Not seasonal

If you’re into your Germanic retro electro, you might enjoy these (courtesy of Random Jane).

This one should get you in the seasonal mood.

And this one is getting me in the mood for tonight’s fives night out. The bit where the band take on the shop dummies in Sweden strips. That’s pretty much us.

Drawing The Sweep

Last night, in the legendary football city of Glasgow, the draw was made for the official TTA Euro2008 Sweepstake. In a lavish ceremony, Presiding Officer Ian Hunter and Secretary Craig Marnoch of the officiating body, GSFWC, drew the competing countries and the numbers of the contestants.

The Draw in full:

1  Andy Cox  France
2  Neil Willamson  Croatia
3  Andy Hedgecock  Switzerland
4  Max Hedgecock  Russia
5  Vaughn Stanger  Italy
6  Jetse De Vries  Germany
7  Foxie  Greece
8  Mike Alexander  Sweden
9  Jim Steel  Romania
10  Andrew Humphrey  Czech Republic
11  Gary Fry  Netherlands
12  Andrew Hook  Austria
13  Stephen Pirie  Portugal
14  James Pirie  Poland
15  Des  Lewis  Turkey
16  Bob Lock  Spain

Good luck to all.

A limited experiment

Well, the photo blogging kinda worked and kinda didn’t. I was attempting to upload photos in batches of three or four but it’s only taken the first one for some reason. I’ll try and get the remaining photos up there later on, but to be honest there were just too many people for any kind of decent photo opportunity, and I kept forgetting too. So, yeah, there aren’t that many, and they’re not that good, but they are a sort of record of what Manchester was like…

Warm, jolly, good-natured, good fun, bumping into people you’ve not seen for years…then hot, sweaty, overcrowded, a bit drunken, nervous…then disappointed, fractious, bad-tempered…then cold, bored, frustrated, unable to find a way to get back to the hotel. For hours.

To sum up: A nice day spoiled. Too many people. We broke Manchester’s infrastructure.

The football itself: We weren’t good enough. The best team won.

The other stuff that happened: I’ve never seen anything like that connected with Rangers fans. As far as I’m concerned those people were neds who have little or nothing to do with the club other than the colours they wore on the day. I’m sickened and angry by what they did.

Thanks to my brother for his craic which is always of the highest quality.

Strength, power and a chocolate slipper got us through to the end.

Being There

Early tomorrow morning I’m hopping on a train for Manchester. When I get there I will meet up with my brother and we will take part in something that hasn’t happened since we were both very wee indeed.

No, we don’t have a ticket for the game.

Yes, we will be two of the estimated 100,000.

Why? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. It’s instinctive. We just have to be there.

I remember saying when I went to last year’s UEFA Cup Final how enjoyable it all was, but I didn’t hold out any hope for being there to support my own team. It just wasn’t feasible, and then look what happened.

Anyway, my Celtic supporting friends, still with fresh memories of Seville, tell me we’ll have a great time, and I certainly aim to.

I was going to attempt to photoblog it, but technology has defeated me at every turn. So, instead anyone who’s possibly interested can catch my flickr stream over in the sidebar.

Back in circulation on Thursday. Unless I get lost.

EDIT: OK, the flickr account seems to have decided to stop receiving my pictures. That’s gash. I might just have to upload a choice few when I get back on Thursday, but it’s not the same, is it?

Watenaccio

I asked a friend the other week: “How would you feel if you were told your team would win a major European trophy, but that they’d be remembered – even despised – throughout the continent as the most negative team ever to do so, your name synonymous with defensiveness for a generation or more to come?”

He answered, quite correctly: “If we won a major European trophy, I wouldn’t care how we did it.”

“Quite correctly” because that’s what fans do. All they care about, bottom line, is that their team does as well as its resources allow it. Anything extra, punching above their weight, achieving higher than those resources should allow them to reach, is the stuff of dreams. In the list of priorities, quality of football comes fairly far down.

Of course, you’d love to have the players that were capable of playing slick, penentrating football and beating all comers with wonderful, expressive goals. You’d LOVE that. You’d be proud as punch of your team. But if you’ve not got those resources, if you’ve got a decent squad of players, who can play reasonable attacking football and score a few goals but not well enough to progress all the way to the top of the tree, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to say, well, we’ll try our best and see how far we get, or are you supposed to look at the resources you’ve got and try and devise a system that will maximise your chances?

Say you were the manager of Rangers (of course that’s who we’re talking about here). Suppose this was the one chance in your tenure to achieve something on this scale. Suppose you’d only recently taken over the team after a bad, bad period and were trying to rebuild it on meagre finances by European – hell, even by Scottish – standards, and sensibly starting by spending on defenders and midfielders and young, inexperienced Scottish players. Suppose, looking, at the opposition as each round came up you saw better individuals on the opposite roster. What would you do? Seriously?

No, of course, you’d limit the opposition’s chances and try to grab your own on the counter. That’s what anyone would do.

The more I look at the “Watenaccio” formation (ain’t that a fabulous word?), Walter’s version of the famous Italian system, the more I realise how clever it is. It’s a system of absolute trust between the manager and the players, and it does allow for a switch to attack when it’s going well, but it’s a risky strategy. It hasn’t worked so well in the two Fiorentina ties as it did against Lisbon. The out ball to the lone striker hasn’t been held up as well, and the supporting midfielders haven’t be close enough to him. And that’s when you find yourself “hanging on”.

Fiorentina manager, Prandelli, is not happy about it of course, and Lionel Messi called it anti-football, but guess what, they’re not in the final. To deserve to be in the final, Fiorentina should have had a better ratio than 3 shots on target out of 21. They had their chances, but they didn’t take them.

I’ve enjoyed watching the the ITV4 commentary of the last few games. Not only because auld Archie’s voice drives me up the wall, but because they know what they’re talking about and they call these games as they see them. In the first leg of the tie, Rangers were poor. Their ball possession – a key part of the system’s success – was awful, but Fiorentina were profligate. I agreed with the analysts’ assessment that we’d have to be a lot better in Italy, and we were. And I agreed with their admiration of the work that Smith has done in motivating a failing, disjointed side into a genuine team that refuses to be beaten.

I was four years old last time Rangers were in a Euro final, and I’m delighted they’re there again. I haven’t a clue if it’ll be good enough to beat St Petersburg, or win the league, or even the Scottish Cup. I just know that the transformation in the personality of the team is astonishing.

These are the experiences that bond teams. There will be new faces next season (hopefully at least one really good striker), and withthe confidence we’ll have gained from this extraordinary journey I suspect when we take on the Chamion’s League again the system will slightly less negative.

Maybe we’ll even win the trophy this time round, maybe not. But this is just the start of the second Smith era. What I’m looking forward to most, is seeing how this team develops.

Gutted

So, despite all my tactics the game went exactly as I expected it to. Now, I have to think up diversionary tactics for the next year until the World Cup qualifiers get under way. At least we’ll have an easier set of opponents next time round.

Time to get back to the novel I think!

Diversionary Tactics (4)

God Bless M. In the end we didn’t resort to Children In Need. Our usual Friday night combination got us to through without thinking much about anything:  Sofa, Wine, Scrabble, Assorted Telly, Random Chat. That the last of these involved the new series of The Mighty Boosh was a special bonus.

Anyway, Diversions over. The song’s never really gone away from the back of my mind. We’ll Be Coming Down The Road.

And now we’re here.

Eight and a half hours. And counting.

Diversionary Tactics (3)

These attempts  are getting less and less successful.

At least the latest episode of Heroes kept me distracted. I liked the switch to five years in the future, after the bomb and everything’s changed.

I’m saving this week’s Jericho til tonight, so last night I fired up EQ for a couple of hour of good honest battering fuck out of monsters. Theraputic, but hardly mentally engaging. Like the new upgrade though. The new features are good and it seems to run smoother too (tho that may just be my imagination).

[As a little on-topic aside, I noticed a nice wee piece in the Evening Times about 17 being an unlucky number in Italy. Dunno how they're going to feel about playing on the 17th of the month at 1700, then...]

Anyway, one day to go. I may resort to Children In Need tonight.

Has it really come to that?

Diversionary Tactics (2)

Last night’s attempt at mental misdirection was something of a motley collection. Each was engrossing in itself, but short lived. Here’s the rundown:

Wednesday Fives – cracking game of football which involved my side coming back from a seven goal deficit to snatch a tie at the end. Totally absorbing for the hour it lasted, but perhaps too close to the subject I’m trying to avoid. By the time I hit the shower I was already fretting over DiNatale and Toni up against Weir and McManus.

Infamous Assassinations - UKTV History have been running this series during the day time this week, so I’ve been dipping into it when I’ve had a spare half hour. Last night was Che Guevara. To think I didn’t even know he was Argentinian by birth.

Interzone - the new Interzone came in yesterday, presenting a well timed array of temporary distractions. Before bed I enjoyed Andy Hedgecock’s very good interview with Gary Gibson, and a beautiful modern childhood fable by Benjamin Rosenbaum. I’ve been enjoying Rosenbaum’s remarkable stories for a few years now, and his reading at the 2005 Worldcon was one of the week’s highlights for me. “Molly And The Red Hat” is no disappointment, and is an excellent introduction to his work. This issue also includes another of my favourite American writers, Chris Roberson, which bodes well for the diversions of the coming days.

Coming Down The Road

I’ve got an earworm. You know, a tune that keeps popping into your head and won’t go away? This one, it’s the one that goes “We’ll be coming, we’ll be coming, we’ll be coming down the road…”

Aye, coming down the road.

Five days to go, and the tension’s already getting to me. By Friday I won’t be able to sleep. By Saturday I’ll be jittery and on edge all day until I can settle myself at that wee corner table in the Captains and get a pint of Best down me. And then, for the next two hours, my heart will cease to beat.

Until then it’s just the waiting. In the office we’ve already tried discussing the team and formation, but there’s not much to discuss. The formation will be the same as has served us so well all year, and the team virtually picks itself. Naysmith’s experience will get him the nod at left back, Hutton’s amazing consistency has made the opposite position his own. The only questions will be over playing McFadden as part of the mid-five or going with McCulloch or perhaps Hartley. Or whether Fletcher is match fit enough, and perhaps giving the in-form Hartley that spot instead. For me it’s Gordon, Naysmith, Weir, McManus, Hutton, Ferguson, Brown, Fletcher, McCulloch, McFadden, Miller. I can’t believe how dependable that sounds.
But the composition of the team is not really the question. We know they’ll give everything they’ve got. We’ll know they’ll defend across the middle and close down all night long. We know Italy have the luxury of being able to wait until the game stretches to look for gaps that they can exploit. What we don’t know is will we be lucky? Because that’s what games like this turn on. A hand ball in the box missed by the referee or undeserved sending offs by an over-officious official. Will a dive over a desperate lunge in the 75th minute be a booking or a pen? The widths of posts, the ricochets off shins, the snaring of studs in the turf at the vital moment. All of these things can/might/will make the difference.

So, yes. I genuinely believe that the gap between us and the world champions is so small that the outcome will be decided by a single piece of luck. The kind of luck that can absolutely break your heart when it goes against you.

It’s been so long since we’ve been here. It’s been so long since the outcome of a match like this mattered.

And the waiting for it to arrive is palpable here. It’s shivering the crisp Novemberish air.

It’s the noise of the tartan army boys. It’s coming down the road…