Friday 4 July 2008

Lights, camera, fuhbal…


Alright folks

First off and very quickly, yup
Spain deserved to win on Sunday, we all know that, fair play to them and hopefully most of you have seen these images of a young, talented and frankly bad tackling Fernando Torres since then.

But that was last Sunday and already we’re in the home straight for the new year of club football – pre-season training starting as well as transfer rumours getting into full swing with decent players now actually available for talks after being on national duty (except Xabi Alonso apparently). This breather is no doubt needed but for those who say they really need a few weeks off, can you really resist the back pages or those football sites that you doss off from work by visiting?

On the subject of which – and thanks to String for the fantastic documentary on Brazilian football he sent on – I was looking for a distraction on YouTube but got horribly stopped in my tracks. Does anyone remember the BBC2 series ‘Natural Born Footballers’? Try as I might I haven’t been able to track down any episodes. Fifteen minute mini-documentaries concentrating on one player each week with decent interviews with people like Denis Law, Kenny Dalglish, Gerd Muller or Jurgen Klinsmann to name but a few.


In the six channel world I lived in back then it was a great blast of footballing history, though the BBC have had quite a few decent football documentaries in their time, concentrating on the history of nations such as Brazil, Holland, Germany and of course England in the run ups to various World Cups and European Championships.


It’s disgusting to think that they’ve probably consigned this practice of decent TV programming to the scrapyard in order to pay for exclusive rights to Alan Shearer’s blank expressions. Anyway, if any of you have some decent links to such documentaries please send ‘em on. To get started, here’s a few things to keep everyone distracted for a while yet.


Simplified but enjoyable dissection of Roy Keane’s psyche… including a contribution from the wonderfully named Phil Starbuck!


The daddy of them all – The Impossible Job (watch out for Harold of Harris looking like Vera Duckworth at one of the press conferences and so many, many ODF sound clips)


A documentary on England 1966 that isn’t cringe inducing. Huzzah!


The odd, intertwining history of Bobby Moore and Jimmy Greaves. The bit about climbing the wall in the Mexican Embassy (if hazy memory is serving me correct) is class.


Pretty decent documentary on Alex Ferguson, in fairness you gotta respect any man nicknamed ‘Razor Elbows’


Later, JJ


8 comments:

Unknown said...

some nice linkage there but i can't concentrate on anything - I'm off to the Day of Darkness metal festival in Laois and I'm hyped up!

http://www.dodfestival.com/line-up.html

Unknown said...

"From Sweden, Nifelheim play black/speed metal. Formed in 1990 with the goal of becoming the hardest and most violent band ever. Their music in the vein of Venom, Hellhammer, Bathory and Mayhem drew great reviews and a massive underground word of mouth factor which quickly got record labels interested..."

They had me at 'violent'

Unknown said...

Joey Barton has recently become the most violent, though i'm not sure if he is the hardest...

Anonymous said...

So, Joey Barton's cellmate Bubba..is he now officially a WAG? TMcG

Unknown said...

Well, in a prison environment I'd say a weedy little prick like Barton is more likely to be the WAG. "Toss that salad boy!"

Ho Chi Feen said...

This is just Brilliant. Schweini doing his post mast interview after the final:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMLuaKva7k

Kudos to the GU blogs for that one.

I've also tracked down the owner of the channel (Dotun off World Football, asit happens) who commissioned that Brazil documentar to see if the other parts will available soon.

Anonymous said...

Sorry string don't get why it's brilliant but maybe my one line of german ich bin ein student not adequate to understand it? TMcG

Anonymous said...

try "enda kenny meets simon cowell" on you tube both knob ends but mixture of both surprisingly good. Respect! TMcG