June 2007 Archives

It seems Monseuir Gaillard has put his head above the parapet again.
After a month in hiding UEFA's head of spin, subterfuge, mystery, intrigue and darks arts has re-emerged to tell the world that English football fans are not so bad after all.
Apparently, they suffer from their reputation.
Quelle surprise.
Anyone who has followed an English team to Europe at any time over the last decade will be only too well aware that merely being from this part of the world is enough to allow some foreign police forces to treat you like you're the scum of the earth.

From the UEFA website, feel free to insert your own punchlines.
Don't know where to begin on this so I'm going to deal with the shock for an hour or so and then come back to it.

UEFA has been presented with the inaugural European Communication Award at the European Communication Summit in Brussels.

Did Ian O'Doherty's missus walk out on him for a fella from Bootle?
Perhaps he blames his ever-increasing waist line and expanding head on a scally who pinned him down and force fed him doughnuts?
Or maybe he's just a bigot who uses out-dated stereotypes and outight abuse to try and mask his lack of any discernible talent.
Sorry to bring this no-mark up again but he's had another pop at Liverpool and Scousers in general for having the timerity to defend themselves against his outrageous slurs.
In case you haven't seen it, here's O'Doherty's column from yesterday's Irish Independent:

The title of this piece is taken from the headline of an article in the Irish Independent, a paper which is actually one of my favourites.
The reason why it is one of my favourites is simple: the brilliant Dion Fanning - a journalist who proves just how bad Martin Samuel really is - is their leading football writer.
Fanning's stuff is always top notch and his analysis of the English Premiership shames half of the writers on this side of the Irish Sea.
But for the life of me I can't work out how the following article, complete with the outright offensive headline shown above, can make it into such a well regarded newspaper:

How generous of Michel Platini to come out and admit that Liverpool fans are officially not the worst in Europe after all.
After a week of spin, subterfuge and orchestrated leaks to the media, the UEFA chief finally had the balls to tell us what we already knew.
The insinuation that Liverpool fans were some sort of barbaric tribe, raping and pillaging its way across Europe would have been funny if it wasn't so damaging.

So it's official then, Liverpool fans are the worst in all of Europe.
Worse than the Italian fans who left the wife of a police officer widowed.
Worse than the French fans who held an anti-semitic rally which turned violent and resulted in the death of an officer from the Gendarmerie.
Worse than the Inter Milan fans who on one occasion launched a scooter from an upper tier of the San Siro and on another caused a Champions League quarter final match to be abandoned by hurling flares on to the pitch.