A Beautiful Thread for the Beautiful Game

I learned to love football during EURO2008, and ever since then, I've never seen a Spain or Barca game where Xavi wasn't the most important player on the pitch.

Adidas commemorates Leonel Messi's third straight FIFA World Player of the Year award with a snazzy viral video.

Seeing as how racism and hatred in English football is flavour of the month again, I might as well draw attention to the website of former English Premierleague referee and media personality Jeff Winter.

Anything amiss about paragraphs two and three?

And this is just todays article. There's pages of this stuff on there. The frightening thing is this repulsive hun bastard actually gets air time on Sky Sports and the BBC.

This is why I'd love to see them go to the wall - it'd leave these creatures with no legitimate standards left to rally around. Forgot football; humanity would be better off without them.

I had to read over Vincent Kompany's open letter◊ again just to settle down again.

And Paul Jewell ensures that racism doesn't completely hog the discrimination limelight this month.

I imagine that he will be getting a touchline ban coming his way for that. If he was a pundit, then he would have probably been sacked a-la Andy Gray, but since he's a manager, I'm not really sure what Ipswich will do with him.

edited 12th Jan '12 2:48:42 AM by flygon250

What a profoundly stupid thing to say.

(I'm talking about the sexist comment, not something that people in this thread have said.)

edited 12th Jan '12 7:23:10 AM by BestOf

Just noticed that Jeff Winter's personal website appears to have been suspended.

The police are involved now, and Celtic are taking legal advice, so that's no surprise.

That someone like this could referee an FA Cup Final then become a sports media personlity - while writing this stuff on his personal website for years on end - really makes you take a look at referees up here and think "how can anyone guarantee that they aren't tainted as well?"

I mean if some fat idiot from Middlesbrough can be so... warped, then what makes the rest of them so immune?

I'm not gonna make any presumptions about people I don't know anything about.

Because Mr. Winter made his deplorable thoughts and opinions publicly known, we can all judge him on those merits. If I don't see other referees making public remarks like this, I'm not going to suspect any of them of being just as bad as (if not, worse than) Winter.

edited 13th Jan '12 8:28:39 AM by SeanMurrayI

100 Greatest Football Moments

Celtic smashing Inter's defence coming in at a cool 14th.

edited 14th Jan '12 3:22:35 AM by TheBatPencil

DAT MESSI

I would've put the Miracle of Istanbul at #1. That should have, at least, have cracked the Top 10. At least top spot didn't go to the "Hand of God" or "Goal of the Century"; fuck Maradona, that fat piece of shit.

Other moments that I didn't notice on the list, that I'd say are worth mentioning:

* Mönchengladbach 12-0 Dortmund (Bundesliga,, 1978) Last match day of the 1977-78 Bundesliga season, Borussia Mönchengladbach is in 2nd place and on equal points with league leaders Cologne but are 10 goals behind on goal difference. With Cologne having to play an already relegated St. Pauli, it seemed there seemed to be no chance of Mönchengladbach catching up to them (or, at least, that's what everyone thought). In the end, Cologne won their game 5-0 and still managed to win the league by a margin of 3 goals on goal difference, but the Mönchengladbach players went out to celebrate, anyway, elated with the sense of an extraordinary achievement. Dortmund's goalkeeper that day, Peter Endrulat, never played for Dortmund again. Today, he sells welding equipment.

* John Sitton challenging his own players to a fight The TV documentary Leyton Orient: Club for a Fiver deserves to be better known. Following the club during their difficult 1994-95 season, during which time the club suffers a HUGE financial crisis, embattled manager John Sitton becomes increasingly unhinged and slowly loses his sanity as Orient sinks lower and lower in the Championship League. This all culminates in a halftime rant during a match with Blackpool where, after having fired one player in the dressing room, he offers out two more players telling them, "...and you can bring your fucking dinner, 'cos by the time I've finished with you, you'll fucking need it!"

* Rene Higuita's scorpion kick at Wembley, 1995 The game being a friendly, I can see this being excluded for not having much of anything at stake, but damn.

edited 14th Jan '12 2:09:37 PM by SeanMurrayI

The family of one Neil McCallum were at Celtic Park today as guests of the Celtic Graves Society. McCallum scored Celtic's very first goal in their inaugural game on the 28 May, 1888 in a 5-2 victory over Rangers.

edited 14th Jan '12 5:21:45 PM by TheBatPencil

Barrow's Wembley dream is over for another year

Rangers' First Tier Tribunal starts back tomorrow. Should be interesting.

HMRC want to give dodgy clubs "a good kicking"

Kick 'em hard, Hector! Kick them hard.

edited 15th Jan '12 9:59:16 AM by TheBatPencil

Inter has upset Milan 0-1 today. Pretty disappointing, Milan had a lot more time on the ball and had plenty of opportunities, but they just couldn't connect. One slip up from Abate was all it took for Diego Milito to squash their efforts.

But, as any true soccer fan would tell you, the real show wasn't going to be on the pitch but in the commentary studio. I just couldn't wait to see Tiziano Crudeli get excited and over-passionate while being paired alongside ...this guy.

But, unfortunately, it just wasn't to be T-Crud's day...

A breakdown of the video's best moments:

Short Version

edited 15th Jan '12 9:53:50 PM by SeanMurrayI

An Asian-American girl shows us all how to look like her favorite player—Newcastle's "BLODDY" Leon Best (Yeah, I felt the same way upon hearing this, too)

Everything about this is so freakin' surreal it's freakin' creepy. I think I'm going to wind up dead in seven days.

edited 17th Jan '12 6:30:15 AM by SeanMurrayI

Why Leon Best?

Why... just WHY?

Celtic have signed Polish centre back Jaroslaw Fojut on a pre-contract. Fojut, 24, will arrive next summer or, if Celtic pay a severance fee with his currant side Slask Wroclaw of the Ekstraklasa before the end of January, this month.

I'v never heard of him in my life, but Wikipedia tells me he made one appearance for Bolton, had loan spells at Luton and Stockport before going back to Poland getting injured for a year. But what the hell, I trust the managers judgement.

Just get that striker in!

Carlo Ancelotti and Paris St. Germain will apparently have no shortage of big name talent to pick from on the transfer market.

20-year-old Nigerian winger Raibu Ibrahim has signed a 3-year contract with Celtic after a trial.

Also, Celtic might be coming back to the United States on tour this June, possibly for friendlies in Boston, New York and Chicago against Chelsea, Liverpool and AS Roma.

Barcelona beat Real Madrid last night at the Bernabéu 1-2 in the first leg of their meetings in the Copa del Rey.

But, hey, we also got some 5-Star commentary from the one and only Ray Hudson praising Barcelona for their "fabulous, botanical football" (among other oddities).

edited 19th Jan '12 4:53:12 PM by SeanMurrayI

The African Cup of Nations kicks off tomorrow. I, for one, am going to be watching as much of it as is humanly possible. Who's with me?

edited 20th Jan '12 3:13:37 AM by Saeglopur

What happened to Egypt? And Algeria, for that matter. Did Libya really qualify ahead of them? I wonder how that's going to work, now that Gadaffi is gone.