Mark Chapman's Weblog

Sports News

Sports news will appear in this blog occasionally and I have absolutely no idea when. Probably just when there are at least two 'SHOCK STORIES'. We are sticking with football for today's entry, as it has two such SHOCK STORIES.

The latest SHOCKER is that Arsene Wenger is a bad loser. Admittedly this fact is not too much of a surprise as he has shown, throughout his illustrious career of winning lots of things that he is not keen on failing to do so. However, he has clearly gone a little too far with his completely insane rant concluding with accusations of referees conspiring against his team. I was fortunate enough to watch the match (a pulsating affair, dominated bt Arsenal but won by Manchester United), and I can claim without bias, that William Gallas handled the ball and that it was a freekick. It is inconsequential whether Arsenal deserved to win, whether they deserved at least one penalty when they played Liverpool and whether referees make mistakes; it is farcical, offensive and downright ludicrous to accuse referees of a vast conspiracy against Arsenal. Let's not forget that Adebayor clearly palmed the ball into the net to claim Arsenal's opening goal and, however deserved it was, they should not have been given it by the referee.

The second SHOCKER was the shameful treatment of Rafael Benitez by his club's owners. Despite some often bizarre decisions by Benitez, he has been the most successful Liverpool since Kenny Dalgliesh and (unlike the latter) done this with his own team. He is popular with the fans, accomplished as a tactician and well respected by other managers. One would not bet against Benitez out-thinking Chelsea in the Champions League yet again and reaching a third final in the competition in four years. And yet the owners of his club are talking to a German who lives in California and has never managed in the Premier League or the Champions League. What is going on at Liverpool?

When one adds the owners' squabbles and Rick Parry's attempts at resolving the in-fighting by falling out with everyone, and you have the classical Premiership farce.

Liverpool are not a team to be messed with, however. With such a loyal fan base across the world and in the ground itself and with such a great history of success behind it, the current owners have to make the right choice. They are not the right people to run Liverpool FC and, even if DIC are not, they certainly cannot be worse.

It is a sad state of affairs that one of the world's greatest clubs has been handled in such a despicable way and it, like Wenger's overreaction, points to the game's biggest SHOCKER; a lack of respect in the game, and in the way its most powerful individual's treat the people who make the game what it is.

The nation awaited as Ricky Hatton promised to become the 'greatest', the 'best' and the 'most famous' boxer in the world. While the odd sports journalist popped in the odd jab, with warnings about the massive gap in class between Hatton and his opponent Floyd Mayweather, they were out-punched by the nationalistic and groundlessly opportunistic tabloid sports writers. We were promised by the tabloids that a down-to-earth man would be able to demonstrate that the staples of the British identity (a poor diet and copious amounts of beer) were more than a match for Johnny Foreigner. Unfortunately he lost and we were all left to vote for the 'other boxer', Joe Calzaghe, for the BBC's Sports Personality award.

With the rugby team falling at the final stage and Louis Hamilton demonstrating that hubris does not necessarily lead to championships, not to mention the failure of the football team to even get to a stage where they could be judged as failures, we have been left with a bit of a sports vacuum. Failing another success at an obscure sport of little note until we win a medal in it (e.g. our towering sporting success at curling), we are going to have to put all our efforts back into the national sport, and into a brand new manager.

England managers have always been hard done by. Considering the fact that there are very few players of any real ability, coupled with the fact that those very same players are paid ridiculous wages that gives young men, from generally poor backgrounds, a level of pomp and omnipotence few political leaders will ever have, has meant that their is a massive gulf between expectations and reality. These managers have perpetuated this problem by consistently promising the world because that is, it seems, the main part of their job. Steve McClaren was the biggest failure England have ever had, largely due to the fact that he embodied both the mediocrity of the English team and the illusory nature of the England 'team'.

Now we have Capello and he is going to be the man who sorts out the prima donas who will make us all fighters. Already though we have the tabloids questioning his nationality, not to mention his grasp of English which, admittedly does appear to be more than limited. In response we have soundbites from the Brian Barwick and attempted soundbites from Capello himself.

Perhaps the answer to success for England (apart from nurturing better players) is to simply cut out the heavy-handed politics and concentrate on what is, after all, a sport? Or perhaps Bill Shankly was only a little bit off the mark when he said football was more important than life and death, perhaps it more important to the English nation than reality.