Petange

Looks like I will start telling bollocks on Luxembourgish football now as well! Can you believe it? Yesterday, we have been to this remote (is it?) village 20km off Luxembourg city. To do what? There's nothing better on a Sunday afternoon than randomly choosing a match from the set of fixtures which you happen to go through browsing a local paper for the first time. So Patange be it. Against second placed Jeunesse Esch (mitica squadra). And, yes, the random addition this time was Norbert...

Freezing. 7 euros. How worse could it be? Where's the stadium? There's no stadium. It's a football field. Rightly so. There are spectators, not supporters. Referee and linesmen are not even Luxembourgish (Belgian, of course). Ladies club is where you can find a cup of coffee to help you raise your body temperature. Most exciting part: Red card, as your team is actually given a freekick - naturally you assail an opponent. Half-time, back home...too cold.

Result, as your curiousity leads you to look for it on the internet the following day: 2-1 for the visitors ('Eschites'?) with 10 men. And what does a Maltese like me, who goes to Petange and back to laugh his head off with his friends over these poor old Luxembourgish football lovers do after that? Can't forget these lot beat us twice last time we met in European Championships qualifiers...

FC Avenir oldest football club in the city

Forget Ronaldinho and Champions League gibberish. Here's a piece of news of utmost importance which all the fans around the world were anxiously waiting for:

After a while of research, it is now considered a fact that FC Avenir Beggen is the oldest still existing football club in the city of Luxembourg. Founded in 1915, the clubs that were "born" closest to FC Avenir and are still existing are Tricolore Gasperich, AS Luxembourg and Red Black Pfaffenthal, all founded in 1919. After the big merger(!) between Alliance 01, Spora and Union Luxembourg, Luxembourg-City's oldest club so far, Union, disappeared from the map. They were founded in 1908. But they were not the first football club in town ever. In 1907, Racing Luxembourg were established, but in 1923 they merged with Sporting to form Spora. Foundation years of all clubs in Luxembourg-City: Beggen 1915, Cebra 2001, Tricolore 1919, RM Hamm 2004, RFCUL 2005, AS Luxembourg 1919, Merl 1927, Muhlenbach 1932, Red Black 1919 and Weimerskirch 1926. (source)

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...