Celtic 4, Chelsea 1

I’m sunburnt because yesterday I attended the pre-season “friendly” between these clubs, at Notre Dame Stadium. Chelsea’s fans came in droves; Celtic’s, who were fewer, cheered better. The Chelsea faithful commenced their exodus after Celtic’s fourth goal.

Martin watched Cameron Carter-Vickers, his compatriot, perform flawlessly for Celtic.

David’s aunt- and uncle-in-law, who’ve been visiting from Honduras, saw their compatriot, Luis Palma, score Celtic’s third goal.

Kasper Schmeichel was Celtic’s best performer. As for Chelsea, Raheem Stirling, of all people, was the brightest spark. He fizzled out ten minutes after coming on.

David, Stephen, and I had hoped to see Moisés Caicedo, but he was absent. So were Cucurella, Fernández, Palmer, and others. Trevoh Chalobah, whom I consider the club’s best defender, is in the doghouse and didn’t make the trip.

I know it’s the preseason and teams aren’t giving it their all, but this was the first time I’d seen players look worse live than on TV.

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I also have terrible heartburn today. I ate serving after serving of chili at my niece Belladonna’s birthday party. She is two. She is a winsome little thing.

Potato Tots 1, Chelsea 4

Strangest game I’ve seen. Very good home team, previously unbeaten, blown out by pitiful archrival. Minute 33, home team surrenders player (straight red card). Minute 55, surrenders second player (two yellow cards). Home team better than archrival, all game long; nearly rescues draw after 90-minute mark; ultimately, loses by three goals. All game long, home team, unafraid of archrival, maintains brazenly high defensive line. Archrival unable to beat high defensive line. Archrival pitiful. Archrival’s main striker pitiful. Plays abysmally. Scores three goals. Blowers-out, trash; blown-out, bosses. Highly paradoxical. In context, utterly logical. Strangest game I’ve seen.

The breaking of the fellowship

It has come to pass. 😢

These were (most of) Brighton & Hove Albion’s South American players during the 2022–2023 season:

Left to right:

Moisés Caicedo (Ecuador).

Jeremy Sarmiento (Ecuador).

Julio Enciso (Paraguay).

Alexis Mac Allister (Argentina).

Pervis Estupiñán (Ecuador).

This season, Sarmiento was lent out to West Brom; Mac Allister moved to Liverpool; and, yesterday, Caicedo signed an eight-year contract with Chelsea. His transfer fee is said to be £100–115 million; the British record is £106 million.

I’m proud of and happy for Caicedo, I guess, but I really liked seeing all these guys play together at Brighton.

An ode to Brighton

Hardly anyone read my latest movie review. I can only infer that the opus in question, Dalziel & Pascoe, series 1, episode 3, “An Autumn Shroud,” already is so well known that my commentary on it is superfluous.

Karin vomited many times today and stayed home from the office.

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One of the luckiest things for me this last year was that Brighton & Hove Albion F.C. employed three Ecuadorians, spurring me to watch most of Brighton’s games and affording me a view of what surely has been one of the most breathtaking teams in the history of sport: a team all the more remarkable for bossing games while languishing mid-table.

Brighton’s manager, Graham Potter, was poached by Chelsea several games into the campaign. But then his successor, Roberto De Zerbi, actually made Brighton better. (There is a YouTube cottage industry about this.) Chelsea ended up sacking Potter.

All game long – in game after game – the broadcasters would sing Brighton’s praises. But the roster isn’t deep enough to lift the club very high up the table. Mind, I say this after a game in which key starters were rested and their substitutes propelled Brighton to a 6–0 victory.

The roster, such as it is, might well be gutted before the next season, as the clubs with deep pockets come swooping down.

How about this season, then? There have been high hopes, but things look bleak. Brighton will play six of the final seven matches against the league’s top four and bottom two clubs. The top four will be tough because they’re good. The bottom two will be tough since they’ll be fighting to avoid relegation.

The good times might already be over.

I like seeing Moisés Caicedo and Pervis Estupiñán on the field together, featuring for a team that plays how Ecuadorians like to play. I don’t want them to be snatched up by bigger clubs next year. But that’ll probably happen. The most enjoyable club season of my life will have been a flash in the pan.

I blink

Watching highlights of the Champions League’s first knockout round, I was surprised to see Thomas Tuchel on Chelsea’s touchline. Apparently, he’s been working there since January. Already he holds the record for consecutive victories by a manager who is beginning at the club.

(It seems like only yesterday when the previous gaffer, Frank Lampard, was scowling at those same players’ ludicrous displays.)

I also was surprised that the 6,000-seat Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano was the venue of Real Madrid’s knockout game against Atalanta. Indeed, Real Madrid have been playing there since June of last year, and the Santiago Bernabéu is under renovation.

In other words: I’ve been ignoring world-famous clubs like Real Madrid, Chelsea, and Paris Saint-Germain (the club that employed Tuchel as recently as December, and for which he also had record-breaking success). And there’s nothing special about those giants: I’ve been ignoring soccer in general (though I do usually watch a game or two over the weekend).

This neglect is certainly due to COVID. Soccer is just not as exciting when no one is in the stands.

Which is a pity. The footballers are, if anything, less inhibited now; and the quality of play is better.

Yahoo! trolls the world

There’s a tradition in U.S. soccer journalism of importing awful British pundits. Several of these donkeys have worked for Yahoo! Sports.

When I first moved to this country, I was delighted with Yahoo! for re-publishing other news agencies’ reports from all over the world. Every day, I’d read of the domestic leagues in Botswana or Thailand or wherever. Coverage of South America was especially good.

All of that fine reporting is long gone. Now, Yahoo!’s content is much narrower in scope, and the site employs its own journalists. These pundits have tended to sing the praises of (a) the English Premier League, (b) the U.S. men’s team, (c) the English men’s team, (d) Cristiano Ronaldo, (e) the other powerful European leagues and teams (France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s, and Spain’s), and (f) U.S. Major League Soccer – more or less in that order. Presumably, these are the topics that U.S. readers care about.

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For years, the especial jackass at Yahoo! was one Martin Rogers, who’s moved on to USA Today. How I loathed that “bloke.” … But now, I wonder if Ryan Bailey, the “wanker” du jour, is even worse.

First, Bailey doesn’t write. He makes videos. (Rogers would at least write his columns.)

Second, the videos are obnoxious, due to Bailey’s relentless cheerfulness.

Third, Bailey doesn’t just wish to preserve the status quo; he favors giving dramatically more power to the most mercenary entities.

See, for example, his recent video, “Making the Case to Scrap International Soccer.”

This is his case:

(1) International soccer sometimes conflicts with the Premier League.

(2) And the Premier League is obviously what everyone wants to view.

(3) Besides, we don’t have to scrap international soccer completely. If we were to keep soccer as an Olympic event, that would be good enough.

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This cannot be a serious argument. No one who isn’t already on Bailey’s side would be convinced. Bailey must be trolling.

But if Bailey is serious, he obviously hasn’t watched the South American World Cup qualifiers. If his idea of a good game is Brighton vs. Newcastle or Arsenal vs. Chelsea, he should try watching Uruguay vs. Chile, or Chile vs. Paraguay, or, least glamorous of all, Paraguay vs. Venezuela. (In the 2018 World Cup cycle, each of those South American fixtures turned out to be a matter of life and death.)

As for moving soccer’s main event to the Olympics: either the Olympics would have to be greatly expanded to accommodate a soccer tourney with the magnitude of the World Cup, or else the world’s main soccer tourney would have to be shrunk. The first option would leave in place all of what Bailey dislikes about the current system (including, I presume, the massive qualification phase). And the second option would fail to placate those who like having a big tourney and its attendant qualification games.

One suspects that the real motive for incorporating the world’s main soccer tourney into the Olympics would be to allow U.S. fans to feel better about themselves, since their country would likely excel in many other events. (“We didn’t reach the podium in soccer? Well, at least we earned the gold in beach volleyball.”)

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Bailey also states that players prefer to focus on their clubs and not their national teams.

To which every South American replies: You must be from England.

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Even so, I probably am more disillusioned with international soccer than I ever have been. This latest World Cup left me especially discouraged. I worry that international soccer will always be unjust – and not only contingently so; I worry that people’s valuation of it is conceptually confused.

I may discuss these issues further during the next several months.

Jury duty; a rainstorm; Messi vs. Kanté; a trip

Today I performed my jury service, or I would have done, except that the trial was canceled. I was absent from work and lost a day’s wages. But it was just as well that I didn’t go to IUSB. The walk would have been miserable: out of my living room window, I saw rain pouring down, hour after hour.

In the afternoon, I watched Chelsea and Barcelona play the first leg of their UEFA Champions League home-and-away series. I was especially interested in the duel between Lionel Messi and N’Golo Kanté. Kanté defended against Messi as well as anybody I’ve seen has done. He didn’t allow Messi to dribble past him or to make penetrating passes. Once, I saw him guard Messi for a few feet, then switch off from him, and then cunningly intercept the pass that Messi gave.

I decided that Kanté is a better defender than Real Madrid’s Casemiro, who resorts to fouling Messi. Messi likes to bully Casemiro by dribbling directly at him; however, when Messi was guarded by Kanté today, he respectfully dribbled from side to side.

One other bit of news: Karin & I have bought plane tickets to Austin, Texas, to visit Ana & David during my spring break.