Leap of a Salmon: The Stuttered Rise of Big Andy

 Source: Alex Livesey/Getty Images Europe

From his early days as a young flaxen-haired prodigy hailing from the black and white region of the North East, Andy Carroll’s story has been followed with a keen eye in the football world. The promising academy product made a very big mark in Newcastle, particularly by scoring a hatful of goals in their very brief period spent in the Championship. The Toon Army made their reluctance to sell him known, but when Liverpool bankrolled an “offer he couldn’t refuse”, Mike Ashley decided to cut his losses and fill the club’s purse.

Undeniably a force to be reckoned with in the air, and carrying the playing attributes of an old-fashioned centre forward (a la Duncan Ferguson and Chris Sutton), “Big Andy” has often attracted attention away from his obvious ability on the field with his less than desirable behaviour off of it. His recent loan move to West Ham was met with positive responses overall, but the dissenting voices were nearly all female. His headline grabbing antics in October 2010 appear to have gone some way in putting a bad taste in supporters’ mouths; I refer of course to Andy being charged with assault on his girlfriend – part of his punishment being to live with now again captain and close friend Kevin Nolan.

However, despite the naivety of youth and misguided behaviour, his criticism has more recently focussed on his football. His somewhat unfair price tag of £35 million, coupled with the task of filling the boots of one El Nino, piled incredible pressure on him before he had even kicked a ball. He was quoted in several newspapers as saying that he did not want to leave Newcastle, the club he had been with since he had first started sowing the seeds of that famous ponytail. Needless to say, his game took a severe knock from the moment he put pen to paper in the board room at Anfield, and is still trying to prove to the world that he can live up to the cash spent on him.

His efforts have not been helped by the phenomenon that is Luis Suarez, who has proved to be prolific, exciting, passionate and hungry. Controversy aside, the Uruguayan is already a Kop hero, and has received fan and club backing through thick and thin. Carroll on the other hand has been subjected to much harsher treatment it would seem, being judged (as are all strikers) on goals scored and trophies won. It may be, however, that Liverpool’s bitterness for him is an unfortunate consequence of a dry spell of both trophies and European football. Changes in regime at Liverpool, and an almost inexplicable disregard of Carroll’s usefulness by new manager Brendan Rodgers, have all come at a time when the once Geordie prodigy should be developing into the fantastic and pivotal player that he will hopefully become.

As a Hammers fan, I think his addition to the squad (albeit probably only until January) has been a revelation for the club. It was a major coup for the chairmen and the manager, as not only did it add some much needed raw quality, but it was real statement of their intent. A continuing battle to acquire the use of the Olympic Stadium along with the aim of consolidating the club’s place in the world’s greatest league was very nicely complimented by convincing the striker to sign.

On early assessment, albeit without goals as of yet, he is fantastic player. He adds something to an already physical squad, and as soon as he enters the field of play, the captain alone is afforded freedom to attack more frequently. An almost telepathic understanding between Carroll and Nolan, nurtured under the watchful eye of Big Sam at Newcastle, has already bred some visible quality. A new challenge for Carroll, perhaps being motivated by a lack of striking options currently being enjoyed by Liverpool, will give him the desire to perform.

It cannot be forgotten that he is still only 23 years of age; with at least another decade of top level football should he stay fit and healthy. With an already bright England career in the making, it will surely only be a matter of time before he, and everybody else, will realise his potential. 

Getting the Green (Flood)Light – Environmental Sustainability in Football

Among the many challenges that face football clubs in executing a successful business model, corporate and political pressures have added another; consideration for their environmental impact. The sport leaves an extraordinarily large carbon footprint, using an enormous amount of electricity, gas and water. In order to adhere to the environmental policies of football’s governing bodies alone, clubs and other related businesses must take energy use and waste into account.

Improving the sustainability and decreasing the negative effects of delivering football to the public have been extremely high on the agenda for a number of years. High profile figures in the game have made excellent strides in promoting environmentally friendly construction and maintenance of football stadia around the world. Former Manchester United defender and now England Coach Gary Neville has used his profile, experiences and interests in property development to try and “influence and change peoples’ attitudes” towards the environmental impact that they may be having in their everyday lives. In fact, Neville founded Sustainability in Sport (SIS) with Dale Vince OBE, which looks to raise awareness of the environmental impact that football has.

SIS presents three club case studies: Forest Green Rovers; Manchester United, and; Dartford FC. All three clubs have gone to great lengths to reduce their carbon footprints and to reduce the waste produced by their operations. The latter club mentioned here is in fact my local side, with their ultra-eco-friendly ground Princes Park being opened in 2006. Since then the club has enjoyed great success on the pitch - gaining three promotions in 5 seasons to take them up to the National Conference – but have also cemented themselves as one of the most environmentally friendly and sustainable football clubs in the United Kingdom. The club has gained high recognition for having built “an ethical stadium with water recycling, bike racks, grass roof and solar panels”. In addition to other methods of reducing environmental impact, such as low energy lighting, encouraging the use of public transport, waste efficiency and recycling (such as that employed by Man United’s “Red’s Go Green” initiative), advertising and promotion within the game leans very heavily toward saving and reducing the use of energy; helped in no small part by the sponsorship of the Football League by npower.

For such a global sport to be viewed as an ethical one, FIFA have made very visible steps to ensure that football is leading by example in energy and environmental policy. Its 2004 Green Goal Legacy report detailed the commitments and adjustments made in respect of logistics and stadia for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, making a commitment to reducing the impact had by large scale tournaments. The roof of Kaiserslautern stadium alone was equipped with a 6000 square metre photovoltaic plant, capable of generating 720,000 kWh of electricity per year. It was estimated that that the tournament would consume 13 million kWh of electricity across all of its sites during its four-week duration – an astronomical figure. This was offset beforehand however by injecting the very same amount of “green” energy into the normal German supply network.

In addition to the work of the largest clubs and bodies, amateur football is making gradual progress in contributing to the wider efforts of the sport, taking responsibility for their potentially harmful impact on the environment. After all, changing rooms and showers need to be sufficiently warm in the long winter playing period, as do the accompanying cups of half-time tea – all of these elements on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning across the country begin to leave a mark. By making small changes over a season, those clubs with their multitude of age groups and reserve sides will be able to not only save precious funds, but count themselves among the ever growing throng of energy conscious sports clubs across the globe. 

England – Why can’t we hammer the Minnows?

Season upon season, one qualifying campaign after another, the senior England national team are drawn in a group with a country labelled as the resident “whipping boys” – so why can’t we ever seem to do a demolition job? The Germans, for example, are well drilled in this task, seemingly pulverising any side placed in the bottom ten per cent of the FIFA World Rankings. Even though it appears that England seem a far more positive and hungry outfit under Roy Hodgson, I would rest far more easily should I be confident that England could sweep part-time nations aside with relative comfort on a regular basis.  

The Moldova’s, Andorra’s and San Marino’s of this world compete heroically against the exceedingly well paid superstars of Spain, France and Brazil et al. They will of course be routinely beaten – and beaten well – when the bus that they have parked eventually gets a puncture. So why then, when England are ranked so highly in world football, do we never seem able to put seven or eight goals past sides that are no more able than a part time team from the non-league? In fact, among the opponents walking out at Wembley tonight were bank clerks and teachers – most likely earning in a year what Wayne Rooney earns just lacing up his boots for training.

I have to admit here that I took the gamble of beginning this article on around the thirty minute mark, with the score at 0-0, but it turns out that I haven’t, unfortunately, been proven wrong by the Three Lions. Andy Townsend pretty much summed up my thoughts in his commentary on 59 minutes: “You have to wonder, if this was a Spain, if this was a German; how many would they be knocking past [San Marino]?” There seems to be a latent inability to completely and efficiently dominate smaller sides where a game such as this should be done and dusted by half time. Despite the absolutely dominant statistics collected over the course of the game paint a convincing picture, actually watching the game makes for a supremely frustrating hour and a half. Score lines such as that enjoyed by the Germans six years ago would make for far more pride-laden reading tomorrow morning, with Rooney or Welbeck “doing a Podolski” and grabbing four or five goals each.

As it stands, both Rooney and Welbeck have scored a brace a piece on 70 minutes – is it wrong of me, or any England fan, to think that this is insufficient against a team ranked 202 places below them? The Ox has just scored his first England goal on 76 minutes, by the way – a beautifully curled effort into the top right of the goal. Yet still I feel fairly unimpressed with what has been a fairly flat affair – 5-0 up or not. 

Not known for his love of all things England, Roy Keane took only six or seven seconds to sum up England's performance at half time - suffice to say it wasn't exactly positive. I must concede, however, I do not very much like joining in with the brigade of fans that refuse to say anything remotely positive about the national side. With that, it must be observed that the starting line up was wholly inexperienced at international level and not so used to playing together. They have spent 90+ minutes trying to break through a frustrating blue wall of 10 players who, as Keane described, were "so short technically", and a 5-0 win in any event puts us top of the group with a little help from Moldova. 

It's another job done, however, so perhaps I should stop being so picky over the details. Still, it would be nice if we could hit double figures where we occasionally have the opportunity...

Home & Away – The Importance of Transport in Football

As one of the most keenly participated and followed sports in the world, transporting football fans and players from A to B is an essential ingredient in contributing to its cultural and commercial success. English Premier League teams, for example, often travel with anything from a couple of hundred to several thousand fans to away games. These figures are fairly consistent when taking a glance at football league statistics over the past four seasons, and suffice to say the vast majority of die-hard fans will show a preference for the “away day” over a solitary car or train journey.

On a typical Saturday afternoon, the motorways and streets lining the football grounds of England are teeming with coachloads of jersey clad ladies, gentlemen and minors, willing to back their side through promotion and relegation. The weekends which they have long lived for are made all the more enjoyable, and achievable, by the coach and minibus drivers willing to scour the countries tarmac network, kept company by the heartfelt song and chant of six or seven-dozen passionate supporters. At the same time, the trains are awash with similar sights, as are the saloon cars filled with mums, dads and children indoctrinated with the colours, history and passion of their ancestors’ great club.

From the very highest level of the game down to school and university teams, travel to and from matches is what makes the sport both accessible and inclusive; a bus full of excited teammates acts as a marvellous adrenal stimulus. That is why, in order for the professional game to be stacked high with dedicated and skilful stars, it is vital that the youth and academy teams of clubs across every standard have their physical and mental abilities complemented subconsciously by a sense of unity and professionalism.

This attention to detail at granular level sets the future stars of the sport in excellent stead for when they eventually, and hopefully, become established and successful professional sportsmen and women. Professional clubs pay particular attention in ensuring that their young academy prospects disembark shiny new coaches and minibuses and are clad with crisp and laundered tracksuits, enabling any side to have an automatic psychological edge over their opposition. The very same ideal, as I’m sure others would agree, applies to how your team enters a school, university or amateur football club ground.

Be it with your fanatical parents, team scarf adorning the rear window and garish bumper sticker peeling away, with your cash-rich club in a state of the art super coach, or upon an economy class locomotive (once the custom of a certain group of supporters from the East End of London), public and private means of transport are integral cogs in the footballing machine. Its success, particularly with regards to revenue generated by gate receipts, is largely down to the ability of fans to travel to matches. It is, in fact, one of the only things that will remain a constant in an ever changing environment for the sport. 

Anything Ron Can Do...

Superlatives fail most folk when attempting to describe the raw genius of Lionel Messi. I can’t actually think of another player that has consistently reached dizzy new heights year on year at the very top level of football. I don’t even think the fact that a lot of football fans were not able to witness the likes of Pele, Cruyff, Maradonna et al in their playing days is a handicap to our experiences – we genuinely must be witnessing the best player to have graced the sport.

Lionel Messi is widely regarded as the best footballer ever to have played the game – but has he achieved enough at international level to earn the tag?

(Photograph: Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images)

  

It must be wholly infuriating, therefore, for one particular Portuguese gentleman to have to continually try and answer his critics and analysts in the shadow of what Messi repetitively achieves. I am not talking about Luis Boa Morte (with all due respect), but of one Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro.

Having left the red side of Manchester in 2009 for the warmer climes of Madrid, three years on and the eye-watering fee of £80 million paid by Los Blancos would appear to have been justified several times over. In fact, if press reports were anything to go by, Real had made the fee back in less than a year in shirt sales alone (although it all went towards paying off the astronomical loans taken out to bankroll the “New Galacticos”). He has notched up 160 goals in 155 games in all competitions – 120 of those coming in 108 La Liga fixtures to date. It’s a phenomenal record for a quite fabulous player. He must be all but irritated that his career has coincided with that of the pint-sized Argentinian maestro.

Ronaldo has been prolific for Real Madrid since his world record breaking signing in June 2009. He also came agonisingly close to helping Portugal reach the Euro 2012 final this summer.

(Photograph: Reuters)

Ronaldo’s dedication to developing himself into the complete athlete is evident; combining the pace and strength of a track and field star with the gracefully quick feet and split second decision making of a black-belt martial artist. Things which have come into question throughout his career however are his attitude towards his teammates, gaining a reputation as a “sulker” and as being selfish when he has the ball at his feet. It seems that some fans feel that he believes that he has some form of God-given right to have the football as and when he demands it.

The reality, I think, is that he simply wants to win. He wants to achieve everything that is possible in the game, and when he is impeded, he does not like it. He has of course won the coveted title of being the world’s best player in 2008, but would undoubtedly have won it every year since had it not been for the eternal rise of Leo Messi. The latter has claimed the prize (as a varying combination of both the FIFA World Player of the Year and the FIFA Ballon D’or), along with a raft of silverware with Barcelona, for three consecutive years. This in itself has never been done in the modern era, and it will certainly be between both he and Ronaldo as to who is crowned again.

Messi has also, surprisingly, had his status lowered due to his limited success with Argentina. The pinnacle of his international career came at the Beijing Games 2008 where he won gold, but this has been viewed as insufficient in putting him on the same shelf as the likes of his compatriot Diego Maradonna. In his defence, international football is a very different prospect to what it once was. The pace and skill involved in football today is of a far higher level, and the majority of players, no matter where they are from in the world, will play their football for a top European club team if they are anything close to the level enjoyed by Messi and Ronaldo. Pele, for example, never played for a European club, instead plying his trade in the Americas, which some would say contributed to his goal scoring record. 

That said, the man won three World Cup tournaments - in 1970 being part of one of the greatest footballing sides ever witnessed. With Messi having won everything there is to win in Spain, along with his European trophies and individual accolades, every single English football fan would give a limb to see him play in the Premier League. Afterall, Ronaldo has now played for the two biggest and most valuable teams on the planet, scoring copious goals and winning numerous trophies with each. All he needs now is the Champions League with Real and he can say that he has near enough won it all - a dream he shares with boss Jose Mourinho. 

It is fair to say that, while CR7 may always be playing catch-up with Messi, it will only be to the benefit of football as a whole. If an already driven and successful footballer still strives to better himself season on season, it will spur the rest of the game to follow suit. The English top-tier has already reaped the benefits of an ever improving standard of player - be it homegrown or from abroad. This summer saw the introduction of talents such Eden Hazard, Santi Cazorla, and Olivier Giroud to the Premier League; a sign that it remains the most competitive league in the world, and also the most avidly followed. 

So, what we can certainly conclude with here is, aside from the fact that comparisons between these two footballing heavyweights are near enough pointless, the fact that we are able to watch them fight it out at the very top puts us in a very special club. 

It also begs the question - when will they stop being so damn good?

Manager v Chairman - The Fragmented Footballing Marriage

It is well documented and discussed that English professional football has been both blessed and cursed in recent years by the phenomenon of cash rich chairmen and women from far flung corners of the globe, injecting their vast fortunes into top-flight clubs. In an effort to stock the trophy cabinets - and inevitably add to their already brimming business portfolio - these oil, steel, property and media tycoons lay on the resources that will hopefully facilitate the fast-track success of the world's leading football clubs. 

The arguable catalyst for this in the English game was the the introduction of Roman Abramovich, who completed his audacious acquisition of Chelsea FC in July 2003. Other clubs have followed suit, most notably Manchester City five-years later. Although the two examples here were met with eventual and resounding support once the silverware began filtering it's way into Stamford Bridge/The Etihad Stadium, there have been other, less well received takeovers and attempted revolutions. A case in point would be the acrimonious Icelandic hijack of my beloved West Ham United in 2006, characterised by outlandish spending on players in the the twilight of their careers, and leaving the club in a crippling state of debt which still has to go some way in being repaired by the current chairmen. A far more unfortunate story is being played out at Leeds United and Portsmouth FC - now plunged into a comparably deficient state of affairs than that of only a decade or so ago - clubs that fell victim to short sighted spending and some clumsy handling of corporate and executive affairs.

(Photograph: PA. Source: The Guardian)

When all goes right for the club on the pitch, the manager is often the most immediate and visible party lavished with credit and reward. Similarly, he is the first to be reprimanded and interrogated when things take a turn for the worse. It is the latter, however, that appears to be reported with greater enthusiasm by the English press - the very public and damning criticism of managers from the boardrooms of their own clubs makes for intriguing, conveniently ambiguous, and revenue generating reading. The Man City takeover spelled a countdown to the exit for Mark Hughes, who, when given the almost impossible task of developing a hurriedly assembled team of overvalued misfits into a title winning force of European football, would have to take the guise of a well established and decorated football manager capable of controlling and inspiring a well paid collection of inflated egos. The same fate, although differing in circumstance, is met regularly by managers given a squad of want-away centre forwards and emerging midfielders encouraged by a tenuous but optimistic sniff of a lucrative move. This scenario is no doubt nourished by the greed and ambition of commission-dependent agents, sowing the seeds of delusion and greener grass in the head of a vulnerable League One academy graduate. Quite memorably, even the likes of Wayne Rooney can fall victim to the seduction of wayward third party advice - something which he has later reflected on with regret.

The word "boss" has become somewhat of a descriptive folly in the modern game. Gone are the days where the manager or head coach would be the Supreme Court on team matters, commanding his side with an iron (and worshipped) fist, à la Sir Alex Ferguson. His stature in the game is of course an exception to the modern rule - his career with Manchester United speaks for itself in world football, and the clubs financial status owes almost everything to his successes - but the status of the football manager is becoming increasingly susceptible to the might of the money men in control of their wages.

Although the negativity that money can have on the affairs of a professional football team, and the axe-wielding nature of a lot of "industry ignorant" club owners' and chairmen, a stand-off approach employed by a wide majority of these has meant that a number of clubs have enjoyed extended periods of fruit-bearing stability. The case of Arsene Wenger springs immediately to mind after that of 'Fergie', and although under fire of late for releasing his star players to big spending rivals, his vision and knowledge of the game rarely comes into question from worthy critics. In a time where financial fair play is a hot topic in world football, the astronomical debt recorded and written off with cash - or shrouded in £400 million, 10 year sponsorship deals - gives cause for concern for smaller clubs whose managers face the unenviable task of competing with a transfer budget not ten percent of the size of that enjoyed by the top four or five heavyweights. This trend is ever spreading across European and Asian football; Anzhi Makhachkala and Zenit St. Petersburg in Russia, Paris Saint Germain in France, Shanghai Shenhua in China to name but a few. All have made signings that have been firm statements of intent by their lavish owners, and all have seemingly installed revolving doors below a sign reading "Manager".

Football has no doubt become a far more exciting, skillful and broadly covered sport in the last two decades, made largely possible by an influx of foreign wealth. It would however seem that the rules by which clubs are run, and those which govern the professional game, have been visibly rewritten as a result.