Very excited for the new Album...
Friday, July 30, 2010
Cold Canadians Cast Cool Callous Casual Claspes...
So one of the first lessons I learned as a missionary is, you walk into a room, shake everybodys hand. You leave, same deal, up and down the line. If you don't Albanians get offended. Even if you're in the sacrament hall, sixty people, you gotta plan a route to the door that passes by everyone so you can shake their hands. Of course Albanians kiss each other on the cheek too, 2, 4, 6, times depending on how close they are. Personally it always bugged me. When I came back, I think I've made a little bit of a conscious effort not to do it. Cause once you start you can't stop. "Oh Andrew didn't shake my hand today, and even though I'll see him probably 4 more times this week, and each of the last three times I've seen him he shook my hand, he Must hate me." sigh. Obviously I'm being a little over the top but I've seriously had multiple conversations along those lines. "why don't you shake hands?" "Why are you so cold?" My usual response is we Canadians have ice in our veins so yah, we are cold. -Pause for laughter- Then I apologize and say I'm not used to it. Then something happened last night that kind of changed m,y mind about the whole thing. I was having dinner with three sisters who live together. The older sister was late coming to dinner, showed up at the restaurant, shook my hand, then proceeded to shake hands kiss her sisters. I couldn't believe it, and i said as much. They see each other every day. They live together. And here they are greeting like they haven't seen each other in years. it just made me think that if I went home right now, walked in the door, I think I could manage to get Joel, whom I haven't seen in months, to look up, maybe remove the headphones, and get a perfunctory nod, and a "'Sup." (Love you Joel) Not saying I would do much better. I'm just saying that we, as a people/nation/society, whatever, maybe we got in wrong on this one. Maybe the Continent got it right, and the whole British stiff upper lip thing turned the whole lot of us into a bunch of cold people. I don't know... this post is losing momentum. I think I'm done. It just seriously boggled my mind... Serious. No Seriously. I'm so super Serious... - sigh- It's too early in the morning. I spent more time on the title than I did this entry...
Thursday, July 22, 2010
The Kosovo Conundrum...
So I was at yet another soccer game tonight with a couple of friends of mine when this huge firework display started going off in the center of the city. The girls, knowing I always have my handy smart-phone nearby, asked me to look up what was special about today.
(By the way, whenever you have a chance to bring girls to a sporting event, you gotta do it. They always ask really relevant, informed questions, know which teams are which, and love taking pictures of the game itself rather than dozens of photos of them, in various poses, sitting in the stands.) Jokes :)
So going to good ol' Wikipedia, I discovered... that the following holidays probably didn't warrant fireworks in Tirana.
- Birthday of former King Sobhuza II (Swaziland)
- Christian Feast Day
- Pi Approximation Day, see March 14
- Ratcatcher's Day
To my chagrin one of the girls figured it out before I did, that the International Court of Justice at The Hague
(that's gotta be the only city in the world who's name has a definite article right?) had ruled that Kosovo's declaration of independence was legal. (My chagrin cause I'd read about the court decision earlier this morning and had completely forgot about it.) Well yeah Kosovo, problem solved, everyone get drunk. Well of course that's not the case. At least the problem solved part, but I'm sure they're hitting the celebration juice up north. Serbia, predictably, of course, rejects the decision of the court. As does Russia. And pretty much all the other nations that haven't as yet recognized Kosovo's independence. Or at least they will by tomorrow morning. And, in keeping with a role I love (LOVE) to play, and at the risk of alienating some of my Albanian friends, I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that, -gasp-, Serbia might be right on this one. At least in principle. In specifics they've done terrible things to the Albanians living in Kosovo, tried to snuff out their culture and language, never mind the thousands that they literally snuffed out. But in principle they may be right.
So hear me out. For starters most of the existing borders were not designed by committee. Or if there was a committee, it was a bunch of English Lords tasked with figuring out a situation half the world away while sipping sherry in a stuffy English country estate. Borders were almost never created along ethnic lines. Rather they said heres a nutural border, i.e. lake, mountain range, desert, whathaveyou, tadah! theres the border. Now let's go play some polo. Cheerio! And that's the civilized way. The uncivilized way is your people were overthrown and invaded by Mongols/Cossacks/Huns/Zulus/Arabs/Turks/Saxons/Spanish/Portuguese/French/dozens others, and of course, The British, centurys ago, and what do you know your people found themselves on the wrong side of the border.
(that's gotta be the only city in the world who's name has a definite article right?) had ruled that Kosovo's declaration of independence was legal. (My chagrin cause I'd read about the court decision earlier this morning and had completely forgot about it.) Well yeah Kosovo, problem solved, everyone get drunk. Well of course that's not the case. At least the problem solved part, but I'm sure they're hitting the celebration juice up north. Serbia, predictably, of course, rejects the decision of the court. As does Russia. And pretty much all the other nations that haven't as yet recognized Kosovo's independence. Or at least they will by tomorrow morning. And, in keeping with a role I love (LOVE) to play, and at the risk of alienating some of my Albanian friends, I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that, -gasp-, Serbia might be right on this one. At least in principle. In specifics they've done terrible things to the Albanians living in Kosovo, tried to snuff out their culture and language, never mind the thousands that they literally snuffed out. But in principle they may be right.So hear me out. For starters most of the existing borders were not designed by committee. Or if there was a committee, it was a bunch of English Lords tasked with figuring out a situation half the world away while sipping sherry in a stuffy English country estate. Borders were almost never created along ethnic lines. Rather they said heres a nutural border, i.e. lake, mountain range, desert, whathaveyou, tadah! theres the border. Now let's go play some polo. Cheerio! And that's the civilized way. The uncivilized way is your people were overthrown and invaded by Mongols/Cossacks/Huns/Zulus/Arabs/Turks/Saxons/Spanish/Portuguese/French/dozens others, and of course, The British, centurys ago, and what do you know your people found themselves on the wrong side of the border.
In a perfect world everybody would have equal representation in
terms of Race, Culture, Language, Religion, etc. all the way from
the local municipality to the UN assembly. But of course, we don't
live in a perfect worldand imbalances and inequalities are always
going to exist. But part of what keeps this world going is, and one
of the founding principles of the United Nations is the integrity of
Nations and there borders.Allowing a people/province/state/city
or any other recognizable minority to independently extricate
themselves and declare independence is an extremely bad
precedent to set. 69 countries have, at this moment, recognized
Kosovos independence. That means 123 haven't. Thats just over
36%. That's not even close to a majority. They couldn't even get
unanimity from NATO or the EU. Do you know why? Cause
they've got there own problems back homewith nationalist
uprisings. How can Spain say, "yah Kosovo, go solo, but not you
Basques. You're completely different."
Whatever compelling arguments you can give showing why
Kosovo get's to be an exception, I bet you the Chechens,
Basques, Turkish Cypriots, or a dozen other groups of people,
can tell you why their cause is greater. The point is this. The
Serbs are being completely unreasonable refusing to
acknowledge the possibility of Kosovos independence,
but the matter has to be resolved internally or it will set a
very bad precedent. I happen to remember a certain nation
who went to war with itself rather than let it's southern half
democratically and peacefully withdraw from the union.
And now they're Kosovos largest patron. Serbia will see the
writing on the wall. They'll make concessions. After all, they
want to get into the EU and NATO as well. But doing
an end route around them is not the way to go.
terms of Race, Culture, Language, Religion, etc. all the way from
the local municipality to the UN assembly. But of course, we don't
live in a perfect worldand imbalances and inequalities are always
going to exist. But part of what keeps this world going is, and one
of the founding principles of the United Nations is the integrity of
Nations and there borders.Allowing a people/province/state/city
or any other recognizable minority to independently extricate
themselves and declare independence is an extremely bad
precedent to set. 69 countries have, at this moment, recognized
Kosovos independence. That means 123 haven't. Thats just over
36%. That's not even close to a majority. They couldn't even get
unanimity from NATO or the EU. Do you know why? Cause
they've got there own problems back homewith nationalist
uprisings. How can Spain say, "yah Kosovo, go solo, but not you
Basques. You're completely different."
Whatever compelling arguments you can give showing why
Kosovo get's to be an exception, I bet you the Chechens,
Basques, Turkish Cypriots, or a dozen other groups of people,
can tell you why their cause is greater. The point is this. The
Serbs are being completely unreasonable refusing to
acknowledge the possibility of Kosovos independence,
but the matter has to be resolved internally or it will set a
very bad precedent. I happen to remember a certain nation
who went to war with itself rather than let it's southern half
democratically and peacefully withdraw from the union.
And now they're Kosovos largest patron. Serbia will see the
writing on the wall. They'll make concessions. After all, they
want to get into the EU and NATO as well. But doing
an end route around them is not the way to go.
Anecdotal football remains...
Quick note on the soccer match I went to, that I haven't written about yet. Remember the game I went to where the Albanian team got blown out by the greek team? Well the goal keeper, who I'm told is usually pretty good, ate some pretty bad goals on the way to the five-nothing drumming. Granted, a couple of the goals he really should have stopped, but he was let down by his defense and pretty much was on his own for the most part. Besides, even assuming he could have put the team on his back, kept it to a 2-0 loss, there was no way this team was gonna go to Greece tonight, and somehow score two goals, cause their offense had no spark whatsoever.
So. All that said, by the end of the game, with the fifth goal in the back of the net, the crowd unleashed it's pent-up vitriol on the poor keeper. Now I mentioned in an earlier post that I found it hilarious when the Albanian crowd cursed out the Greek players in language that they couldn't understand, but the embattled net minder certainly understood what the crowd was saying. Now I've been at sporting events where the crowd booed the home team or but never have I seen it so obviously directed at one player. And when I say crowd, I mean the entire section of the stadium, (or at least what was left,) not just the yelling, bare chested, crazy-ultra types, screaming in unison, choreographing their words with various obscene gestures, saying horrible things about the keeper and his loved ones. It was quite literally, the loudest the crowd got all night. Bear in mind this is the Home crowd. Going after what I hear is one of the best keepers in Albania. After what can probably be considered the best season in the clubs 80+ year history. Facing a faaaar superior team. On basically the opening game of the new season. Anyways, so the keeper wasn't impressed with this and he started back with the sign language. Which was kind of funny cause he had to keep one eye on the game and one eye on the crowd cause this went on for a while during the flow of the game. His head was basically on a swivel. Finally after making a save, he grabbed the ball, and drop kicked it at the section from which he'd been receiving all this venom. Which of course, only spurred them further, and were only silenced by the final whistle, which mercifully came quick.
So. All that said, by the end of the game, with the fifth goal in the back of the net, the crowd unleashed it's pent-up vitriol on the poor keeper. Now I mentioned in an earlier post that I found it hilarious when the Albanian crowd cursed out the Greek players in language that they couldn't understand, but the embattled net minder certainly understood what the crowd was saying. Now I've been at sporting events where the crowd booed the home team or but never have I seen it so obviously directed at one player. And when I say crowd, I mean the entire section of the stadium, (or at least what was left,) not just the yelling, bare chested, crazy-ultra types, screaming in unison, choreographing their words with various obscene gestures, saying horrible things about the keeper and his loved ones. It was quite literally, the loudest the crowd got all night. Bear in mind this is the Home crowd. Going after what I hear is one of the best keepers in Albania. After what can probably be considered the best season in the clubs 80+ year history. Facing a faaaar superior team. On basically the opening game of the new season. Anyways, so the keeper wasn't impressed with this and he started back with the sign language. Which was kind of funny cause he had to keep one eye on the game and one eye on the crowd cause this went on for a while during the flow of the game. His head was basically on a swivel. Finally after making a save, he grabbed the ball, and drop kicked it at the section from which he'd been receiving all this venom. Which of course, only spurred them further, and were only silenced by the final whistle, which mercifully came quick.
Just a quick insight into the mentality of your local soccer officianado.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Naturally Stupid...
Did I mention it's hot here? Between trips to the pool, the beach, and just lying on my balcony, I'm getting quite the tan. Or, more accurately, my freckles are getting closer together. Semantics...
But I'm getting sunburnt a lot.( By my calculations my risk of skin cancer has gone up 30.61 % since I've got here.) And when I'm not sunburnt I'm shedding skin like a snake in growth hormones. (you like that? Took me two minutes to think up that metaphor. Simile?...)
But here's my point. Whenever I tell someone I'm sunburnt they'll tell me some local remedy to get rid of it/ease the pain. My favourite is throw some yogurt on it. (Early on I bought some aloe vera and that seems to so the trick. ) now without knocking on folk medicine to much, they've got a lot of weird treatments here for pretty much every ailment you can think of. One of my very first investigator families had me sit through a whole discussion with a cup of their moonshine brandy under my nose cause I mentioned in my broken Albania that I thought I was coming down with a cold. My favorite was when we were visiting this one family, and the daughter, who was a very smart very westernized, severed a mission abroad type girl had her ankle wrapped in onions because she'd sprained it. Now considering Albania was pretty isolated for the large part of her recent history, you can't blame the people for the lack of knowledge or access to pharmaceuticals. Also I don't wanna negate the possibility that there might be something to it all. After all, there had to be some reason that they chose onions over, say, egg plants. But my point is this, if there was a whole lot off merit to it, some ginormous drug company would have had there R&D dept. do a million dollar study years ago into the effects (affects? No effects...) of onion pulp on the reduction of swelling on a Class 2 spain of the Anterior Talofibular Ligament.
And here's my main argument. For all those natural-paths and homeopaths out there, western medicine may have it's flaws, but seeking out new treatments isn't one of them. And therein lies the rub. All those natural types love the idea of taking everything from nature. Well news flash, everything, (EVERYTHING!) comes from nature. Those drug companies aren't couriering their pills in from Mars. The find a plant that lowers blood pressure slightly, they'll extract the specific essence that does the job, condense it down to pill form and start selling it. Except not until after they go through extensive testing and a lengthy approval process from the FDA. They're not stupid. Sure they're after profits but they all want a better less dangerous pill than the next guy. Besides who's not after profits. Definitely not the med school dropouts who became homeopathic practioners. The same people who are telling you about the evils of medicine are the same ones who want you to by their placebo laced snake oil. Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for taking less drugs, better diets, more exercise, vitamins and all that jazz, but pitting one school of thought against the over is disingenuous at best. I had a friend in dental hygienist school, who, under the sway of her naturopathic parents, went to one of their doctors (sic), to get something for hepatitis B instead of getting the vaccine. And while I'm sure there's something they can give you to boost your immune system, there's no replacement for the weakened form of the disease to allow your bodies NATURAL defenses to build up some antibodies to kill the virus. The thing that bothered me the most was that the practioner told, and subsequently convinced her, with a 100 certainty that this combination of herbs or whatever was as good or better than the vaccine.
To me what it all boils down to is elitism. It's rich housewives, with to much time and disposible income, watching too much oprah and reading too many magazines. It's them wanting to have better healthcare than all the plebs out there. Same people that are spending four times as much for organic food and the finest Cambodian breast milks. (Chappelle's Show) Dang I'm ruining my argument with humor. I hope grandmas not reading.
Bottom line, there's definitely flaws in the system. But there's a reason it's the best one out there. And we all know those natural followers and more significantly the proponents, would be double-fisting the antibiotics if they ever had a serious problem so stop trying to rip off ignorant people.
But I'm getting sunburnt a lot.( By my calculations my risk of skin cancer has gone up 30.61 % since I've got here.) And when I'm not sunburnt I'm shedding skin like a snake in growth hormones. (you like that? Took me two minutes to think up that metaphor. Simile?...)
But here's my point. Whenever I tell someone I'm sunburnt they'll tell me some local remedy to get rid of it/ease the pain. My favourite is throw some yogurt on it. (Early on I bought some aloe vera and that seems to so the trick. ) now without knocking on folk medicine to much, they've got a lot of weird treatments here for pretty much every ailment you can think of. One of my very first investigator families had me sit through a whole discussion with a cup of their moonshine brandy under my nose cause I mentioned in my broken Albania that I thought I was coming down with a cold. My favorite was when we were visiting this one family, and the daughter, who was a very smart very westernized, severed a mission abroad type girl had her ankle wrapped in onions because she'd sprained it. Now considering Albania was pretty isolated for the large part of her recent history, you can't blame the people for the lack of knowledge or access to pharmaceuticals. Also I don't wanna negate the possibility that there might be something to it all. After all, there had to be some reason that they chose onions over, say, egg plants. But my point is this, if there was a whole lot off merit to it, some ginormous drug company would have had there R&D dept. do a million dollar study years ago into the effects (affects? No effects...) of onion pulp on the reduction of swelling on a Class 2 spain of the Anterior Talofibular Ligament.
And here's my main argument. For all those natural-paths and homeopaths out there, western medicine may have it's flaws, but seeking out new treatments isn't one of them. And therein lies the rub. All those natural types love the idea of taking everything from nature. Well news flash, everything, (EVERYTHING!) comes from nature. Those drug companies aren't couriering their pills in from Mars. The find a plant that lowers blood pressure slightly, they'll extract the specific essence that does the job, condense it down to pill form and start selling it. Except not until after they go through extensive testing and a lengthy approval process from the FDA. They're not stupid. Sure they're after profits but they all want a better less dangerous pill than the next guy. Besides who's not after profits. Definitely not the med school dropouts who became homeopathic practioners. The same people who are telling you about the evils of medicine are the same ones who want you to by their placebo laced snake oil. Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for taking less drugs, better diets, more exercise, vitamins and all that jazz, but pitting one school of thought against the over is disingenuous at best. I had a friend in dental hygienist school, who, under the sway of her naturopathic parents, went to one of their doctors (sic), to get something for hepatitis B instead of getting the vaccine. And while I'm sure there's something they can give you to boost your immune system, there's no replacement for the weakened form of the disease to allow your bodies NATURAL defenses to build up some antibodies to kill the virus. The thing that bothered me the most was that the practioner told, and subsequently convinced her, with a 100 certainty that this combination of herbs or whatever was as good or better than the vaccine.
To me what it all boils down to is elitism. It's rich housewives, with to much time and disposible income, watching too much oprah and reading too many magazines. It's them wanting to have better healthcare than all the plebs out there. Same people that are spending four times as much for organic food and the finest Cambodian breast milks. (Chappelle's Show) Dang I'm ruining my argument with humor. I hope grandmas not reading.
Bottom line, there's definitely flaws in the system. But there's a reason it's the best one out there. And we all know those natural followers and more significantly the proponents, would be double-fisting the antibiotics if they ever had a serious problem so stop trying to rip off ignorant people.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Football follow-up...
Soccer... Soccer... Do you like soccer yet!
That's a family guy bit...
So this might be my last soccer post for the foreseeable future but I gotta get some random anecdotes of my chest before I forget them all. Maybe a couple more...
First I touched on the Andorra - Albania match a little bit but it I think it needs more treatment.
For starters I think it's incredible that every nation in the world has a chance to qualify for the world cup. From the giants of football like England and Brazil, to every small scrap of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific, if you have some measure of autonomy, and can scrape together 23 guys with matching uniforms, you're pretty much in. But those micro-nations usually end up just playing each other like in the Oceanic conference before just so one of them can get squashed by New Zealand. Same with the Caribbean, they would all eliminate each other before getting crushed by the Mexicos and USAs of the North American Federation.
But in Europe its different. In the build up to either the World Cup or the Euro Cup they seed every nation in Europe, divide them into groups, and have a them play each other round robin like. Therefore you're gonna have a couple giants of European football, a couple pretenders, a couple fish, and one or two real minnows. This list includes several countries that only the super rich have even heard of as the best places to hide their money from the taxmen i.e. Luxemburg, Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta, the Faroe Islands, and San Marino. Sadly the Vatican City is yet to field an all catholic priest team.
I've just always loved the notion of these non-professionals, for the most part, who probably just train a couple of times a month, play on a rec-level team, find themselves playing against their heroes on a regular basis. All this because some noble, at some point in the history hundreds of years ago, achieved autonomy for his little fiefdom from some king by pledging 100 knights to help fight some war. It's as if the mayor of St. Thomas found an ancient piece of parchment from the King of England, 250 years ago, stating it would be forever independent because of their awesome price break they gave the royal family on a shipment of furs they sent them, and boom, St. Thomas is sending their best hockey players to the Olympics, taking time off from their day jobs as welders and construction workers, who used toi have dreams of making it big but never got out of junior B hockey, playing agaisnt the Sidney Crosbys of the world, who just two weeks ago they were watching on Hockey night in Canada, Molson in hand.
Actually I think I just had a great idea for a screenplay.
copyright 2010 me.
That's a family guy bit...
So this might be my last soccer post for the foreseeable future but I gotta get some random anecdotes of my chest before I forget them all. Maybe a couple more...
First I touched on the Andorra - Albania match a little bit but it I think it needs more treatment.
For starters I think it's incredible that every nation in the world has a chance to qualify for the world cup. From the giants of football like England and Brazil, to every small scrap of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific, if you have some measure of autonomy, and can scrape together 23 guys with matching uniforms, you're pretty much in. But those micro-nations usually end up just playing each other like in the Oceanic conference before just so one of them can get squashed by New Zealand. Same with the Caribbean, they would all eliminate each other before getting crushed by the Mexicos and USAs of the North American Federation.
But in Europe its different. In the build up to either the World Cup or the Euro Cup they seed every nation in Europe, divide them into groups, and have a them play each other round robin like. Therefore you're gonna have a couple giants of European football, a couple pretenders, a couple fish, and one or two real minnows. This list includes several countries that only the super rich have even heard of as the best places to hide their money from the taxmen i.e. Luxemburg, Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta, the Faroe Islands, and San Marino. Sadly the Vatican City is yet to field an all catholic priest team.
I've just always loved the notion of these non-professionals, for the most part, who probably just train a couple of times a month, play on a rec-level team, find themselves playing against their heroes on a regular basis. All this because some noble, at some point in the history hundreds of years ago, achieved autonomy for his little fiefdom from some king by pledging 100 knights to help fight some war. It's as if the mayor of St. Thomas found an ancient piece of parchment from the King of England, 250 years ago, stating it would be forever independent because of their awesome price break they gave the royal family on a shipment of furs they sent them, and boom, St. Thomas is sending their best hockey players to the Olympics, taking time off from their day jobs as welders and construction workers, who used toi have dreams of making it big but never got out of junior B hockey, playing agaisnt the Sidney Crosbys of the world, who just two weeks ago they were watching on Hockey night in Canada, Molson in hand.
Actually I think I just had a great idea for a screenplay.
copyright 2010 me.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Just an incredible Neil Young cover...
Dave Matthews band and Warren Haynes - Cortez the killer
People just don't make good music anymore...
People just don't make good music anymore...
Friday, July 16, 2010
Random Thoughts while out on the town...
I started another blog entry today on soccer, wrote way too much and got bored... maybe ill firm it up tomorrow.
So I was out tonight with some friends, walked by a real estate agency with a bunch of postings for rent and sale. I notcied they hadn't changed since I walked past a couple of weeks ago. So I thought to myself, well, besides foreigners, who's looking for apartments that much. Then it dawned on me that, with at least the last generation, everybody in Albania owns some piece of land. I can't beleive that I never thought of this before, especially being a bit of a history buff. You always here about these Russian oligarchs who, smartly you gotta say, bought up all this land and enterprises after the fall of communism, and are now kabillionaires. Fine great, but for some reason it never occurred to me that because the in the transition form the-state-owns-everything communism to the-state-owns-practically-nothing democracy everyone got a free house. Which you got to say is an incredibly interesting concept. Considering the scope and size of the communist Eastern European states that kind of land transfer is unprecedented. Every citizen, every farmer, every son of a former landless serf all of a sudden got his forty acres so to speak(well probably way less). No mortgages though. No rent. Overnight you go from owning nothing to having an even share of the country. More over if your piece of land happens to be prime real estate than ka-ching, they build an apartment, and you're nouveau riche. 50 years of communism and the slate gets wiped clean and the country hits the reset button.
Of course the people who get screwed over are the former landowners who had more than their share prior to communism, but, well, they were probably jerk landlords to begin with so who cares about them. lol
So I was out tonight with some friends, walked by a real estate agency with a bunch of postings for rent and sale. I notcied they hadn't changed since I walked past a couple of weeks ago. So I thought to myself, well, besides foreigners, who's looking for apartments that much. Then it dawned on me that, with at least the last generation, everybody in Albania owns some piece of land. I can't beleive that I never thought of this before, especially being a bit of a history buff. You always here about these Russian oligarchs who, smartly you gotta say, bought up all this land and enterprises after the fall of communism, and are now kabillionaires. Fine great, but for some reason it never occurred to me that because the in the transition form the-state-owns-everything communism to the-state-owns-practically-nothing democracy everyone got a free house. Which you got to say is an incredibly interesting concept. Considering the scope and size of the communist Eastern European states that kind of land transfer is unprecedented. Every citizen, every farmer, every son of a former landless serf all of a sudden got his forty acres so to speak(well probably way less). No mortgages though. No rent. Overnight you go from owning nothing to having an even share of the country. More over if your piece of land happens to be prime real estate than ka-ching, they build an apartment, and you're nouveau riche. 50 years of communism and the slate gets wiped clean and the country hits the reset button.
Of course the people who get screwed over are the former landowners who had more than their share prior to communism, but, well, they were probably jerk landlords to begin with so who cares about them. lol
Shoot... How was I titling these soccer posts again? part 3... or 4 maybe?
Rivalries!
Soccer is great because of rivalries between continents, countries, cities, religions, sects, ethnicities, politics, social classes, pretty much whatever you can beef about in real life it can spill over into real life. And it's not fake made-up North American rivalries perpetrated by the PR reps trying to sell tickets to the ignorant businessman type season ticket holders who couldn't name five players on the home team never mind their heated rivals, (not you though Dad you're great :) .) These rivalries start at the fan level and stay there for the most part. And there's always some great history behind it, because most of these rivalries are as old as the clubs themselves, (which is old, like turn of the century old.)
[ Sidebar random question, as the 21st century has turned, at which point do I have to stop saying turn of the century before it gets ambiguous? Or would that be turn of the millennium. I just my start referring to the last twenty years as the turn of the millennium. You heard it hear first.]
Most rivalries end up boiling down to geography. You beef with the club from the same neighbourhood, city, province, country, what-have-you. Most of these are called Derbies, at least in English. And then from that same geographic proximity the beef goes geo-political. Clubs having gravitated to one side or another of some divisive issue. (I say having because usually clubs gravitate back towards neutrality in our politically correct society, but the fans don't forget.
(gee this could be a long post... well off I go)
My first companion on the mission had a poster with all the teams from the Italian soccer league that showed all their jerseys. He told me that I had to pick a team, cause every street kid would ask me who my team was, (and did they ever.) So I looked at the teams, he mentioned who the top five or so were, I made the completely masculine choice of choosing S.S. Lazio basically because I liked their sky-blue jerseys. People who know me may have seen me wearing a few of them since then. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan and follow the team pretty religiously now but back then I new next to nothing about Italian soccer and based my decision solely
on aesthetics. Took me a while and a few football conversations to learn even where the were based out of. The answer, Rome, Lazio being the name of the principality Rome is located in. Their big rivals are Roma, in fact the share the Stadio Olimpico with them. They call it the Derby della Capitale. Without getting in to it too much, the call it more than just a game, (but they say that about all the big derbys I guess.) But still, lots of violence, lots of obscenities being shouted. Lots of very sturdy metal fences set up to keep the fans from going at each other. Their rivalry stems from Lazio being the one roman club to resist Mussolini's forced unification of other roman clubs to form Roma to compete with the powerful northern Italian clubs in Milano and Torino. But, ironically enough, Roma started to gather it's fan base from the more left-leaning political types, with Lazio getting the more right leaning. Right leaning in the forties means, well, Facism. Lazio, I would later find out has a pretty fascist(and with that comes racist) history. And the Ultras (the crazy hardcore fans) like to hype this up even now with Nazi salutes and facist propaganda crap. Romas Ultras pull similar stunts but tend to be less racially motivated. Most notably at a derby during the 98-99 season, when Laziali(Lazio fans) unfurled a 50-metre banner around the Curva Nord that read, "Auschwitz is your town, the ovens are your houses"Of course In N. America this would be crazy headline making stuff but not in European football. Of course the clubs officially distance themselves from this mess but don't do a lot to stop it. I mean id I can't sneak a hot dog into the ACC how do you get a 50 foot banner into the stadium.
(Sidebar note, for some reason we as North Americans think we've cornered the market on racism, and that Europe is so much more civilized. It's not ok?)
Couple other examples. Okay maybe more...
The famous Old Firm derby, between the Glasgow giants of Scottish football, originated, humbly, by a catholic priest looking to get some Irish immigrant children, that the Protestant clubs wouldn't have, to play some football. This set the stage for 100 years of sectarian strife both at home and across the Irish channel, being played out on a pitch in Glasgow. For years they both had strict hiring policies along religious lines, but have since opened up their ranks to players of all creeds to stay competitive. But that doesn't stop the Rangers fans from singing about killing Finians, and other such equally offensive chants from both sides.
AC Milan and Inter Milan's historic rivalry came after the the two clubs founders split over whether of not to allow foreigners to play which Internazionale was in favour of but A.C. was not. Inter also became the more bourgeois choice amongst the Milanese with A.C. drawing more blue collar support.
Real Madrid and Barcelona, by the far the most successful of the two Spanish clubs, have El Classico, which boils down to Catalonian nationalism mixed with leftover Francoist era politics. Way to much to go into.
My Arsenal gunners beef with Chelsea, and Man United, but their big derby is with their fellow north Londeners Tottenham Hotspurs, which has it's roots in geography and a bunch of silly squables over the years, but that doesn't stop their fans from wanting to bash each others heads in.
But anyways here's the story I wanted to get into.
So as I've explained before, and as everybody's no doubt promptly forgotten, every country has both a league format and a single elimination cup tournament that run concurrently during the season. In order to entice teams to take their cup competition more seriously, UEFA, the European football governing body, decided that cup winners would get beneficial placement in the Europa league, Europe's secondary competition, the next year. Well a team called Besa Kavaje, from the little city of, Kavaja, lol, managed to win the cup competition, i.e. the Albanian Cup. Great for them! A little Cinderella story for Albanian football. The problem is though is that when small teams manage to bring up some good talent they never stick around. Teams sell them, make some money, and players get to show their talents on a bigger stage. Well Besa sold a whack of their players, limiting their ability to field a strong team. Not a big deal, all small teams do it cause that money can by a dozen young players that they can bring up, maybe improve their training facility, upgrade the stadium, whatever. But, they still gotta play in Europe the next season with their now diminished squad. The opponents they draw? Olympiacos, the most successful club in Greece football, who after having played against Arsenal in the highest echelon of European football last year is slumming it this year in the second qualifying round of the Europa league after a bad domestic form. Now I went to the home match of a two legged heads up match between the two clubs that was held in the national stadium here in Tirana, which is about an hours drive from Kavaja, because, well, their stadium sucks and doesn't meet UEFA's standards for competition. What was interesting was that the crowd was, I wanna say, at least four times larger than the qualifier that KF Tirana, the local big Tirana club, had had the week before. Why? Because the Greeks are coming. And there's no one Albanians hate more than the Greeks.
My first soccer experience here was a friendly match between Albania and Andorra, one of Europe's resident fake mini-countries. I think I'll go into that game more later. But anyways, the crazy Albanian fans still showed up to show their support to beat a country with the population of Red Deer. So I got there early, and they were doing their parade thing down the road they were chanting Hellas Hellas ,(Greece, Greece in Greek,) F$%! You, F$%! You!, English kinda being the Lingua Franca of swear words. Funny thing though, there were no Greeks there. At all. But they had no beef with those pleasant Andorrans so lets chant about those with whom we do gots beef lol.
There are two great moments of Albanian soccer. One was when they beat the Russians 3-1 in a Euro qualifier. The other was when they beat the Greeks 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier, basically derailing their attempt to qualify, right after they had just won the European Cup. Now I guess I won't get too much into history of conflict between Greece and Albania, but there's some long standing border disputes. The Greeks pretty much tried to absorb Albania when they declared independence from the Turks. Now a days Albanian diaspora in Greece are blamed (probably rightly so in some cases) for bringing crime and disorder, and stealing jobs form the natives.
It's all a rich history but there's some problems there.
So the stadium is pretty packed. Some travelling supporters from Athens have showed up, and the shouting begins. A lot of talking about your mother, your sister, pretty much all your familial relations. In English, and Albanian, which I though was hilarious. Hey Spanish referee! I know you can't understand a single word I'm saying or even tell I'm directing my comments to you or but Yo Mamma! Yah! Take that! You're gonna think twice about giving that foul next time aren't you!
So there was a lot of obscenities being hurled back and forth. All the while Olympiacos is just giving it to poor Besa. 5 - 0. They just creamed them. And the more they scored the more the Albanians shouted and cursed. And I think that's what I liked most about it. This was an outlet for mostly working class poor to come, shout themselves hoarse, and release a little pent up
aggression. You don't see that as much in North American sports as most teams have priced out fans, and lulled us all into complacency with there PA announcer telling us what and when to yell. The last game Raptors game I was at the guy behind me got mad at me for standing up. There's large parts of soccer stadiums that never sit down. I really think we've lost something in our homogenized corporate sports world in N. America that can still be found here for a 5 dollar ticket.
Well I've still got 3 or 4 stories I wanna tell but this is day two of this post and I'm sick or writing and this is turning into a 12 paragraph run on sentence.
i'm out
So as I've explained before, and as everybody's no doubt promptly forgotten, every country has both a league format and a single elimination cup tournament that run concurrently during the season. In order to entice teams to take their cup competition more seriously, UEFA, the European football governing body, decided that cup winners would get beneficial placement in the Europa league, Europe's secondary competition, the next year. Well a team called Besa Kavaje, from the little city of, Kavaja, lol, managed to win the cup competition, i.e. the Albanian Cup. Great for them! A little Cinderella story for Albanian football. The problem is though is that when small teams manage to bring up some good talent they never stick around. Teams sell them, make some money, and players get to show their talents on a bigger stage. Well Besa sold a whack of their players, limiting their ability to field a strong team. Not a big deal, all small teams do it cause that money can by a dozen young players that they can bring up, maybe improve their training facility, upgrade the stadium, whatever. But, they still gotta play in Europe the next season with their now diminished squad. The opponents they draw? Olympiacos, the most successful club in Greece football, who after having played against Arsenal in the highest echelon of European football last year is slumming it this year in the second qualifying round of the Europa league after a bad domestic form. Now I went to the home match of a two legged heads up match between the two clubs that was held in the national stadium here in Tirana, which is about an hours drive from Kavaja, because, well, their stadium sucks and doesn't meet UEFA's standards for competition. What was interesting was that the crowd was, I wanna say, at least four times larger than the qualifier that KF Tirana, the local big Tirana club, had had the week before. Why? Because the Greeks are coming. And there's no one Albanians hate more than the Greeks.
My first soccer experience here was a friendly match between Albania and Andorra, one of Europe's resident fake mini-countries. I think I'll go into that game more later. But anyways, the crazy Albanian fans still showed up to show their support to beat a country with the population of Red Deer. So I got there early, and they were doing their parade thing down the road they were chanting Hellas Hellas ,(Greece, Greece in Greek,) F$%! You, F$%! You!, English kinda being the Lingua Franca of swear words. Funny thing though, there were no Greeks there. At all. But they had no beef with those pleasant Andorrans so lets chant about those with whom we do gots beef lol.
There are two great moments of Albanian soccer. One was when they beat the Russians 3-1 in a Euro qualifier. The other was when they beat the Greeks 2-1 in a World Cup qualifier, basically derailing their attempt to qualify, right after they had just won the European Cup. Now I guess I won't get too much into history of conflict between Greece and Albania, but there's some long standing border disputes. The Greeks pretty much tried to absorb Albania when they declared independence from the Turks. Now a days Albanian diaspora in Greece are blamed (probably rightly so in some cases) for bringing crime and disorder, and stealing jobs form the natives.
It's all a rich history but there's some problems there.
So the stadium is pretty packed. Some travelling supporters from Athens have showed up, and the shouting begins. A lot of talking about your mother, your sister, pretty much all your familial relations. In English, and Albanian, which I though was hilarious. Hey Spanish referee! I know you can't understand a single word I'm saying or even tell I'm directing my comments to you or but Yo Mamma! Yah! Take that! You're gonna think twice about giving that foul next time aren't you!
So there was a lot of obscenities being hurled back and forth. All the while Olympiacos is just giving it to poor Besa. 5 - 0. They just creamed them. And the more they scored the more the Albanians shouted and cursed. And I think that's what I liked most about it. This was an outlet for mostly working class poor to come, shout themselves hoarse, and release a little pent up
aggression. You don't see that as much in North American sports as most teams have priced out fans, and lulled us all into complacency with there PA announcer telling us what and when to yell. The last game Raptors game I was at the guy behind me got mad at me for standing up. There's large parts of soccer stadiums that never sit down. I really think we've lost something in our homogenized corporate sports world in N. America that can still be found here for a 5 dollar ticket.Well I've still got 3 or 4 stories I wanna tell but this is day two of this post and I'm sick or writing and this is turning into a 12 paragraph run on sentence.
i'm out
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Accented Beef...
So apparently I'm not a native yet... lol
When I was a missionary we used to play this sorta language test game. So apparently we were pretty lazy and we called for a lot of take out pizza and the like, especially in the summer when it's so blazing hot out. So the game was you have to call a take out place, a new one at that, cause a few places definately got to know us pretty well, and make an order. And if by the end of the call the hadn't asked, "where you from", or, "what are you greek or something?", then you win! Not a lot of missionaries ever won. Mostly cause Albanians are nosy and lack a certain element of shame that stems from having a 0.01 percent immigrant population. That, and Albanian is super tough.
Everywhere I go, every shop, every phone call, every street corner, it's "hey, what you foreign?" Now while I don't exactly look Albanian it's not exactly like I'm in Shanghai or Mecca or whatever so I figure it's my accent that gives me away. And there in lies the beef. First off, I'm never ever offended. And I realize that's partly because there's no immigrants in Albania but when someone implies "hey, you're strange to me and you haven't been able to blend into society well enough for me to not notice", I don't get offended. Not so in Canada.
It almost always happens that whenever I work with someone or hang out or meet someone who's obviously not born in this country, inevitably I'll ask, "so where you from anyways" Some people, who aren't d-words, well say well I was born in blah blah, but I moved here when I was so years old. Perfect, I asked cause I was interested, not because I hate immigrants or I'm implying you've failed in the extremely difficult task of speaking English with a perfect accent. I just want to know more about you. But I hate those people who answer, "Edmonton," and kinda jut there chin out and dare me to ask a follow up question. Or even better, "Edmonton, but i used to live in Toronto." Oh really! Cause I happen to be from Ontario and I can tell you, Somali taxi driver, that yours is not a Toronto accent. And it just ticks me off that in a multi-cultural society people get there guard up so easily when it comes to there heritage. Maybe they've experienced some prejudice in the past because of their heritage, I get that, but I'm sorry you can't play the "I'm from around here" card until you speak the native language well enough to be mistaken for a native. Even if I'd been living here for ten years and considered myself a Tirananer (lol) I wouldn't get offended if people asked where I'm from if I didn't speak perfect Albanian, (which I doubt I ever will.) The children of immigrants can say they're from around here cause, well, they are actually from around here. They speak perfect English, and regardless of their race, creed, colour, whatever, they're natives. But being a native is completely different than having the local nationality. And until you've immersed yourself suffiecently into the native culture to be mistaken for a local, you can't be offended when someone implies you're not.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Lebron hyperbole coming at you...
So I guess this post, being NBA centric, is for Dad. I'm writing this from my cell phone in a cafe so I hope it works. Every one here is super generous and always wants to treat me to "coffee." It's offending to say no and, well, frankly, not a lot else going on so I oblige them usually. I get a cola or fruit juice. Depending on how missionary-ish I feel I can explain they I don't drink coffee because of the gospel or I'll say something like we canadians don't drink coffee when it's this freakin' hot out (true.) Usually the latter. Lol. But seriously, 33 degrees out, middle of the afternoon, "let's get a coffee!" And when I tell them it's to hot they'll usually spout off some fifties mumbo jumbo like, "no it's good to drink hot stuff when it's hot." "calms the nerves," or "keeps the spine straight"... Lol
Anyways since the past few days I get to wake up to a tsunami of twitter posts every morning (like the alliteration?,) and since these cafes have free wireless, they'll ask me what I'm reading about.
Now I love that I can walk down the street and have an in depth conversation with any random guy about soccer. Everybody knows what's goin on. That said I'm hard pressed to find anyone who has heard of lebron james, never mind knows about free agency. Besides big clubs buying all the best players is the norm here so imagine trying to explain a soft salary cap.
But anyways heres my Lebron/Bosh beef. First, I don't know when bosh turned into such a media whore. I guess he got so much good press for those (not that funny) all star youtube bits he did. But all these stupid meetings they all took with all these stupid tweets saying how they were all "great meetings" and "got some real thinking to do"... Shut up. Lebron let the cat outta the bag by saying you'd all decided this way before this week. So screw you. You thanked toronto as an after thought on twitter. you tricked everyone into thinking you had even a ten percent chance of coming back. You filmed the whole thing hoping to make a second crappy dvd with you're new buddies. You faked it all. You're a drama queen, you suck.
But Lebron is worse. His fans really loved fan. I liked him. Seriously did anyone really have anything that bad to say about the guy before this. Raptors fans had given up on bosh long before now. Nobody in toronto is burning Bosh in effigy. We're gonna boo Carter louder than bosh.
But lebron really was the king in cleveland and it got to his head, and apparently all of his advisors were either dreaming of the beach or too scared to say "hey bron-bron, instead of twisting the knife in every cavs fan s back with an hour long special, how bout a little contrition and we tone it down a notch." Nope. A big nationaly televised eff you. Lebron s bachelor involved him breaking up with his devoted wife of seven years to propose to the surgically enhanced and vapid stripper from Miami on national tv. Cold. I hope they suck and miami fans turn on them quick. and I hope cleveland fans, and basketball fans everywhere give it to the new evil empire everywhere they go.
Anyways since the past few days I get to wake up to a tsunami of twitter posts every morning (like the alliteration?,) and since these cafes have free wireless, they'll ask me what I'm reading about.
Now I love that I can walk down the street and have an in depth conversation with any random guy about soccer. Everybody knows what's goin on. That said I'm hard pressed to find anyone who has heard of lebron james, never mind knows about free agency. Besides big clubs buying all the best players is the norm here so imagine trying to explain a soft salary cap.
But anyways heres my Lebron/Bosh beef. First, I don't know when bosh turned into such a media whore. I guess he got so much good press for those (not that funny) all star youtube bits he did. But all these stupid meetings they all took with all these stupid tweets saying how they were all "great meetings" and "got some real thinking to do"... Shut up. Lebron let the cat outta the bag by saying you'd all decided this way before this week. So screw you. You thanked toronto as an after thought on twitter. you tricked everyone into thinking you had even a ten percent chance of coming back. You filmed the whole thing hoping to make a second crappy dvd with you're new buddies. You faked it all. You're a drama queen, you suck.
But Lebron is worse. His fans really loved fan. I liked him. Seriously did anyone really have anything that bad to say about the guy before this. Raptors fans had given up on bosh long before now. Nobody in toronto is burning Bosh in effigy. We're gonna boo Carter louder than bosh.
But lebron really was the king in cleveland and it got to his head, and apparently all of his advisors were either dreaming of the beach or too scared to say "hey bron-bron, instead of twisting the knife in every cavs fan s back with an hour long special, how bout a little contrition and we tone it down a notch." Nope. A big nationaly televised eff you. Lebron s bachelor involved him breaking up with his devoted wife of seven years to propose to the surgically enhanced and vapid stripper from Miami on national tv. Cold. I hope they suck and miami fans turn on them quick. and I hope cleveland fans, and basketball fans everywhere give it to the new evil empire everywhere they go.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Straight Outta Tirana...
So after having soent many a phonecall and emails convincing my Mom how safe it is here in Albania I release the irony of this post as shes probably the only one who's gonna read it.
But... So I was walking home from FHE last Monday about fifty meters from the largest road in Tirana, about five minutes from my house, a place I walk by at least twice a day, and there were all these cops and news cameras. I walk over to this guy and asked what happened. He looked at me kinda incredulously and replied "can't you see the blood?" (I couldn't, but I could see the shell casings with the evidence markers next to them.) So I asked if somebody was shot, "yes but only wounded," he replied. Over some girl apparently. Both the shooter(s) and the wounded took off before the cops showed up (very belatedly I'm sure).
So funny thing is, my neighbourhood "friends", or the guys that have taken a shine to me and insist I come into there cafe and say hi to them every time I walk by and drink something with them, seemed pretty nonchalant about somebody getting shot 100 meters from where they hang out, explaining it away as "thats what some people do in Albania". Secondly, in the above picture I was trying to get the wide angle shot but I pretty much could walk up look at the shells and the blood as close as I wanted because the tape barely roped it all in. Frankly I'm surprised the had tape. And evidence markers... for that matter. Cops in Albania seem mostly interested in shaking people down from what I've seen.
Seemed rather run of the mill to most people... but whatever, interesting to me.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Why soccer is the -insert superlative- yada yada part 2
Promotion and Relegation.
This is important because the better a club you are the better division you play in. In Europe all the leagues are interconnected within their own countries. In England, which I'm gonna go ahead and venture a guess has the largest structure, to quote wikipedia "The system has a hierarchical format with promotion and relegation between leagues at different levels, allowing even the smallest club the possibility of ultimately rising to the very top of the system. There are more than 140 leagues, containing more than 480 divisions.[1] The exact number of clubs varies from year to year as clubs join and leave leagues or fold altogether, but an estimated average of 15 clubs per division implies that more than 7,000 clubs are members of a league in the English football league system." So I could start a team in say Mid-Sussex Football League division eleven and be in the premier league, I assuming I keep winning, in 20-ish some years. And assuming I build a nice enough stadium, yada yada, the premier league has a series of conditions you need to fufill in order to go up. But basically. the top teams go up a level, bottom teams go down. And this is how it works, an a somewhat smaller scale in most countries (Albania has four levels mostly because everyone here plays pickup 5 on 5 soccer and there's no good fields anyways), all over Europe.
What goes this mean? Well in the major sports leagues in N. America theres no risk when it comes to playing badly. Actually you're rewarded with the best pick or the best chance at a top pick of the incoming crop of collegiate athletes. You're gate revenue may go down but all you need is one big free agent signing, a big name rookie, or live in a big enough market to ensure that you're be able to keep the dollars flowing. So you see teams purposely tanking in order to get the best chance at a top prospect. In Europe you see the opposite. Which takes us to...
Why Soccer is structured so dang well...
a Table Format
I love the table structure of play. At least in England, every team plays each other twice, home and away. Top team after 38 games takes the title. That's it. Sometimes its a blowout with teams securing the title a month in advance, sometimes it comes down to the last day. But every game is important. No turning it on in the playoffs like hockey and basketball (hello celtics). And the best team usually wins. But's theres also drama on the other end of the table. The bottom three teams drop out of he top flight to the next division down. One team, which felt slighted after another club managed to avoid relegation by improperly signing Carlos Tevez, a famous Argentine player a few years ago, put the figure at 45 million pounds as the monetary loss at playing in the second level of English football, which they felt was owed to them by the team who had broken the rules. So for that amount of money they are fighting tooth and nail at the bottom of the table to get out of those bottom three spots.
b Cup Format
Running Concurrently with the regular season is each countries single elimination Cup tournament. (I'm using a lot of English examples I know but let's face it English soccer rocks) In the FA(Football Association) Cup had 762 teams competing for it in 2010 from the top 9 or so levels of the football pyramid. The larger leagues get dropped into the competition later on in the bracket but you regularly see smaller division teams taking big scalps and knocking off big clubs early in the competition and making cinderella like runs deep into the tournament.
c European Competition.
But by far the best part is the Champions League and the lesser Europa League where the best teams of EVERY European league get together and battle it out every year which makes for the best football you'll ever see bar none. The biggest and best clubs consistently make the final from all across the continent which makes for excellent football and interesting match-ups. And the craziest thing is all the European countries have a shot at getting their best teams to the final. Spots are allocated best on a complex merit-based system where the bigger teams and countries get dropped into the latter stages of the competition but even little ol' Albania has a chance to get its local champion a chance at facing the Barcelonas and Manchester Uniteds for European glory.
So the bottom line is anybody with a decent amount of money, a half decent place to play, and 18 guys can start a team, and assuming they keep winning could be playing against the biggest teams in the world. Of course they won't but the only thing stopping them is losing. Which when you think about it is pretty incredible from a N. American perspective. It's as if every minor junior hockey team was connected to the NHL by competition, instead of just being a feeder system for the bigger league. So I start a team with me and my buddies in the lowest hockey league. We win a bunch of games, jump up a level, get some better players, jump up another level, there's nothing stopping us from getting to the NHL.
So here's a funny soccer anecdote. I went to this early qualifying match for the local Tirana club with a Hungarian team. The reserve players were warming up and some guy in my section starts yelling to a guy on the bench on the other side, of the field. I don't know if he knew him or what, but the guy starts yelling back from the opposite side of the field. And the end up having this little conversation,"how you doing" yada yada. Thought it was hilarious.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Why European Soccer is the -insert superlative- sport ever... Part 1 of 7ish? Maybe?
Yah yah I know I haven't been blogging. I know all two of you have been waiting patiently for this...
1. Player contracts
So because theres no collegiate soccer in Europe it's all about clubs. So that North-West London soccer team you started with when you were six well have a professional/semi-pro team or that you can graduate to if your good enough and keep playing with them you're whole life. Of course if you're good enough then you're gonna want to move up in the world which is where it get's interesting. Bigger club's scouts will spot you and offer your club, which owns you if you're under contract, a transfer fee which the club gets to keep. This past season over 100 million dollars was spent on one players transfer fee. The smaller club then has money which it can spend on improving it's on squad, facilities, etc. to make itself a better team. So the emphasis get's put on developing talent and scouting players in the youth at bargain prices. And the better a player plays the bigger salary he gets. Everybody wins.
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