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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

So anybody who knows me knows I love soccer. Something probably no one knows is the number of Saturday and Sunday mornings I've been up at 5:30am to catch a English afternoon game. Although I played in high school I really fell in love with soccer during my mission. So without further a due(sp?), my series on the 3-5ish top reasons (depending how many I ideas I got) soccer kicks the stuffing outta every North American sport.

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.