some uncomfortable assassination metaphors in this AVB piece.

Maradona has something to say.

Italy

Galliani slaps down Chiellini in growing Ibrahimovic furor.

AC Milan captain Ambrosini piles on as well.

Massimo Moratti silences Capello to Inter talk.

James Horncastle looks over the wasteland of the Serie A transfer window.

Spain

La Liga Loca’s full weekend preview.

Andy Brassell on Malaga.

Germany

With Stanislawski sacked at Hoffenheim, Markus Babbel takes his place after a lengthy and considered search process which took one day. Brilliant guys.

Bits and bobs

Neymar scores a hat-trick, continues to be overrated somehow.

Bob Bradley’s principled stand in Egypt.

Soccer isn’t chess.

And that, give or take, is the story so far…

Some quick hits late in the day.

This is an official Man City video analysis of Joe Hart farting in a car (via Dirty Tackle)

Brooks Peck is a little mystified as two why City would make a video featuring various talking heads talk about a video in which Joe Hart farts in a car. Let me take from here, Brooks? Can I call you Brooks? No? Okay sir.

Anyway, companies don’t spend much on TV in the United Kingdom, which is why a “season” often comprises six, half-hour episodes filmed on a Nokia phone. Ergo, they need lots of filler, and one of the ways they provide filler is with “List Shows.” Top Ten England Football Moments, Top Ten Corrie Eps, Top Ten News Presenter ‘Gaffes’, etc.

These shows follow a very familiar pattern, which this Man City video recreates to a tee: get some worthless talking heads to give their equally worthless opinions about some bit of pop culture puffery, which usually includes a local DJ, some no-name in a replica shirt, and Noel Gallagher, who is in every, single one. Which means City are quite clever, really, even if this isn’t a parody of the awful dregs of British TV.

Harry Redknapp, Rube of the Year (via Grantland)

This is Brian Phillips doing what he does best, and probably the most damning bit of business done on ‘Arry since Rob Beasley phoned him up for a quick interview. A taste:

Harry derives part of his charm from the idea that he’s a last point of contact with an older, purer form of football, a living zipline back to the days when all matches were played in the rain and nobody knew anything about tactics. “Just fucking run about,” Harry once told a striker who didn’t speak English. In these days of Xavi and false nines and “can Lampard play with Gerrard,” there’s a deep need in the English footballing psyche for a distinctively English way of approaching the game that doesn’t go numb in quarterfinals, and Harry exploits this the way he exploits everything else — cheerfully and with a Boer War’s-worth of dropped h’s.

Cor blimey.

England: Strong Leadership is Required (The Fiver)

I haven’t been much moved to write out yards of guff on the Capello dealie, mostly because of the reams of stuff appearing elsewhere, but also because Scott Murray has what should be the final word on the matter. To quote a mere snippet won’t give you the full flavour, but I have yet to read a more damning assessment of Team England than this. For example, on the “principled” hypocrisy of the FA on this issue:

Capello informed Bernstein that he was for the off. “I agreed on behalf of the board that this was the right decision,” grinned Bernstein, a job well done, adding that “principles” are important, and that Stuart Pearce, who in 1994 had to apologise to Manchester United midfielder Paul Ince for alleged racial abuse made “in the heat of the moment”, would be taking charge for England’s upcoming fixture against the Netherlands.

Scott Murray is, like Andi Thomas, one of the most underrated football writers around today.

Every year, Deloitte releases its “money league,” the list of the world’s richest soccer clubs by revenue (don’t mention the L-word!). It’s a valuable tool in European club football’s propaganda war; clubs can swing their big dicks to the scared public. After all, money is power, and it’s in clubs interests to show off to the world they have lots of it, and everything’s going great!

Note the list is based on revenue, rather than turnover, which would involve a lot of minus signs and red ink. Even so, these lists should be placed in context as to how small potatoes soccer actually is. First, the list:

1. Real Madrid, Spain, $636.5 million (1).
2. Barcelona, Spain, $598.3 million (2).
3. Manchester United, England, $487.2 million (3).
4. Bayern Munich, Germany, $426.6 million (4).
5. Arsenal, England, $333.3 million (5).
6. Chelsea, England, $331.6 million (6).
7. AC Milan, Italy, $312.1 million (10).
8. Inter Milan, Italy, $280.6 million (9).
9. Liverpool, England, $269.9 million (8).
10. Schalke, Germany, $268.7 million (16).
11. Tottenham, England, $240.3 million (12).
12. Manchester City, England, $225.1 million (21).
13. Juventus, Italy, $204.3 million (10).
14. Marseille, France, $199.6 million (15).
15. AS Roma, Italy, $190.5 million (18).
16. Borussia Dortmund, Germany, $183.8 million (-)
17. Lyon, France, $176.3 million (14).
18. Hamburg, Germany, $171.0 million (13).
19. Valencia, Spain, $155.0 million (-).
20. Napoli, Italy, $152.5 million (-).

WOW! The money! My eyes!

Until we realize that most “Money League” companies in the real business world—the one that doesn’t allow wage to turnover ratios in the 60-70% percentile range—generate revenue in the billions. With a ‘b.’ Which, maybe you’re thinking, includes Apple and McDonalds.

Well, how about Sobeys, with revenues of just under $15 billion across 1,300 stores? Or the bankrupt and struggling Eastman Kodak, which generated $7 billion in revenue and still turned a profit but declared bankruptcy to service its considerable debt?

Well, those are big companies. Clubs are single, atomized brands with a limited scope. Okay, then what about Kathy Ireland? The former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, by simply slapping her name on a brand that sells everything from ceiling fans to ottomans, generates $2 billion in revenue for the company Kathy Ireland Worldwide. To give you a sense of the scope, that’s three Real Madrids.

But, you know, soccer is big business, just one that rarely makes a profit, operates deeply in debt, and whose top twenty earners combined generate just over 1/3rd of the revenue of a Nova Scotia-based grocery store chain. We know this because Deloitte created a league of the richest ones, and because Richard Scudamore says so.

What do you think we talked about today? We took your calls & tweets on ‘Ave Your Say Thursday and to no surprise, you had a lot to say about Fabio Capello. It was a full house on today’s show as James Sharman, Thomas Dobby, Brendan Dunlop & Kristian “rarely at the office on Thursdays” Jack talked about the former England manager, what he might do next, how the FA rebuilds their reputation and wonder what ‘Arry must be thinking.

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THE FOOTY SHOW Podcast is available Monday-Thursday here on The Footy Blog & on iTunes

At what point will a team’s over-achievement stop being called a surprise?

It’s a fair question when you consider that with René Girard as coach, Montpellier have confounded expectations of the club for the last three years.

In Girard’s first season in charge in 2009-10, they finished fifth as a newly-promoted side; at this stage last season, Montpellier were only four points off second place before a spring slump dropped them to 14th place; this season, they have only been out of the top three for single week.

Last weekend’s win over Brest kept them in second, three points behind leaders Paris Saint-German and, significantly, seven points ahead of Lille and Lyon in joint-third.

So much for fears that they would struggle in January, given that three of their players—Souleymane Camara (Senegal), Abdelhamid El Kaoutari and Younes Belhanda (both Morocco)—were on African Cup of Nations duty.
Montpellier won five-out-of-five and are yet to concede a goal in 2012.

The club’s rise comes at a time when the future of France coach Laurent Blanc is uncertain. Blanc wants a new deal before Euro 2012. However the French football federation, mindful of the issues it had with Raymond Domenech, who got a new deal before Euro 2008 and stuck it out until the fiasco of the 2010 World Cup, want to wait until after the summer tournament. France Football reported this week that Blanc is weighing up offers from elsewhere and may pull a surprise similar to Jacques Santini’s, who announced one week before Euro 2004 that he was to join Tottenham Hotspur (it did not end
well: for France, Spurs or Santini).

Last Sunday, Le Journal du Dimanche claimed that Arsene Wenger was on a federation short-list should Blanc leave in the summer. Le Monde has already reported Paul Le Guen would be considered if the France job became vacant. On Tuesday, France Football added two more names to the list:
Rudi Garcia, coach of champions Lille, and Girard, whose work at Montpellier—not to mention the four years he spent as France Under-21 coach—have put him in the running as well.

Girard is a former France international who was part of the 1982 World Cup squad that lost to West Germany in the semifinal. He won three league titles with Bordeaux playing alongside Domenech and Gernot Rohr (now Gabon coach), and was inspired by Johan Neeskens. “People remember me as a hard man, which is fine, but I was a midfielder who scored fifty goals in my career, and not just any old goals, but volleys and bicycle-kicks too,” he told So Foot this month.

As a teenager, Girard tiled roofs with his brother and would make him play football, even though he never liked it, during every tea-break. He began and ended his career at Nimes, and was even the subject of a testimonial match there attended by Neeskens himself. But after three difficult years coaching Nimes in the early-1990s, he quit coaching for a year and ran a newsagent’s shop, working six-and-a-half days a week. As he put it: “I needed to be occupied and I’d rather die in the middle of doing something than sitting in my armchair.”

Girard was part of French coach Aime Jacquet’s backroom staff when France won the 1998 World Cup and, under Roger Lemerre, when they won Euro 2000 and flopped in Korea in 2002. He coached France’s Under-16s, Under-19s and Under-21s. The latter was a stepping-stone to the France job for Raymond Domenech, but it did not turn out that way for Girard, whose side won three Toulon tournaments and reached the semi-finals of the 2006 European Championships.

“When I was with the French federation, I discovered there were some people, like Gerard Houllier [who was head of DTN, a technical director role encompassing all national teams], who are good at manipulating people using diplomacy. Houllier wanted Erick Mombaerts in my position, and there was a putsch to get me out.”

Girard was not happy with the decision and demanded an explanation from Domenech, who was at that time in charge of the senior team. “It’s not me, it’s Houllier’s call,” he said. Girard then approached federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes, who told him it was because of the play-off failure against Germany in qualifying for the 2009 tournament (which in retrospect seems pretty harsh, given that Germany comfortably won the tournament and used six players that reached the World Cup semi-final twelve-months later).

“I’ve made mistakes in my past and sometimes gone too far, but if I think you’re bad news or that you’re a hypocrite I’m not going to say you’re a nice guy,” Girard added. “So when Houllier fucked me over, I told him to go fuck himself. And I walked out.”

You might have thought that such a response would immediately rule out Girard’s chances of ever returning to the Federation. But things have changed there now: Escalettes and Houllier have gone, and new president Noel Le Graet, as he is proving by digging in his heels over Blanc’s contract, has taken different approach.

Last week, Girard joked that Montpellier’s points total should finally see them safe from the threat of relegation. In reality, avoiding defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in ten days’ time will strengthen their case as a genuine top-three side, which would leave only one Champions League place left for Lyon, Lille and Marseille. Montpellier’s rise could leave two of those sides with a bloody nose and Girard with a chance of avenging his ‘Houllier moment’.

The Ajax board in happier times

So, for reasons my non-Dutch brain can’t comprehend, Johann Cruyff’s victory in blocking the appointment of bitter rival Louis van Gaal as Ajax CEO precluded the resignation of the entire board en masse, including Cruyff himself:

The resignations of the five members follow an Amsterdam court decision on Tuesday banning the naming of Louis van Gaal as CEO. As well a Cruyff those standing down include Edgar Davids, the chairman, Steven ten Have, and the technical director, Danny Blind.

You can sort of understand the board resigning in protest against the Dutch legend, but why Cruyff? Did he not want to be the last buffoon standing? I did read a report that he will sit on the new one, which would support this explanation. Anyway, the irony of the club that founded a footballing system that stresses harmony of movement and purpose continues to be the source of bitterness and division.

When Saturday Comes‘ William Turvill adds to the lengthening discourse on the difficult relationship between players and social media, which is basically a euphemism for Twitter (you don’t normally expect to read about Ravel Morrison being a horrible person on Bebo, for example). The article follows a familiar trajectory until the end:

The most simple and logical solution is to stop players from referring directly to club affairs and make clear their opinions are personal and not representative of their employer’s. Players like Barton – who came dangerously close to contempt of court on Twitter over the weekend – might not enjoy such top-down moderation, but in light of how badly players come across on the site, closing their accounts wouldn’t be the worst solution.

Journalists love to focus on players abusing social media, in part because it distracts from another, less sexy issue—football journalists expressing knee-jerk, heat-of-the-moment opinions on football. Turvill mentions this very controversial Patrick Barclay Tweet referring to Heysel, but a far better example would be the countless moments when journalists reveal their team bias, or lack of journalistic integrity, only to write careful, stale prose in the newspaper proper the next day.

Several clever journalists squirm out of this conundrum via the old “my views do not express those of my employer” trick. Turvill rather smarly asks why players should not merely be asked to do the same. As I’ve written before, a blanket ban on Twitter would simply put up another barrier between the unwashed players and coddles millionaire players. But a legal disclaimer, along with a stern legal warning from clubs to players not to besmirch their employers or their customers, would at least help neuter this idea that players must reflect some ridiculous ideal of club unity and Charlie Davies-like enthusiasm.

It won’t stop players from being arseholes in public, but it would at least tie off a legal loose-end.

The Lead

Before we get to that, here’s what we know so far. Stuart Pearce will take over national team duties in the interim, and helm England in their friendly against Holland on February 29th. The FA also confirmed Fabio Capello’s resignation was the result of the FA stripping John Terry of the captaincy, and the chiding over his subsequent remarks to the Italian media. Meanwhile Capello released a short but gracious statement of his own. The Guardian has a pretty informative rolling live blog, so if you really want to keep pressing refresh, that’s your best bet.

The rest of the blather is all speculative, and almost all of it involves screaming for Harry Redknapp to get the England job, end off. The same old debate over whether England should appoint an English manager has also been dusted off and put on display. And, as usual, the entire costume drama makes not one whit of difference when it comes to the likelihood of England lifting a trophy for the first time in forty-six years.

That’s because even the more progressive football journalists in the UK are still under the illusion that the national football team is a kind of home-grown All-Star exhibition side, rather than a decades long project involving raised national standards in training, education, and club academies. Perhaps instead of believing, like Michael Owen, England won’t win a World Cup until the entire outfit is English (including the tea lady), the press might encourage the FA to re-examine the deep-lying failure of English club academies to produce elite first-team players.

The FA could examine how Germany enacted a ten-year plan to reverse their relative poor form in international competition by setting rigourous standards for their club academies. They could use UEFA’s upcoming FFP regulations to kick-start a debate about the nature of English football clubs, and whether they should be continue to be run (into the ground) as for-profit businesses held hostage by fly-by-night investors, or as community trusts to help ensure relative financial stability in grassroots English football. They could require a much higher coaching standards, to bring the country more in line with Spain and Germany.

And if all that is just, well, too much, and too “continental,” they might at the very, very least consider a lengthy, involved interview process for the managerial successor, rather than a populist, flavour-of-the-month rubber stamp.

But no, what matters is getting ‘Arry to sign up as quickly as possible, cuz Rule Britannia and all that…

Canada

Montreal Impact lose to the Houston Dynamo in pre-season friendly.

Canada’s World Cup warm-up schedule is not ideal.

Stephen Hart held a conference call, and the blogs and news sites came running to discover…not much.

Ben Knight with a clarification on the CSA voting process.

England

The TV interview wot done it.

Harry Redknapp lies to a journalist again when he says he “hasn’t even thought” of the England job.

Alan Pardew doesn’t want it. What, did somebody ask him?

Brendan Rodgers signs a very well-deserved contract extension with Swansea.

Luis Suarez will shake Patrice Evra’s hand.

Wolves’ defender George Elokobi goes to Forest.

Ravel Morrison will have to “explain” homophobic Tweet to West Ham staff.

Aston Villa fail to extend Robbie Keane loan.

Man United slipping in the “money league.”

Alternate universe Wesley Sneijder would have gone to Manchester United.

Italy

Italian press reacts to Capello resignation.

Is Ibrahimovic out of control?

Catania’s replay with Roma finishes as it left off.

Spain

Sid Lowe on Athletic Bilbao making it to a Copa del Rey final for the first time since 1984, and the end of an era as a legendary stadium sees its final match.

Real Madrid to poach Robin Van Persie?

And that, give or take, is the story so far…

Fabio Capello’s resignation dominated the day. James Sharman & Kristian Jack give their take on England’s new dilemma.

Kristian chats with TFC manager Aron Winter about the Best XI he ever played with or against.

James chats with Toronto Maple Leaf players Carl Gunnarsson & John-Michael Liles about their soccer obsessions, Liverpool & Man Utd, respectively.

It’s your segment, ‘Avin It or Not ‘Avin It.

Missed THE FOOTY SHOW tonight? Catch the replay at 11pm EST or Thursday at 12:30pm & 3pm EST.

Not to worry Footy Show faithful, we didn’t forget today was Wednesday. This edition of ‘Take Your Kick’ was dominated by the shocking news that Fabio Capello had resigned as England manager, just minutes before we jumped in the studio.

We got to a slew of questions from the footballing world though, and JT was already going to be a topic of conversation. TFC and Canadian National Team defender Adrian Cann joined us in studio and had quite a few laughs with James Sharman, Kristian Jack and Thomas Dobby who did whatever they could to earn the most meaningless points from Dunlop. Follow @AdrianCann on twitter.

Steve Kean’s successful future at Ewood Park, the MLS schedule, Neymar’s century mark at the age of 20 and even our long time celebrity crushes were discussed.

Listener discretion is advised. The David Seaman movie collection has a few more titles…sorry.

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These words reported by something called Italpress, and reprinted on Football Italia. Hard to confirm their authenticity, but if true, consider this bridge burned:

“What really hit me and forced me to take this decision was the fact the much-vaunted Anglo-Saxon sense of justice, as they are the first to claim that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

“In Terry’s case, they gravely offended me and damaged my authority at the head of the England side, effectively creating a problem for the squad.

“I have never tolerated certain interference and crossing of lines, so it was easy for me to spot it and take my decision to leave.”

It must be stressed these remarks have not been confirmed as authentic. But they’re on a website, and this is a blog, so…

UPDATE: Late report that these remarks are indeed a pile of crap:

Capello denies quotes attributed to him on Italian website. Threatens legal action #pafabio

— Ben Rumsby (@benrumsbyPA) February 8, 2012

As the Independent’s Jack Pitt Brooke tweeted:

Harry Redknapp started the day in the dock, and ends it on top of the (English) football world.

— Jack Pitt-Brooke (@JPBIndy) February 8, 2012

But let’s take a few minutes to contemplate the absurdity of the thing. Redknapp is by far the most popular choice. He’s English. He’s done superbly well in his time with Tottenham. And, that’s it.

But unless the FA is willing to allow Redknapp to somehow (how?) manage England as kind a ridiculous part time job at least until the end of the current Premier League season, I don’t see any way he’ll repay the faith of Tottenham supporters during his tax evasion trial by telling them to sod off while he manages the most over-hyped team in World Football. He could start in May, though.

So who else then? David Beckham? ALAN SHEARER!?! Good lord, maybe Capello might change his mind?

From the FA website:

The Football Association can confirm that Fabio Capello has today resigned as England Manager.

This follows a meeting involving FA Chairman David Bernstein, FA General Secretary Alex Horne and Fabio Capello at Wembley Stadium.

The discussions focused on The FA Board’s decision to remove the England team captaincy from John Terry, and Fabio Capello’s response through an Italian broadcast interview.

In a meeting for over an hour, Fabio’s resignation was accepted and he will leave the post of England Manager with immediate effect.

Which means I can now use this very apt jpeg:

It’s probably not the stuff-of-dreams for those interested in the big names of European football in a contest against what many believe will be the Ivory Coast (the game is in progress as of writing), but the narrative here is about as emotional as you’ll find in sports.

In 1993, the Zambian first team died when their rickety Zambian Air Force Buffalo DHC-5D crashed into the ocean just outside Libreville, Gabon, the host nation of the current ACN tournament, and the site of this year’s final. An engine caught on fire and an under-slept pilot switched off the wrong one.

In the AfCon tournament the following year, the Zambian replacement team made a miracle run to the finals, only to lose to Nigeria (see above). In the intervening years, their fortunes have been decidedly more mixed.

Jonathan Wilson penned an excellent piece today on the rise of Zambia in recent years, whom he ascribes to the current president of the Zambian football federation:

Look at all that is good about Zambian football and you will see the hand of Kalusha Bwalya. He scored a hat-trick when Zambia beat Italy at the 1988 Olympics. After the air-crash of 1993 had wiped out almost the entire team, he was the rallying point the new side was built around. And, as Zambia look to reach their first Cup of Nations final since that remarkable renaissance side of 1994 in Wednesday’s semi-final against Ghana, it is Kalusha, now president of the football federation, who drew the blueprint.

While heartwarming, it should be noted that relatives of the victims of that crash are still awaiting 19 years-on for an explanation as to why that plane was ever allowed to leave Zambia.

At last, the cardiologists of Rome can rest easy. “The heart is designed to palpitate,” said Daniele De Rossi when asked in November how much longer he planned to keep Roma’s fans waiting to discover if he would sign a new contract with the club. On Sunday, those tense tickers got relief when it was confirmed that the midfielder signed a new five-year deal that ties him to the Giallorossi through to 2017.

Some contract it was too—€5.5m per year in guaranteed salary, plus further bonuses that will in reality take it to at least €6m. That would be enough to make him the joint-best paid Italian player in Serie A, alongside Juventus’s Gigi Buffon. According to Gazzetta dello Sport’s numbers, it also represents about one tenth of the club’s total turnover. Of greater importance to the fans however was that, despite initial reports to the contrary, the deal did not include any release clauses.

De Rossi could hardly be blamed for taking his time to make what was a very significant decision. This would likely be, he noted, the last major contract of his career, and the alternatives were not inconsiderable. Among his suitors were clubs as storied as Real Madrid and as rich as Manchester City. Both De Rossi and Roma’s general manager Franco Baldini acknowledged that he had been offered “silly money” to play elsewhere.

What was noteworthy, though, was the explanation he gave for his decision to stay. De Rossi said money was a factor – while noting that he could have had much more elsewhere – as was his love for the club he supported as a boy. But also important was his desire to continue working with a man who had at one point stood accused of undermining the club’s Roman values: the manager Luis Enrique.

“He was fundamental. He has relit that flame which all footballers need,” said De Rossi of Enrique, the Asturian tactician appointed by the club’s new American owners during the summer. “He is the best manager I have ever worked with.”

That is high praise from a player who has been coached by Fabio Capello, Luciano Spalletti and Claudio Ranieri at club level, as well as Marcello Lippi and Cesare Prandelli with the national side (indeed, the latter had also worked with him during an extremely brief tenure at Roma in 2004). Enrique has only been working as a coach for three-and-a-half years, and his only previous post was with the Barcelona B team.

The truth is that De Rossi was taken with Enrique from day one, and was heard departing his first meeting with the new manager in July saying, “This challenge really excites me too, with you we will do great things”. Il Giornale’s report of that meeting cited sources at Roma’s Trigoria training ground saying they had never seen the player appear more motivated.

To some, De Rossi’s warm welcome for the new manager came as a surprise. The club’s other great homegrown hero, the captain Francesco Totti, had made plain his scepticism over the new regime – heralded as it was by statements from Baldini on his pleasure at finding a manager “uncontaminated” by the Italian game. To Totti’s mind, and to those of many supporters, Enrique’s appointment was an unwelcome attempt to impose foreign values on a team and a city that takes great pride in its heritage.

“Above all I hope that he who is born a Romanista, and who has given much to this club, will always be granted the respect they deserve,” wrote Totti in a column for Corriere dello Sport on the day of Enrique’s unveiling. Within weeks, newspapers were thick with reports of a rift between the forward and his new manager, a situation exacerbated when the player was left out of the starting XI for a the first leg of a Europa League qualifier against Slovan Bratislava, and substituted in the second.

It would be a mistake however to assume that De Rossi would share Totti’s outlook. Yes, they are both Romans and both have spent their entire careers representing the club they adore, but that is where the similarities end. Where Totti was a “predestinato”—one whose natural gifts meant he was destined to reach football’s highest stage—De Rossi was at the other end of the spectrum, an unremarkable young player who, as James Horncastle noted in a recent piece for Fox Soccer, achieved success on the back of hard work and desire.

Likewise, while Totti is always outspoken, De Rossi is more withdrawn. “We have different characters,” said the latter in November. “Francesco is the classic Roman, he seems to come from a different era. He is cocksure, confident in himself, he has a big personality … And he can also be a bit touchy.”

Of course, it is also true that each has been treated very differently by the new regime. Totti suffered the ignominy of being left out in favour of the 22-year-old Stefano Okaka, the 18-year-old Gianluca Caprari and the newly-signed 21-year-old Bojan Krkic for that first game against Bratislava; while De Rossi was told from day one that he was integral to the new coach’s plans.

True to his word, Enrique installed De Rossi immediately in the heart of his new system, deploying him as a deep-lying ball-winner and play-maker, a role in which the midfielder, after two indifferent seasons under Claudio Ranieri and Vincenzo Montella, has thrived. De Rossi comfortably leads the team in both passes attempted (a staggering 71.3 per game) and opposition passes intercepted (3.8 per game). Indeed, he ranks second and third in the league respectively in those two categories.

And there is no doubting that De Rossi is most content when he is made to feel indispensable. “[Enrique] values me, he gives me lots of responsibility,” said De Rossi after signing his new contract. “Doing little tasks is not for me: I like to be at the heart of the manoeuvres, to be the cause of victories and at time defeats.”

One other area in which he differs from Totti, however, is in the number of titles won, having made his first-team debut in October 2001, a few months after Roma’s last Scudetto. Although De Rossi, like Totti, became a world champion with Italy in 2006, domestically he has never won anything greater than the Coppa Italia. In agreeing to stay, he also made it clear that he believes that can change. “At Roma you can be great without Scudetti or medals,” he said. “But I have a great desire to put something in the cabinet.”

“[James] Pallotta made a good impression on me,” added De Rossi of the club’s new majority shareholder, who threw himself clothed into a swimming pool at the club’s training ground last month in order to ram home a point to his team about playing without fear. “He wants to win without losing any time.”

In other words, he wants to get those hearts palpitating once again, but this time because of what happens on the pitch rather than off it.

Despite Simon Kuper’s wishes to the contrary, there is single set of Sabermetric data that can be used to pinpoint why one team is great and one team is crap. Liverpool’s performance this year however is a statistician’s dream, ironic because Liverpool are supposed to be Damien Comolli’s pet Moneyball project.

The Independent, taking data from Infostrada, created this nifty chart which points out the nature of Liverpool’s problems so far this season (for larger version, click here). Cheers to Zonal Marking’s Michael Cox for Tweeting the link.

Defensively, the club rank well in goals conceded, but in attack, where football data has yet to catch up with on-field performance, their statistics are awful. Liverpool have the lowest chance conversion rate in the Premier League. And yes Thomas Dobby, Demba Ba’s conversion rate is 30.2% to Suarez’s 6.6%.

If this is some sort of ad for “Soccernomics,” I would say Liverpool have a lot of work to do. To be fair to Simon Kuper, his recommendations for English football went far beyond a sensible transfer policy, and spoke to the very nature of how most football clubs are run. Comolli is not football’s Billy Beane, particularly as figures like Jean-Michel Aulas at Lyon provide a far better example of the kind of effective transfer policy Liverpool are still miles from implementing.

Whatever the problem at the club, if some of their transfer decisions in recent seasons are indeed based on the most cutting edge data available, soccer is still in search of its WAR.

NOTE: this piece initially said Liverpool don’t rank well in goals conceded. It has since been corrected. The Whittall regrets the error.

Tomorrow’s Thursday, the day when we take your calls, tweets and emails on THE FOOTY SHOW Podcast!

Call TFS’s voicemail and tell us in 30 seconds or less what’s on your mind in the football world this week or pose a question to the crew. You can call us right now, in 10 mins, tomorrow, ten years from now, the line will be there long after Portsmouth FC have disbanded, reformed in the eight division and worked their way up to the League Two. Can’t sleep? Have a quick rant you need to get off your chest? Are you a lawyer who wants to set us straight on FA regulations?

Give us a call! 1-855-42FOOTY (1-855-423-6689).

That’s not the only way to get in touch with us of course. Tweet us and use the hashtag #FootyChat. It’s your show, so ‘ave your say!

The Lead

Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric have both been found not guilty of tax evasion related to payments made by the former Portsmouth owner to the then-manager to a Monaco bank account. The prosecution failed to make the case the payments were performance bonuses, rather than personal investment money. The BBC:

The defence said the money was an investment made by Mr Mandaric while Mr Redknapp said he forgot about the account and had very little to do with it.

The prosecution claimed the first payment of £93,100 was a bonus for selling striker Crouch for £3.25m profit.

Redknapp appeared to have admitted to a News of the World reporter at the time that the payment was indeed a bonus for the Crouch sale, but then told the court he was “lying” because this was a journalist after all, not police.

At the end of the day, the English public have their hero back, ready to take over with the national team once Fabio Capello leaves after the current Euros. It’s clear some newspapers queued up their Harry Redknapp career retrospectives in case of a guilty verdict. Now these read as a celebration of the unfairly maligned wheeler ‘n dealer.

Harry Redknapp had his day in court, and was declared innocent of tax evasion. Fine. The verdict speaks for itself, and on the evidence, seemed to have been the right one at least as far as the legal process is concerned. But few of those currently back-slapping themselves over the HM Revenue and Custom’s poor case will take two steps back to look at the Redknapp/Mandaric relationship as evidence of the cronyism that characterizes one of the stupidest “businesses” in the world, English football. Wherein a club owner will pay one of its employees money into an offshore account to for fun investment money, and then make another payment for investment losses, is merely par for the course in a professional working relationship in football.

Instead, Harry Redknapp left the court room to the  rapturous applause of journalists and fans alike, and is now first in line for the most coveted managerial job in England. Mandaric meanwhile will go back to seeing Sheffield Wednesday out of League One.

Not anywhere to be found on the major websites this morning: forgotten Pompey cannot pay their players. Newspapers don’t have a wide angle lens, so its on to the next courtroom drama…

Canada

Some Canadian reactions to the LA Galaxy getting Juninho back on loan.

Surprise! De Ro delay in DC United contract negotiations.

England

Fabio Capello “increasingly isolated” in FA row over Terry captaincy.

Terry meanwhile may lose Umbro as a sponsor.

Ravel Morrison’s homophobic Tweet. Man, this kid is a winner…

Alex McLeish shows off his man management abilities by telling Charles N’Zogbia to “work harder.”

Obvious story about Luis Suarez at Old Trafford.

Some nonsense involving Bale, Arsenal and Barcelona.

Italy

Arsene Wenger “surpised” by Antonio Conte’s reversal of fortune with Juventus.

Luis Enrique dampens expectations of Roma.

Christian Chivu’s future still uncertain.

Spain

The development prospects of both Real Madrid and Barca have aided all of Spain, says Andy Brassell.

Jose Callejon believes Mourinho will stay at RM beyond the end of the season.

Germany

Rafa Honigstein on the rise and fall of Hoffenheim.

Takashi Usami wants out of Bayern.

Bits and bobs

Copa Libertadores preview.

Senegal sack manager Traore.

Port Said tragedy becomes political focal point in Egypt.

And that, give or take, is the story so far…

You see it on THE FOOTY SHOW every Wednesday on theScore. This is the segment driven by you! Each week you come up with some great suggestions for ‘Avin It or Not ‘Avin It. We’re looking for more!

What are you ‘avin or not ‘avin this week? Come up with the statements and Dunlop will read the best ones on-air to James & KJ. As always, VOTE for your favourite goal of the week on our facebook page! Man, there’s some seriously good ones this week.

We’ll hit you with the ‘Take Your Kick’ Podcast Wednesday afternoon, as TFC defender Adrian Cann joins us. Then get your visual fix on THE FOOTY SHOW at 6pm EST on theScore (replay 11pm EST & Thursday at 12:30pm & 3pm EST).