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Posts Tagged ‘James Richardson’

In a line-up that’s every bit as unsurprising as the top four in the Premier League, James Richardson is joined in the pod by Barry Glendenning and Sean Ingle in another rip-roaring edition of Football Weekly.

The pod squad analyse Chelsea’s demolition of Arsenal, Liverpool’s bruising battle with Everton, and Tottenham Hotspur’s snoozefest with Aston Villa and ask: why are we getting another dose of the same old same old?

Also in the show – and lest we be accussed of Big Four-centricity – we discuss Hull City’s recent revival now that Phil Brown ditched the earpiece and the goatee.

Plus, we ponder whether Fabio Capello’s done the right thing in stripping John Terry of the England captaincy. And we get dewy-eyed about those Brat Pack movies of the 1980s.

Finally, our favourite Teuton Raphael Honigstein brings us news of a rift in the German national team and the latest from the Bundesliga; Sid Lowe brings us up to date with Spain’s La Liga; and Jimbo tells us about Lazio’s mounting woes in Serie A.

Have a listen and post your thoughts on the blog below. We’re also on iTunes, Facebook, and Twitter, and if you like this type of juvenile humour, get your daily dose with our tea-timely email, The Fiver.

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It’s a mix of football, fisticuffs, and fidelity on the latest Football Weekly.

James Richardson’s joined in the pod by Kevin McCarra, Barney Ronay and Fernando Duarte.

We kick off by discussing all the weekend’s action from the Premier League. Are Manchester City now starting to show the mettle required to finish fourth after they burst Chelsea’s bubble? Plus, who’s the angriest player in the league – James Beattie or Bobby Zamora? And when will Rafa Benítez decide the time is right for Alberto Aquilani to finally play for Liverpool?

Next, Sid Lowe tells us about the Cristiano Ronaldo show after the world’s most expensive player preened, missed a penalty and got sent off in Real Madrid’s 4-2 win against Almería.

Finally, we analyse the World Cup draw – make sure you watch our special video on this too by the way – and get carried away about the dramatic conclusion to the Brazilian league season.

There’s even an appearance from blogger villasupportgroup (that’s Richard Whittall to his family and friends).

Have a listen and post you thoughts on the blog below, or find us on Facebook and Twitter. Be nice to your own kind…

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In a special video, filmed live at the Emirates Stadium in association with Enjoy England, Football Weekly regulars James Richardson, Barry Glendenning and Kevin McCarra are joined by David Pleat – and a vuvuzela – to analyse the World Cup draw

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Click refresh to update or turn the automatic update feature on. Email your thoughts about tonight’s draw from South Africa to Barney.Ronay@guardian.co.uk and follow in real time the reaction of fans across the globe

4.15pm: Barney will be along shortly, but here’s what’s coming up later today on guardian.co.uk/sport:

* Video – We’ll have all the reaction from South Africa from 8pm
* Blogs – Our writers, including Kevin McCarra and Richard Williams, will comment on the draw within an hour of it finishing
* Print the draw – Download and print a pdf of the full draw and chart England’s possible route to the finals (OK, quarter-finals)
* Interactive guide – Get the lowdown on all 32 nations and the World Cup venues with our fantastic multimedia application
* Football Weekly: video – James Richardson, David Pleat, Kevin McCarra and Barry Glendenning chew over the main talking points (this is being recorded tonight and will be on guardian.co.uk/football tomorrow morning)

Guardian fans’ network This from guardian.co.uk sports editor Sean Ingle. “As you will have noticed, Barney’s minute-by-minute commentary is accompanied tonight by a Scribble Live box showing instant reaction from supporters across the globe to the World Cup draw. Our hope is that this new Guardian fans’ network will provide added depth, insight and analysis to tonight’s mbm coverage. So if England draw Slovakia, for instance, readers will know what Slovakian TV is saying about the draw, which Slovakian players that will be dangers next June and anything else worth detailing. Here’s hoping you like it.”

Preamble: Hello everyone and welcome to our coverage of the 2010 World Cup draw. Fifa’s shebang – starring Oscar-winning actor Charlize Theron and colourful Fifa suit, Jérôme Valcke and featuring guest slots from Sepp Blatter and David Beckham – gets underway at 5pm, with the draw itself starting at 6pm.

How the draw works The 32 teams are split into eight groups of four, but – unsurprisingly – it won’t be as simple as Ms Theron drawing a team from each pot. Some groups may need to be skipped in order to avoid confederation clashes within them. This will be achieved specifically by placing the first two African teams drawn from pot three into the groups containing Brazil and Argentina.

Pot 1: South Africa, Brazil, Spain, Holland, Italy, Germany, Argentina, England.
Pot 2: Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Mexico, Honduras.
Pot 3: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay.
Pot 4: France, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia.

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James Richardson is joined by Sean Ingle, Paolo Bandini, and Jonathan Wilson, and there’s a distinctly international flavour to the latest Football Weekly.

First up, Fernando Duarte reports from the mountains of Oman to look back on the clash between World Cup favourites Brazil and a depleted England. What lessons, if any, will Dunga and Fabio Capello have learnt from this encounter?

We also look ahead to the second leg of Ireland’s World Cup play-off with France, and the other battles in the quest to get to South Africa – not all of them as dramatic as Algeria’s fiery tussle with Egypt.

Finally, we hear from our man in Wellington, Colin Peacock, who tells us about the joy in New Zealand. After 28 years, the All Whites have made it to the grandest football stage after beating Bahrain – but will there be a team worse than this collection of journeymen (and Ryan Nelsen) at the tournament?

Post your sheep-related puns on the blog below, or find us on Facebook and Twitter. And while you’re messing about on the internet, have a look here for your chance to meet the Football Weekly crew – and David Pleat – in the flesh at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.

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Barry Glendenning, Kevin McCarra and Sean Ingle join host James Richardson in podland for a look back over the week’s international football action.

As England round off Group Six with a thoroughly unconvincing display against Belarus, the pod discuss what we have learned from their last two games and assess their chances in the finals.

Argentina scraped through after a narrow win in Uruguay which prompted an extraordinary press conference from Diego Maradona. Marcela Mora y Araujo calls in from Montevideo with the details.

Sid Lowe has all the Spanish news, including another fantastic performance from a much changed Spain side against Bosnia, and why he thinks Robhino will join Barcelona in January.

It’s back to league action at the weekend and the pod preview Sunderland v Liverpool, the Cotton Mill derby and Juventus v Fiorentina amongst others.

Post your comments below and find us on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes.

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In the latest Football Weekly, internet sensation James Richardson is joined by Sean Ingle, Barry Glendenning and Jonathan Wilson to look back on – let’s be honest – a surprisingly dramatic weekend of World Cup qualifiers.

We kick off with England’s defeat in Ukraine. Is it time to bed in an alternative to Rio Ferdinand at the back? Did David James do enough to cement his position as the country’s top goalkeeper? And who’ll lead the line against Belarus in the absence of Wayne Rooney?

The pod debate the Republic of Ireland’s 2-2 draw with Italy. The world champions are through, but who will Ireland face in the play-offs?

Beyond Europe, the pod discuss how Argentina almost drew against Peru, the worst team in South America. Now Diego Maradona’s team need a draw in Uruguay to reach South Africa – which could have dire consequences for England.

Finally, the pod look at Sir Alex Ferguson’s non-denial denial in his spat with referee Alan Wiley, and ask is the FA’s fit and proper test even easier to pass than your cycling proficiency?

Post your comments below and find us on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes.

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The England game on the web was a bit of a shambles. And who invited Sven?

There’s one of those Carlsberg adverts – you know, they don’t do blah blah blah, but if they did, etc – with a bunch of lads having a beer and a Chinese takeaway. The food is delicious, there are gorgeous ladies serving it, the chopsticks have mini knives and forks at the end to make using them easier. And then, as if it wasn’t perfect enough, one of the waitresses pulls aside a panel to reveal a giant plasma screen and puts the match on. It’s how watching a game should be – footy on a huge screen, mates, beer. Life, for the average lad, couldn’t be any more perfect.

And it’s pretty much the opposite of what’s going on here. I’m watching Ukraine v England (Saturday) on my own, on my little laptop, at www.ukrainevengland.com. The internet’s the only place it’s on. I’ve got no mates round, no giant plasma. I expect there is a wire I could use to connect my computer to the telly, but I don’t have that wire. And to be honest I’m not sure the picture could cope with being blown up much more – it seems a bit jerky, like the whole team is doing the Peter Crouch robot dance, but maybe that’s because I went for the cheapest broadband option.

Anyway, this is probably the future, so we may as well get used to it. James Richardson, our host, says it’s one of the most eagerly awaited England transmissions in a very long time.

With James in the studio is Sven-Goran Eriksson, looking a bit creepy dressed all in black. Sven says Gerrard with a hard G; you’d think he’d have learned how to pronounce the players’ names after all those years in charge. And he talks about jello cards, but I like that – it must be hard for the referee to look authoritative brandishing a jello card, with it wobbling around all over the place.

Match commentators are Tony Jones and David Pleat, but we never see them. Are they even there in Ukraine? There’s no wander around the streets of Dnipropetrovsk for a little local colour before the game. Maybe they’re watching it on the internet, too. That would explain why it takes them such a long time to notice that Steven Gerrard with a soft G has been substituted at half time. And the John Motson-style mix-up over whether it’s Glen Johnson or Ashley Cole who deflects the ball into the net for the Ukraine goal. Maybe this whole game only exists in cyberspace.

There’s an amateurish and slightly shambolic feel about this coverage, wherever they are. In the cyber studio, someone’s left their phone on and gets a text. Sven, was it yours, one of your lady friends, perhaps? Sven hasn’t really got the hang of being a pundit. If he was still the manager, would he have Emile Heskey or Carlton Cole? Hmm, difficult, he says. Would Robert Green have made the save David James made? Maybe, you never know. Has a match ever been called off because of flares thrown on to the pitch? He doesn’t know that either. No, Sven, that’s not how it works – you’ve got to know stuff, and have opinions, that’s how it works. And pronounce people’s names properly, and switch your bloody phone off.

James Richardson does a couple of puns to liven things up. We’ll be hoping to see a lot more of the right kind of flair after the break, he says. Ukraine is a chip off the old Soviet bloc. He likes a play on words, does James.

On my screen, there are two white spaces where the team lineups should be. They’ll be updated on match day, it says above. But this is match day, and still no players’ names. Maybe Tony and David are in charge of that and they haven’t figured out who’s playing.

There are no interviews after the game, just a little more of Sven not knowing very much, or expressing any opinions. I’m getting less and less impressed with this internet TV. Advertisers don’t seem to be overly impressed either. There’s an ad for Bet365, and npower, and Mars is proud to be behind the England team – that’s it, just those three, repeated several times. No big expensive Nike ads, or Adidas. Or Carlsberg. Oh for a beer, a big screen and a few mates right now, and a bit of professionalism. Carlsberg don’t do live internet streaming of international football matches, but if they did they’d probably be a bit better than this.

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My normal email has been broken by some penpushing eejit, so slowemail.farce@googlemail.com will have to do

4.50pm: OK, we’re under way. And it’s just like the proper telly, this. Cheap set with eye-bleeding backdrop? CHECK. Tedious montage of scrappy goals set to unnecessarily loud popular music? CHECK. AC Jimbo trousering another cheque? CHECK. “Welcome to one of the most eagerly awaited England transmissions in years,” says The Internet’s James Richardson with a twinkle in his eye. Transmissions? He’s keeping it old-school here. How’s he going to archly refer to this programme next? A telecast?

Michael Carrick is given his first appearance in this campaign, Gareth Barry being told to do one as a result: Green, Johnson, A Cole, Gerrard, Ferdinand, Terry, Lennon, Lampard, Heskey, Rooney, Carrick.
Subs: James, Bridge, Upson, Barry, Milner, C Cole, Agbonlahor.

“The” Ukraine: Pyatov, Kucher, Kobin, Rakitskiy, Khacheridi, Gai, Tymoschuk, Nazarenko, Rotan, Shevchenko, Milevskiy.
Subs: Shovkovskiy, Yarmolenko, Gusev, Voronin, Seleznyov, Shevchuk, Mykhalyk.

Anything the BBC could do in 1937, we can do better in 2009:

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So does this represent progress? No. No it doesn’t. Where’s OUR Imagination in Wood-Carvings? OUR “Old Kentucky”? OUR “Fancy That!”?

THE INTERNET (Vision: 6.67 Metres; Sound: 7.23 Metres)
5.15: Ukraine v England

October 10 2009, and more broadcasting history is about to be made, with the first England game streamed exclusively live on the internet. Today’s listings…

TELEVISION (Vision: 6.67 Metres; Sound: 7.23 Metres)
11.0 – 12.0: Film for Demonstration Purposes
3.0: “Fancy That!”
3.30: British Movietonews
3.40: Football at the Arsenal
3.55-4.0: Cartoon Film, “Wayward Canary”
9.0: Hutch (Leslie Hutchinson)
9.10: Imagination in Wood-Carvings by Polly Hill Clarke
9.20: Gaumont-British News.
9.30-10.0: “Old Kentucky.”

September 16 1937, and BBC staff, sick to the rear pegs of transmitting hour upon hour of light operas, experimental plays and Lord Reith’s union-bashing diatribes, decide to do something for the common punter instead. Rolling a length of Special Wire down the hill from the BBC’s Ally Pally HQ to the Arsenal Stadium in nearby Highbury, they transmit footage of Arsenal’s reserve side kicking a ball around in training with some members of the first team. Not for the last time in its existence, the Corporation was laying itself open to the charge of producing programmes only of interest to 17 people in the Islington area – but no matter, because broadcasting history had been made: the world’s first-ever live televised football match! The day’s listings in full, as reported by the Manchester Guardian…

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• World Cup qualifier also available in Odeon cinemas
• Games must only be sold free-to-air, says fans’ spokesman

The England supporters’ spokesman Mark Perryman has criticised the decision to screen England’s forthcoming World Cup qualifier in Ukraine solely on the internet and has called on the sport’s governing bodies to prevent high-profile matches being forced away from traditional viewing platforms.

Kentaro, the international football agency which was hired by the Ukrainian Football Federation to sell the TV rights for Saturday’s match, has acted following the collapse of Setanta, which held the rights to all of England’s away qualifiers prior to entering administration this year.

No mainstream broadcaster in the UK met the Ukrainian federation’s asking price to screen the match from Dnipro, leading Kentaro to appoint the digital sport specialist Perform to stream the match online

“I find it outrageous,” said Perryman. “Fifa and Uefa should make it a condition of entry to World Cup and European Championship qualifying campaigns that games must be sold only free-to-air, both to the home market and the away market. Where England fans are being sold short is not in this instance by their own FA, but by foreign FAs selling the game to the highest bidder, and in this instance it’s an internet outfit.

“Arguably Ukraine away was the second-toughest of the away games of the campaign and they certainly didn’t expect us to beat Croatia 5‑1 in the preceding game and go through automatically.

“At 5.15 on a Saturday night most of the England fans I know will not want to be sitting in front of a computer, even for an England game. A computer screen isn’t really something you can sit around on the sofa with your family and mates, so I think the viewing figures are going to be low.”

Last year, Perform stepped in when TV deals did not materialise for Uefa Cup matches featuring Manchester City and Tottenham, streaming the games live on a pay-per-view basis through the clubs’ respective official websites.

James Richardson will present the live coverage of Saturday’s game on ukraineVengland.com, alongside the former England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, while David Pleat will be part of the commentary team.

While the presentation of the match promises to be professionally handled, Perryman warned that the increasing migration of sports to pay-TV and satellite platforms had damaged viewing figures, and fears the impact of extending that migration to the internet.

“There’s certain businessmen concerned with world football who want us to pay for every game we can watch,” he said. “There are lots of fans who don’t want that to be the future. Every single sport that is transferred to pay-per-view or satellite, or this kind of development, narrows the audience, and that cannot be good for the future of the game.”

Kentaro’s managing director Peter Silverstone insists the deal represents a “natural progression” for the industry. “The distinction between media is becoming ever-increasingly blurred, and your television screen is becoming your internet screen as well,” he said. “Everyone in the UK is watching iPlayer, YouTube etc, we are watching an inordinate amount of content on the internet – 92% of the UK public have a broadband connection over two megabytes.

“People are also watching the television while being on the internet, Twittering etc, so we see this as a natural progression. I think in six months’ time to a year, this conversation, this hype, will be moot, because we are ever-increasingly watching content on the internet, and an England match may be the first but it won’t be the last.”

Individual subscriptions for Saturday’s match are limited to one million and prices will rise on an incremental scale from £4.99 for those who sign up before Thursday to £11.99 for those who subscribe on the day.

The subscription offer is not available on a commercial basis, meaning pubs will be unable to show the match live. “You can watch in cinemas; we have a deal with the Odeon cinema group across the UK,” added Silverstone. “So the communal element for families and friends to watch the game together will be at the cinema.”

Meanwhile, the English FA has reiterated the decision to broadcast the match online was taken solely at the discretion of its Ukrainian counterparts.

“The FA has had no authority over the decision to broadcast this match exclusively live on the internet,” the FA director of communications Adrian Bevington said in a statement. “It is the host nation and their commercial agents who have the authority to sell the rights for away fixtures.”

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