Not again!

Anyone who is slightly interested in Italian football will have some idea of what is going on. But certain individuals who only read the headlines will think " Italian football and corruption, what's new?" not realisng it was lower league teams and the corruption they might think they know is a whole lot complicated and subjective, but they will just brandish the entire league as corrupt because, you know curruption doesn't occur anywhere else does it?!!
 Yet again betting charges and attempts to throw matches, but this time it's not the clubs but individual players, but as before it looks likely that Juventus will pay the price. Leonardo Bonucci, Simone Pepe and Antonio Conte are the main focus.
Bonucci is suspected of fixing a game whilst he was at Serie B team Bari, prosecutors have really got it in for the Juventus defender as it was proposed that he will serve a ban of 3 years and 6 months! Pepe on the other hand is accused of failing to report while he was at Udinese and may face a one year ban, still rather harsh considering the supposed crime, I'm sorry, but how can you even prove that the person knew about anything illegal, surely if he reports every suspicion he won't have any time left to do his job, which is being a professional footballer. Antonio Conte is suspected of failing to report match fixing when he was at Siena and has had his plea bargain of 3 months and a fine rejected, now don't get the wrong idea, this is not an admission of guilt because he has strongly denied doing any wrong doing, he just didn't want to go through a long drawn out trial, which now seems to be the case as he is infuriated with the judge's decision and wants to clear his name. But if he fails he may get a 15 month ban and that could only be bad news for Juventus. However, even if he does get banned he will still be able to train the team during the week, it may seem okay but you're forgetting how much he gives to the team and how inspirational he is to these lads, how else did they go the entire last season undefeated?

Yet a small part of me thinks that Juve brought this on themselves with the whole 30 Scudetto debate, they obviously annoyed someone!

Through thick and thin..

The attributes of a fan…

To be a fan/supporter of a sports team is a wonderful thing, you get a sense that you belong to something that in your eyes is the greatest thing. It can be a way to meet new people that have the same passions as you and it gives you a feeling of pride when your team does well. Notice I’ve said team and not individual players, in a sport like football, it truly is the team that wins or loses not the individual player. What the AC Milan fans have done recently, protesting about the sale of two players seems to be going against this, no matter how important the player is, he is not bigger than the club and the so called supporters should realise this.

Yet there is a flipside to this, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has scored over 20 goals for the club and has been an imposing figure in this team, and Thiago Silva has been called the best defender in Europe, and when he wasn’t available for the team the team did suffer, and the sale of Milan’s 2 best players could hurt the competitiveness of the club. So in the end the fans that are asking for refunds and threatening legal action, could be doing it in the name of the club as a whole. What I mean is that they probably feel that the sale of these 2 players is a sign that things will get a lot worse for the club.

Yet by saying the club will not be able to go on without these players no matter how important they may seem, could seem like a huge insult to the rest of the players because you are essentially saying that they cannot do their jobs properly without these 2 players. As good as these players are, a true supporter of AC Milan has to keep an open mind and put their trust in the club they profess to love.

Football is a global game with audiences from all over. The fan has to realise that with this kind of exposure also means that a lot of money has been invested in the game, through advertising, TV rights and sponsorship deals, and like any business they have to keep an eye on their finances. The fans should have faith that the huge fee they received from these two players will be reinvested into the club, although it is understandable that they don’t, considering what happened after the sale of Kaka’.

However if you are a real supporter of the club, you will support the club during all the hard times and accept that things will not always go your way. As a Juve fan, I’ve been with them all the way, through the calciopoli scandle to the finishing 7th and all the players we said goodbye to in between, and this has made their success last season even sweeter, so chin up, and keep the faith that your club knows what they’re doing.

Grande Italia

People are guilty of being rather disrespectful to the Azzurri, claiming that they're all corrupt and cannot compete anymore with the big leagues.... And you know what I say to theses people??? We made it to the Euro finals, and where were you?! People who claim that Italy were slaughtered in the final and simply don't have the " super stars" anymore are half right. It's true that they were against a more superior team, but people tend to forget is that a fully fit Italy team with a dose of luck held Spain to a draw in the first game. I'm not saying that the men in blue would have beaten Spain, but it would have been a close fight. People tend to forget that this Spain team have been with each other for a fair amount of time and have won alot with the same team, whereas this Azzurri team is fairly new and have not been tested at the very top with the exception of: Buffon, Pirlo, Bazargli, Rossi and Di Natale, you should not underestimate the power of familiarity, it is needed for any team to be successful.
Anyway my rant today is not about that, it's about the departure of some big names from Serie A which has made some people question the pull of the Italian league. The departure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic was not too mush of a shock, as he is 30 and as we know, a footballers career is rather short, so you cannot blame him too much for going for a far paycheque, yet the saleof Thiago Silva has been met with confusion and anger, as some of the fans have even started legal action against the club for false advertising. Silva is regarded as one of the best centre backs in Europe and he's Brazilian, not normally a nation you would associate with great defenders. And how did he become so highly regarded? He was mentored by an Italian great.. Mr Maldini!! And then Nesta, both Italia and taught him everything he knows. Yes, I know they have both also left the scene but that in no way means that Italian football has lost it's edge, they are evolving into a new way of playing as was evident in the Euro's, and least you forget Italy is a beautiful country.. who wouldn't want to go there, I certainly can't wait to go back!
Serie A may lose a few stars, but we have many in the making and the prestige of Italian football is far from over!

FORZA AZZURRI!

Alessandro Del Piero - Ciao il Capitano | 13.5.2012 vs Atlanta | HD

Age of the ZOMBIES!!! ( I am exercising my right to freedom of expression)

There’s something wrong with people…

Every day now when I switch on the television, there’s some kind of conflict and some new kind of danger that we have to be alert of, and it doesn’t even stop at the news, on the trains you hear announcements now that tells you to inform any “ suspicious” behaviour to the police. Now tell me what the hell constitute as suspicious behaviour??!! Maybe a person has a twitch or has just had a bad day at work and seems particularly annoyed, do you report everyone who doesn’t fit the profile set by the police? This is just one of the many things the Government is doing… for our safety, of course! I mean they’ve decided to put rocket launchers on top of people’s houses, a tad overkill don’t you think? And people scoff at me when I point out the similarities to Fascism. The police for one thing, has become more and more militarised and are less concerned with the safety of the people, but more concerned with certain areas (usually rich) and certain buildings (usually banks or big corporations) All this extra “security” doesn’t make me feel safe at all, it makes me feel nervous because if I do anything that they perceive to be suspicious, like wearing a backpack, they might arrest me or worse.. shoot me in the name of national security. I tell you what the biggest threat to national security is.. CLIMATE CHANGE. But does that even cross their minds…no, all they can think of is to make the people more afraid of so called terrorism.

According to Wikipedia: Fascism ( /ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology.[1][2] Fascists seek elevation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry and culture through a totalitarian state that seeks the mass mobilization of a nation through discipline, indoctrination, physical training, and eugenics.[3][4] Fascism seeks to eradicate perceived foreign influences that are deemed to be causing degeneration of the nation or of not fitting into the national culture.[5]

You have to be a complete zombie not to see the similarities, but that is what a large portion of the public is, through working all day, doing the same repetitive crap, they are exposed to the Metro, The Sun and other forms of “ popular news” and have only enough free time to watch sensationalised news which is often put out of context, but you see, that is all they see, and the more they are exposed to this kind of lazy reporting the more they will believe they are under threat and be more than willing to give up all their rights. What people normally equate with fascism is Hitler, now he took it to the extreme and don’t recognise that there are subtle phases in this and that not everything is so black and white, there are more complex issues to consider.

The news has a responsibility to be objective a show the stories from all angles and encourage people to be more analytical, and should not just concentrate on the views from the west. But you see all this, the notion that the news is there to inform you of the goings on in the world for the public has gone out of the window, they are more concerned with ratings and finding different ways to “ sex it up”. And one of the many ways they do this is by replacing the news with gossip and speculation, because in the end that’s what a large portion of the public wants, but just because they crave it doesn’t mean they should encourage this behaviour, a former alcoholic might want a drink but that doesn’t mean you should give it to him/her, you see what I mean??

I urge people to question the news more and try to watch different forms of news and avoid the mainstream like, Fox, Sky and the BBC or watch them in moderation, as they have forgotten what investigative journalist are meant to do, so it is up to us to investigate. Otherwise welcome to the age of the zombies!