Raging Fatalism; and Putting The Boot In
What the hell’s up with him? The Fiver can only surmise that he’s making patriotic hay while the sun shines. For tomorrow the national football team play world champions Italy at Hampden, and a win will guarantee qualification for Euro 2008 - though it might as well guarantee the moon on a stick, because we all know what’s going to happen. Still, not everyone is as mentally disturb … hold on … not everyone is as pessimistic as Shortbread. “It’s our intention to go the final step,” smiled Alex McLeish today. “We’re at home in Glasgow and we have to make the Italians feel they’re away from home,” added the Scotland boss, whose relaxed manner would surely have settled Shortbread’s nerves, were Shortbread not playing a medley of Runrig’s greatest hits on chanter while attempting a soft-shoe shuffle around two sharp claymores.So who’s going to put this pressure on the Italians? Kenny Miller? James McFadden? Kenny Miller and James McFadden? “It’s not my policy to reveal the starting line-up,” shrugged McLeish, as an in-shock Shortbread tried to affix three severed toes back on to his foot, “but I’m sure later on in the day or tomorrow morning the newspapers will have a probable team.” McLeish has got that damn straight, because the folk over at Big Paper know someone who knows someone who’s seen McLeish’s starting XI, and word is that jinking genius McFadden will plough a lone furrow up front. Meanwhile as a manic Shortbread was carted away in the Special Bus to the Special Hospital, his Italian cousin Bespoke Tailoring Expensive Shoes Moped Pizza Smouldering Good Looks Fiver was kicking back, sipping a small glass of grappa in an insouciant fashion. He knows. He just knows. Let’s face it, we all know. Poor Shortbread!* * * * * * * * * * * *QUOTE OF THE DAY”I haven’t got a bad word to say about Martin Jol. I loved working with him, and we got on really well. Unfortunately we are in a results-driven business” - Robbie Keane sticks the boot in to his fun-but-useless former Tottenham manager Tony Soprano.*********************THIRD WORLD WARThe Fiver enjoys a parlour game or none when it’s gathered round the family hearth. Scrabble, Pin The Tail On Juliano Belletti, Tearful Drunken Fight With Your Father Who Never Appreciated You - they’re all crackers. But best of all is that game where you change one of the words in a film’s title to make a gigglesome joke. So Star Wars becomes - tee-hee! - Fart Wars, and Honey I Shrunk The Kids becomes something very bad indeed.The same logic could be applied to today’s placatory quotes from Slaven Bilic about the England team. Simply add the words “especially if you’re England” to the end of each sentence and suddenly it makes sense.”It is not easy to play in Russia. It is not easy to play Macedonia. And it’s very difficult to play in Tel Aviv,” he said today (this sentence doesn’t count, pedant). “So maybe [England] were expecting to cruise the group, but it’s a very difficult group.”While Slaven was giving Second-Choice Steve the benefit of the doubt, England’s World Cup-winning full-back George Cohen was busy putting the boot in. “I find it upsetting when I watch this England team. Look at the sides we play - some of them are genuine third-world countries,” said Cohen, safe in the knowledge that the humble yam farmers of Andorra [GDP per capita $38,800] would never get wind of his ill-informed comments. “I can’t imagine anything less passionate than the way we play now.”England’s hosts tonight - as long as they can manage to get a few car batteries together to power their floodlights - will be the subsistence farmers of Austria. But it’s tomorrow’s games involving Russia, Israel and Croatia that England really need to watch out for, because if results don’t go their way, they’re heading for a very long summer of rubbish parlour games.What with it being Friday night and this match being completely meaningless, don’t bother following Austria v England as it happens with Scott Murray, but go out meet some new people and have a few drinks instead.*********************THE RUMOUR MILLVillarreal’s Juan Roman Riquelme is off to Spurs, after picking up subtle signals from his current club that suggest his long-term future might lie elsewhere. “The people at the club keep saying I am not needed,” he harrumphed.The West Ham chequebook is at this very moment down the gym pounding the treadmill as it prepares for an almighty January flexing. Giles Barnes and Nicky Shorey will both sign, while Nigel Quashie will remind the world that he does still exist by moving somewhere else for a nominal fee.Ronaldinho might be coming to Chelsea, but then again he might not. Don’t ask Henk ten Cate, former Barcelona assistant manager and current holder of that very same post at Stamford Bridge, because he doesn’t know anything about it. “I don’t know anything about it, ” he said, or words to that effect.* * * * * * * * * *STILL WANT MORE?Simon Burnton examines the big black cloud currently hovering over Oldham’s Boundary Park.Seconds out for a six-minute-and-30-second round of audio chat between Big Paper scribe Simon Hattenstone and Ricky Hatton.From the 90-year-old rugby star to the Norwegian playing third division football at 60, The Joy of Six: elderly sportsmen looks at athletes who’ve stuck two fingers up at Father Time.Liverpool and Israeli legend Ronny Rosenthal goes toe-to-toe with Small Talk to explain that miss against Aston Villa, why a lion would win a fight with a tiger, and why his country can help England reach Euro 2008.What’s that coming over the hill? It’s James Richardson and the Football Weekly crew, droning about Scotland and England and Israel and Spain and other stuff.Sweat onions and leeks in butter with Big Paper chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as he shows you how to whip up a wholesome, nutritious and downright tasty smoked pollack chowder.And in tomorrow’s %26#163;1.50 Big Paper: telly-watching misanthrope Charlie Brooker hands down his verdict on the week’s TV, more pre-Israel v Russia straw-clutching in Sport, and enough supplements, inserts and pull-outs to clutter up most modestly-sized living rooms.* * * * * * * * * * *NEWS IN BRIEFBenfica midfielder Augustin Binya has been handed a six-match ban for his slightly over-enthusiastic tackle on Queen’s Celtic midfielder Scott Brown during the two sides’ Big Cup clash at Parkhead.The FAI has denied making overtures to Paul Jewell or anyone else in a bid to find somebody who knows what they are doing to manage the Republic of Ireland football team. “Will ya g’wan outta dat ya feckin’ hoor ya! No approach has been made by the FAI to any potential manager,” insisted a spokesman.The Sheilaroos have said “fair dinkum” to Everton’s request that Tim Cahill should sit out his country’s international friendly against Nigeria at Craven Cottage next week.And in news that is bound to generate no end of chat around office water-coolers the length and breadth of the UK, Reading’s Icelandic international Ivar Ingimarsson has announced his retirement from international football.* * * * * * * * * *FIVER LETTERS”Re: the BBC apologising for EastEnders dialogue. Liverpool fans under attack from fictional c0ckneys? Will their suffering never cease?” - Jim Adamson.”EastEnders was seen by 12 million people who always thought ‘them Scousers’ were to blame all along and the BBC see fit to perpetuate this myth yet again. Revenge for the ‘Justice Day’ hijacking of the FA Cup tie against Arsenal earlier in the year? There was also an insinuation that fences went up BECAUSE of Heysel. This is untrue, but of course, this just makes me look like a stereotypical, self-pitying Scouser, doesn’t it? I wonder if you thought that about the thousands of Italian fans who turned up for Gabriele Sandri’s funeral? Were they self-pitying football supporters too?” - Behn Graham.”Continuing the Ultravox theme (Wednesday’s Fiver), were the guests at Steve Rider’s party (yesterday’s Fiver) dancing with tears in their eyes?” - Phil Taylor.”Did you mean Park Drive cigarettes in yesterday’s Bernard Cribbins story? I believe the Monopoly-related smokes were called Mayfair” - Geoff Coxon.”Re: $tevie Mbe. With such an inflated superiority complex and propensity for despot-like mood swings, a dollar sign in his first name and a surname that looks and pronounces like a stereotypical African one, I was beginning to wonder if the Fiver’s writers had cottoned onto something we don’t yet know about the whereabouts of the ‘late’ Emperor Bokassa” - Russell Yong.”Darren Boyle’s reference to Fiver-saving lift devices suggests it’s a good thing Big Paper hasn’t outsourced Fiver Towers’ high quality work to China yet” - Paul Jurdeczka.”I was interested to see that one of the more creative readers of the Guardian football site has turned Chelsea’s Israeli manager, Avram Grant, into Enid Blyton’s Noddy in this week’s Gallery. I’d like to point out that in Grant’s mother tongue (Hebrew that is) the word ‘noddy’ means ‘my fart’. Just thought you’d like to know that” - David Graniewitz.”Before the transfer saga even begins for James McFadden, he should just accept that his football career has never really taken off and go back to concentrating on his singing career. Travis haven’t had a decent album in years” - Se醤 Cassidy.”Re: Paul Jewell being linked with the Republic of O’Ireland job. After leading Plucky Little Wigan, will Paul be needing the Pluck of the Irish when he takes the helm?” - Rob Rayburn.Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk.* * * * * * * * * * *DON’T WORRY PAOLO - YOU MIGHT GET A BETTER RESULT AT THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
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