Ronnie Golden Balls

My hero

Ronaldinho was awarded the 50th Ballon d'Or last night in Paris as the best player in Europe in 2005. Frank Lampard was second and Stevie G third.

Now while I love Ronaldinho and think he is a hero, I don't think he really desreved it this year. If anything, I think he was head and shoulders above anyone else on the planet in 2004, even if he won nothing that season. One only has to look at Barca's record in the first half of 2004 and how many of those games Ronnie won on his own, to see how good he was. I know he won La Liga and the Confederations Cup in '05, but I just felt his influence was less. I would have given it to Lampard. The amount of goals he scores for a midfielder, and his general all-round contribution, is phenomenal.

Anyhow, well done little Ronaldo :)

Blue is the colour...

Pistol Pete (Thanks once again to Thompo for the pic)

And then there were two. What a result for the Blues, blasting away the title challenge of third-placed Portadown 4-0, with 2 more goals for Pistol Pete, who surely will be snapped up by a cross-channel club in the January transfer window. If we'd have had this victory last season instead of an over-cautious 0-0 draw three games from the end of the season, we'd have won the league. But the Glens are hot on our tails after winning 3-0. Next up for the Blues? League Cup Final on Saturday. The opponents? Glentoran, who else? (stop press: just been movd to Saturday week as George Best's funeral is on Saturday)

As for the others, Gillingham were roundly spanked 5-0, a result that scares me, we don't cave in like that too often. A new manager had better be installed quicksmart.

TeBe, who visited the world-famous Torgelow in Vorpommern, pulled off a 2-1 win but are still deep in relegation trouble. Good report and pics again from the TeBe Party Army Boy.

By the way, excuse the messiness of the site at times, with random tables and stuff, trying to sort it out and make it snazzy and informative but as a html novice, still haven't got the hang of it. Give me time...

Blue is the colour...

Thanks to Thompo for the pic

A pretty good weekend for my teams. Linfield had their 5-0 'Pflichtsieg' (expected victory, Andy boy?) over Armagh with a hat-trick from past-it fatboy Ferguson ;), the Gills managed a rare win over Hartlepool (Neale Cooper's two former clubs, incidentally) and TeBe... Won NINE - nil!! OK, the first XI of our opponents were missing due to complicated backroom turmoil, and we beat the first XI 4-0 last season, but a win's a win when you're at the bottom. Good report from AndyBoy here .

In other news, Rangers got hammered 3-0 by Celtic to leave them 15 points behind in the SPL and to leave Alex McLeish's days truly numbered. His tropy haul is impressive, but 2 wins in 12 ain't good enough for Rangers, and you're measured by your record compared to Celtic. What a turnaround. At the beginning of August, after Celtic's embarrassment in the CL and defeat to Rangers, everyone wanted Strachan out. Patience here paid off. In Rangers' case however, patience has been displayed for months as the crap performances accumulated (my bro can vouch for one, having been at the 1-1 home draw with Inverness...) and with a manager who performed wonders at Hearts before his chairman started meddling in team affairs waiting in the wings, again it's time for a change I think.

Armchair Supporter

My hero

I watched Real Madrid vs Barcelona on Saturday night in the one bar in Moutiers that's open with my 'neutral' Spanish flatmate. (By the way, Canal+ showed the game in full, but an hour later than the actual kick-off, a most curious set-up, the game actually having been over for an hour but you're still there following the action as if it were live).

What a game. What a player. What a team. Plenty of chances, a high tempo, incredible technique, [in cliche mode] football truly was the winner *grins*.

Ronaldinho was magnificent, I thought he looked disinterested in the first half, but the two goals he scored were sublime. How exactly do you stop him? You can't stand up to him or he's past you in a shot. But he's so fast too and if you commit yourself to a tackle, he's away in the other direction.

What impressed me most was the Real fans applauding Ronaldinho after his second goal. I've only ever seen this before once, when Ronaldo took Man Utd apart at Old Trafford one night. Truly fair play *lump in throat appears*. Though one suspects they wouldn't have reacted in the same way if Eto'o had scored two such goals.

Next up is Lille vs Benfica on Wednesday in the Champions League...

Cooper Resigns!

Gone (from gillsconnect.com)

Good going, 2 out of the 3 managers of my teams have quit so far this season, and the one i really want rid of is as safe as houses! (only half kidding...)

Anyway, the story can be found here :

Neale Cooper has resigned as manager of Gillingham just five months after filling the Priestfield hot seat. Cooper, whose family still live in Inverness, won 7 games during his 22 game stint at Priestfield, but was forced to deal with an injury nightmare and sign players with virtually no budget.
Recent defeats against Walsall and non-league Burscough in the FA Cup may have forced Cooper to resign, with the former manager stating unacceptable recent results made his mind up to resign out of respect for the club.

Can't say I'm surprised (my ST-holder mate Neil said the same thing). Fair enough, he had little or no money to play with, and had his best striker sold on the eve of the season, but results have been appalling, and sometimes a change is necessary.

It begs the age-old question: whose fault is it, the manager's or the players'? I'm afraid I feel it's the manager's here, despite Scally and some players saying the players didn't do the biz.

Even with the trimmed-down squad, we should still have enough quality to be comfortable in this league. Playing 4-5-1 at home in your first match on the opening day of the season sets your stall out for what is to come. Leaving your best most creative player on the bench when you aren't scoring goals doesn't help. And signing lots of dodgy questionable lower league Scotsmen in the hope of unearthing the next Andy Thompson is a desperate tactic. Results have been a disgrace. A manager lives or dies by them.

Good luck in the future Neale.

Thompson for Ulster!

The boy done good. He came on in the 75th minute, apparently showed some nice touches, didn't look out of place and did more than players like Andy Smith and Steve Jones have ever done for Norn Iron.

Here's what the Beeb
(the nationwide version!) had to say about it:

The Belfast fans were also able to celebrate the appearance of Irish League star Peter Thompson.
The Linfield striker, with 18 goals this season, came on as a substitute for James Quinn with 14 minutes left.

Well done Pistol Pete!

Lila-Weisse Allez...

Oddset-Cup 3rd Round

TeBe 3 - 0 Tuerkiyemspor

(Fuß, Lemcke, Weidner)

OK, so it was only a Berlin Cup match, and we only beat probably our kindest 'rival' in the whole league, but at last we win again and hopefully gain a much-needed morale boost going into the last league games before the winter break, starting with Anker Wismar on Friday.

Report and some nice photos of the Mommse here from the Party Army Reporter.

Gills Doomed?

Scally by name...

My disastrous comment of a week back is beginning to look optimistic. Here is a taster of what Paul Scally, dodgy Gills chairman, said here on gills connect:

Mr Scally said this is going to be a make or break week for Gillingham Football Club. The majority of fans may have forgotten the ITV Digital collapse, but clubs like mine are still feeling the full devastating effects of it.

This is not looking good. I hark you back to something said on Jim Hancot's blog in May:

The Gills are now in danger of falling apart altogether, we're still heavily in debt after ITV digital collapsing a few years ago. The good players will probably leave or be sold, the squad will decrease, Stan Ternent probably won't stay on and the future looks bleak.

Oh dear.

Thompo for Ulster!

Thompo, King of Ireland

Linfield's star striker, Peter Thompson, is likely to make his debut for Northern Ireland during the game with Portugal on Wednesday night.

It is a fitting reward for a player who has banged in 18 goals so far this season, including 3 hat-tricks in a row. The only problem is, the mainland vultures are circling, and he'll probably leave during the January transfer window, leaving us desperately short of cover up front.

Here is the story from the Beeb:

Linfield's Peter Thompson is ready to take the huge step from part-time Irish League football to playing for Northern Ireland against Portugal.

NI manager Lawrie Sanchez has hinted that the 20-year-old postman from east Belfast will play some part in the Windsor Park friendly on Tuesday.

Well done Thompo. More on him later.

Armchair Supporter

An occasional column dedicated to those games I watch on TV.


Owen heads the winner


I was in Chambery at the weekend staying with English and Scottish mates. We got watching the second half of the Argentina - England game. What a match. What a finish. I thought England had played average up till that point, lots of stray passes, no movement, bereft of ideas, the only real spark coming as usual from Rooney. But then Crouch came on and ruffled a few feathers, and up popped Owen with 2 great headers. England shouldn't get carried away, the old faults are still there, and I think without Rooney, they're average. But it'll boost their confidence.



Nice kits

France 0 Germany 0

Terrible match, and *whisper it* I thought the Germans played well. France were poor, again, without ZZ, they have no variety and nothing to offer. Germany were competitive, committed, the usual teutonic qualities. Ballack's still a cnut though.

Part-Time Supporter Take 2

Here we go again... blogspot.com has more features and is more flexible than myblog.com, so I'm moving...

Well, I've decided that as football is pretty much a large part of my life (even though I'm crap at it) and that a lot of my blog was being taken up by it and that politics and football don't REALLY mix, that I'd create my own football blog, dedicated mainly to Linfield FC, the real love of my life, but also to TeBe Berlin and Gillingham (and any other teams in places I've lived, eg Barcelona and Lyon).

By its very nature, this blog will be composed to a large extent of secondary sources or information gleamed from people ' at the coal face' and as such I'll be grateful to my trusty reporters witnessing all the tensions, the pain and the glory as they happen, but on the occasions I'm actually IN Belfast, Berlin or Medway, I'll give my own version of events.

Being a exiled fan, by choice or due to other commitments, is a totally different experience: waiting for the Saturday evening phonecall that could make or break your night; seeing that Aiden O'Kane scored again and drawing the conclusion that he can't be THAT bad even though your mates tell you he was the usual lapper for the rest of the game, shirked out of tackles and touched the ball 6 times; seeing your team has won 4-0 but yet hearing they played shit, and somehow failing to reconcile the two; listening to the game on the radio via the internet and the strange umbilical experience that this provides (from the high of winning the league vs the Glens in 03/04 (while in Barcelona), to the low of losing it the following year to a last-second goal from a striker we released at the beginning of the season (while in Berlin), being a fan in exile evokes a feeling of helplessness yet comfort at the same time: you can't verbally will your team on, yet you don't have to be there to witness another god-awful performance. It doesn't make you any less of a supporter though, just a different kind of one.