Motty was one of the voices calling matches when I first moved to the UK and fell in love with the beautiful game. R.I.P.
As much as I enjoy watching football on TV, there’s just something about listening to it on the radio especially when you have a supremely talented commentator such as Motty at the helm. I suppose I’ll always take the TV over the radio when I have a choice, but I don’t feel hard done by if I have to listen to the game on the radio.
Most in America knew him from the FIFA video games. Back in the 90s and 00s he'd also be the voice of many tournaments such as the European Championships. Absolute legend.
I remember Dickie Davies hosting a live Sat afternoon sports round up saying: "....... and now for some cock sucker!"
Back when there was only one or two matches per week on Fox Sports World, I listened to Steve Hunter call the matches on the official site. It was free. Seems weird now.
A guy on the mens league team would bring a little radio and we'd listen to the matches on that from the field. Crazy to think that is how we had to consume matches 15 years ago.
Roma boss Jose Mourinho was sent off in his side's Serie A defeat at Cremonese, his third red card of the season. Cremonese claimed their first win of the season with a late Daniel Ciofani penalty securing a 2-1 win. Mourinho, 60, was sent off two minutes into the second half but said he was provoked by the fourth official. "I'm emotional but not crazy. For the first time in my career a referee has spoken to me in an unjustifiable way," said the former Chelsea manager. "Unfortunately, the fourth official doesn't have the honesty to say what he said to me, how he said it and the way he treated me, which obviously triggered my reaction," said Mourinho after a defeat that left Roma fifth in Serie A. "I don't want to get into the fact that he's from Turin, that we have to play Juventus and he wants me off the touchline. I don't want to get into that. I want to get into the fact that for the first time in my career, a referee, and in this case a fourth official, spoke to me in an unacceptable way." ... no Jose, you obviously don't want to get into that at all.
today's sportswashing update ... https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...league-newcastle-owners-us-court-case-amnesty Premier League clubs have reacted with anger to the description in a US court document of the Newcastle chairman, Yasir al-Rumayyan, as “a sitting minister of the Saudi government”. The development has prompted calls from Amnesty for the league to re-examine the assurances given by Newcastle’s owners that the Saudi state would not have control of the club. The Guardian understands that the clubs dismayed by the situation are in no mood to let the matter lie. The document filed this week has raised fresh questions about the level of separation between the Saudi state and the Public Investment Fund (PIF), whose governor is Rumayyan. A brief filed in a court case involving the PGA Tour and LIV Golf describes the PIF as “a sovereign instrumentality of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and Rumayyan as “a sitting minister of the Saudi government”. Now the human rights group Amnesty International is calling on the league to ask new questions of Newcastle’s owners. “It was always stretching credulity to breaking point to imagine that the Saudi state wasn’t directing the buyout of Newcastle with the ultimate aim of using the club as a component in its wider sportswashing efforts,” Peter Frankental, Amnesty UK’s economic affairs director, said. “There’s an unmistakable irony in the sovereign wealth fund declaration emerging in a dispute about another arm of Saudi Arabia’s growing sports empire, but the simple fact is that Saudi sportswashing is affecting numerous sports and governing bodies need to respond to it far more effectively. “The Premier League will surely need to re-examine the assurances made about the non-involvement of the Saudi authorities in the Newcastle deal, not least as there’s still a Qatari bid for Manchester United currently on the table.”
and today's The PL Has No Moral Center news .... Having owned up to multiple breaches of Football Association betting rules, the Brentford striker Ivan Toney faces a lengthy ban. The episode heralds a sad fall from grace for the talented 26-year-old, who might have made England’s World Cup squad had the shadow of the Football Association’s charges not been hanging over him. ------------------------ The Big Step, a campaign group dedicated to removing gambling adverts from football, scented the whiff of hypocrisy neatly, posting a quartet of photos on Twitter. They show Toney, twice, proudly holding a SkyBet player of the month award, Toney in Brentford’s strip, emblazoned with the logo of Hollywood Bets, and Toney’s chest serving as a billboard for the Asian betting firm Fun88, during a stint at Newcastle. If Toney betting on football matches looks like a conflict of interest, what of the fact that bookmakers and gambling entrepreneurs own clubs outright? Stoke are owned by the Coates family via their Bet365 empire, while the Brighton chairman, Tony Bloom, built his fortune on the back of gambling businesses, including his specialist sports betting advice firm Starlizard. Meanwhile, one of Bloom’s former employees, Matthew Benham, developed statistical models to make smart sports bets and owns the gambling stats firm Smartodds and betting exchange Matchbook. As the Brentford owner he may now have to use his gambling riches to fund a stand-in for Toney.
Is the Saudi league that CRonaldo joined similar to the LIV Golf group that is disrupting the PGA Tour?
oh ffs .... now we have a Knight of the Realm giving cover to the sportswashers .... https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/64831408 Nation state funding of football clubs is "philosophically" a better fit than private equity funds, says ex-Liverpool chairman Sir Martin Broughton. Bidders for Manchester United are still waiting to be told whether the Glazer family are willing to sell the club. Billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe and a Qatari consortium have made offers, while involvement from private equity funds has also been suggested. Broughton said: "Private equity is an unsuitable owner of sports' teams."
Nottingham Forest are making an official complaint to the Professional Game Match Officials Board [PGMOL] after growing increasingly frustrated with poor refereeing this season. Forest are putting together a detailed document listing the blunders from match officials, in response to another chastening experience in Sunday’s 2-2 draw with Everton. Steve Cooper, the Forest head coach, was furious with the performance of referee John Brooks, who is based in Melton Mowbray, and said his display needed to be reviewed by PGMOL chiefs.
In tonight's Concacaf Champion's League match between Alianza (El Salvador) and Philadelphia Union a dog ran onto the pitch and attacked the ball prior to a restart. That's a first for me.
Holding another winter World Cup is unacceptable without major changes to how the tournament is arranged, world players' union Fifpro has said. The union has published a report on how the Qatar World Cup, held in November and December, affected player workload. Post-tournament recovery time was cut from 37 days to eight to reduce disruption to Europe's club calendar. A winter World Cup "should not be a viable option for anybody", said Fifpro general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann. A future World Cup could be staged in December, as Saudi Arabia is considering a bid to be the 2030 host, while Portugal and Spain could also hold a winter tournament. Fifa president Gianni Infantino said after the finals in Qatar that the winter scheduling had led to better matches. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/64893408
christ knows. but won't stop it getting repeated as a possibility a million times. the sooner FIFA get rid of Infantino the better.
World referees' chief Pierluigi Collina says Premier League players will stop time-wasting when more accurate amounts of added time are applied. Football's international rule-making body Ifab has announced plans to increase the 'effective time' being played during matches. "The effective time at Aston Villa v Brentford was 43 minutes," said Collina who chairs Fifa's referees' committee. "I don't think someone wants to pay to watch a match that lasts 43 minutes." Italian former World Cup referee Collina has been given figures that show Premier League matches have an effective time of 54.49 minutes, while it is even lower in the Scottish Premier League at 50.42 minutes. Champions League matches have an effective time of 58.07 minutes, said Collina. Ifab has decided the actual amount of time taken in five key areas - substitutions, player injuries, penalties and red cards, VAR and goal celebrations - should be used when calculating overall stoppage time rather than an estimate. It is accepted this would initially mean the amount of stoppage time increasing, although it is felt this would reduce once players realised the time they were taking was just being added. "We have seen implementing VAR has reduced simulation. How many cards are now given for simulation? Very little because the players know it is meaningless to try," said 63-year-old Collina, who refereed the 2002 World Cup final. "I am convinced time wasting will be reduced when players know it is meaningless to waste time because that time is compensated." "Last weekend in the Premier League, there were 10 matches," Collina said. "Four had additional time of 10 minutes or more and some of the others didn't have the accurate amount, probably because they had scores of 7-0 and 4-0. "In the game at Liverpool, there was four minutes added, one in the first half and three in the second. But there were six goals in the second-half. Maybe at some point in the future we will have a rule which says if the difference between the two sides is big the additional time is not to be given. But this would be in the laws of the game. "Now it is common sense but it is common sense when it doesn't affect someone. I can understand that showing the right amount of time when it is 7-0 is difficult to understand. "But if the regulations say the entire goal difference can make a difference in the ranking at the end of a competition, one goal scored or not can make a difference."