Republic of Ireland V Turkey, Italy, Costa Rica & Portugal - May/June 2014

**DannyInvincible** · 24/06/2014, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

Are you implying they're the same person?

Like Clark Kent/Superman maybe...

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

I saw where he told viera and fabio of the 2 european cups i was watching it, was funny but I dont think they were wholly dimissive, certainly viera wasnt anyway, but they were more siding with eachother. It was initially because the night before martin disagreed with viera, and he didnt like that viera had disagreed with him, he kinda blew it up into something. I've always felt a bit uncomfortable watching martin on ITV/BBC when doing the analysing, like he is a little sore and trying to control things.

I got the distinct impression from the way he spoke and how Vieira and Fabio reacted with coy laughter that Martin was alluding to something that had been exchanged off-camera. It seemed they'd been unaware of his record and perhaps doubted his footballing clout as a result. Of course, Martin was very keen to correct any lack of knowledge. I hadn't seen the night before, but maybe that contributed too.

**SwanVsDalton** · 24/06/2014, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

They were together last night, and everytime Fabio makes a comment he says I agree with you Boss, and looks to him.

I saw where he told viera and fabio of the 2 european cups i was watching it, was funny but I dont think they were wholly dimissive, certainly viera wasnt anyway, but they were more siding with eachother. It was initially because the night before martin disagreed with viera, and he didnt like that viera had disagreed with him, he kinda blew it up into something. I've always felt a bit uncomfortable watching martin on ITV/BBC when doing the analysing, like he is a little sore and trying to control things.

I never think he comes across as sore, just forthright. They're all pros, it's just banter. I think their interactions are generally quite warm, if spiky. Bit like RTE, in the sense the panel can go for each other's throats on-camera but can leave that at the door and go for a pint too.

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

The defensive line thing was about playing offside, and also about defending from crosses, I took the same view as viera and fabio on 2 seperate occassions but oneill blamed the defenders who were trying to play offisde. He also blamed paulinho or whoever was standing on the near post for cameroons goal for not cutting out the cross, and marcelo and luiz for not keeping an eye on the ball rather than the player. He had a point on both but I don't think it was as straightforward as that. I'd worry that what he is telling the players is different from what they hear day in day out at club level and hence will cause confusion and players will end up in no mans land in games, like Stutts suggested for the Turkey and Serbia games. We looked all at sea, especially the likes of coleman who normallly has decent positional sense and awareness.

I only saw the Cameroon goal analysis, but I agreed with him. Don't think it was too controversial an opinion.

As for what players might hear day-to-day, players are going to hear different things from all their managers. Ultimately O'Neill has been hired to manage his way and if what he says is different from what a player hears at club level, so be it. He can't account for what 20 different managers are telling his players, he has to manage them to play together and to a set game plan. And I can't see him giving them advice that's totally at odds with conventional football wisdom.

**Stuttgart88** · 24/06/2014, 1:02 PM

I have doubts about MON's methods being appropriate for modern international football but I think no matter how much the game changes the basics of good defending never really do. Nor do the basics of organisation, where O'Neill has good form.

I've been impressed by Strachan's utterances the few times I've heard him. A particularly interesting exchange came yesterday following Rooney's comment (hypocritical - just ask ask Sol Campbell or Bastien Schweinsteiger) about England not diving enough like, say, Uruguay. Strachan gave his recollection of playing Uruguay in the Mexico 86 WC, saying he couldn't fathom how they could play in such a dishonest manner. Then a few days later the Scots players visited a Mexican slum and Strachan said he had never seen poverty anything like it, not even in Scotland's sink estates. Winnning football games was a way out for these people and bearing this in mind it's just not right to expect they'll have the same sporting values that emanated from the British schools system in Victorian times. I agree and much as diving annoys me, critics of football fail to recognise just how the game permeates the poorest levels of society all over the world.

**paul_oshea** · 24/06/2014, 1:48 PM

Winnning football games was a way out for these people

It has nothing to do with that at all. Its not like its a way out and they will do anything like diving in a football match. These people don't have the same moral values as they are brought up differently, its about survival and they lack the basic moral code and value distilled in those brought up and not dragged up. Look at the colombian team of 94, nearly all bar escobar were rascals and from bad areas, but escobar was always a gentleman.

The most distinct one was when viera and oneill disagreed about playing the offisde and not playing it, the 2 central defenders were in sync for australia and moved out together, the left back stayed and was keeping an eye on the run(of robbeni think), but he had clear vision of the two central defenders, he should have stepped forward, he didn't and kept robben onside. Big mistake, it reminded me of watching the line since oneill took over, its all over the shop, there is no straight line, players are not in sync.

If oneills idea behind this was you cant trust the offisde and you cant trust that the officials to make the correct decision i could agree somewhat but this wasnt the case, but he sided with the individual where the other 3 were in sync, and funnily enough the left back had the best view of all.

And yes he cant teach them but if 20 managers are in tune with playing the sameway in the backline and he tries to distill his theory on them they will be all at sea like we have seen in the past.

**Charlie Darwin** · 24/06/2014, 1:52 PM

I didn't think it was possible but Paul O'Shea has just put diving to win a free kick down to bad parenting.

**paul_oshea** · 24/06/2014, 1:54 PM

Haha, not quite but the point that strachan was making and stutts was making was not as simplistic as a footballing way of life. Its a way of life.

**CraftyToePoke** · 24/06/2014, 2:00 PM

I'd imagine there would be some fairly tough neighbourhoods in post communist and post conflict eastern Europe, Baltic and former Soviet block places. Those lads don't roll around on the grass. I think Strachan was wide there.

**Stuttgart88** · 24/06/2014, 2:46 PM

Nonsense. There was no poverty under communism. You have fallen for the usual western economic propaganda.

I think Strachan has a point. That's not to say middle class kids don't cheat (Robben) or that all street urchins are cheats or even that all cheats are street urchins, but I think there's probably a relationship. The same social conditions that lead to gang culture are, in my estimation, more likely to produce a player with little hesitation to take a dive than a kid who learnt to play his sport in a half decent school. Not all kids in extreme poverty get sucked into gangs (good parenting and all that), but extreme poverty is one factor that causes gang culture, for example.

Of course none of us is a sociologist so none of us really knows, but Strachan's point sounds sensible to me and, after all, he was there.

**paul_oshea** · 24/06/2014, 3:24 PM

I dont know why i spelt robben like that, i profusely apologise!

**DannyInvincible** · 24/06/2014, 8:30 PM

Funnily enough, I happened to write this piece on the issue of diving being less alien than some might think after Ashley Young stirred a fair bit of controversy with his play-acting two years ago.

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

It has nothing to do with that at all. Its not like its a way out and they will do anything like diving in a football match. These people don't have the same moral values as they are brought up differently, its about survival and they lack the basic moral code and value distilled in those brought up and not dragged up. Look at the colombian team of 94, nearly all bar escobar were rascals and from bad areas, but escobar was always a gentleman.

Who lacks a basic moral code? Those from deprived or impoverished ("bad"?) backgrounds? What a load of nonsense. Are you saying Escobar was one of the few in that 1994 Colombian squad from a privileged background, and that's why he also happened to be its only gentleman?... Not just nonsense, but offensive nonsense.

Cycling is a sport that has been dogged with rampant cheating down through the years. It's very much a sport of the white privileged class. Explain its suspect values... Are the materially-impoverished African countries any more or less prone to simulation in football than their counterparts from more affluent continents? Of course not.

Some of human history's greatest oppressors, exploiters and swindlers were anything but deprived. They were from the empires of wealth, power and glory spreading their "British values from British schools" and the like around the globe. If anything, they were the ultimate experts in deception. They used their cunning to conceal their sins behind veneers of moral crusade and cultural generosity. Much like the US does today - the world's "moral guardian" - purporting to be spreading freedom and democratic values around the globe. Poverty itself is the criminal symptom of imperial abuse, conquest and globalisation. To claim the impoverished lack the basic moral code of the privileged is an insult to the victims of elite oppression throughout human history. To be honest, it sounds like veiled (or unwitting, to give the benefit of the doubt) xenophobia/socio-cultural superiority to me; this notion that we in the developed/privileged world are more moral and well-mannered than "they" are. Of course we'll conveniently tell ourselves our values are always superior to theirs. If they're lacking something in the deprived world, maybe it's the deceptive subtlety and sophistication possessed by successful swindlers in the developed world.

Diving, or cheating, is a vice of which humans/footballers are universally guilty. Its performance is not limited to only those from developing societies. The likes of Damien Duff, Frank Lampard, Thomas M�ller, Arjen Robben and J�rgen Klinsmann; all happy divers when the opportunity presented or presents itself. Irish players, English players, American players, German players, Italian players; none are immune. Cheating occurs in all sports, because it's something that humans do when the stakes are high enough to motivate or "warrant" it. It's rooted in human self-interest. The higher the stakes or the more competitive the contest, the greater the chance of someone, irrespective of their socio-cultural background, utilising deceit if they think they can get away with it. Professionalisation and increased competition has obviously contributed to such behaviour, but it's perhaps the ruthless "win at all costs" business-like ethos permeating modern football and sport that provides the primary breeding ground for this evident contempt for one's opponents and the game itself; as it goes, "if it's profitable, it's justifiable".

**paul_oshea** · 24/06/2014, 10:29 PM

Suarez bit chellini because he would do anything to get out of a slum and make it in football? I think not.

enjoy your theoretical bubble di, ask anyone from south America what to expect from these places and they will tell you the same, obviously not every single one is predisposed but it's the majority socio-economic related...

**Stuttgart88** · 24/06/2014, 10:43 PM

Paul, you have a terrible habit of creating stupid straw men to try and make a point. I didn't relate slums to acts of wanton violence. I related slums to some players lacking the same sporting values that people from relatively privileged backgrounds expect.

Suarez bit Chiellini because he's a scumbag. What's the root cause of Suarez being a scumbag? Who knows?

What does your second paragraph mean, especially the last line? I've read it 5 times over and have no idea whether you're contradicting yourself or not. And what's your sample size of "anyone in South America"?

**DannyInvincible** · 24/06/2014, 10:55 PM

Originally Posted by paul_oshea

Suarez bit chellini because he would do anything to get out of a slum and make it in football? I think not.

I wasn't arguing that at all.

enjoy your theoretical bubble di, ask anyone from south America what to expect from these places and they will tell you the same, obviously not every single one is predisposed but it's the majority socio-economic related...

Which places? South American slums? And predisposed to what exactly? Immoral behaviour (behaviour we don't like, in other words)? Morally-suspect behaviour is not the preserve of the impoverished classes.

**Charlie Darwin** · 24/06/2014, 11:16 PM

Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Paul, you have a terrible habit of creating stupid straw men to try and make a point. I didn't relate slums to acts of wanton violence. I related slums to some players lacking the same sporting values that people from relatively privileged backgrounds expect.

Suarez bit Chiellini because he's a scumbag. What's the root cause of Suarez being a scumbag? Who knows?

What does your second paragraph mean, especially the last line? I've read it 5 times over and have no idea whether you're contradicting yourself or not. And what's your sample size of "anyone in South America"?

Paul knows everyone in South America. All the real South Americans who go to football games and live in poverty.

**CraftyToePoke** · 25/06/2014, 12:20 AM

Originally Posted by Stuttgart88

Nonsense. There was no poverty under communism. You have fallen for the usual western economic propaganda.

I have fallen for nothing. And in any event said post communist. So there.

**osarusan** · 25/06/2014, 1:35 AM

I don't really buy the argument that there is a correlation between the kind of upbringing you had and the kind of sporting behaviour you expect (or is expected of you).

Some players will cheat because it will help them win. They will do it regardless of where they're from. Some players won't. I doubt there will be a greater percentage of those who will coming from disadvantaged childhoods.

As Danny I said, there is a win-at-all-costs attitude amongst loads of sports. Sports which are both more and less accessible to the poor. This attitude leads to some sportspeople taking PEDs, faking blood injuries, paying to have rivals stabbed. If you raise the stakes enough, then some sportspeople are going to go to any lengths to succeed.

In terms of diving, if they get away with it, who cares? Who cares if it costs another team a place in a world cup or other tournament? Who cares what fans of other teams think? The majority of these fans who are so outraged would probably defend a dive by a player from their team just as blindly as those fans they criticize.

Any moral highground that British players or fans might have once had is long gone, if it ever existed, because they've seen how effective and rewarding this kind of behaviour can be, and have embraced it as a part of their footballing culture.