Catching up

I still feel (and will for some time I guess) like a freshman within the blogosphere. What aroused my curiousity had been a circle of friends who were already very much into it. Maltese bloggers appeared to me as a most welcome relief making up for the everyday blabber we have to keep up with in our press.

Yet, somehow there are always undercurrents going on between bloggers and this represents another side to the whole blog activity. Irony and all ok, and it's great to show one is able to laugh at others as much as oneself. But doesn't this risk to end up in yet another syndrome of having to battle it out with the 'usual suspects' and leaving behind those debates which attracted me and several others to the Maltese blogosphere in the first place? Does tajbin biss għal bejnietna ring a bell?

I might be naive or even shallow. I might be cheesy, or what about tacky? In that case let me know, and I will return to blogging just on good old football.

Brugge

Here I am again. Months after my last blog. Evidently, it proved rather difficult for me to keep up with my own blog and with the blogosphere in general. The reason behind my total apathy will be confessed in a later post. In the meantime just wanted to update my football trips with the latest UEFA cup fixture which brought me, with Mark, David and Ian, to Bruges, the pictoresque Flemish city wherein Roma giallorossa embarked in their quest for a UEFA last 16 spot.

After having been constrained to bed for 3 days, catching the 3 hour train to Brussels wasn't really what I was longing for. Waiting for Mark in the grey drizzle in front of Central station was even worse. But soon we were on our way to the stadium, a pretty one indeed.

The match was ok. Roma without Totti but still a very helathy squad (on its way to the 10th win in a row). As usual the Italian style 90 minutes which ended in a 2-1 scoreline despite seeing De Rossi being sent off just after 20 minutes. Fans cheerful and appreciative of their team's effort (Evviva Portillo who is the star player, together with the Leko and Balaban). They still chanted as their team saluted all around the pitch at the end, as the winning team was already having a shower.

The next day we played the tourists in Bruges and Brussels. Although nothing beats the end of the trip at the auto-grill...

When football meets politics

The title of the post is quite corny, alright. But this is an area I find particularly intriguing. And I will surely have more opportunities to broach on the subject. Partly because the blend between the two disciplines is lately getting even more blurred than the tradition of their fusion suggests, and also because I see it as yet another expression of the passion that surrounds tha game.

I'm not much into the prosaics of modern day footballers' 'autobiographies'. I know that it's an efficient money-maker in Britain, but I cannot see myself having to go through some hundred pages supposedly to relive one football season (and yet John Terry's recount of last season has sold really well in the past months, and that's after winning the league...just imagine Paolo Maldini writing his memoirs - sorry. Irresistible diversion. As usual.). However, I had enjoyed Paolo Di Canio's autobio in 2000. I used to like the guy whose skills had been so underrated in his homeland. He's had his crazy moments, but he's always managed to come out finely with his tricks on the field. Those who read this book might have second thoughts on prejudging the whole mess he's put himself so nicely into by his repeated, presumably fascist salute towards the Curva Nord. I tend to do so as well. But he might be going slightly overboard. His descriptions of the notorious 'trasferte' of which he used to form part of when he was still a kid (and a quasi-professional youth player in the Lazio ranks) gave a more realistic picture of how football is seen by the real hardcore fans in Italy. What irks me is the fact that Paolo is not a kid anymore, and he knows that he's got the media attention all over him with a simple gesture. So I start to question how genuine his behaviour is this time around.
I don't see why he should insist in being an ultra' rather than a lucky footballer who has the chance to play for his favourite team.

Anything which might remind anyone of the mussolini days in Italy is anti-constitutional and illegal. Which fuels the media frenzy even more. Do they really need anything of the sort to have something to talk about in Italy?

More to come...

At the Rockhal

Yesterday Duran Duran's concert was actually good. It was so cool to see Simon Le Bon and the Taylors so close coming from Jane's posters and pictures almost twenty years ago. And it was thanks to those Music-Trip-day casettes that I knew most of the songs they played. Apart from Simon, who has grown a considerable beer belly and some extra wrinkles, they all look exactly as they did way back in their heydays. Especially John Taylor. And they had a pretty good live show. Who could have ever told me that I would one day watch Duran Duran live, now that most of my colleagues' reactions were: 'Oh are they still around'?

Il Metronomo

He might not be Franco Baresi or Paolo Maldini, but we're not too far. The tenacity and vision of Demetrio Albertini was also an integral part of the massive achievements of Milan's 'imbattibili' in the early nineties. He's been through it all under Don Fabio, to reach the peak with the scudetto-champions cup double after that magnificent final in Athens against Cruyff's Barcelona in 1994. That particular fixture had a clear favourite, the Catalans, who fielded the likes of Romario and Stoitchkov and who were coming from 4 consecutive league titles in Spain.

He was always at the centre of it all, pun included. That's why they called him
Il Metronomo, he undoubtedly managed the pace of the whole team. And after such a glorious career, he left (temporarily, as we all hope) the world of football without much fanfare. As was his style after all. Far from the media limelight, where possibble. The few personal moments of glory where the (not-so-rare) goals from direct freekicks. As was the case in a Coppa Italia final when he opened the score at the Stadio Olimipico in Rome, to see all the hopes of winning the often-snobbed trophy ruined as the team was outplayed by a couple of Lazio reserves.

In the end, the milan-born midfielder might have been the scapegoat for a couple of anonymous seasons in the late nineties. Recently he has tried his luck elsewhere at Atletico Madrid (where tha highest point was scoring yet another freekick in a derby against Real, clinching a draw in the 96th minute), then Lazio, Atalanta and finally Barcelona. But his home was Milan.

Until we see him again as Mister Albertini...