I found this interesting article over at XT forums, I thought you guys would enjoy this read. Unbelievable how the media try to mislead people...
The belittling of giants
Danny Kelly
(from The Times newspaper)
Wasn't it great last week to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the country's first elected female leader, making a state visit to France? France is, of course, Germany's oldest ally and a huge party was held to mark a century of peaceful coexistence between the two.
At the bash, music was provided by the group whom rock fan Merkel described as "undoubtedly the greatest English band of all time", the Kaiser Chiefs. During the event, held at the Irish Embassy, there was much quaffing of pints of Ireland's traditional liquid gift to the world, Magners cider.
And so on and so on and so on. What a load of horse feathers! What a disgusting rewrite of history! Not the sort of blatant whitewash, eyewash and hogwash you'd allow in your house, eh? OK, so why do you let the football authorities and the TV companies do the same thing? It happens all the time, of course, but this week we really saw the whole airbrushing of the past thing in full effect. Celtic beat Manchester United.
They didn't deserve to, but they did; that, thankfully, is football. What followed that scampered victory, though, was pure humbug, industrial strength Shinola. We were invited to applaud the plucky Scots as they "qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League for the first time".
Now, I am not, despite the photos that adorn this page, an idiot. I know what they mean. I know that they have rebranded the old European Cup, so the phrase itself isn't empirically, technically, legally incorrect. But, honestly, I am just not going to swallow all the brave new football world hokum that actually lies behind those weasel words.
The truth is - despite what the brainwashers want you to think - that Celtic have been in the last 16 of the "Champions League" (or the McVitie's Hobnobs League Of Supreme Achievers, or whatever it will be called in two years' time). And the last eight. And the semi-finals. And the final.
Indeed, in 1967, as everyone bally well knows, they won the blinking thing.
The marketing boffins want you to believe that there was no football before the Champions League (and before the Starbucks Double Froccalattucino Premiership, for that matter) because they are ashamed of something that used to be a community-based, working-class, unashamedly male, shambolically organised (for which read "inefficient at hoovering revenue"), rough, ready, rugged sport. Not a product, a sport.
And most of the time, for the sake of not appearing like some sort of luddite loony running around with my sandwich board and loud-hailer, I go along with this whole Champions League/Premiership sleight of history.
But this Celtic thing was a quiet-life bridge too far. In asking me to forget, for marketing purposes, the Lisbon Lions, they ask me then to also forget the Real Madrid team who won the first five European Cups. And this in the week that Ferenc Puskás (genius, but tubby, so very poor product-placement prospect) died; for shame.
They also want me to expunge the memory of the Ajax team who won three on the spin in the early Seventies, the greatest club team I'll ever see. And they want me to pretend that the AC Milan team of Baresi, Maldini, Gullitt, Van Basten and Rijkaard was an illusion, something I dreamt.
They want me to consign Beckenbauer's Bayern, Clough's Forest and even Tony Barton's Aston Villa to the dustbin of voluntary amnesia. Well I won't, with the possible exception of Villa.
Indeed, instead of belittling Celtic, they should be garlanding them. When Celtic beat Inter Milan in that 1967 final, they actually helped to rescue a competition in danger of dying on its a***.
After the exhilaration of its early years, the tournament had been hijacked by the curse of Italian defensiveness.
AC and then Inter Milan had come to dominate, the latter bringing with them coach Helenio Herrera, henchman Giacinto Facchetti, the whole catenaccio schtick and a huge side order of cynicism. It was these destroyers of football Celtic mauled on that balmy Lisbon evening.
Light triumphed over dark, good over evil and the door was flung open again for the attacking likes of Manchester United, Ajax and the rest.
Who knows, if the Italians had been allowed to have their way, the whole European thing might have been anaesthetised to death. There would have been nothing to rebrand.
Nothing to market. Nothing to attract the TV billions and the besotted hordes. TV presenters, and Uefa themselves, should try remembering that.
The belittling of giants
Danny Kelly
(from The Times newspaper)
Wasn't it great last week to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the country's first elected female leader, making a state visit to France? France is, of course, Germany's oldest ally and a huge party was held to mark a century of peaceful coexistence between the two.
At the bash, music was provided by the group whom rock fan Merkel described as "undoubtedly the greatest English band of all time", the Kaiser Chiefs. During the event, held at the Irish Embassy, there was much quaffing of pints of Ireland's traditional liquid gift to the world, Magners cider.
And so on and so on and so on. What a load of horse feathers! What a disgusting rewrite of history! Not the sort of blatant whitewash, eyewash and hogwash you'd allow in your house, eh? OK, so why do you let the football authorities and the TV companies do the same thing? It happens all the time, of course, but this week we really saw the whole airbrushing of the past thing in full effect. Celtic beat Manchester United.
They didn't deserve to, but they did; that, thankfully, is football. What followed that scampered victory, though, was pure humbug, industrial strength Shinola. We were invited to applaud the plucky Scots as they "qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League for the first time".
Now, I am not, despite the photos that adorn this page, an idiot. I know what they mean. I know that they have rebranded the old European Cup, so the phrase itself isn't empirically, technically, legally incorrect. But, honestly, I am just not going to swallow all the brave new football world hokum that actually lies behind those weasel words.
The truth is - despite what the brainwashers want you to think - that Celtic have been in the last 16 of the "Champions League" (or the McVitie's Hobnobs League Of Supreme Achievers, or whatever it will be called in two years' time). And the last eight. And the semi-finals. And the final.
Indeed, in 1967, as everyone bally well knows, they won the blinking thing.
The marketing boffins want you to believe that there was no football before the Champions League (and before the Starbucks Double Froccalattucino Premiership, for that matter) because they are ashamed of something that used to be a community-based, working-class, unashamedly male, shambolically organised (for which read "inefficient at hoovering revenue"), rough, ready, rugged sport. Not a product, a sport.
And most of the time, for the sake of not appearing like some sort of luddite loony running around with my sandwich board and loud-hailer, I go along with this whole Champions League/Premiership sleight of history.
But this Celtic thing was a quiet-life bridge too far. In asking me to forget, for marketing purposes, the Lisbon Lions, they ask me then to also forget the Real Madrid team who won the first five European Cups. And this in the week that Ferenc Puskás (genius, but tubby, so very poor product-placement prospect) died; for shame.
They also want me to expunge the memory of the Ajax team who won three on the spin in the early Seventies, the greatest club team I'll ever see. And they want me to pretend that the AC Milan team of Baresi, Maldini, Gullitt, Van Basten and Rijkaard was an illusion, something I dreamt.
They want me to consign Beckenbauer's Bayern, Clough's Forest and even Tony Barton's Aston Villa to the dustbin of voluntary amnesia. Well I won't, with the possible exception of Villa.
Indeed, instead of belittling Celtic, they should be garlanding them. When Celtic beat Inter Milan in that 1967 final, they actually helped to rescue a competition in danger of dying on its a***.
After the exhilaration of its early years, the tournament had been hijacked by the curse of Italian defensiveness.
AC and then Inter Milan had come to dominate, the latter bringing with them coach Helenio Herrera, henchman Giacinto Facchetti, the whole catenaccio schtick and a huge side order of cynicism. It was these destroyers of football Celtic mauled on that balmy Lisbon evening.
Light triumphed over dark, good over evil and the door was flung open again for the attacking likes of Manchester United, Ajax and the rest.
Who knows, if the Italians had been allowed to have their way, the whole European thing might have been anaesthetised to death. There would have been nothing to rebrand.
Nothing to market. Nothing to attract the TV billions and the besotted hordes. TV presenters, and Uefa themselves, should try remembering that.
Buy on AliExpress.com
