I take a back seat to no one in my snotty, obnoxious, offhand dismissal of Toronto FC and everything connected with it, although I must confess that with grass on the pitch and without Mo Johnston they're on the verge of gaining a small measure of grudging respect.
Very small, I grant you, but still.
Anyway, I am having trouble coming up with an appropriate introduction to this video so all I'm going to say is that it's extremely NSFW because of the language and also because being this much of a jerk is even more offensive than the vocabulary:
There's really not that much to add. Yes, they do seem to have a plethora of people who don't seem entriely aware that there's a sporting comptition of some sort going on down on the field, but Jesus, Mary and Uncle Festus, how much of a snob can you be?
Speaking of offensive, in an exquisite piece of bad timing, a Manhatten realtor announced yesterday that Thierry Henry, the fellow of whom we are supposed to believe that a $2000 fine is in any way significant, just closed on a $14.8 MILLION SOHO TRIPLEX where more than likely the doorman gets that much in tips of an afternoon.
It's probably not inappropriate to note that Kevin Hartman, who is as we speak sitting on his sofa with his leg propped up on pilows watching Sportscenter for the eighth time through, makes $165,000 a year or – in terms Henry can understand – he might be able to afford Thierrys' front hall closet.
I wonder if the league wishes he had waited a few days to sign the contract.
As noted by RSL SOAPBOX there's a piece up on Major League Soccer Soccer, the Official Website of, well, you know, which says that Real Salt Lake are "the frontrunners to win the Supporters' Shield", something which will come as news to, for example, Los Angeles, who really ARE the "frontrunners for the Supporters' Shield"..
I've never been terribly comfortable with the league operating this dual-purpose website where half of it consists of official league news and statistics and the other is given over to opinion scrawlers.
So when, for example, the un-attributed weekly "MLS Power Ratings" column, in ranking Columbus recently, carried the notation: "Get over it, Crew; The ref got the call right", a less sophisticated observer might take that as a league-sanctioned opinion.
(And a stupid one at that since the guy was provably wrong on the rules and then lied about it.)
The list of examples is of course long and getting longer, but at some point having quasi-official "opinions" on a supposedly official – and therefore neutral – website seems kind of cheesy.
Maybe it just me.
And maybe it's just that anyplace that publishes the ignorant twaddle of an overstuffed turnip like Simon Borg doesn't deserve to be taken seriously anyway.
And since no post here would be complete without the requisite David Beckham story, today we learned that Stupid Spice is suing some grocery store checkout line housewife fodder of a rag called In Touch which is apparently carrying a story claiming that Becks HAD AN AFFAIR in 2007.
Apparently his people think this is a good idea and who am I to argue about how another man – or corporate entity – protects his reputation.
On the other hand, nobody would have ever heard of this thing – and I must confess I've never even opened a copy of the magazine – if he wasn't taking them to court.
Still, it does honestly seem that, despite the fact that virtually every female on the planet – along with a large percentage of the males – would hop into bed with the guy at the drop of a hat, that he conducts himself rather honorably.
Football is full of guys like Iker Casillas – who is systematically working his way through every woman under 30 on the Iberian peninsula – and Christiano Ronaldo, who comes to the US for vacations because the young females are exceptionally stupid, so I guess if I were Becks and working that hard at keeping it in my pants I'd be a little ticked off too.