Posts Tagged ‘Diego Maradona’

1FITG apologises

Posted: March 18, 2013 by onefootinthegame in Uncategorized
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Following an apology in The Times today for publishing a story about the Dream Football League which turned out to have been, how shall I put this, dreamt up, 1FITG has been similarly moved to apologise for its own wholesale absence of journalistic standards.

When we get it wrong, we admit it.

So, it’s time for us to set the record straight.

We stand by all our writing staff at 1FITG. Our sub-editors and editors are the best in the world.

Our fact checkers are obsessed with detail. We wouldn’t be seen anywhere near a dodgy story.

However, we made one or two minor errors in our exclusive report last week, when we announced the imminent launch of a British Territories League. It transpires that:

- There is no plan to tap into the riches of the English expatriate community by taking the Premier League to such locations as the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar and the Pitcairn Islands in the premier league summer break.
- Our headline ‘Bermuda Tri-amble: ageing Premier League stars set for overseas windfall’ was misleading in suggesting that the British Territories League was a done deal.
- Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has not, in fact, formally complained to FIFA, or threatened to send troops to accession the Falkland Islands should the stars of the Premier League set foot on them.
- Our robustly checked, single source for our story, ‘El Fabrico’, who over months we’ve got to know well down the pub and said he was a close personal friend of Diego Maradona, is not fully trustworthy.

In our defence, we’d like to add that to criticise our handling of this story is to misunderstand how top football journalism works.

It is perfectly normal to take at face value the improbable claims of people from football’s fringes whose only interest is clearly in making money. Aside from this story, everything we have ever printed on 1FITG is 100% true, such as “Pep Guardiola signs for English club” or “exclusive: player’s agent just phoned me and said something that isn’t self-evidently untrue”.

We could have simply ignored the fact we got this implausible story completely and utterly wrong. The fact that we didn’t only shows how dedicated we are to accuracy, and the trustworthiness of our football journalism.

Rest assured, only a top quality outlet of football journalism like 1FITG could get it this wrong.

Top football celebrations ever

Posted: October 28, 2011 by onefootinthegame in Awards, Champions Leuage, Championship, Championship playoffs, England, FA Cup, International football, La Liga, League One
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After Super Mario’s ‘Why always me?’ T-shirt last week we then saw those crazy Scandinavia chaps trying to teach some pub team the fishing celebration and it got us thinking about celebrations. So many to choose from, impossible to order them. But here are some of our favourites:

Marco Tardelli, 1982 the passion of being the best in the world

The passion, the tears, the beating of the arms like king kong, the relief of months of stress.

Italy had taken a huge beating from the media pre tournament and had gone into media blackout. Rossi was back and misfiring in the early group stages where Italy drew their 3 games (sound familiar?). After beating Argentina and arguably the best Brazil side ever, Italy beat West Germany in the final. Tardelli eyes bulging lets off months of stress in what, in my opinion is the great celebration ever. Still makes the hairs stand up on end.

Honourable mention for Grosso Semi final 2006 too. Oh and the phenomenal pass from Pirlo.

Robbie Fowler lines it up…

Robbie Fowler in his pomp. Cheeky, bending over infront of Le Saux and banging them in for fun.

This celebration would probably lead to 4 weeks suspension and a sending off nowadays. Back then it was just great fun (this blog doesn’t promote drugs in any way).

Best bit about this celebration was that manager Gerard Houllier, suggested it might be a Cameroonian grass-eating celebration, picked up off team-mate Rigobert Song. Yeah…right.

1994 World Cup…Stand up (or knee down) Mr Finidi George.

The 1994 World Cup was full of great celebrations. Maradona (see below) and Bebeto’s now legendary baby swinging celebration (the baby that celebration played for the Brazil U17’s last month).

But our favourite was Finidi George, scores a goal for his country and then goes to the corner flag to urinate like a dog. Unbelievable stuff.

Henry’s arrogance

I didn’t like the vast majority of Henry’s celebrations, actually I hated them all. But something about this celebration was great.

About 35 yards out the referee is telling Henry to put the ball further back, after swinging in a fantastic goal he stands still, Ballotelli like and just asks (shouts) at the ref – is that enough? Is that enough.

Diego smacks it up

As mentioned above 1994 had so many great celebrations, this was probably one of the defining moments in Maradona’s footballing career.

After shedding weight and getting back into the team, Maradona picked up where he left off in 1990. Little did we know he was high on a cocktail of drugs.

The celebration was a hint though…

Sticking a flag in hell

Before he was a mild manners pundit Souness was not only a great player but also a less good manager. This celebration wasn’t after a goal he scored but after the Turkish Cup Final against the bitterest of bitter rivals Fenerbache.

Most people would want to get in, get the result and get out. Not Graeme. Souness decides that putting the Galatasary flag in the middle of Fenerbache’s pitch was the best way to play down the tension…Fantastic to watch though.

Gazza

So many Gazza celebrations, so little time that it could be a blog on their own (tweet us if you want to write it).

Here are our favourites:

Euro 1996

FA cup Semi Final

Lazio madness

But the most contraverisal…against Celtic because someone told him…Gazza celebrates with a loyalist gesture. Oh Gazza.

We’ve missed loads so get over it, but link your favourites below.

The Premier League takes another victim: pub football

Posted: November 20, 2010 by onefootinthegame in Non League football, Premier League
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Is that "body armour" under that shirt?I hate the Premiership. It’s ruined the football league. And now it’s ruining pub football.

Yeah, pub football.

I turn up for games and I find the opposition have got their socks pulled up over their knees like Thierry Henry or John Terry. They’re wearing multicoloured boots. They can’t control a ball for toffee, but wearing canary yellow Puma’s seems to make them feel better about being piss poor.

At half time they start sucking down energy drinks as if they’ll somehow compensate for being a stone and half overweight and never exercising.

There’s people in my own team who insist on wearing base layers, even on a hot day. And there’s others who have no shame in playing wearing gloves or tights on a cold one.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never wanted to wear gloves. I feel the cold like everyone else. But when I started playing pub football wearing gloves or, heaven help me, tights would have marked you out for the kind of treatment Andoni Goikoetxea dished out to Diego Maradona.

The worst thing though is when one of these deluded primadonnas scores against you.  Time was they’d just jog back to their half. Now they go cart wheeling about like they’d just scored an extra time winner in the World Cup final. They seem to have forgotten this is Sunday morning football. There is almost nothing at stake.

I don’t support a Premiership club and I don’t watch the games. I’m quite happy to let it get on with imploding under the weight of its own ridiculous marketing hyperbole. Can’t I just have one bit of the game free from the Premiership’s tyrannical bullshit?