An early draft of Tiger Woods’s speech has fallen into the hands of The Faster Times.  It appears that Tiger turned for assistance to another sports great in trouble, the Argentine soccer coach Diego Maradona, in much the same way that T.S.Eliot looked to Ezra Pound when he was composing “The Wasteland.” Here is the manuscript with Maradona’s suggested emendations in parentheses.

First, I would like to apologize to my checkbook and to my fridge [try "amigos and family"]. Second, I want to make it clear that nothing I did, while it was certainly great fun [try "foolishness"] had anything at all to do with Zinedine Zidane’s sister, and would not have involved my sister, if I had one, which I don’t [maybe stop at "Zidane?"] April is the wettest month [try "cruelest"] when we play The Masters in Augusta. That’s when I like to take out my 4 Wood and bury my face in the fragrant peach fuzz that surrounds Amen Corner. [Hola my friend! Keep your 4 Wood in your bag. You are not Neruda. Forget the flor secreta, stick to "love means never having to say you're sorry," but say sorry anyway.]  Only I am to blame, and only I am escaped to tell thee. [Excelente!] I have let down my friends, my family and my pants. [O.K.Just] The battles of desire can never be won, but I will win them. In future I ask that you judge me not according to my dreams, or the websites that I visit, but according to the quality of my clothing, especially in relation to that of most other golfers, who should be embarrassed to go out in some of the sweaters that they wear, and as for the long Argyle sock guys-surely, they have to be kidding! [Try not to come across as angry or disdainful.] But they are good guys, all of them, and many of them have honorably provided me with friendly escorts in strange towns when I have felt particularly alone, as I do now and as I did once in Scotland during a downpour at the British Open when I went back to my hotel room and I’m not saying that if you grow up blowing bagpipes you can blow just about… [Basta! This I learned in Napoli. El silencio es ora.]  And so I take my leave from my mother, from the crowd of Zombies who surround her -what is this by the way- the Day of the Dead?  [No! Tigre No! ] Because after today you won’t have Tiger to kick around anymore. I’m going back on the midnight train to Georgia. Going back to find the life that I once knew.  And yes, golf IS a sport you Yahoos. It’s more of a sport than sliding down a mountain on sticks or prancing about on ice in a glorified FUCKING WAITER’S OUTFIT to some tacky East European muzak.  [Basta! Basta!]. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It was a mistake! I made a mistake. It was summer, I was alone, it was humid. I had a drink. It was DARK. I didn’t know I was dancing until I was doing it. Do you know what I mean? Has that never happened to any of you? You FUCKING HYPOCRITES [Se Sanseacabo!] Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Goodnight.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2010/02/21/tiger-woodss-speech-the-first-draft-with-maradonas-emendations/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2010/02/04/john-terry-and-vanessa-peroncell-italian-coaches-speak-out/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2010/02/04/john-terry-and-vanessa-peroncell-italian-coaches-speak-out/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:16:31 +0000 Jonathan Wilson http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/?p=170 Earlier today the two top Italian managers in the Premier League, Carlo Ancelotti and Roberto Mancini, sat down with England’s Italian coach Fabio Capello to discuss the John Terry Affair. The Faster Times was present to record their conversation.

Ancelotti: Let me begin with a question. Why does John Terry have two first names like a Pope?

Capello: Carlo, my friend, he has not been acting like a Pope in the shower looking down on the unemployed (laughter). He was fucking his teammate’s girlfriend!

Ancelotti:  And this is a crime against humanity? Have you seen the pictures? This is not some dog of a British WAG he was boning, this is a bona fide French hottie.  What would Berlusconi say?

Capello: Bravo John Terry Bravo!

Ancelotti:  Per l’appunto! You and I know that the English are terrible lovers and they do not even know how to tie a man-scarf like Mancini. Maybe this Wayne Ponte was a loser in bed. Maybe he fucked like a left back and even a stupido central defender like JT was a step up.

Mancini: No he never touched her back. It was the ass.

Capello: Cretino! Wrap your fucking scarf and shut up.

Ancelotti: Did he fuck Ponte’s sister as well?

Capello: No

Ancelotti: So why is everyone getting so worked up?

Mancini. Because of the ass.

Cappello: Imbecille. Did you think you would beat Manchester United with your huge fucking blue and white scarf? You lost to that drunken Scot! Go drink donkey piss.

Ancelotti: Tell me you are not going to strip him of his captaincy!

Capello: Al contrario! He has shown himself to be a real man with a mistress, secrets, clandestine rendezvous (what is the plural of that word? Rendezvousvous?). In our country he could run for Mayor of Spoleto. As long as he doesn’t fuck my girlfriend I’m down with his comportamento.

Mancini: I have photos. Look–if that isn’t in the forbidden city…

Capello: How many times do I have to tell you? The British doesn’t care about in the ass…they all do it!!! Men, women, animals, trees. I have to pull them out of trees on the training grounds!

Ancelotti: Abramovich is unhappy. He is scared for his own girlfriend.

Capello: Tell it to the Camorra. The big Russkie bear is a scaredy cat.

Mancini: I love the way Lord Alex tie his scarf. It is not elegante, but he throw over one shoulder with abandon. He is free of the bourgeois demands of the fashionista police. While I am trapped! If I don’t look better than Mourinho I might as well lie down for John Terry.

Ancelotti: Drogba fucked your mother.

Capello: Why tell him now???

Ancelotti: (shrug) What kind of a name is Vanessa Peroncell?

Capello: What are you? An etymological ignoramus? It is from the Italiano-it’s mean BIG STONE.

Mancini: JT has big stones.

Ancelotti: She fucked cinqe Chelsea players and even that blonde Iceberg lettuce who is playing for the Jews now.

Capello: She is “effronte,” as we said in Paris after the war.

Mancini: She is a back too.

FINITA LA COMMEDIA

Ecoutez up mes enfants.  You are a disgrace to the Emirates, to l’equipe (no, not the sports paper Walcott vous idiot) la patria and to the whole concept of La Gloire as outlined by Montesquieu in his famous letter to Montaigne. NONE OF YOUR SHIRTS FITS! Arse-shavings, you Soviet dwarf, why are you wearing a shirt that is too big for you? In the name of Carla Sarkozy and Catherine Deneuve swap immediatement avec Eduardo. Attendez! Eduardo you are no bigger than Danny De Vito. Dieu et Sacre Bleu! Quel fromage!  Nasri and Denilson, you are both so scruffy, I tell you encore une fois, THOSE FUCKING SHIRTS DON’T FIT, you look like Verlaine and Rimbaud after rough sex on a bad day! Capiche? There is only one solution. You must all grow-toute de suite –allez vite, put on some inches. Stretch. You cannot stay forever young. Jay Z says so. Non, Fabregas, you onion soup, I do not prefer the Rod Stewart version.  Be inventive, use all means available. Did you not see our great compatriot and once and former hero Thierry Henry use the Hand of Frog against those pathetic Paddies? Now it is your turn. Stretch your arms high. Song, que faites-vous? You look like Lady Gaga on speed. Oui, Oui of course I know she is white and blonde. Braid your fucking hair and ta geule! You cannot lose to these Liverpudlian anti-fashionistas. Have you seen them? They wouldn’t know St.Laurent from St.Pancras.  Pull on your shirts, tuck zem in. That’s right, now turn your collars up like Cantona. Is the Seine uglier than the Mersey? Did Jonny Halliday sing less beautifully than Gerry and the Pacemakers?  Was Diderot stupider than Paul McCartney?  Have some respect for the Emirates. Fuck Dubai and its problems! I said the Emirates.  WEAR SHIRTS THAT FIT! Est-ce-que je demande a lot here?  And now, cultivate your gardens! J’accuse Sir Alex and everyone else who manages a Premier League team. In the name of Jane Birkin, victoire or la morte!

But before I go further, let’s get a couple of things straight. Entre nosotros, golf is not really a sport, is it?  I mean you no insult or harm, but where there is no running and where there are trousers and ugly sweaters there is no sport? Am I right or am I right? I see that you are buff but to what end? Permit yourself more Epicurean delights. El Tigre, you have let your three wood out of the bag, five, six, seven times too many, and the piranha of the press will never forgive you. And worse, women will never forgive you… unless, unless….

Do you remember a few weeks ago when I apologized to all the women in the world for a mere gesture and some language that had been perceived by prudes and news-trash as “offensive?”  I nipped that ugly little rose right in the bud.  But that was nothing compared to my Bolano success. I am telling you Tigre last night I had in my hotel room two heads of Women’s Studies from the University of Buenos Aires (my God-when they remove their glasses and let their hair down!) and one specialist in literatura who was in a furor about a magician named Gabriel Marks (probably a Jew) whom, she said, Senor Bolano, may he rest in peace, also despised. I don’t know what tricks of this Marksist had so offended her (and Mr.B.) but I can tell you that she enjoyed mine!

Understand me, mi amigo, scum journalists care nothing for these women, they pass in and out of the hotel lobby, no cameras click and, muy importante, these birds do not sing. Do you follow El Tigre? Woodsman, you have been fishing in dangerous waters, bad waters, the wrong waters. Cocktail waitresses? Penthouse executives?  These are not the women for great men like thou and I.  Buy a book, as I did, something deep and reflective, like the new Dan Brown (we can’t both use Bolano, and in any case you are in Florida where no one speaks Spanish!) have your picture taken reading-not driving into a fire hydrant.  Cradle your book, and trust me, if you hold it they will come.

Mis amigos, I cannot tell you how splendid it is to be here in Zurich. The mountain air, the sea breezes, the generous banks, the tick tock of your Rolexes, the fine chocolate; I come to you a humble and humbled man. Last month, when I apologized to all the women in the world I knew in my heart of hearts that it was not enough. The men of the world deserve to hear from me too.  But first a word or two in my defense for I have done the state some service, and they know it. When, after the game against Uruguay, I told those scum of the Fourth Estate that they could all suck my cock and keep on sucking it I meant nothing untoward! Nada! In Villa Fiorito, where I grew up, it was simply my grandmother’s way of calling us in to dinner after she had throttled, gutted and cooked one of the local roosters. I am a generous man with a good heart and in Montevideo I had planned a great victory feast for my journalist friends,  roosters donated by local cock-fighting impresarios, cooked on a spit like suckling pig, then skewered for easy sucking.  And in any case in lunfardo a “cock” is actually a great man, a proud and strutting rooster cocksman. The President of Argentina herself would be proud to be called a “cock” even though she doesn’t have one. But I apologize also and especially to her for the shame and disgrace that the misinterpretation of my words and gestures- -for those of you who have seen the Youtube video of the team bus my eyes were wide, my mouth open and my hand moving like that because I was dreaming of swallowing chorizos with red peppers as that is always how I celebrate a victory!  But in any case, gentlemen of Zurich, I ask you, was it not Jesus himself who said “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”  Is there one among you who can honestly say that there has never been a time when his chorizo has got the better of him? We have beautiful minds, mis amigos, but treacherous bodies. And the truth is I never left you, through all my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise… I’m sorry, the emotion of this occasion has carried me away.  My neutral Swiss friends, some people say you are cowards. I say you are the bravest of men, honest and faithful right up to the end.  If you were horses I would ride you, but in a heterosexual way, the wind in our gaucho faces, tears of remorse streaming down our cheeks. Dark swallows will return, but my ill judged words and gestures, they’ll not come back. Give me one more chance and I promise to remain on the sidelines, silent, absorbed, my chorizo tiny as a Brazilian garrincha inside my tracksuit. Disculpame!

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/11/15/remorseful-maradona-banned-for-two-months-escapes-oprah-appearance/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/10/17/maradona-apologizes-to-all-the-women-in-the-world-plus-his-half-time-prayer/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/10/17/maradona-apologizes-to-all-the-women-in-the-world-plus-his-half-time-prayer/#comments Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:39:37 +0000 Jonathan Wilson http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/?p=145

After Argentina’s 1-0 defeat of Uruguay in Montevideo on Wednesday, a win that booked the troubled South American team a passage to World Cup 2010 in South Africa, Coach Diego Maradona unleashed an expletive laden verbal assault on the press and his other critics, real and imagined. Yesterday, as reported by the BBC, Maradona, exhibiting a surprising gender bias, apologized, but only to all the women in the world.  “I apologize to women, to my mother, to Argentine women, to Uruguayan women and to women throughout the world. But only to them, not to others.”

I have been tracking global responses for The Faster Times and thus far the apology has been accepted by most women in Buenos Aires but by only a tiny percentage in Brazil. England reports no acceptances at all while in Scotland 100% of women including J.K Rowling have said, “We forgive you,” to Maradona.  All the women of Naples have forgiven him but in Rome, Florence, Milan and Turin less than 2% are forgiving, but significantly most of them hail from the golden-hearted sex trade.  The majority of Chinese women are leaning toward forgiveness and Maradona is hoping for a similar response from Indian women but they have been late to register their opinions. A survey of women in the U.S.Military reported that none of them gave a shit one way or the other, but in contrast 100% of female members of the American Academy of University Professors and the Modern Language Association said that they even though they had no idea who Maradona was or what he had said they would NEVER EVER forgive him. Meanwhile Maradona’s mother is apparently a hold out. She is believed to be demanding a private phone call from her son and objects to being “lumped in” with the all the other women in the world in his apology. One Uruguayan woman who claims that Maradona stole her eye shadow and a small brush a few hours before Wednesday’s match has confirmed that she is willing to forgive him if he returns the make-up-he can keep the brush.

In another move designed to restore luster to Maradona’s tarnished image the Argentine football association have released a tape of the half-time prayer that Maradona offered in Montevideo while his players knelt around him.  Here it is:

My gauchos, kneel with me now. We are 0-0 in a game that will make or break us.  We lower our heads, we think of all the women in the world, no Lionel, not in that way, but as we would think of our mothers or our sisters.  We ask the man with the beard who was in the stands with us last week in Buenos Aires to return once again. May He make their goalkeeper as blind as Borges. May He in his wisdom allow us to jump from place to place on the pitch like the chapters in that great novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, and thus may we baffle the Uruguayan defense.  May our wives and girlfriends abandon their women’s reading groups because all they do is read crap and gossip. Never mind Balotti, put your head back down, I just thought I’d put that in. And may the redeemer come unto Andrew Lloyd Webber and let us say Amen.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/10/17/maradona-apologizes-to-all-the-women-in-the-world-plus-his-half-time-prayer/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/10/11/maradona-saved-by-bearded-deity-and-saint-palermo-for-now-argentina-on-the-brink/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/10/11/maradona-saved-by-bearded-deity-and-saint-palermo-for-now-argentina-on-the-brink/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:41:42 +0000 Jonathan Wilson http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/?p=137 Martin Palermo, who hadn’t played for the Argentine national team for a decade, scored in the 93rd minute of last night’s rain swept game against Peru in Buenos Aires’s River Plate Stadium to keep hope alive that Diego Maradona’s team may yet make it to South Africa.  After the game, Maradona, according to the BBC, canonized Palermo “It was a miracle from Saint Palermo that gave us another life,”  (for the record there was, until now, no actual Saint Palermo and the patron saint of that  operatic Sicilian city is Saint Rosalia (1130-1166) who beat back a devastating plague in 1624) and then declared, according to Yahoo Sports, that “The bearded man (God) came to visit the stadium of the river.”

Over the last decades God, like almost everyone else, has developed what appears to be a consuming interest in the world of sports. He often helps individuals towards triumphs and rewards.  Christians in particular appear to be benefiting from God’s help, as attested to by the rash of pre-match and post-goal celebrations that incorporate making the sign of the cross. Since the lifting of that heavy Iron Curtain, one of whose functions was to keep God out, genuflection has become almost de rigueur among the footballers of Eastern Europe.  Protestants in Western Europe, it must be said, don’t thank God nearly as much as Catholics worldwide and this may be why, for example, England hasn’t won the World Cup since 1966 and, by extension, why the People’s Republic of China, despite its massive population, can’t seem to put together an eleven that can beat the Faroe Islands. One thing is for sure: God doesn’t seem to like losers much and they never thank him. I have yet to see a goalkeeper cross himself after the ball rolls through his legs.

Here’s a question: why didn’t God help Peru? In fact, why did he torture the Peruvians and their fans by permitting an equalizer in the 90^th minute only to gift Argentina victory in the dying seconds of the game? The fact that God, unshaven, was in sold-out River Plate stadium suggests he was probably an Argentina supporter to begin with.  This is understandable. He’s obviously a fan, admires good soccer and wants to see Messi in South Africa. He may also still harbor some resentment about the whole Inca thing.

In the United States there is general agreement that God resides in the heavens above, represented in our earthly sphere by the sky or the underside of a dome if the game is played indoors, and there is a lot of pointing upwards after home runs and touchdowns. Everyone knows that God is watching. This is a problem: God has become distracted by sports and that may explain why the world is fucked up in so many places.  I mean if Maradona is correct and God was at the game last night, and it was a gripping game, he certainly wasn’t taking care of business anywhere else.  It is rumored that in Buenos Aires a player actually pointed at God (easily recognizable from his beard) where he was sitting in the stands and offered the equivalent of “You the man” as Martin’s shot hit the back of the net.  Another possibility I don’t particularly want to entertain but you can’t entirely discount: God had money big time on Argentina.

Will God show up in Montevideo on Wednesday in his blue and white striped shirt singing “Vamos Argentina”? Maradona, a man gifted by God with consummate soccer skills but only mediocre talents as a coach, better start praying that he does.

It was many years before, on a dreary November day, I happened to skim a few pages of “Fever Pitch” by mistake believing it to be another Hornby book, “About A Boy,” starring Hugh Grant.  Mr. Hornby is a Gooner through and through, but credit where credit is due, he can sure as hell write. In order to express my gratitude for his fan’s notes, I sent Nick Hornby a handful of English soccer cards circa 1969 drawn from a collection of a hundred or so that I had purchased in a Newton, Mass. baseball card store many years ago for $20.00.  The cards I delivered to the author of “Fever Pitch” featured (naturally) only players who wore the red of the Arse in the years before they crossed the English Channel.  In response I received a friendly and appreciative note. The cards, Mr.H. said, had been one of the best things to come out the publication of his book and he would treasure them, especially the “Frank McLintock,” one of his old heroes.  I quickly wrote back to say that while I very much appreciated his generous and gracious response there was really no need for gratitude as the cards in question had been poisoning my collection and I had been happy to get rid of them.

Some time later, during Q&A at a reading given in Brookline, MA by Nick Hornby while he was promoting his latest novel, an expat Brit in the crowd asked the author: “What do you think about Tottenham Hotspur?” To which Mr. Hornby disdainfully replied, “They used to be our rivals.”

What made the Farrelly Brothers, usually so delicate and subtle in their handling of controversial material, and the Hollywood producers of “Fever Pitch” starring Jimmy Fallon as John Cusack and Drew Barrymore as herself, decide that L’Arsenal should be transformed not into the appalling New York Yankees whom they so closely resemble, but into the delightful Boston Red Sox, so close in form and apprehension to the mighty Spurs?  The Farrellys are from Rhode Island, they really should have known better than to saddle the Sox with the Arsenal legacy.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, at least until Halloween at Emirates Stadium when the Gooners will take on the Lilywhites: presently Tottenham occupy 3^rd place in the Premier League and Arsenal 5^th. Last Saturday Tottenham produced a magnificent 2-2 away draw with the always-impressive Bolton while Arsenal scraped out a lucky 6-2 victory over lowly Blackburn.  Used to be rivals?!

When angry, Chelsea’s new manager Carlo Ancelotti is known to vent in Italian and, as reported by many news outlets, including the venerable Times of London, that is precisely what he did at half time during Chelsea’s Saturday game against Wigan, which the billionaires ultimately lost 3-1. No one on the Chelsea team either speaks or understands Italian. Luckily I have managed to acquire a transcript of Ancelotti’s tirade. Diego Maradona, the City of Naples Waste and Construction Department, three hookers and a former Czech politician who all claimed, dubiously I admit, to be close to both Berlusconi and Bertolucci, and a linesman who usually works Manchester United games were all involved in getting me the tape.

Scene: A dressing room in Wigan, the Paris of the North West.

Enter Carlos Ancelotti with steam rising from the top of his head.

Carlo: Sons of whores! Your sisters are whores and everyone in Milan has fucked them including Zidane. You, Terry, you play as if you have a sheaf of dry spaghetti stuck up your ass. Lampard! All the women in your family are whores and Maradona has fucked them and he fucked your grandmother twice! Drogba, you oaf! All you do is play Fache Booke to see how many friends you have. So you think you have 10,000 friends? You have none! Especially not in this room. Your female cousins are whores and Anelka has fucked them all! Cech! Stupido! Did they take out your brain after you fractured your skull? Prague is a brothel, everyone knows this. Even Kafka (no you idiot he doesn’t play for Real Madrid, he wrote great letteratura like the Da Vinci Code) went to whores most of whom were your great aunts. Carvalho, Boswinga, Mikel, if your sisters and wives aren’t available why don’t you all just bend over and let the entire Wigan team fuck you up the ass? O for a beaker full of the warm South so I could ram it down your throats and fill you up to the gizzards with undrinkable wines from France or Australia. Cole! Moron! Scemo! Idiota! That’s Italian for moron you idiot! Whassamatter? You don’t speak Italian? Essien? What happened today big boy? You forgot to eat your Digestives? Your girlfriend hates you, Sven-Goran Eriksson has fucked her. Even I’ve fucked her. Mother of Jesus help me get across to these imbeciles. Malouda! I forgot you, cowering in the corner! I would rather play Angelina Jolie on the wing than you! At least I would have the pleasure of seeing her run up and down the pitch. Stop crossing yourself and cross the fucking ball. Drogba won’t see it coming because he is too busy looking in the mirror but maybe it will hit him and deflect into the net. Basta! I have said enough. You look bemused you bunch of cretins.  Wilkins! What do you mean “Non parlo Italiano?” You’re supposed to be my fucking assistant. Tell them what I said and strap that plastic guard round me in case one of them goes Zidane. Ah why do you all look at me like this, with your heads hung? Didn’t any of you see the mini series “Rome?”  What do you think Gastro-Enteritis would do in this situation? He wouldn’t go out and play like a little girl. He would girdle his loins, fuck all the WAGS in Wigan then kill everyone on their team! Out, out on to the cold field, one more chance to redeem yourselves, you sons of whores. I love you all!

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/09/29/ancelotti-loses-it-in-half-time-tirade-the-tape/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/09/22/of-referees-and-men-how-much-time-does-manchester-united-need-to-win-a-game/ http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/2009/09/22/of-referees-and-men-how-much-time-does-manchester-united-need-to-win-a-game/#comments Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:41:02 +0000 Jonathan Wilson http://thefastertimes.com/soccer/?p=110 Last Sunday two hugely important Premier League games were more or less decided by awful refereeing decisions. The most egregious came at Old Trafford, where after Manchester City had courageously fought back to equalize three times against their local rivals Manchester United- the last goal coming in the 90th minute - the ref inexplicably added on seven minutes of additional time to a match that had seen no long stoppages for injury and few delays.  Replays later showed that after Bellamy’s late goal Sir Alex Ferguson had left his technical area to inform the fourth official that the game should proceed  “until United score, Osama bin Laden is captured, or Scotland beat Brazil in a World Cup Final, whichever comes first.”  Meanwhile over at Chateau Abramovich Tottenham dominated Chelski for twenty minutes, failed to capitalize on their superiority and went down 1-0.  They equalized not long after, when Robbie Keane was hacked down in the area and scored from the resultant spot kick. Oh no, my mistake, they didn’t, because referee Howard Webb who last year actually apologized for erroneous decisions made during his crushingly biased adjudication of the Spurs v Man U. game at Old Trafford, decided that it might be fun to screw Spurs over one more time.  O.K. Tottenham probably wouldn’t have won anyway after Ledley King and Bassong went off, but the point is that bad referees, like bad lieutenants, change the game.

What is to be done?  as Lenin asked way back in 1901 following the refereeing decision that led to Kruzhok Liubiteley Sporta’s dubious 1-0 victory over Peterburgsky Kruzhok Sportsmenov. Although there is plenty of evidence to the contrary, especially where Howard Webb is concerned, most people are convinced that referees are “only human.” Thus, when Graham Poll issued three yellow cards to the same player, Croatian defender Josip Simunic, during Croatia v Australia in World Cup 2006, a wave of sympathy rather than (or maybe “as well as” would be better) derision rolled over him.

But really, with World Cup 2010 fast approaching is it time to let technology transcend the “only human?” Everyone except Sir Alex Ferguson probably agrees that some version of the Hawkeye system used in tennis Grand Slam tournaments should be installed on goal-lines, but what about instant replays of action a la the NFL? These would, of course, slow the game down immeasurably and would it be worth going stop-start just to catch Maradona extending the hand of God or Drogba swan diving?  High School girl’s soccer in the U.S.A. has begun patrolling the field with two refs, one in each half. This is awful-aesthetically, philosophically and politically- authority needs less not more visibility.  Other solutions: refs who are not legally blind, refs who are born in wedlock, refs who have never been anywhere near Abramovich’s yacht. My solution would be to clone Pierluigi Collina, the great, graceful and impeccable recently retired Italian referee, before it is too late.

After West Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in the 1990 World Cup Final Carlos Menem, then President of Argentina said of Uruguyan-Mexican referee Edgardo Codesal, a gynecologist by profession and a penalty freak: “He should go back to concentrating on medicine and not carry on causing damage to soccer.”  A subtler rebuke to one of the men in black came from Ron Atkinson, manager of West Bromwich Albion in 1979.  Albion went down to Red Star Belgrade in the UEFA cup competition after which Atkinson said: “I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat.” I offer these examples  (supplied by the excellent Umbro Book of Football Quotations eds. Peter Ball and Phil Shaw) of the ancient sport of ref-baiting to demonstrate the heights of wit and inventiveness that refs can inspire. Best of all, of course, was the behavior of the mercurial Paul Gascoigne while he was playing for Rangers against Hibernian in 1995. The clumsy ref, Dougie Smith, dropped his little pack of cards. Gazza scooped up the yellow from the turf, adopted the position and “booked” Dougie. Smith, humorless arbitrator that he was, removed the card from Gazza’s hand and carded him right back.  When gently prodded about his punitive action by one of the Hibs players Smith, according to The Guardian, replied: “He might be able to take the fucking piss out of you but he’s not going to take the fucking piss out of me.”  Ah refs! Cant live with them…