Posts Tagged ‘NFL’
So, this week saw the end of the first transfer window in the English football season, and therefore lots of high profile movings for large amounts of money (especially with Manchester City getting a cash injection from their new owners). This got me thinking about the state of English league football, and I don’t like it.
It’s been going on for a while really, with the domination of Manchester United and Arsenal of the Premiership (between them winning all but one of the first 12 seasons of the league’s existence) and the presence of Chelsea and Liverpool within the group that have become known as “the big four” - a name not given to them for the average weight of their players, but their bank balance.
With the exception of Blackburn Rovers (who were the one exception to Manchester United/Arsenal’s rule of the first dozen seasons) the only team to have won the premiership is Chelsea, who first lifted the trophy at the end of the 2004-05 season and retained it the following year. Of course, it comes as no surprise that they managed this after a large cash injection from their newfound Russian owner, Roman Abramovic. Many accused them of buying the title, which is a fair comment, but also a fair tactic.
These days it seems that the league is more and more about how money you can invest in buying players at the inflated premiums they seem to have at the moment. Manchester City, as mentioned above, have recently acquired a large cash injection and used this to break the English transfer record with their shock purchase of Robhino. Reports are also around that they’re willing to offer local rivals Manchester United up to £133million for Christiano Ronaldo when the January window opens. This is just ludicrous, but the owners want to get some silverware, and this is the way they’ve chosen to go about it.
All of this, to me, makes the league far less entertaining. You can predict, with almost certainty, that one of the big four will win the league, and it probably won’t be Liverpool. You can guess that the smaller teams, probably those recently promoted such as Hull and Stoke, will get relegated - and you know that the rest will fall somewhere in the mediocraty between. It’s not that fun.
Contrast this, however, to different leagues in other sports such as American football’s NFL. In this league there are salary caps, stricter rules on transfers between teams (with free agents and restricted free agents etc), sharing of revenue from television and ticket sales between teams regardless of size and, by no means least, the draft. In this each year the worst team from the previous season gets to select the player they most want from those coming into the league from college football, giving them the opportunity to get the best new player before the other clubs (who pick in order of success with the Superbowl winners going last). All in all this leads to a league where, as the phrase goes, on any given sunday any team can beat another - regardless of form, as was shown with the Superbowl upset this year where the Giants beating the Patriots (who had been unbeaten and had beaten the Giants at the end of the regular season).
Of course, there’s no way FIFA could introduce something similar into football now, the leagues are far too established and there’d be uproar from fans of the currently successful clubs. It’s also worth remembering that the premiership has penalties for finishing low down (relegation), where the NFL has anything but. With this in mind I guess we’re going to be stuck watching the big four continue their dominance, and perhaps we’ll see Man City make something of the millions of pounds of investment, but for entertainment - I’ll be glad happily watching the NFL now that the season has started again.
Tags: entertainment, football, NFL, premiership, sports
In the midst of all the primaries and other political events in the US at the moment comes a diversion - the spectacle that is the Superbowl. This year sees the undefeated New England Patriots take on the underdog New York Giants in Arizona’s University of Pheonix stadium. Of course there’s the pride of winning the Vince Lombardi trophy, but there’s more to it this year, even if you’re not a fan of either of the teams involved.
The Patriots are currently undefeated this season, having won all 16 regular season games and the 2 post-season games leading to the playoffs, although this hasn’t been without some controversy after they were caught making illegal tapes of the New York Jets in their opening game of the season. Since then though, they’ve beaten everyone that stood between them and their current position on the brink of becoming only the second undefeated team (and the first to go 19-0).
The Giants, on the other hand, have the chance to become only the fifth wild card team to win a Superbowl, and having almost stopped the Patriots in the last game of the regular season there’s no doubt that Eli Manning and co. will be out to win this time. On their way to the Superbowl the Giants have won 10 consecutive away games, including big upsets in the playoffs against the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. They’ve got it all to play for.
Taking all this into account has left the Vegas bookies offering a 13 point margin in favour of the Patriots. This seems quite large, considering that the Giants were ahead for a lot of the regular season finale, and held the Patriots to only a three point win (pretty good going considering the way that the Patriots obliterated a lot of teams; the most notable being the 52-7 victory over the other NFC wild card team - the Washington Redskins).
For most people, the Patriots are the team that they love to hate; they’re unbeaten, they’ve had the “Spygate” thing hanging over them and the way they walked over teams on their way to the Superbowl has left a lot of people who will be getting behind the Giants. The Giants of course are the underdogs, and everyone likes a good underdog story. Well, everyone apart from Patriots fans who will be hoping that the team manages to make history tonight.
Both teams are truly in with a chance, the Giants proved they could contain the Patriots during the that game at the end of the season, and with their upsets in Dallas and Wisconsin they’re certainly not to be written off too soon. The Patriots are still a force to be reckoned with, especially with both Tom Brady and Randy Moss setting new records for touchdowns this season, and with Donté Stallworth, Wes Welker, Lawrence Maroney and the rest of the offence being as dangerous as they are, there could well be fireworks during the game.
It might be after 11pm here by the time the game kicks off, but I full well plan on watching it in its entirety.
Tags: giants, NFL, patriots, sports, superbowl
As mentioned in a previous post I went to see the New York Giants take on the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium in the first NFL regular season game to be played outside of North America. As such tickets were hard to come by, but I got lucky and managed to get four when the third batch went on sale to people who had pre-registered (having just escaped from the meeting at work mere minutes before they appeared online).
Tickets secured I was rather happy, especially as I’d managed to get some seats in row 16 behind an end zone - which just sounded awesome without having ever been to Wembley. I then found out that we could also get tickets to the tailgate party that they were doing before the game - so why not!
Eventually game day rolled round and Dave, Phil, Nariman and I made the journey to Wembley. Outside Wembley Arena (where the tailgate was held to avoid being completely washed out due to the wonderful English weather) was the “Big JT” robot version of Dolphin’s defensive end Jason Taylor and a HGV full of XBox360s to play Madden on. We however wandered inside where there were NFL challenges that you could take part in (passing, kicking, receiving) some little areas styled to the two cities and also a stage with a rather poor cover band playing. Even at this stage the atmosphere was good with everyone seemingly looking forward to the event itself.
Not long after the gates opened for the stadium itself we wandered inside, and finding our way out into the seating we realised just how close we were. With the front 5 rows or so being closed off (due to the limited visibility that you’d get being that low down at an American Football game) we were about 10 rows back, pretty much in line with the edge of the pitch and very near the tunnel through which the teams would later enter at the start of the game.
Having taken in the initial moment of going out into the seats we wandered back inside and experienced the worst part of the day; Wembley’s “food”. At £8 for a meal it was expensive and rather crap. The burgers came in a disguise with nicer bread so as to hide the rest being crap - and the chicken was very dry… but this was soon forgotten about as the pre-game show started. This involved a performance by The Feeling, the national anthems and of course the coin toss - where the biggest boo of the day was heard as John Terry was announced as a guest captain for the Giants, and then the biggest cheer as Lewis Hamilton was also announced to be there (whilst being shown to be tiny next to the players).
Kick off and the game ensued with the game being quite scrappy. We saw a number of dropped passes and a missed kick towards the start of the game - with the rain not helping anyone (I mean, who designs a stadium with a roof that doesn’t close all the way). Even without a particularly great set of play on the field the atmosphere was fantastic with the crowd really getting into it and numerous Mexican waves going round and round the stadium.
Half time arrived with a half-time show. No Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunctions or crazy stages as seen at the Superbowl here; instead we had the band of the Royal Engineers play - opening with the theme from Rocky. It was soon over though and the second half started… well… after the streaker who had dressed as a referee and run to the 50 to do some exercise had been removed from the field.
With the score being 13-3 to the Giants and the game drawing to a close it seemed that the Dolphins were destined to continue on their losing streak - but there was a glimmer of hope towards the end when Lemon found Ted Ginn Jr in the end zone at the other end of the stadium to bring them within three points with only 90 seconds or so to go. The on-side kick then followed… with the crowd (or at least us and those around us) hoping that they’d manage it and we’d get to see some overtime… but it promptly slid over the wet grass and out of bounds for a Giants possession and a series of knees, which also attracted boos from the crowd who wanted to see some more action.
We then wandered back through the crowd to the tube and headed home having had an awesome day. With any luck we’ll have another game at Wembley next season and I’ll get tickets to that too.
During this whole thing I managed to get some (rather crap admittedly) photos, which can be found in my Flickr set.
Tags: dolphins, giants, NFL, sports