Farewell My First Love

If you’ve started reading this on the hope it’s a sordid expose on my first root, you’re going to be out of luck. It’s more important than that and besides, who hasn’t seen my interpretive dance dramatisation of that on Youchube yet?



Football is my first love and after 25 years of lusting over it each season – or to be specific the English Premier League – I think I’m done and I'm pretty sure I know why; money.



There has always been a lot of money in football, ridiculous money. The buying of good and selling of shit players has always been almost as exciting as the football itself and pre-season wet dreams were made on some of those transfers, like the time Spurs signed both Gazza and Gary Lineker in the same season.



Then there was Jurgen. Oh Jurgen. Never has another man created such a tingle in my gooch quite like Jurgen did.



Spurs have always been big spenders with very little to show for it. If you trace the club back to its roots (no pun intended) you’ll find that it is a Jewish club by foundation and that leads, apparently, to all sort of generalisations about how tight they should be with money. There is then, keeping that in mind, a certain amount of irony on where we get to now in this particular story.



Spurs have never been tight with their money and infact have wasted it many millions over on crap footballers. The good ones have generally been sold, for sizeable amounts which have been promptly wasted on – wait for it – crap footballers, give or take a Gareth Bale or Rafael Van der Vaart.



These days football is all about money. It is a means for very rich men to generate even more millions than they already possess and that means they’re prepared to spend a little to make a lot. Only they’re spending lots, far too much for even a Jewish club with an ironic inability to be frugal to keep up.



So this season, Spurs have no money to spend. And because we’ve got crap players, no one to sell to make any. That in itself wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the world but the clubs we were getting close to competing with do have money to burn, have now gone and bought themselves Playstation line ups and pretty much fucked it up for everyone else.



It’s hard to get excited about that really. Unless you’re a fan of one of those clubs, which I ain’t. Some people are very excited, like this guy who just two games in is using phrases like “The season is bubbling nicely, but yet to really explode”. What a peen-arse.



So two weeks in and I haven’t even watched so much as part of a game. No fantasy football, no weekend debriefs with Stu or AJ and no banter with the boys at practice about who beat who. I’m not even biting at the throwaway comments mates are making on Facebook. That’s what the de-friend button is for.



And all this apathy after my awesome niece (she the football prodigy) just gave me the most awesome birthday present; a framed, signed team shirt. She’s awesome.



She’s the reason I won’t give up on all football just yet.

Gazza, Gaz and good times.

Spreken Ze Deutsch?

Sometimes, you have to wait a long time before you talk to someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

Think about just how many people you converse with during the course of the working day and I bet that like me, you probably get the impression that most of them couldn’t organise a decent shit. But every so often you come across that type of someone who just optimises oral efficiency; a German.

You just can’t beat a good German (the two World Wars aside, of course). Of all the Nordic accents theirs is the one that sounds the most like a well tuned V12 twin turbo engine; humbly reserved most of the time but with the ability to verbally thrash you within an inch of your life should you deserve it.

Others from that part of the world just don’t carry the same authoritarian tone that the Ze Germans have. Sure, the Swedish accent is quite inviting - on a nubile blonde with pony tails - but coming from their fellas it just sounds, well, fruity. The Dutch all sound like yokels and as for Finns / Danes and Norwegians, well, who can really understand what they’re saying anyway.

Let’s face it, Germans, like slavery, get shit done and the next best thing to actually being one (don’t mention the war) is to talk to one on the phone. Try it sometime, its pants wettingly good. But you can't use mine, try instead looking through the phone book for the most German sounding name you can find i.e Schultz, Hitler and give them a call.

Other Germanic things that leave me feeling like a little girl:

Jurgen Klinsmann - Best German ever to have played for Spurs.

Messerchmitt BF 109 - Best German fighter I ever had to shoot down.

BMW M3 - Best German motor I am yet to own.

Adidas football boots - The Germans make the best boots (funny that).

Heidi Klum - Best German bird ever.

The Tiger Tank - The best tank ever, was German.

Michael Schumacher - Mr Formula One, is German.

The Scorpians 'Wind of Change' - Best one hit wonder German band, of all time.