Goal

Berba's scores our first -




Owen with the second


And Valencia with a cracker for three

szólj hozzá: Ald 0-3 Mnu

The Noise of Carpet

First off, apologies for the lack of posts recently, but my laptop screen has broken and it's not the easiest thing to work around, eventually I'll get it fixed and normal service will resume.

Anyway, I've forced myself to work around the problem today because of the ridiculous responses to Evra saying Suarez racially abused him.

Football is a game with a recognised racism problem - why else do we have the "kick racism out of football" campaign/  Why else has there been a recent debate on the lack of black managers in the game? When English teams go abroad and face racism condemnation and calls for action fill many column inches.  When a black player is abused in a game in the Premier League everybody wants to ignore it or cast doubt on the possibility of it happen, or, even worse, try and cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the man who suffered the abuse.  The reaction of Liverpool, wanting Evra banned if there's no proof found is ridiculous, almost an attempt to make sure any racism in future is hushed up, swept away - if no one says anything we can pretend it isn't there.  Gordon Taylor suggesting the PFA could help mediate in the "row." Was it a row?  I thought it was one player racially abusing another. Is mediation needed here?

And why was Suarez's denial given such po-faced creedance?

"We are all the same. I go to the field with the maximum illusion of a little child who enjoys what he does, not to create conflicts."

Any other time this would be laughable coming from such a cynical diver.  But no one pointed this out in the media.  

The fact that no one wants to believe this happened in this day and age, in our, most cosmopolitan of leagues, is no excuse to sweep it away, report it as if it cannot be true, as if Evra must have made it up.  This whole episode (whatever the outcome) shows the problems with the game and its inability to finally deal with racism, or sexism (the whole Andy Gray and Richard Keys row, where they were scape-goated so that nothing actually had to change) or homophobia.  It's alright when it's eastern european countries with the problems, we can patronisingly chastise them and feel good about ourselves, but when its closer to home it's best ignored or rubbished.

(The final straw here was the usually brilliant 101 Great Goals site putting this up - a video that showed nothing of what it claims to with these words attached:

"new footage has now been released which taints Patrice Evra’s character in relation to truth-telling"

Which is absolutely shameful - even if it did show him diving - there is no comparison between diving, something which, like it or not, is deeply ingrained in the game, and saying one has been racially abused.)