Unbeautiful Game

FIFA Reform via @DamianCollins

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:38:09 +0000

Sign up to Damian Collins’ petition to reform FIFA, send it to your local politicians, dignitaries, whatever and whoever you can.

Finally somebody in a position of power is fighting the endemic corruption in world football.

A little something we found.

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 14:14:27 +0000

A little something we found.

A little something we wrote for those lovely people at CaughtOffside

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:50:20 +0100

A little something we wrote for those lovely people at CaughtOffside

Bin Hammam Makes Final Plea - it falls on Deaf Ears, Blind Eyes, Mute Mouths

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:26:00 +0100

So on Tuesday we provided a link on Twitter to a letter written by Mohammed Bin Hammam to Petreus Damaseb, the Caribbean official charged with heading up the ethics committee reviewing MBH’s appeal against his life ban from working in football. Despite failing to make any kind of ripple in the Western news media, the letter contained some pretty serious allegations. MBH was essentially asking Mr. Damaseb to speak out on a number of issues, suggesting that “…if your conscience is on vacation” then call the travel agent, get the hotel’s phone number and book the first flight back to Nyon. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Mr. Damaseb has instead chosen to buy his conscience another strawberry Daiquiri and maybe do a couple of lengths in the infinity pool. But why does MBH believe that Mr. Damaseb has allowed this mental vacation in the first place? The reasons are threefold - he believes Damaseb was installed as ethics committee deputy chairman and given the job of running MBH’s case to be a puppet to Jerome Valcke and Sepp Blatter’s desires, given that there was already a Swiss chairman of the committee who according to MBH would not have allowed Blatter and Valcke to affect his judgement. Secondly, MBH made the salient point that no one on earth would believe that Blatter and Valcke were in a position to judge corruption. Thirdly, perhaps most interestingly, MBH questioned whether Damaseb had seen the letter sent by Valcke to the Caribbean football authority, in which he essentially demanded that members admitted to receiving bribes from MBH or face the severest punishment. Now all of this could sound like the pleas of a desperate man, banged to rights for bribing colleagues to vote for his candidacy for President (remember that?) and now trying to regain some level of credibility. Perhaps that’s what it is. But there is no doubting that this letter provides an insight into the murky workings of FIFA, even in a department supposedly created to assess the ethics of its members. There is no doubting that Bin Hammam is a long way from smelling of roses himself, but the allegations contained in this letter go a long way to making sense of the strange appointment of Damaseb ahead of his Swiss counterpart on the ethics committee. Damaseb has no background in this kind of investigation. But then what was to be expected from the organisation who appointed Placido Domingo to aid their review? Either way, MBH will not go away and he appears to be willing to dish the dirt on his former superiors. We at UG, oftentimes detractors of MBH, this time give him our full backing. It was always going to take an insider to bring down FIFA, given the nature of football’s ruling class, that insider was always going to be corrupt. It feels wrong but here it is: keep it coming Mohammed! You go girl! The letter by the way, is here http://www.mohamedbinhammam.com/en/Blog/blog.php?page=1&menuNum=31 UG.

We haven’t done a video of the week for a while, but then...

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:02:05 +0100

We haven’t done a video of the week for a while, but then again, sometimes something comes around that you just cannot afford to let slip away unnoticed. It isn’t the bizarre, Goodfellas-esque single 1 minute and fifteen second shot that makes this video - but City’s Chief Executive of Embarrassment, Gary Cook.

Look at how he greets young Samir, as if they’re just about to get down to some street football in a dirty Parisian car park, or cut up a kilo of Moroccan hash together. His hideous “How are you, brother?” made us at UG cringe so hard we developed the wrinkled forehead of a 126 year old philosopher.

Aside from the cloying and horrible choice of phrase from Cook, you’ve got to respect the quality of his ghetto-shake. He’s got the slap, crunch and twist down to a tee to be fair. Maybe that’s how they did it at Nike back in the day…

It's Always the Corrupt Ones Who Look Corrupt

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 23:35:07 +0100

Now, now, now.

We at UG are the first to condemn any kind of prejudice - we don’t and won’t ever accept it. But upon hearing Hassan Al-Thawadi’s claims of anti-Arab prejudice being the base of the corruption allegations against the Qatar 2022 bid, we began to notice a pattern.

We’re sure you think you know where this is going - you may well have already written the rest of this article in your head. It probably goes something like this: “Wow, this is about to get incredibly racist. There was me, all this time thinking Unbeautiful Game was an upstanding, moral blog on the subject of football and all its dirty dealings and now look at me. I’m sitting here reading racist drivel.”

Well we’re going to let you down - because what we’ve discovered does not abide by colour or creed. What we have discovered is far more significant than that. It is a basic facet which runs throughout every photo of a corrupt human being, no matter where they are from, what they believe in, or what designer suit they slip on every morning before drinking their bullion and White Tiger blood smoothie. The question on everybody’s lips of course: what is that facet?

So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, let us introduce

“THE WRY SMILE OF CORRUPTION.” (please click the names to see the evidence)

Example 1. Jack Warner

Ahhhh, Jack. A favourite of ours at UG. Just look at that grin, the first shining example of THE WRY SMILE OF CORRUPTION in all its glory. If he uncurls his lip, coins fall out.

Example 2. Jerome Valcke

Wow. Look at that classic from Jerome, bringing in the praying hands as well. Some who use the WSoC choose to detract from it slightly with some kind of gesture, so’s not to arouse suspicion - Jerome is showing us a vintage sanctimonious ‘prayer hands’ here, making us think he’s all holy and whatnot, rather than a money grabbing little scumbag.

Example 3. Nicolas Leoz

Here’s old Nicolas with one of his favourite things, the Copa America. He loves it so dearly, over the years the cup has treated his bank balance like it were its brother. So no surprise then, given that Leoz is also up to his eyeballs in sweaty, stinking, cloying corruption, he’s employing a vintage WSoC and hand gesture combo too.

Example 4. Sepp ‘the Master’ Blatter

So you thought Leoz was good? Observe, the master smiler at work. His face says “I have to smile like this, ha, its my job.” But his hand says “Back away, if you investigate me any further you’ll be forced to make a ‘retraction.’ Yeah. Like this one. With its own website.” This is another classic WSoC, lulling us into a false sense of security with all those teeth and shiny eyes, whilst simulataneously sending a subliminal message through the hand signal. Genius.

Example 5. Mohammed bin Hammam

Oh me oh my. Get a load of those gnashers. Those teeth are so white they could only have been paid for with dirty money. If you look deep into his eyes, you can also just catch a sense of MbH’s “I could have you killed within 5 minutes” vibe. An iconic WSoC.

Example 6. Hassan Al-Thawadi

Of course, Hassan, chief labeller of prejudice. Not too bad at the old WSoC either is he? Are we anti-Arab? No chance. Anti-blatant, steaming, evidenced corruption, yes.

For those of you who remain dubious, who might look at this study and say “Well they’ve not found an English WSoC, it’s just more sour grapes.” Well here he is…

Of course if you haven’t had your fill of WSoCs from this, you can always just type ‘FIFA Delegates’ into Google images. THERE ARE HUNDREDS.

UG.

Video of the Week 06/07/11 Video of the Week today comes from...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:03:00 +0100

Video of the Week 06/07/11

Video of the Week today comes from the Women’s World Cup in Germany and specifically last week’s Australia vs Equitorial Guinea match. Now, there’s been plenty of quality on offer in the tournament and this - perhaps the most amazing error of judgement and sight, comes from the referee rather than a player.

WE ARE ALL IN THE GUTTER, BUT SOME OF US ARE LOOKING AT THE EFFICIENCY OF THE DRAINAGE SYSTEM

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:06:00 +0100

Another week, another absolute belter from the unrelenting source of mirth that is Mr. Jack Warner. The former FIFA Vice-President, leader of CONCACAF and all round good guy last week resigned from his duties in international football. Those of us with a cynical mind might say that Mr.Warner had done this to avoid the potentially damaging investigation by FIFA’s Ethics Committee into his bribe-y activities with Mohammed bin Hammam, which have been extensively discussed on this blog. However FIFA, who have accepted Warner’s resignation, went on to say that “proceedings against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence maintained.”

Of course they have. Because that suits both parties so well. Old buddy Jack can walk away back to his post in Trinidad and Tobago’s government (more on that shortly), FIFA can walk back to FIFA-land (or Switzerland as it is represented on maps), knowing that a man who has been at the top of their management structure for 15 years won’t be found out to be a corrupt, thieving, ill-intentioned lunatic with a penchant for dirty money. It’s a win-win situation.

But here at UG, we don’t just let FIFA’s press office get away with absurdities like the quote above. We like to dissect. Thoroughly:

“Proceedings against him have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained.”

So, firstly, “Proceedings against him” implies that Mr. Warner was indeed under threat of some kind from Placido Domingo and his band of investigators at the Ethics Committee. If FIFA felt that whatever Mr. Warner had done (organise and execute blatant cash for votes bribes…if you don’t know that by now and you’re reading this…god help you) was worthy of starting proceedings, then surely that negates the second part of their sentence: “…have been closed and the presumption of innocence is maintained.” THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE?! YOU’VE JUST STARTED “PROCEEDINGS” YOU MORONS! WHAT DO YOU MEAN “PRESUMPTION”? WHAT DO YOU MEAN “INNOCENCE”? THIS ISN’T HOW A BLOODY INVESTIGATION WORKS!!!

If, for example, the CEO of a bank was caught doing some insider trading, and say, made himself $1m, what would the bank do? Sack him. Probably have him arrested and taken to court. He’d probably go to prison. What did FIFA do when Jack got caught making black money from CONCACAF’s portion of tickets for World Cup 2006? Asked him to give his profits to charity. He did. What did FIFA do when in 1990, in a Word Cup Qualifying playoff against the US, Warner sold 45,000 tickets for the match in Trinidad’s national stadium, capacity 28,500? Nothing. Sepp Blatter and Joao Havelange, FIFA’s two top dogs at the time, were there to see the carnage and rioting outside the stadium. They knew ticket allocation was Warner’s job.

So about this “presumption of innocence” and it being “maintained.” What we at UG find difficult to accept (although we’re getting used to it) is that FIFA could make a statement so hilariously incorrect. It just isn’t factual. Jack Warner is not innocent, he is a proven fraudster. FIFA know this, as explained. How he isn’t treated as such is testament to the bizarre parallel universe FIFA appear to live in by virtue of being based in Switzerland. They do not have to investigate anything that they don’t want to, or which could harm their reputation. Any problems they have can be solved (to coin Blatter’s favourite phrase) “from within the FIFA family.” Essentially we have allowed our unbeautiful game to be brought under the control of an autocrat, Sepp Blatter, who much like others before him, refuses to accept any version of the truth other than his own. George Orwell would have loved to have had FIFA as a muse.

FIFA have already embarrassed themselves enough this summer without even going on to what they did next. As if Warner being allowed to leave smelling of roses wasn’t enough, FIFA have now called him back as a witness in the trial against Mohammed bin Hammam, the very man Warner is accused of facilitating bribes for in the CONCACAF region. FIFA’s statement read “He will be investigated as a witness but not as an accused party. He has offered his support to the ethics committee in their continued investigation.” So now, to further our analogy, the bank CEO who is caught insider trading, selling more shares than he owns and handing out brown envelopes at the AGM is being asked to come back and be a witness in a case which he’s directly associated with. In any other organisation on the face of the earth, the idea of operating like this would be met with laughter and condemnation. YET STILL GOVERNMENTS ACROSS THE WORLD WATCH THIS HAPPEN.

So, how does it end? Well thankfully, at least one person has seen sense. Trinidad and Tobago PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar has decided to remove Jack Warner from his post as Transport Minister. He had previously been high up in her government, a valued adviser trusted with looking after affairs when she was away on business. This time however, the mud slung in Warner’s direction appears to have got too thick for the liking of Mrs. Persad-Bissessar. So now, Warner finds himself in the ignominious position of Minister of Works, looking after his country’s roads and drains.

This probably suits him too, when taken into perpective. He keeps some of his influence and a nice quiet job without too much controversy. No doubt soon enough he’ll be back from the gutter, not just looking at the stars but rubbing shoulders with them. As the whole FIFA debacle over the last few weeks has shown, no gutter is too gutter for FIFA and with only a few small organisations left fighting this madness, they’ll be knocking back the Crystal and finger buffets down there for a while yet.

UG.

(Heres a little something of interest, ChangeFIFA are now on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/changeFIFA)

Video of the Week 28/06/11 Our Video of the Week this week comes...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:39:05 +0100

Video of the Week 28/06/11

Our Video of the Week this week comes from Argentina, where the country’s most successful side, 33-times champions River Plate, have just been relegated to the Second Division. In their 2nd leg playoff against Belgrano they only needed to win 2-0 to stay up, but could only manage a 1-1 draw, having missed a crucial second half penalty.

This led to some seriously unbeautiful scenes in which 25 people were injured rioting after the match. Belgrano players were attacked and River’s playing staff needed a protective cordon.

Video of the Week 21/06/11 Our video of the week this week comes...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 22:23:32 +0100

Video of the Week 21/06/11

Our video of the week this week comes from the Soulbruthas’ Youtube channel, via a tweet from @FRANCESCalciO. It reminds us of the ChangeFIFA campaign, if you’ve got some rage pent up inside you go and have a look at their site. Then be even more angry.

Video of the Week 13.06.11 In the spirit of everyone’s...

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 20:43:55 +0100

Video of the Week 13.06.11

In the spirit of everyone’s friend Shhhhhhhhhteeeeeve McLaren returning to what he might call “Dee, ah, de Preeemier Ship” we’ve unearthed this gem from his spell at FC Twente. Shteve obviously thought speaking in a Dutch accent would help him to assimilate into a new football culture, but actually it just made him look like a complete moron.

FIFA SMILE AND NOD AFTER FRESH ALLEGATIONS, BUT BARBADOS AND FRIENDS FEEL LEFT OUT

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 15:18:00 +0100

After a week in which the FIFA cash for votes scandal slipped down the priority list in most news rooms across the world, a bit of fresh dirt emerged from the Caribbean for FIFA’s PR men to drop through their trouser legs in the yard.

Following the madness of Sepp Blatter’s re-election by default and that press conference, the Surinam FA released a statement further backing up the allegations of bribery against Jack Warner and Mohammed bin Hammam. Louis Giskus, their president, said that they too had been given $40,000 in a brown envelope, like the one given to the Bahamas FA. They were told to use it for ‘development projects’ which given UG’s understanding of Fifan, actually translates directly as ‘whatever the hell you want to spend it on, hookers, cars, even a novelty hat.’

Now not only is this another example of stone-wall corruption which must be investigated by FIFA’s wonderfully titled Ethics Committee, which now contains the ethical expert opera singer Placido Domingo (that’s not even a joke) and possibly Henry Kissinger (he’s still mulling over his invite), it is also a slap in the face to Sepp Blatter’s claims that his organisation can be fixed from ‘within the FIFA family.’ The idea that the investigation into these bribery allegations should come from within was ludicrous enough when there was only one Caribbean FA accusing Warner and MbH of making unsolicited payments. Now that there are two, (on top of delegate Chuck Blazer) one of which has provided photographic evidence of their brown envelope where the other has simply described the exact same thing, surely this is an investigation which should be undertaken in criminal terms.

In any other organisation in the world, if this sort of allegation emerged, those involved would be investigated by Interpol, or the FBI, or whichever authority presided over the location where the crime took place. Because after all, bribery is a crime punishable by prison in most parts of the civilised world. Unfortunately for those of us who care about transparency and fairness in the unbeautiful game, this crime took place in Trinidad. In Trinidad, where Jack Warner is acting Prime Minister whenever the real one is out of the country. In Trinidad, where in 2002 and 2006, Warner sold CONCACAF’s share of world cup tickets to a company called Simpaul which he had shares in and who are also run by his son, who then marked them up and sold them on at a higher price, making Warner’s family in excess of $1m. Admittedly, FIFA were forced to investigate this by a high profile BBC documentary, and Warner was made to give $1m to charity as a result. Even that seems like a bizarre and weak punishment for an organisation to metre out to an employee who has just been caught red-handed embezzling and dealing in the black market WITH THEIR PRODUCT. So knowing this, you can imagine that the chances of criminal proceedings being undertaken here stand somewhere between slim and none.

So Warner will escape from this without any legal investigation, and will most likely walk away from FIFA’s internal investigation by the world’s leading lute player, some opera singer and a former politician (see it’s hard to tell which part of that is a joke, which is typical of FIFA) none of whom, apart from arguably Henry Kissinger, have any history in investigating such matters. Mohammed bin Hammam probably will too. But that suits FIFA down to the ground, the last thing they’d want would be for someone to actually turn around to the press and say what everyone knows already.

“After prolonged investigation, where we looked at a photograph of a brown envelope containing $40,000 with ‘BAHAMAS FA’ written on it marker, spoke to the people involved who said they got paid this money directly and then briefly scratched our heads wondering how anyone could think this wasn’t corruption, we’ve come to the conclusion that this is just totally corrupt. We sent in our best toddlers with a hearty supply of jelly tots and this is what they’re saying. So if they can see it, and everyone else can, even Placido bloody Domingo can, then it pretty much has to be. Right?”

Truth aside, out of all of this the most hilariously pathetic piece of information to emerge came from the Barbados FA, who released a statement last week expressing how upset they were to be left out of all the brown envelope-related fun and games. “The Barbados Football Association was made aware that the trip and accommodation were sponsored by Mohamed bin Hamman under the auspices of the CFU,” he said. “The BFA did not and does not see this as akin to bribery or any inducements as in the past trips by Caribbean delegates to meetings have been sponsored by the organisation and agency that wanted to put on the programme.” Similarly, the Anguillan FA lamented the lack of brown envelopes sent their direction. “I can say categorically that we and the Anguilla Football Association have not received any cash gifts.” He then got a little teary and got back into his Maserati, giving it a wheel spin as he pulled away throwing $100 bills out of the window at poverty-stricken children.

What we can learn from this is that Warner and MbH have no reason to be scared. FIFA has a habit of brushing even the most serious allegations under the carpet, as with Warner and the World Cup tickets, amongst numerous others. MbH didn’t exactly smell like roses even before all this stinky business. So essentially, pack up your troubles in your old brown envelope and smile, smile, smile, because we’re all in for another 4 years of good old Uncle Sepp, who will be almost 80 by the time he (hopefully) leaves office. Maybe by then, the world’s governments and financial fair play authorities will have grown the cojones to actually challenge FIFA’s disgraceful inner workings and lack of respect for the law.

Honestly, will they? Probably not. With great power comes great money, quickly followed by greasy palmed men with six decades of life to erode their moral compasses. Lets hope the next generation of FIFA delegates can change the tone.

UG.

SHAME ON FIFA OR THE FOOTBALL TSUNAMI OF WHITE PAINT THAT WASHED AWAY ALL THE INFORMATION

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 18:09:00 +0100

Shame, shame, shame.

Shame on you FIFA. Shame on you. Shame on Sepp, shame on Jack, shame on Mohammed, shame on Chuck and shame on Jerome. Shame on you all.

Now unless you’ve been living in the jungles of Papua New Guinea for the last week wearing a pair of earplugs and a sleep mask, you’ll know that finally, after years of shifty deals and blatant corruption, FIFA has completely imploded.

It started with Mohammed Bin Hammam deciding to stand in a presidential election against current leader Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter. At the last election Sepp stood uncontested and amazingly won - but this time things might have been different. Bin Hammam stood a good chance of taking him on. It was expected to be a very close run thing and then, as if by magic, big Mo and his colleague, the inimitable Jack Warner (head of CONCACAF and FIFA vice-president) were accused of corruption. The actual accusation was that they had given members of the Caribbean branch of FIFA $40,000 each to vote for Bin Hammam in the election. At the time Warner and Bin Hammam both denied this. Unfortunately for them, a photo of one of these $40,000 packages has since emerged from the Bahamas FA. You can see it here.

Since then this accusation has exploded into something far more significant. There has been claim and counter claim from both sides, FIFA’s ethics committee have met and decided to temporarily suspend Warner and Bin Hammam from all football activity pending a full investigation. Before that had happened, Bin Hammam had accused Blatter of knowing about these payments being made and doing nothing about it - quite unsurprisingly, he was acquitted of this charge by FIFA’s ethics committee.

On top of this acquittal, the ethics team also completely absolved Nicholas Leoz, Ricardo Teixeira, Jack Warner and Worawi Makudi of the accusations laid at their doorsteps by Lord Triesman, who had headed up the FA’s bid for England to host the World Cup in 2018. Triesman claimed that those delegates had asked for outrageous bribes in return for their votes - in Leoz’s case in the form of a knighthood. It’s easy to forget now that 2 weeks ago, these accusations were the big story. That they’ve been so readily brushed under the carpet and forgotten by the press shows the sheer magnitude of what has happened at FIFA in the last week. That said, it doesn’t make them irrelevant - by refusing even to investigate these charges FIFA are essentially saying that these words are no more than sour grapes. Why a man like Lord Triesman would feel the need to put himself so hugely at risk and in the public eye by making these claims if they had no substance obviously didn’t occur to FIFA. But they probably knew he had no evidence other than his word - and hey, they had bigger fish to fry anyway.

We digress. After the ethics comittee hearing, Jack Warn-er warned in our Quote of the Week, that there would be a ‘football tsunami’ unleashed over the coming days. Sure enough - Jack didn’t fail us. He produced an email on Sunday which he said was written by FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke. Valcke’s email said that “MBH thought he could buy FIFA like they bought the WC.” Love of acronyms aside, this is a disturbing message to say the least. Valcke’s implication was that bin Hammam had helped Qatar’s World Cup bid by using bribes or ‘gifts’ and that he planned to do the same again with his presidential bid. ‘MBH’ voraciously denied this allegation, before half admitting it when he accused Sepp Blatter of ignoring the payments. Beyond that, Qatar were absolutely furious. They threatened legal action, Australia asked for the £36m they spent on their bid for 2022 back again. World football and FIFA suddenly became the biggest story on the planet, something had to be done, the press were up in arms, sponsors were quick to damn the actions of FIFA delegates and briefly, ever so briefly, it looked like Blatter may have to postpone the elections.

Then, THIS HAPPENED.

Holyf*ckingchristdidabicyclekick, Sepp Blatter gave the most incredible press conference in FIFA’s astounding history of corruption, disgrace and unfathomable crap. He refused to accept that any of this furore should make any difference and decided to have the election with him as the only candidate. Sound familiar? So essentially, in spite of all the fuss, all the murky workings of FIFA coming to light, all the anger and all the articles, Blatter’s back in. We have no article left to write. A few people like a backbench MP and a small organisation called ChangeFIFA are still angry, but they haven’t managed to interest FIFA themselves in actually changing, yet. Even good old Jacky Warner stopped ‘alleging’ those ‘allegations.’

So, according to UG’s esteemed lawyer, you have to forget all of the above, because in Sepp’s world, it a) isn’t true and b) never happened. Thanks to freedom of the press, you normally answer questions when you’re asked about something directly. Sepp doesn’t. He leaves. He demands more ‘respect’ which translates as more ‘silence’ when you speak FIFA. So here’s the lawyer friendly version of events, sent to UG this morning by FIFA’s press office.

*********

RECENT NON-EVENTS AT FIFA 05/06/11

Recently, nothing of interest has happened.

Yours,

The Press Office at the FIFA Family

‘For the game. For the world. For our back pocket.’

***********

Oh.

UG.

Video of the Week 05/06/11 UG would give anything to watch a...

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:42:19 +0100

Video of the Week 05/06/11

UG would give anything to watch a game at Signal Iduna Park, or it’s non-shite name, Westfalenstadion. LOOK AT THIS EXAMPLE OF HOW TERRACING CAN BE SAFE, AND NUTS.

No guessing who won last night’s Champions League final...

Sun, 29 May 2011 12:53:15 +0100

No guessing who won last night’s Champions League final match up then.

Barcelona celebrated by firing coach Pep Guardiola into the air from a trebuchet - luckily the squad were on hand to catch him as he returned to earth.

The Champions League Final, End of Season Blues etc...

Sat, 28 May 2011 17:37:52 +0100

Well, well, well.

It’s that time again at UG headquarters. Batten down the hatches, buy the tinned foods…it’s a strict diet of Vodka, sleeping pills and summer hibernation for us.

Sure there’s the under-21s European Championship to look ahead to but that doesn’t start for a couple of weeks yet. That means 2 weeks after Monday’s Championship Playoff Final genuinely without any kind of live football taking place. Thus, UG will be locked away, sipping quietly on a bottle of Wyborowa and eating tuna straight from the can.

When your existence is wholely based around the unbeautiful game, the weeks of a non-world cup summer are spent in a dreadful bout of depression. There have been summers when UG has not even emerged from our dog basket, only to be discovered months later, bleary eyed and covered in bedsores, rolling around moaning like a wounded bear. But - and it’s a big but - before that we’ve got to take in the biggest game in European football.

ITS ONLY THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL.

Manchester United and Barcelona have become synonomous with European success in recent years, in spite of both sides being filled with awful, cheating, grubby little mercenaries. You might exclude from that group:

Lionel Messi - who doesn’t tend to roll around on the floor like an epileptic simean every time he gets kicked. He’s also quite good at football.

Eric Abidal - anybody who overcomes a tumour to return to play in a game like this needs a good solid pat on the back (maybe not too hard, yet). Michael Owen’s ‘injuries’ which have hindered him for so much of his career sound limp by comparison. But we knew that anyway.

and

Edwin Van Der Sar - the Dutch goalkeeper is a picture of professionalism and to still be playing football at the highest level at the age of 57 is a massive achievement.

Javier Hernandez/Chicharito/The Little Pea - another reasonably respectable player who’ll be making his way onto the pitch tonight. According to various sources, he’s actually quite a nice young lad.

So, aside from those four, you might as well forget it. Unless of course you like watching 18 teenage girls fight over a Juicy Couture handbag as if their lives depended on it. Hang on…see you at 7.45pm.

VIDEO OF THE WEEK 28/05/11 One of the least ugly pieces of...

Sat, 28 May 2011 13:24:00 +0100

VIDEO OF THE WEEK 28/05/11

One of the least ugly pieces of unbeautiful gaming seen by UG in recent years. He’s still a selfish little shit though, should have passed it shouldn’t he? Wanker.

A brief welcome...

Sat, 28 May 2011 13:09:00 +0100

Welcome one and all. UG welcomes you to our pit of footballing despair, where the dregs of the world’s most unbeautiful game will be hung out to dry like the soiled underwear they all are.

Be it articles about corruption at FIFA, a satirical take on the week’s footballing news or just a pointer towards a good bit of journalism by somebody else, UG is your place to get it.

And remember - next time you’re watching the ‘beautiful’ game, have a look at Wayne Rooney’s face.

UG.

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