New England Kit Leaked – Looks Like Recycled 66 West Germany Jersey

The new England kit for 2013 was leaked last week and the reviews on Nike’s new design have been pretty dismal.

Nike has maintained their current minimalist style of producing elegant and uncluttered shirts and created a great kit for England, only, it looks exactly like the one West Germany wore in 1966.

In a small photo, the two shirts from different eras, and of course, separate countries in Europe that have a history of disliking each other, are indistinguishable.

That’s pretty embarrassing on Nike’s part, and I guess lazy when you come to think of it.

It’s a big surprise that a company as big as Nike who owns such a large portion of the market share in football kits didn’t spot this earlier. In designing the new shirts, you would think somebody would have taken a look at the evolution of jerseys in previous major tournaments and noticed the resemblance on a strapping young German with giant mutton chops by the name of Franz Beckenbauer.

Considering that the resemblance is with a hated rival, this mishap becomes even more embarrassing for the sporting giants.

If I were Phil Knight I would be throwing things around my office, or more realistically, continue drinking champagne on my yacht out of gold cups in my chair made out of money while I figure out what to do with Tiger Woods.

The away kit isn’t as bad. It’s fashionable and elegant, but it looks like something you would more likely wear while failing miserably at the impossible game of golf, than in a football match.

The third kit is much more attractive, but I don’t know where they get the gold from. Somebody must have been playing around with Windows Paint and figured they had found a winner.

Nike’s new kit marks their first attempt at the English national team since they purchased Umbro in 2007.

Personally, I’ve always liked the jerseys Umbro have produced - my particular favourite being the 1998 World Cup home kit. 

I understand the allure and increased profits the swoosh yields, but maybe Nike should have let their subsidiary keep making their kits. After all, Umbro is an English company that I imagine understands the desires and preferences of their market. One of those preferences being kits that don’t look like the kits of countries they hate.

In fact, I bet there’s a whole file on that somewhere at their headquarters in Manchester, in a big filing cabinet marked ‘common sense’, or maybe labeled, ‘stupid things you shouldn’t do.’ 

Champions League Final - Does Anyone Outside Germany Really Care?

Tonight sees Bayern Munich take on unlikely finalists Borussia Dortmund in the final for the world's most prestigious club competition. Like the majority of the world, I too am disappointed.

I haven't been this disinterested in a Champions League final since Porto met Monaco in 2004. In fact, I'm more excited at the 8-pack of mixed meat hot dogs that awaits me in my fridge for dinner and cost 1 euro at the local supermarket.

Outside of Germany, I imagine most football enthusiasts feel the same.

Both teams field exceptional talent and play an entertaining brand of football, however the final isn't the same if two continental juggernauts don't meet in the end.

In addition, it's not the same if the final is a match that is played twice yearly in the less glamorous Bundesliga. The whole allure of Champion's League is watching two elite teams play a match of extreme importance when they otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to meet each other in competitive play. The only exceptions are if two eternal rivals meet in the final such Barcelona and Madrid, or Manchester United and Liverpool due to their rich history of hating each other.

A final that could just as easily be a German cup matchup will yield as much excitement as the most intense German cup matchup can muster - very little. I don't even know what the German cup is called. That should tell you how awesome the German cup is.

Regardless, I'll still watch the match and eat my cheap but delicious hot dogs with little enthusiasm, unless of course someone runs onto the field with a funny t-shirt or no t-shirt at all; that's always fun.

Arsenal Stagger into Fourth

After Sunday’s 1-0 victory over Newcastle, Arsenal secured the best they could have hoped for this season - a fourth place finish. This gives them the last of the vital Champions League spots and entry into the elite and extremely profitable competition.

This season provided very few glimpses of the Arsenal of old. The moments where they played the elegant, glamorous, and fast moving football that has made them so famous and successful under Arsene Wenger was rarely seen.

Too often, Arsenal fans were demoralizingly privy to spiritless and scared football. They were easily handled by the big boys of England that once were close rivals, and struggled against teams far below their wage bill whom they once dominated and made into spectacles of their superiority.

The supporters are unhappy yet satisfied that there is at least the possibility of continental football in the echelons of Europe’s most prestigious club competition next year.

In addition, Arsene Wenger is quite pleased that he has secured a 16^th straight season in the Champions League, albeit in a clumsy and deteriorated fashion. That hasn’t stopped him however from offering his proverbial press snippets of a desire to improve the team for the upcoming season in order to challenge those at the top for some long awaited silverware.

If the last 7 years has anything to show us, it’s that his words can be rather uninspired. His end of the year address is more of a feeble attempt to maintain the peace among the Gunners faithful and preserve his tall frame against the manager’s chair in one of those cheesy Citroen sponsored seats.

Because of Wenger’s stringent philosophy of financial self-sufficiency and counter culture transfer and wage policy, 4^th place is like winning the league to him now. It feeds his ego and perpetuates the belief that what he does is successful and on his own terms.

At the end of every year, as long as the team has managed to claw its way into the top four, he cleverly ensures the media and fans that he will attempt to improve the squad without offering a definitive commitment.

He speaks in circles, the way any good diplomat does, talking of the ‘need to improve’ and a desire to ‘strengthen the group’, but never promises anything.

Instead, he commends his team’s performance, talks about how much character the players have, and lowers everyone’s expectations for the transfer window by redirecting all blaring inadequacies his squad has, and highlights misleading statistics and how rich oligarchs and sheikhs are abusing the financial side of the game.

After the win at Newcastle, Wenger had this to say:

“Since February 1, we have taken more points than everybody else in the league, and I don’t believe that’s just down to coincidence, but just to the fact that the group has grown. This team has grown through the season.”

“In the last three months, I believe we have been remarkably consistent. We have won every away game, so it is a good springboard for next season, to transfer that belief into the start of next season.”

“…we need to have stability and strengthen our group if possible because there are many clubs out there with a lot of money, so the competition is very hard and there is not as much talent as money today in football.”

First he reminds everyone how well the team has performed after an unmentioned horrific start and drastic slide down the table. Then he reinforces the idea that the team and players he has are indeed quality, right before reminding everyone that there are many rich teams and that players are overpriced these days, thereby giving him an excuse when he doesn’t buy anybody while he sells the years best performers.

However, there is talk of this year being different than the others. There are clear indications that Wenger has a lot of money to play with. The papers say Arsenal will spend big.

And yet, this has all been said before. It was said last year after the sale of Robin Van Persie and it was said the year before that after the sales of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri.

The results were panic buys and miscalculated risks on players that Wenger thought were gems in France’s Ligue 1, Ligue 2, or wherever it is he thinks gems come from. The players he bought were never going to replace the ones he sold.

The fans don’t expect the manager to go out and spend 100 million euros the way Manchester City, Chelsea, Real Madrid, and as of late, Paris St. Germain do every year. They just want quality to be replaced with quality. They want the manager to spend the money he makes from the players he sells.

They don’t want to watch him waste the summer flirting with signings and then returning in late August empty handed and telling the world that all football clubs have gone mad.

In my experience, the one person who says that everyone else is crazy, is usually the one that’s crazy.

People understand that the market is bigger and more congested. There are new variables with endless resources that drive prices up, but that doesn’t mean Arsenal can’t compete for quality names. The last time I checked, according to the best publication that reminds you how poor you are - Forbes, they’re the 4^th richest football club in the world.

The fans don’t want any more rhetoric; they don’t want justifications and lowered expectations for an inadequate squad. They want Wenger to spend the money he has. They want to see the players they have lost, replaced. Simply put, as they have chanted so many times this year, they want their Arsenal back.

Also it wouldn’t be so bad if Arsene looked a little more debonair on the sidelines.  

Jose Mourinho’s Reign at Real is All but Over – What Happened?

After three years in charge of Los Blancos, Jose Mourinho will bid farewell to his tumultuous and inglorious time in Madrid.

In those three years, Mourinho won the league, the Copa del Rey, and the Supercopa. Although three trophies in three seasons would make 98 percent of professional football managers and their supporters ecstatic, Mourinho’s haul with Real will be remembered as an underachievement.

When he first arrived to arguably the most popular club in the world in 2010, the expectations were very high. He was coming off a monumental treble winning season with Inter. In Spain, he was expected to equal the feat. His primary obligations were to secure Madrid their first Champions League since 2002, and knock the terrorizing and dominant Barcelona off the top of the league.  

In his three years with Real, Jose Mourinho came close to winning Europe, but never succeeded. He beat Barcelona to the domestic title in 2011, but lost out to them the other two years. Fundamentally, his time at the Bernabeu has left ‘The Special One’ with his smallest trophy haul at any time in his career since his humble beginnings at Leiria and Benfica in Portugal’s Primeira Divisão. His tenure at Real however, will not be remembered for the lack of silverware. It will be remembered for his inability to definitively trump Barcelona at home and abroad, for his erratic behaviour, and the in-house fighting with administration and players.

When Jose Mourinho arrived in Madrid, he was expected to eclipse Barcelona’s dominance domestically and in Europe. He was given a squad with deep talent and a fair amount of money to buy the supplementary players he felt would be able to accomplish this deed. In the subsequent season in 2010-2011, Mournho’s Real Madrid finished a disappointing second place to Pep Guardiola’s Barca. The failure to win the league in his first season as Madrid boss was magnified by a humiliating 5-0 defeat in the Camp Nou.

Mourinho was only able to beat Barca to the Spanish crown in only one of his three seasons on the Castillan side of the Iberian peninsula. The other two seasons he has resided in Barcelona’s shadow. Even though Real has bettered Barcelona this year in head to head matchups, including an impressive victory in the Camp Nou, Barca has captured their domestic title with ease, leaving Mourinho trophy-less for the first time since his last season with Chelsea, which he never finished due to unresolvable differences with Roman Abramovich.

To add to Mourinho’s inability to perform and win at the level he has established for himself, his time in the Spanish capital has been marred with petty behaviour and glimpses of a shallow, weak man.

Real Madrid is a club that prides itself on its elitism and elegance. It is the world’s richest team and Spain’s most successful club. It is self-defined as a gentleman’s organization that enjoys its status as a quiet symbol of Spanish federalism. The club demands that all personnel respect their values and self-anointed characteristics by upholding the sophistication of the club’s identity, personified through their emblematic white kits.

It is funny then that Real Madrid would decide to invest so heavily in Jose Mourinho, a manager who is mired in constant controversy, psychological mind games, and pretty much any tactic that garners him an edge in competition.

Real Madrid are the Japanese of football; respectful, proud, elegant, determined, and always a world power.

Jose Mourinho on the other hand is quite different. He is arrogant, witty, temperamental, strategizing, and a winner at all costs.

It is only natural that there would be conflicts between the desired identity of the club and Mourinho’s real bahaviour. On several occasions, Mourinho has done things that have made the Madrid board regret their decision, and implore their Public Relations team to right the image they want projected to the rest of the world. 

Part of Jose Mourinho’s regiment is to distract the attention from his players in the media, allowing them to properly focus and train for the games. He provides news sources with stories that focus on his wild quotes and perspectives, thereby deflecting any distractions from players. This is a well noted tactic of his.

If that were it, I believe Mourinho’s relationship with the Real hierarchy and its supporters would not be so strained, however the Portuguese manager displayed other behaviours and moments of poor judgment that would slowly deplete his adoration from fans and backing from his superiors.

He can be quite calm at times, however, like all humans, emotion could get the best of Jose, and naturally, this conflicts with Madrid’s desired image as a callous weakness not fit for a club and institution of their stature.

Throughout Mourinho’s career, he has been seen to emphatically celebrate vital goals and victories with long runs along the sideline, extravagant slides on his knees, and leaps into his players arms as if he had provided the assist, usually enraging the opposition and their supporters in the process. The rambunctious fans at Chelsea loved this. In Madrid, it was considered embarrassing.

His most embarrassing moments that caught the ire of the Madrid administration and faithful was his constant fighting with Pep Guardiola and Barcelona which hit its climax when Jose Mourinho poked the then Barca assistant, Tito Vilanova, in the eye.

Mourinho’s constant bickering with Guardiola through the media was perceived contradictory to Madrid’s expected behaviour. They want a diplomat, yet in Jose Mourinho they had an emotional man with an inflated ego who used the media to his advantage and as a platform to rile his opponents and express himself. Although many enjoy his repartee with the media, he did also physically attack an opposing coach in a petty and childish manner. It was a stupid thing to do; a revelation he expressed shortly before apologizing, however it was done and captured on camera and unfortunately may be the iconic image that resonates in his time with Real. If he isn’t remembered for that, then he will be for his highly publicized differences with the team’s biggest stars.

The latest knock on Jose Mourinho’s short dance with Real Madrid has been his much debated and widely broadcasted disputes with two of the club’s longest serving and most recognizable icons, goalkeeper Iker Casillas and defender, Sergio Ramos.

Although the players have not publically come out and stated their differences with their manager, there have been loud whispers throughout the media of their disenchantment with Mourinho.

The trouble stems from their being dropped out of the starting eleven at various points throughout the season. Mourinho believes in a squad built on competition. He has no favourites. He has said that he does not have a number one at any position. His number one, is whichever player starts the game. If you are in form and playing well, you play; if you are not, you sit.  

As two of Madrid’s Spanish icons and international heralds, Ramos and Casillas believed they deserve more respect and loyalty from their manager. The fans felt the same. Casillas is arguably the most respected Madrid player and the most coveted keeper in their history. The club and their supporters feel he is the best keeper in the world. Mourinho felt otherwise.

He is a manager who puts his best and most strategically superior team on the pitch each game. An error is never left unpunished and a poor performance is never forgotten without comment. Everyone is accountable and held to the same expectations.

Ramos and Casillas maybe feel exceptions should be made. They are international stars and domestic heroes. They are Madridistas who proudly personify Real’s personal philosophy. They are decorated elite athletes who a large public adores and with that, they have inflated egos and a sense of entitlement that is bolstered by those in the press box and the seats. With the supporters and the board on their side, Mourinho has been left looking like the petty villain, reduced to defend himself with the Real Madrid president in a clash of egos, yet another personal battle of his within the Real ranks.

Florentino Perez is one of Spain’s richest and most respected businessmen worth up to $2 billion. He is also the president of Real Madrid.

In the last three years, Mourinho and Perez have had to continually defend their relationship. Reports have always defined their interactions as tense and unnatural. In response, they have repeatedly attempted to reassure the public that their relationship was extremely professional, mutually respectful, and constructive. Only the naïve could believe their empty words.

Perez and Mourinho are two very public men with the egos that come with their fame, fighting for a limited power desperately desired by both men.

Mourinho wants total control of his football team. He wants to decide which players are bought, which players are sold, and who plays.

After internal conflicts about player recruitment, sales, and purchases, this authority was awarded to Mourinho, limiting Perez’s voice and power, however after his disappointing run in Europe and Spain, and the unhappy players causing dissent in the Bernabeu, it seems both Perez and Mourinho are happy to part ways, and end a relationship that was doomed before it even started.

Mourinho’s time at Real did not provide the rewards most anticipated, however it did provide the controversy, sound bites, and provocative news all expected.

His poor form in his latest season, perceived unbefitting behaviour on the side, and unrest with the board, players, and their supporters, has left the Portuguese manager pondering what’s next.

As a man that never disappoints, wherever it is, I look forward to it.