As you might have deduced from this cunningly rendered image to the left, I have started a new blog, entitled Football and Sex. It is not just about football and sex. It is about football and lots of things- an occasional musing on football and something else. Look out for Football and Race, Football and Iain Duncan Smith, and Football and Jesus. But the first post and the title is Football and Sex because I am shallow and frivolous. ##UPDATE: I AM UPDATING F&S WITH ALARMING IRREGULARITY, BUT WILL GET BETTER, HONEST.##
Hello again. As you may have noticed, Benji's Balls has been on an extended slumber, which may or may not be fatal. Let's see.
Well it might well be. Dunno really. As all nine of my regular readers may have noticed, things have been a bit sparse here of late. The amazing truth is that I have been rather (gasp) busy over the last little while, getting paid to write stuff innit. Of all things! So, if I may indulge oneself during this moist-eyed farewell, here were a few of the highlights:
Greetings from abroad. Just thought I'd let you know that Benji's Balls will be taking a short vacation whilst I am exploring the cultural intricacies of the continent (see pic). If you are in need of some footballing shits and giggles during my sabbatical, dear readers, all seven of you, including me, simply click on the following.
Gooner One: Ian Beth
Gooner Two: Jimmy H
Gooner Three: David Brill
Gooner Four: Chay Bainbridge
'After the two midfield players cut each other down with alternate late tackles, Barton taunted Dabo by telling him: "You're s**t." Dabo retaliated by telling Barton: 'You are not as good as you think you are,' and the players began to trade blows,' reports The Daily Mail.
"It was incredible. Joey was over Dabo and still hitting him while he was on the floor," an eyewitness told The Daily Mirrror." [footy365]
"Perhaps you may find it odd that I think happiness does not come from being able to buy a car that one wants," he challenged in his autobiography, before reminding us that "the woods are full of bows and arrows"
"For the first leg at Stamford Bridge, Mourinho arrived early enough to get in position. He watched the game on a television in the dressing-room and, during the first half, communicated to his staff in the dugout by radio or telephone. “You can get mobile reception in the dressing-room,” the source said. “It depends what network and in what room.”
At the time, television commentators spotted and commented on the fact that Rui Faria, the fitness coach, had a strange kink in his bobble hat and repeatedly scratched his ear. It was the sort of kink that could be caused by a wire and earpiece. “It was so obvious, to keep playing with your ear like that,” the source said.
Suspicious of skulduggery going on under their noses, Uefa officials went down to the tunnel, but by then the players were back in the dressing-room and listening to a team talk from their manager.
One source claims that knowing that the listening device had been rumbled, Chelsea simply used more rudimentary communication in the second half. It was noted at the time that Silvinho Louro, the goalkeeping coach, made several trips back to the dressing-room. “He’s a nervous spectator,” a source close to Mourinho joked at the time, but Louro kept coming back with bits of paper that were passed to the other coaches. Whatever the pieces of paper contained, they tended to coincide with substitutions.
Mourinho was not waiting for the players at the end of the match, which Chelsea won 4-2, because he had already allegedly clambered into one of the kit skips. He was wheeled out of the dressing-room by members of the backroom staff and, it is believed, back into the leisure club in the Chelsea Village hotel at the ground, where it had been reported that he spent the entire evening.
In a passable impression of Inspector Clouseau, Uefa’s hapless officials left none the wiser. Insiders claim Mourinho was so thrilled that he joked openly about his trip in the skip in front of his players at training the next morning.
In the second leg, at the Olympic Stadium in Munich, there was a greater risk of detection if he tried to enter the dressing-room. The sources allege that Mourinho went into the stands to watch but, apparently flustered by the close attention of a camera crew, he quickly departed for the team hotel.
The privacy might have been useful. The Timeshas been told that a speaker had been set up in the dressing-room so that he could talk to the players over the telephone at half-time. “There was a massive speaker,” a source said. “José was at the hotel.” Uefa’s representatives had surpassed themselves yet again by approaching Faria to check if there was anything under his hat. There wasn’t.
In a recent biography to which Mourinho contributed, he boasted about how he overcame a touchline ban during his days at FC Porto by sending messages to his assistants from his seat in the stands via “a small, sophisticated telecommunications device”. He even listed the precise instructions, which included: “Tell Deco [the Porto midfield player] I’m p****d off, I want more!” and, “Pressure on linesman, everybody.”" [The Times]
I'm covering the small provincial town of London. The first post is on The Great Tube debate, unveiling the results of an emailed question I unleashed upon my address book last week. Best reply was from my good friend Karen Fransman:
"The Northern line still holds a special place in my heart. Very much like an old, flea ridden dog that should have been taken round the shed and shot in the head long, long ago."
Couldn't agree more.
Well I never, tis my hundredth post, which in the blogosphere is quite the celebration. I'd like to thank a few people.
