Benitez .... prick

[TANGODANCER]

Anyone who calls what managers say in press conferences 'mind games' in a serious manner should be stabbed. Mind games my arse.

What exactly are they Blurred? Care to enlighten us? Trying to gain psychological advantages by devious statement isn't mind games, what is it then?

[blurred]

Anyone who calls what managers say in press conferences 'mind games' in a serious manner should be stabbed. Mind games my arse.

What exactly are they Blurred? Care to enlighten us? Trying to gain psychological advantages by devious statement isn't mind games, what is it then?

'Mind games' is just such a shit term. If anyone thinks that Benitez or Ferguson go about their job in a fundamentally different manner because of what's said in press conference they must be barmy. Their job is to train and prepare a football team for matches, as if Rafa's gonna say 'We're going 4-4-2 this week, chaps, because Ferguson made some comment about us not using our strikers'. Load of pap.

Managerial press conferences are tedious in the extreme, and the media building up 'feuds' is just emblematic of the whole sensationalism of sport (Super-Mega-Uber-Grandslam Sunday which decides the title, despite the fact it's played in December, for example), which is also tedious and makes the whole thing seem like wrestling with all these staged interviews about their adversaries. Headlines should be 'manager says something supporting his team - shock' and 'manager responds to comments about his team by supporting his team - shock'.

[Lord Kangana]

I agree. They're all pricks.

[InsaneApache]

I agree. They're all pricks.

Benny's the biggest one though.

[superjohnmcginlay]

Anyone who calls what managers say in press conferences 'mind games' in a serious manner should be stabbed. Mind games my arse.

What exactly are they Blurred? Care to enlighten us? Trying to gain psychological advantages by devious statement isn't mind games, what is it then?

'Mind games' is just such a shit term. If anyone thinks that Benitez or Ferguson go about their job in a fundamentally different manner because of what's said in press conference they must be barmy. Their job is to train and prepare a football team for matches, as if Rafa's gonna say 'We're going 4-4-2 this week, chaps, because Ferguson made some comment about us not using our strikers'. Load of pap.

Managerial press conferences are tedious in the extreme, and the media building up 'feuds' is just emblematic of the whole sensationalism of sport (Super-Mega-Uber-Grandslam Sunday which decides the title, despite the fact it's played in December, for example), which is also tedious and makes the whole thing seem like wrestling with all these staged interviews about their adversaries. Headlines should be 'manager says something supporting his team - shock' and 'manager responds to comments about his team by supporting his team - shock'.

Id love to see that. Megson, face strained shouting into the camera "Im gonna take you down FatSpanishWaiterboy!".

[marshall_42]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/sport/spo ... 901131508/


HI WHEEL LOVE HEET HEEF WE BEAT THEM, SAYS BENITEZ
LIVERPOOL manager Rafa Benitez has poured scorn on Sir Alex Fergsuson insisting he 'wheel love heet' if his side beats Man United to the Premier League title.




'Tiny penis' claims FergusonIn a passionate outburst on Sky Sports Benitez said: "Hwhen joo do dat to footballers like he said aybout Leeds and hwhen joo do tings like dat aybout a man like Stooart Pearce.

"Hi hev kept really quiet but hi wheel tell joo someting, he hwent down een my estimation hwhen he said dat."

Close to tears, Benitez added: "Hwe hev not resorted to dat but hi wheel tell joo - joo can tell heem now eef joo are hwatching eet - hwee are steel fighting for theese tytel and he has got to go to Middlesborough and get someting.

"And hi wheel tell joo honestly, hi wheel love heet heef hwe beat dem. Love heet."

Benitez resigned shortly after the interview but was persuaded to return by the Liverpool board.

He is expected to resign and be reinstated another 14 times between now and the end of the season, before being admitted to a special hospital.

Meanwhile Sir Alex Ferguson said last night: "I don't know what his problem is. What I do know is that Spanish men have incredibly small penises. That's a scientific fact."

[blurred]

An interesting mind-games piece from the Gruaniad Sports blog.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... mind-games

History, it's no great revelation to report, is written by the victors. So the story of the denouement to the 1995/96 Premiership battle between Manchester United and Newcastle is told like this.

After seeing his team squeeze past a resolute Leeds, Alex Ferguson craftily wondered aloud whether Howard Wilkinson's struggling side would try as hard against Newcastle in their upcoming fixture. Kevin Keegan's side would win that game but, incandescent with post-match rage, the Newcastle boss responded to Ferguson's slight on Leeds by losing the place completely live on national television. Newcastle subsequently self-combusted and Ferguson, credited with unsettling his rival at a crucial stage of the season, scuttled off with the prize. All hail the master of mind manipulation, the patriarch of paranormal prompting, the supreme sovereign of soccer-centric psychological suggestion.

It's a lovely story, that, the way it pans out. Sadly, whether it stands up to scrutiny is another matter. Here's another way of telling it.

After seeing his team squeeze past a resolute Leeds, Ferguson had good reason to be worried. United had previously just lost at Southampton, and followed that performance by making a right old meal of it against Wilkinson's struggling side, who were down to 10 men for 73 minutes – and with defender Lucas Radebe in goal after keeper Mark Beeney had been sent off. United were "muddled and nondescript", reported the Guardian's legendary football correspondent David Lacey. "Carlton Palmer was the best player on the field," read Lacey's damning verdict the day after, "which said much about the poverty of Manchester United's football as it did for Palmer's rare display of vision and consistently good passing." Roy Keane had hauled his men out of bother with a slightly fortuitous late winner, latching on to Paul Scholes's deflected shot, but there was no doubting United had mislaid their form at exactly the wrong time of the campaign.

After the match, Ferguson gave the interview that would eventually send Keegan into meltdown. "I can't understand the Leeds players," his diatribe began. "I'm absolutely in support of their manager. He doesn't deserve his players. If they had played like that all season they'd be near the top. They raised their game because they were playing Manchester United. It was pathetic. I think we can accept any club coming here and trying their hardest, so long as they do it every week."

That interview, and subsequent events, effectively sealed Ferguson's status as football's king of mind games, but it is scattergun at best. Like his first indigo-hued attack on Arsène Wenger after a 3-2 home defeat to Derby in April 1997 – "Wenger has been in Japan … he doesn't know anything about English football … he's at a big club, well, they used to be a big club, Arsenal … he should keep his mouth shut, firmly shut" – it seemed primarily designed to deflect attention away from a poor performance. Certainly it fails to stand up as part of a carefully considered psychological masterplan – a reading that sits uneasily with the now-common perception of a mind-games guru toying with a hapless foe, idly flicking chess pieces around a board while stroking a cat. In fact, given his response to Southampton's first-half three-goal salvo the weekend before – a wholly irrational half-time decision to order his side back out in different-coloured shirts – it could be argued that Fergie seemed to be cracking a wee bit himself.

Anyway, by this stage, Newcastle were already buckling under the pressure of trying to bring the title to St James' Park for the first time since 1927: they had lost their last three away games, at Arsenal, at Liverpool in that game, and at Blackburn. So whether Ferguson's remarks and Keegan's subsequent outburst accelerated an already worrying trend for Newcastle should – but somehow doesn't – remain a moot point.

Hindsight distorts, especially as Newcastle drew their last two games, so it's also easy to forget that, at the time, some even questioned the sagacity of Fergie's gambit, such as it was. "Ferguson's tactics could backfire on him," opined Stephen Smith, a chartered psychologist specialising in sports personalities, in the Guardian a couple of days after Keegan flipped his lid on Sky. "Monday's outburst may act as a catharsis … if Ferguson's comments were a calculated manoeuvre, it has met with only limited success … Newcastle's players now have a vital role. They must have noted the effect this has had on their likeable and honest manager … if they feel Keegan has been unfairly treated by their common foe, their Goliath, it could be the best spur they have for greater motivation and team cohesiveness."

Of course Newcastle's players failed to respond as Smith suggested they might, but it would be wrong to dismiss his analysis as woefully wide of the mark. Because the year before, Fergie's Amazing Mind Games had exactly that effect on the opposition. Having already stated that "Blackburn will have to finish like Devon Loch to give us any chance", Ferguson over-egged the pudding, going on to question the "bottle" of Kenny Dalglish's side. Rovers did indeed stumble badly as they approached the line, but Ferguson's "bottle" remark would galvanise the side in a crucial late-season fixture against Newcastle.

Rovers won that game – the penultimate of a season that would eventually be decided by one point – by one goal to nil, despite Newcastle battering away at them for the majority of the match. Tim Flowers made five superlative saves, and after the game was happy to respond to Ferguson's taunts. "Don't talk to me about bottle," he told Sky, "don't talk to me about bottling it, cos that's bottle out there. That's quality players out there, giving their all … we're gonna fight to the death, cos we've got bottle … all we can say is we'll give exactly what we've given today, exactly what we've given all season, and that's 100% bottle." Bottle, bottle, bottle, bottle, bottle. Fergie's remarks, as Smith suggested they could have been for Newcastle, had certainly been a "spur for greater motivation and team cohesiveness" to Blackburn. The result: Manchester United 0 Blackburn Rovers 1 (Ferguson og).

It's a thin line between genius and folly. But somehow Ferguson's reputation as psychological mastermind wins out whatever occurs. Perhaps mindful that his goading appeared to affect the combustible Keegan, but had no purchase whatsoever on the more measured Dalglish. Ferguson has, contrary to received wisdom, rarely tried it on since. Playground retorts don't get under the skin of sensible grown-ups – and so his spats with Wenger and Jose Mourinho, while amusing distractions for sure, were usually harmless blasts of hot air, bouts of media showboating that failed to change the course of a single season. In fact, the one time Fergie did seriously attempt to stir up a hornet's nest, ahead of United's 2003 Champions League quarter-final with Real Madrid – by accusing Uefa of fixing a "nice draw" for Spanish and Italian sides, while demanding a "strong" referee to keep an eye on Real's "dirty tricks" – he came a terrible cropper, Real steamrollering his team 3-1 at the Bernabeu before the original Ronaldo came to Old Trafford and slotted away an outrageous hat-trick in a 4-3 United win that flattered the home side immensely.

And yet the myth persists, to the point that one only has to imagine how the headlines of the past week would have played had Ferguson quietly read out some gently amusing pre-written pot-stirring words, and Rafael Benítez responded by resorting to personal abuse and branding his opponent "angry" and "disturbed". This ever-so-tedious spat was immediately filed under Mind Games, so the feeling persists that, either way, Fergie was going to be hailed the winner.

Thing is, though, whose fault is that? Or, indeed, any of this? Not Ferguson's. It's the media who are to blame for propagating this myth, a result of the unhinged importance placed on jabberings made during the immediate aftermaths of hotly contested games, or musings made to fill the dead-air time of Friday-afternoon press conferences. And it makes you wonder: who has really lost out as a result of these supposed mind games? Keegan? (Newcastle were shot through anyway.) Benítez? (Nobody knows how that will pan out, at least until United aren't awarded a penalty for the next three seasons.) Or could it be Ferguson himself?

Take one example: arguably the bravest thing one of the greatest managers in the history of British football has ever done is to wantonly dismantle his first great United side – a Double-winning one to boot – and fill his teamsheet with kids: in a Manchester Evening News poll that summer, more than half the respondents wanted Ferguson sacked. Then, in that new team's virgin season, Fergie led them to a then-unprecedented second Double. That achievement (along with Eric Cantona's remarkable contribution to United's successful run-in, but that's another story) is rarely recalled these days. Partly because Ferguson has won a few more league titles, a couple of European Cups, and a Treble since, so it doesn't seem to matter so much. But mainly because there's one thing, over everything else that happened that year, which everyone remembers the 1995/96 season for. That thing being? Yep, you got that straight.

So one of the most remarkable managerial decisions in English football has been dwarfed in the history books by a few throwaway lines uttered into a microphone at the heat of the moment. Well, there's only one response anyone in their right mind should give to that: "I would love it if this myth could be laid to rest for ever. Love it."

[Hoboh]

So Rafa with his outburst is












































A Prick!

[ratbert]

Wasn't signing Asprilla the cause of Newcastle's demise rather than Ferguson?

[Hoboh]

http://msnsport.skysports.com/story/0,1 ... 62,00.html

Enter stage left, dodgy vision to defend the prick

[blurred]

If it's a case of him or Parry, then Parry can f*ck off because he's a useless clown. I'd rather have Rafa than Parry every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

[Rated R Superstar]

I haven't been on these boards in a while, so I'm just catching up.

For my clarification, is Benitez still a prick?

[seanworth]

I haven't been on these boards in a while, so I'm just catching up.

For my clarification, is Benitez still a prick?

Seems to be the case. We keep giving him more chances but every time it still comes up PRICK

[bobo the clown]

For my clarification, is Benitez still a prick?

Yes.

[Worthy4England]

Liverpool striker Fernando Torres believes Manchester City would not be the correct club for Brazilian star Kaka.

City's billionaire owners have apparently tabled an audacious bid of £108million for the AC Milan playmaker, who is set to receive a reported weekly wage of £500,000 should a deal be reached.

But Torres believes City's lack of silverware in recent years should serve as a warning that success will not necessarily follow on the heels of a record-breaking move to Eastlands.

"Manchester City is not the right team for Kaka," Torres told the Daily Mail.

"Seriously, how can they pay £100million for Kaka?

"Big players want to win trophies and Manchester City is not even in the race for trophies in England. They are fighting to stay in the Premier League, or to get to the middle of the table.

"They have to build from there and then go against the biggest clubs and after that, maybe, a top player will join them.

"Chelsea were high in the league before they started to sign really big stars. Now everyone wants to play for Chelsea, but they did not when (owner) Roman Abramovich first arrived. They built a strong club and then it happened."

The Spaniard added that the staggering sums of money on offer to Kaka should not be the primary motivation for leaving Serie A.

"For now, I cannot imagine Kaka playing for Manchester City," he continued.

"It would be a fantastic contract, yes, but there are other things more important than money. A player wants to be remembered for what he has won.

"Imagine 10 years after you stop playing, you go back, you look around, you are not in any picture, you have no medals, no trophies; it is like you played for nothing.

"You may have a fantastic car, a fantastic home, but what does it matter?

"You can have a contract that is better than your friends, but no player looks back and says, 'I won more money'."

Anyone any idea what Torres is waffling on about here? Apart from the European Championship with Spain, he's won nowt of note other than a Spanish Second Division medal - and gone a joined Liverpool...and he's talking about a player who has a Serie A title, European CL winners, World Cup winners medals (amongst others) to talk to his grandkids about. Torres = Prick.

[blurred]

Erm, isn't that exactly the point he's making? He wants to go and win more.

[Hoboh]

Erm, isn't that exactly the point he's making? He wants to go and win more.

Why did he not join the Manc scum then???

[Worthy4England]

Erm, isn't that exactly the point he's making? He wants to go and win more.

Indeed it is - but errrm Liverpool?

I could possible stretch to Liverpool winning the CL again - but it's a bit of a push and to be honest based on a lot of very old history.

Domestic title, I think you've fooked up for this season (again).

Spain winning the World Cup - can't see it.

Soooo when exactly is he going to catch Kaka up before taking the piss anymore? Prick (not you Blurred).

[Rated R Superstar]

I haven't been on these boards in a while, so I'm just catching up.

For my clarification, is Benitez still a prick?

Seems to be the case. We keep giving him more chances but every time it still comes up PRICK

It's good to know that some things will never change.

[blurred]

Erm, isn't that exactly the point he's making? He wants to go and win more.

Indeed it is - but errrm Liverpool?

I could possible stretch to Liverpool winning the CL again - but it's a bit of a push and to be honest based on a lot of very old history.

Apart from being the club that has the best record in the competition over the last 5 years or so in all of Europe, you mean? Yeah, big push that one. Very old history, too.

Domestic title, I think you've fooked up for this season (again).

I think it's far too early to say that. We're there or therabouts heading in towards February, and while I'd personally have United as favourites, we're challenging.

Spain winning the World Cup - can't see it.

Don't see why not - best side in Europe, should have a big tilt at the World Cup next time round.

Soooo when exactly is he going to catch Kaka up before taking the piss anymore? Prick (not you Blurred).

I'm not saying he's going to catch Kaka, and I'm not saying that he's more likely to win things joining us than, say, United. But you were calling him a prick because he's won not a great deal, and his point was that it's all about what you win and not how much money you've got in the bank, so you actually agree with the point he was making. He's not bragging about being better than Kaka, or having won more, just saying that in his opinion it's about what you win and not what you earn that marks you out at the end of your career. I just found it odd that you called him a prick for sharing your opinion.