All Gone Ron.

Yes, this is another blog about football. Don’t like football? Tough, it’s my blog. Why don’t you like football, what’s wrong with you?

But I’ll keep this brief, just for you haters.

If there’s one thing I hate it’s a sore loser and I know a thing or two about sore losing because when it comes to the world’s biggest, I’m right up there. Not that I demonstrate this in front of my girls mind you, my responsibility to them to be the best coach I can be is far more important than me getting my sulk on.

In almost nine years of coaching I’m proud to say I have lost my rag only the once and even then it was due to the ref being a deaf, dumb, blind man with no legs.

So it pisses me off when I see guys like Christiano Ronaldo start talking conspiracy theories and shit after being beaten across two games, fair and square, like Real Madrid were by Barcelona yesterday. In fact the game was the antithesis of anything resembling a conspiracy given that the referee flatly refused to send one of the Madrid boys off despite him fouling anybody that came within kicking distance.

Ronaldo is King of the Sulks. He’s also the second best and one of the most recognisable players in the world and he didn’t get to be either by packing a sad every time he lost.

Well. He probably did, because he’s that kind of guy, but it’s fair to say his talent, not his tanties that got him to where he is. So maybe he should just man up and take it on that magnificent waxed chest of his, or maybe, just maybe, work a bit harder during the game to really do something about it.

My chest, on the other hand, is neither magnificent nor tanned but even I can take a loss or two, except this past weekend when my beloved Spurs lost to Chelsea in controversial circumstances. I should have known that when the ref arrived dressed as a mime that things were going to get a bit tasty. Thus the Chavs won, not by one, but two incorrectly given goals.

Now I can accept a fuck up from a volunteer official. I see it almost every game my teams play but like I always say to my girls you just have to accept that the ref is just a guying living vicariously through his daughter and he’s going to be as biased as shit. You can’t change it; you just have to get on with it.

But you expect more of highly paid professionals that do it for a living. If we relax this expectation then let’s save everybody’s time and just have a series of 38 coin tosses at the start of the season and decide the champions that way. I for one would get a few more hours of sleep a season.

Sometimes I wonder if life would be easier if I just decided to follow one of those teams that seem to win everything, like Real Madrid.

Nah, fuck it. It’s all gone Ron for them anyway.

Sins of the Firm, Tanned Flesh

Who would be a professional sports person aye?

Oh sure, once you’ve reached the zenith of your sporting code you will be given god like status by the masses, be showered with money, adulation and temptation but that last bit won’t matter because somehow, whilst on your way to becoming the hottest thing on two legs, we will have expected you to develop a higher sense of morality than we, the common man.

You won’t have of course, quite the opposite. And herein lays the peculiar downside to sporting fame; that your downfall in the eyes of an adoring public is more likely to come when you err off the field, not on it.

Tiger Woods is of course the epitome of that fall from grace at this moment in time. His quest to sink his balls into his own private 19 hole course across the country has plagiarised opinion amongst even the most loyal of diehards. His case is at the extreme end of the scale but then so is the man. Hey, he had to do something with all that money and time didn’t he?

A similar, but slightly less spectacular story is unfolding in London where two of England’s most recognisable footballers – John Terry and Ashley Cole – are both in the gun for their infidelities. Both play for Chelsea, the top team in the league at the moment and therefore the most hated team in the league, if you support one of the other 19 teams that is.

Terry, up till the story broke, captain of both club and country, has lost the latter honour. Shagging someone else’s missus alone probably wouldn’t have got him into much trouble in the eyes of those that run the game over there, but this particular missus happened to be engaged to a team mate, Wayne Bridge. Terry, it should be noted, is married but clearly rooting his missus must be like flogging a dead horse.

Bridge left the club last year (after all the ‘hide the tip’ shenanigans happened) but there is a very good chance that the both of them will be picked to play for England at this year’s World Cup Finals in South Africa. Now I’m no Dr Phil but I’m betting the two won’t spend their time together in a long, warm shower discussing their feelings.

Cashley Cole, so named for his very public contract negotiations a few years back where he made it quite clear that he would happily play for whomever offered him the most money, was also married when he decided to dip the candle into a hairdresser.

All I can think is that she must have given him one helluva good hair cut to get that bonus. His wife was prepared to forgive him for that one but it has since come to light that his philandering ways have continued and he is now, quite rightly, out on his Arsely.

Coles missus, like Terry’s, is not undesirable. Mrs Cole is a pop star and therefore by very nature of her position in society possibly one of the most masturbated over woman in all of Britain. I didn’t actually know how attractive she was until I Googled her and found she fitted quite easily into the ‘I would’ category.

So you wonder what it is with these dudes. Guys who have it all, live the dream of so many and yet still manage to fuck it up. The answer is simple; they are, despite the hero worship, human and no different to you and I when it comes to urges and impulses. Perversely we chastise the likes of Messrs Terry, Cole and Woods for their sins of the flesh but not the mingers who tempt them. Funny that.

The ultimate irony in this whole sorry story came to me when I watched John Terry get booed by a bi-partisan crowd of 35,000 the very next away game he played after the story broke. Like none of them have ever fancied a mate’s missus, or been unfaithful to theirs. You have to love the morality of football fans.

Could it get any worse? Probably. I’m personally waiting for the news that John Terry and Ashley Cole were having an affair with each other...

Oh sure, Cheryl is hot, but can she cut hair?