Runway fun for National
Cold weather in Europe has dampened the ardour of many clubs, but there can be
no doubting FC National Bucuresti's will to train as they compensated for the
lack of unfrozen pitches in the Romanian capital by strutting their stuff on a
local airfield. Last season's Divizia A runners-up travelled 20km to a small
airport in Clinceni to make use of a rare patch of turf which did not have the
consistency of iron. "For the good of the game," sighed National's Italian coach
Walter Zenga, whose career with Internazionale FC and Italy could hardly have
prepared him for such an eventuality. National players, such as former Chelsea
FC star Dan Petrescu and Romanian international Daniel Prodan, entertained each
other with cries of: "Down! An aeroplane is landing!" It has been a peculiar
week for National, who spent last Monday training on a pitch at an army base in
Campina, a full 100km from Bucharest. In order to get from their dressing room
to the field, players were forced to vault the walls around the base, but that
was nothing compared to what Romanian third division side FC Oltul Sfantu
Gheorghe had to go through as they conducted a training session on the surface
of a frozen lake. "At first, everybody was scared, but everything was normal
afterwards," said coach Alexandru Andrasi.
Odds on Keane getting even
While football elsewhere in Europe may still be slowly awakening from its winter
break, in England things are still going at full speed, and perhaps that lack of
a rest in December might go part of the way to explaining a rash of peculiar
bets being offered for the new year. Paddy Power bookmakers have offered 8/1
odds on Manchester United FC's Roy Keane facing up to his mortal enemy, former
Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy, on a television chat show in 2003,
and 66/1 on the duo having a fight in public. Keane's United team-mate David
Beckham, meanwhile, is a 16/1 candidate to receive a knighthood by the end of
the year, although he may be less impressed to hear that the bookmakers also
reckon he has a 28/1 chance of ending 2003 as a divorcee. If it is of any
reassurance to the England midfield player, who was recently voted sports
personality of the year by viewers of Welsh language children's television
programme Uned 5, Paddy Power are offering much better odds - a mere 12/1 - on a
member of the British royal family being bitten by a fox.
Feathers fly at Partick
Manchester United FC's David Beckham is still smarting from the boot
accidentally kicked at him by his manager Sir Alex Ferguson, but he should be
happy that he never played for Scottish Premier League side Partick Thistle FC.
Partick manager John Lambie admitted last week that he had once expressed his
dissatisfaction with a player by slapping him in the face with a dead pigeon.
Dedicated pigeon-fancier Lambie had brought a box of dead birds into his office
with the intention of giving them a decent burial, but found a much more
practical use for one of them in his office when he was arguing with a player.
"His name was Declan Roche and he was talking back to me - so I got these dead
pigeons out of a box and slapped him round the face with one," said Lambie. "He
was certainly surprised, but it couldn't have improved him much because I got
rid of him soon afterwards." Expect a rash of similarly bizarre arguments as
other European clubs scramble to get their names in uefa.com's regular stupid
stories column.
Hatchet man
Pigeons are small stuff compared to what players from Romark FC, a Czech club in
London, experienced during a five-a-side match. In this case it was the referee
who lost his cool and the Romark players, for all their protestations at his
handling of the match, were ultimately grateful not to lose their heads. "He was
getting abuse from the Romark players and he abandoned the game," said a
witness. "One of the players called him a fairy and he went completely berserk.
He ran off the pitch and returned a few moments later stripped to the waist
waving a long axe around his head. All hell broke loose. The ref was like Conan
the Barbarian." On a similarly violent tip, Paris Saint-Germain FC players were
stoned by a 'wild horde' of supporters after letting a two-goal lead slip to
lose 3-2 at En Avant Guingamp last weekend. In Brazil, meanwhile, a SC
Corinthians Paulista supporter, known only as Roberto, has tied himself to a
tree outside Corinthians' Parque São Jorge stadium, and is refusing to leave
until changes have been made to the team lineup and tactics. He has expressed
his disgust at the club by eating bananas and throwing the skins at the club's
front door.
The men in black
Of course, with their will to win, professional sportsmen have always had that
aggressive edge, but it is not something that you usually expect of referees.
Last week, uefa.com reported on the referee in London who pursued players around
with an axe. This week, we have referees turning on their own. Up in Cumbria,
towards the English border with Scotland, two referees found themselves at
loggerheads when they were both booked to officiate the same amateur game. Jimmy
Hunter was about to whistle for kick-off in the game between Askam United FC and
Furness Rovers FC in Barrow-in-Furness when he was interrupted by another
referee, Dick Green. Kick-off was delayed by 15 minutes as the two officials
refused to back down. Hunter threatened to abandon the game unless Green left
the field, while Green responded by blowing his whistle at Hunter. Eventually a
third referee took charge, with the two rivals taking a touchline each and
acting as linesmen. "It was my match, he had no right to muscle in," said Hunter
after the game. "If he had asked politely to take charge of the game I would
have let him but it became a point of principle," said Green.
Cup spill costs Alki
Over in Cyprus, Alki Larnaca FC would be happy to have any supporters, wearing
gas masks or otherwise, after they set an unhappy Cypriot Cup record this week,
with just four paying supporters attending their game against Ethnikos Ashias
FC. It was one of the highlights of a season that has already seen hapless Alki
send club records tumbling, having fallen to their record defeat – 11-1 against
Omonia FC – a few weeks back (and an 8-0 defeat against newcomers Dighenis
Morphou FC a week later). The club have already gone through two coaches and
have also seen striker Aleksandar Minic walk out in a row over unpaid wages, and
their financial situation has not been improved by the match which ended in a
3-2 defeat against second division Ashias. Having earned €40 in gate money, Alki
now owe the owners of the GSZ stadium, where they play their home fixtures,
€1,620 in rent. Bottom of the table with only one win and three draws all
season, one record Alki will not break is the one for their worst ever season.
In 1998/99 they won one and lost 25 of their 26 league games, conceding a
stunning 109 goals in the process. So it could be worse.
Play misty for me
Arguably, it is better to be hated outright than be simply ignored, and that may
have been a bitter thought in the mind of Stocksbridge Steels FC goalkeeper
Richard Siddall. The goalkeeper, playing in an amateur game near Sheffield in
England recently, played on his own for ten minutes unaware that the match had
been abandoned because of thick fog. Siddall persevered during the game against
Witton Albion FC despite not seeing any of his team-mates for ten minutes and
only left the field when a supporter informed him of his error. "I didn't have a
clue," he admitted. "I just stood there waiting for a player to come through the
mist." Stocksbridge manager Wayne Biggins, a former Sheffield Wednesday FC
player, added: "We were in the dressing rooms but Richard thought we were still
playing. No one had a clue where he was until it dawned on us that he must have
still been on the pitch."
Cold weather in Europe has dampened the ardour of many clubs, but there can be
no doubting FC National Bucuresti's will to train as they compensated for the
lack of unfrozen pitches in the Romanian capital by strutting their stuff on a
local airfield. Last season's Divizia A runners-up travelled 20km to a small
airport in Clinceni to make use of a rare patch of turf which did not have the
consistency of iron. "For the good of the game," sighed National's Italian coach
Walter Zenga, whose career with Internazionale FC and Italy could hardly have
prepared him for such an eventuality. National players, such as former Chelsea
FC star Dan Petrescu and Romanian international Daniel Prodan, entertained each
other with cries of: "Down! An aeroplane is landing!" It has been a peculiar
week for National, who spent last Monday training on a pitch at an army base in
Campina, a full 100km from Bucharest. In order to get from their dressing room
to the field, players were forced to vault the walls around the base, but that
was nothing compared to what Romanian third division side FC Oltul Sfantu
Gheorghe had to go through as they conducted a training session on the surface
of a frozen lake. "At first, everybody was scared, but everything was normal
afterwards," said coach Alexandru Andrasi.
Odds on Keane getting even
While football elsewhere in Europe may still be slowly awakening from its winter
break, in England things are still going at full speed, and perhaps that lack of
a rest in December might go part of the way to explaining a rash of peculiar
bets being offered for the new year. Paddy Power bookmakers have offered 8/1
odds on Manchester United FC's Roy Keane facing up to his mortal enemy, former
Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy, on a television chat show in 2003,
and 66/1 on the duo having a fight in public. Keane's United team-mate David
Beckham, meanwhile, is a 16/1 candidate to receive a knighthood by the end of
the year, although he may be less impressed to hear that the bookmakers also
reckon he has a 28/1 chance of ending 2003 as a divorcee. If it is of any
reassurance to the England midfield player, who was recently voted sports
personality of the year by viewers of Welsh language children's television
programme Uned 5, Paddy Power are offering much better odds - a mere 12/1 - on a
member of the British royal family being bitten by a fox.
Feathers fly at Partick
Manchester United FC's David Beckham is still smarting from the boot
accidentally kicked at him by his manager Sir Alex Ferguson, but he should be
happy that he never played for Scottish Premier League side Partick Thistle FC.
Partick manager John Lambie admitted last week that he had once expressed his
dissatisfaction with a player by slapping him in the face with a dead pigeon.
Dedicated pigeon-fancier Lambie had brought a box of dead birds into his office
with the intention of giving them a decent burial, but found a much more
practical use for one of them in his office when he was arguing with a player.
"His name was Declan Roche and he was talking back to me - so I got these dead
pigeons out of a box and slapped him round the face with one," said Lambie. "He
was certainly surprised, but it couldn't have improved him much because I got
rid of him soon afterwards." Expect a rash of similarly bizarre arguments as
other European clubs scramble to get their names in uefa.com's regular stupid
stories column.
Hatchet man
Pigeons are small stuff compared to what players from Romark FC, a Czech club in
London, experienced during a five-a-side match. In this case it was the referee
who lost his cool and the Romark players, for all their protestations at his
handling of the match, were ultimately grateful not to lose their heads. "He was
getting abuse from the Romark players and he abandoned the game," said a
witness. "One of the players called him a fairy and he went completely berserk.
He ran off the pitch and returned a few moments later stripped to the waist
waving a long axe around his head. All hell broke loose. The ref was like Conan
the Barbarian." On a similarly violent tip, Paris Saint-Germain FC players were
stoned by a 'wild horde' of supporters after letting a two-goal lead slip to
lose 3-2 at En Avant Guingamp last weekend. In Brazil, meanwhile, a SC
Corinthians Paulista supporter, known only as Roberto, has tied himself to a
tree outside Corinthians' Parque São Jorge stadium, and is refusing to leave
until changes have been made to the team lineup and tactics. He has expressed
his disgust at the club by eating bananas and throwing the skins at the club's
front door.
The men in black
Of course, with their will to win, professional sportsmen have always had that
aggressive edge, but it is not something that you usually expect of referees.
Last week, uefa.com reported on the referee in London who pursued players around
with an axe. This week, we have referees turning on their own. Up in Cumbria,
towards the English border with Scotland, two referees found themselves at
loggerheads when they were both booked to officiate the same amateur game. Jimmy
Hunter was about to whistle for kick-off in the game between Askam United FC and
Furness Rovers FC in Barrow-in-Furness when he was interrupted by another
referee, Dick Green. Kick-off was delayed by 15 minutes as the two officials
refused to back down. Hunter threatened to abandon the game unless Green left
the field, while Green responded by blowing his whistle at Hunter. Eventually a
third referee took charge, with the two rivals taking a touchline each and
acting as linesmen. "It was my match, he had no right to muscle in," said Hunter
after the game. "If he had asked politely to take charge of the game I would
have let him but it became a point of principle," said Green.
Cup spill costs Alki
Over in Cyprus, Alki Larnaca FC would be happy to have any supporters, wearing
gas masks or otherwise, after they set an unhappy Cypriot Cup record this week,
with just four paying supporters attending their game against Ethnikos Ashias
FC. It was one of the highlights of a season that has already seen hapless Alki
send club records tumbling, having fallen to their record defeat – 11-1 against
Omonia FC – a few weeks back (and an 8-0 defeat against newcomers Dighenis
Morphou FC a week later). The club have already gone through two coaches and
have also seen striker Aleksandar Minic walk out in a row over unpaid wages, and
their financial situation has not been improved by the match which ended in a
3-2 defeat against second division Ashias. Having earned €40 in gate money, Alki
now owe the owners of the GSZ stadium, where they play their home fixtures,
€1,620 in rent. Bottom of the table with only one win and three draws all
season, one record Alki will not break is the one for their worst ever season.
In 1998/99 they won one and lost 25 of their 26 league games, conceding a
stunning 109 goals in the process. So it could be worse.
Play misty for me
Arguably, it is better to be hated outright than be simply ignored, and that may
have been a bitter thought in the mind of Stocksbridge Steels FC goalkeeper
Richard Siddall. The goalkeeper, playing in an amateur game near Sheffield in
England recently, played on his own for ten minutes unaware that the match had
been abandoned because of thick fog. Siddall persevered during the game against
Witton Albion FC despite not seeing any of his team-mates for ten minutes and
only left the field when a supporter informed him of his error. "I didn't have a
clue," he admitted. "I just stood there waiting for a player to come through the
mist." Stocksbridge manager Wayne Biggins, a former Sheffield Wednesday FC
player, added: "We were in the dressing rooms but Richard thought we were still
playing. No one had a clue where he was until it dawned on us that he must have
still been on the pitch."
