Counterpoint: Why You Should Definitely Boo Cesc Fabregas

Yesterday, Juan wrote a post on why you should boo Cesc Fabregas.  Today, I'd like to take issue with that post and explain why you should absolutely, definitely boo Cesc Fabregas.

1. He's an extremely good player.  Probably one of the five best central midfielders in the world.  People who aren't Arsenal fans never really understood this completely.  The subject of Fabregas would come up with fans of other teams, and I would repeatedly insist: "no, he is a truly special world-class player," and then they'd say "hmm sure alright" and then add something nonsensical about Lampard or, even worse, Michael Carrick, and I'd shake my head and say: "no, you don't understand," and then we'd get frustrated with each other.  (And I mean no disrespect to Lampard, who was brilliant and still is sometimes brilliant, especially when he scores against Chelsea because that ish is hilarious.)

2. He wears a blue shirt when he plays home games.

3. He does not wear a red and white shirt when he plays home games.

4. He intentionally passes the ball to this old man who was recently spotted on a bus, and the old man then uses his devil magic skills to magic the ball into the other team's goal.  (Sometimes the other team is wearing red and white.)

5. He was so good and he was the captain and then he said he wanted to go home and he said that it was all he ever wanted and he had Barca DNA and Pepe Reina put that shirt on him and then he went home and OK that's fine it's just like Henry but then three years later he is not at home but instead playing for a terrible man who is completely without honor and class and who would definitely, definitely lose to Arsene Wenger in a fistfight and he is being paid with money that is dripping with the sweat and blood of the Russian people who were swindled and I hate him and I love him and I hate him

(deep breath)

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Why You Should Boo Cesc Fabregas

It's been over 3 years since Cesc Fabregas played his last game for Arsenal; it was a 2-1 loss to Bolton.  He left for his hometown of Barcelona, where, before anyone cared where he played soccer, he was just a kid.  In Northeast Spain, nothing is given.  Everything is earned.  Or something like that.

He wanted to win we were told.
But he won't play! We responded (correctly).
He'll fit in perfectly they said.
But where exactly? We exclaimed (correctly).
The weather, the tabloids, the women, the food, the culture - they're are all better in Spain!
But... but...yeah ok fine.

In between watching perhaps the best team I will see in my lifetime I watched him on the bench, desperate for a frown, a twitch, something that I could point to.  Something that would let me know that maybe he regretted his decision.  That's all I really wanted.

I know, I thought, he won't play in El Clasico, and that's when I can move on.  He came on in the 80th minute, Barcelona lost 2-1.

But then he started playing, and then he scored a few goals, and then they won the league, and then they won everything.  He looked happy.  Ouch.

Time will fix this, and it did.  I was happy for him.  He was right, Arsenal was a sinking ship.  He'll always be a gooner.

Until he wasn't.

What in the holy christ fuck is he doing back in England and with goddamn Chelsea with goddamn Mourinho and Drogba, and, jesus!  And don't come at me with this, "Arsenal didn't want him" bullshit.  First of all Arsenal have a right to pass on him, I'm glad they did (no I'm not), and that's not what happened anyway.  If he's capable of forcing himself onto Barcelona, and he'll take a pay cut to do it, and he'll swim the Mediterranean just to get there, then if he really wanted to come back he would have.  It wasn't about competitiveness when he left because athletes in their prime want to contribute - he was the captain of a Champions League team in Englad at 24!  His first games were with an Arsenal team that went undefeated in the league!  It turns out we were right, he was wrong.
And that's why you should boo him.  Because with this it's not often you're right, but this time you were.
So let him cross it to an offside John Terry, which of course won't be flagged, of course, it's Chelsea.  And let him hug all up on Willian, and Terry, and let Mourinho keep trolling Arsenal fans since he's still mad that Pellegrini trolled him with Lampard earlier in the year - thanks for that by the way - and hopefully Fabs has some advice for Costa and his Van-Persie-hamstrings.  To hell with it all.
BOOOOOOOOOO.

Manchester United Are Must-See TV

One season of football can really change the way you feel about a club.  As long as I've been watching, Manchester United have been Public Enemy No. 1.  A team to be hated and feared.  Respected and admired, certainly.  But mostly hated and feared.  And ever since Cristiano Ronaldo left, United have never been at the top of my non-Arsenal soccer viewing.  Even when they were putting out title-winning sides, I took no particular enjoyment in watching them play.

Until now, that is.  United's utter ineptitude last season laid the groundwork by removing most of the fear and loathing and replacing it with grateful, long-awaited feelings of schadenfreude.  And this season, they are probably the most entertaining side for a neutral viewer.  Their attacking options are like something that was dreamed up by Roman Abramovich after a few lines of fine Colombian (not talking about Falcao) a few years ago, who then shook his head and laughed at his own silliness.  Meanwhile, their defense is playing like someone told them that the FA has changed the offside rule to five yards behind the last man.  And that the ball is made of hot lava.  Basically, it means that the viewer is guaranteed a minimum of four goals per game, and it's not entirely clear which side is going to score them.

Anyway, if this doesn't convince you, watch and admire at Rafael screaming in desperation at Saido Berahino as he peels away, trying to put him off scoring the way your annoying friend yells right before your shot in a game of H-O-R-S-E.  (Note: it didn't work.  At all.)  Good stuff.

Frustration

I started writing this post when Arsenal were 2-1 down to Hull. The game finished 2-2 so Huzzah, I guess.

I don’t know what makes a great soccer team great.  I mean, I have a rudimentary understanding of what is required, and I can certainly recognize greatness when I see it.  But what I cannot do is say: "if you buy X player and Y player and hire Z manager, you will have a great team" and know that I will be right.  (Well, maybe if variables X, Y, and Z are Messi, Ronaldo, and Jurgen Klopp, respectively.  I would feel pretty confident about that.  But even then, who knows?)  Of course, this has never stopped me from making these sorts of predictions and tricking myself into believing them.

Which brings me to Arsenal.  Last year, Arsenal broke its nine-season trophy drought by winning the FA Cup against Hull City.  It was glorious and well-deserved.  If Juan and I were not deadbeat absentee parents of this blog, there certainly would have been celebratory posts and pictures and champagne for all.

What made the FA Cup win so wonderful was not just that Arsenal had a trophy to throw in the faces of its critics (albeit only the third-most prestigious trophy one can win in English football these days), but that it seemed to be the first marker on a road to continued success.  For nine years, Arsenal and its fans had wandered in the desert, watching teams built on youth and the glittering jewel in the crown, Cesc Fabregas, show great promise (2007-08, 2010-11) and then ultimately crash and burn down the stretch.  During these years of debt and thrift and injury (always injury), Arsene Wenger cobbled together starting lineups with spit and duct tape and Denilson and somehow the team dragged its ass over the finish line in third or fourth.  Arsenal fans would spend the summer wondering which one of their stars would get picked off by a bigger club.  Instead of being used to buy suitable replacements, the proceeds would immediately be sent to the bank to pay for the Emirates Stadium.

Anyway, all of this has been beaten to death, so I'll get to the point, which is this: those years of fruitless frustration are supposed to be over.  The stadium is paid off.  There is a new kit deal.  The naming rights to the Stadium have been renewed.  The club is flush with cash.  Arsenal spent an extended period of time at the top of the table last year.  There is a shiny new trophy in the cabinet.  And the last two summers have seen the arrival of two of the most exciting attacking players in world football: Mesut Ozil and Cesc Fabregas Alexis Sanchez.

Even without the arrival of a defensive midfielder and greater defensive cover following the departure of Thomas Vermaelen (two subjects that deserve, and have received, gallons of ink already), I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that Arsenal fans felt their team would be truly competitive this season.  Ozil and Sanchez would be the missing variables to get our once-exciting offense back on track.  Welbeck could be the finisher that we've missed since RVP.  Things would CLICK.  Maybe we would ultimately fall short in the League to the depth of Chelsea or Citeh, but we would be in the fight to the end!  We would be outside challengers for the Champions League!  We would put up a staunch defense of the FA Cup!  Some of us even exchanged texts about the treble being in play.  (Full disclosure: some of us are silly.)

As of this moment, Arsenal sit sixth in the table, and they will probably be lower than that by the time the weekend is over.  Chelsea are in the lead with twice (twice!) as many points.  Ozil is injured.  Koscielny is injured. Giroud is injured.  Debuchy is injured.  Wilshere is (almost certainly) injured.  Rosicky and Ramsey have struggled with injuries at various points already.  Walcott has not yet returned.  This is all very bad luck (or something worse and systemic), but Arsenal have still put out sides that, on paper, ought to be have won against opponents like Hull, Tottenham, Leicester, and Everton.  These games have all been draws, some, like today, by the skin of their teeth.  We have looked very, very mediocre.

This team is not great.  It is not even very good.  I don't think it's just the injuries, either.  Something is not right.  There is a faint whiff of rottenness at the core.  The hope provided by that FA Cup victory is long gone.  The lack of good defensive depth and cover has been incredibly obvious.  And the resignation is setting in that this will be yet another season where we exit the Champions League at the round of sixteen.  A season where the FA Cup holds the slim possibility of another trophy and, more likely, the threat of embarrassing ourselves against lower league opposition.  A season where the league is far beyond us by Christmas (or, um, today) and we will struggle for the Top 4 Trophy and the lifeblood of Champions League football.

(Still gonna watch, though.)

We Forgot Our Own Birthday

Notable Footy Things That Have Happened Since We Last Updated the Blowg:

1. Arsenal sold their best player and another of their most promising players, became terrible, and were humiliated by United at Old Trafford.

2. Uruguay won the Copa America and retained their position as South America's best team.

3. The United States lost the Women's World Cup in a heartbreaker to Japan. Becky Sauerbrunn, friend of the blowg, made her World Cup debut in the semifinal match against France and was outstanding.

3. Liverpool bought some really promising young British players and looked like they might be getting somewhere.

4. Manchester City started the season on fire and beat the crap out of their frightened neighbors.

5. Juventus somehow built one of Europe's scariest teams under the radar by acquiring Marko Vucinic (a Jim favorite), Fabio Quagliarella, Andrea Pirlo (a Juan favorite), Alessandro Matri, Simone Pepe, Arturo Vidal, and Marco Boriello. Vucinic, Boriello, and Matri joined del Piero, Iaquinta, Luca Toni, and Amauri as striking options (OK, that is just ridiculous). A death struggle quickly ensued between Juve and Milan.

6. Tottenham started the season terribly and then just as suddenly became London's best team. Ew.

7. Chelsea in crisis.

8. Arsene Wenger brought in an enormous German, a handsome Spaniard, and a tricksy Israeli to right the good ship Arsenal. Amazingly, it worked. But mostly because Robin van Persie hoisted the entire team onto his broad shoulders like a Dutch Superman with a son named Shaquille.

9. Things happened in the Bundesliga and Ligue 1.

10. Things also happened in La Liga. Mostly things involving Barca and Madrid: Cesc suddenly discovering that his head game is outrageous in Spain, Pepe behaving so poorly that it drew criticism from choirboy Wayne Rooney, and lots of diving.

11. Manchester City and Manchester United both failed to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League and had to settle for the Europa League. No, there is nothing more embarrassing than that.

12. (Alleged) Racism.

13. Paul Scholes and Thierry Henry (swoon) returned for Man U and Arsenal, respectively, thus confusing fans of both teams into thinking it was 2002. Millions wrote their MPs in the hopes of preventing a war in Iraq.

14. Henry scored the winner on his re-debut for Arsenal. Millions peed in their pants just a little bit.

15. Liverpool became terrible again, thanks in part to (alleged) racism.

16. Arsenal became terrible again, thanks in part to injuries and just general crapness.

17. Jim passed the NY Bar Exam and started work in Arkansas. Juan moved to Colorado and started medical school.

18. The Legend of Carl Awesome celebrated its fourth birthday on January 15, 2012. Which is like 21 in blowg years.

19. I promised on several occasions to definitely update the blog every time Juan or Adam Large texted me something hilarious about footy. I never did.

20. Anything connected to Mario Balotelli.

But fear not, we'll be bringing you our canny thoughts and priceless insights on a more regular basis. Starting with our first ever live-tweeting of Arsenal vs. Manchester United, which can be enjoyed here: https://twitter.com/#!/jimedstan

Univision and Brasil's Swagger

"Ok, I have another theory for why Venezuela is wearing red wine," explained the Univision announcer. This was the 10th time the booth mentioned the color choice on the Venezuelan national team and Pablo Ramirez, the leader of the crew, wasn't finished bouncing ideas off his colleagues. "If you mix the colors of the Venezuelan flag together, you get red wine." His partners were incredulous, and so was I, but for entirely different reasons.

Brasil is back; it's about time. With Argentina rebuilding, and Uruguay still one bad loss from their usual existential crisis, those yellow bastards look terrifying, again. Maybe it was the five, yes, that's correct, five consecutive give-and-go's between Neymar and Andre Santos. Or perhaps it was Pato's effortless settle in the box, from a ball kicked 50 yards away, over his shoulder, with a defender painted on him, while he was at full speed. Maybe it's that Robinho looks really comfortable. I don't want to alarm anyone, but he's being used in the correct role now as well.

"There's going to be a big problem if Venezuela try to match Brasil's pimperies," said Pablo's colleague. Learning how to successfully use "pimperies" in a sentence is something that Univision can't take away from me now, but moreover, he was right.

Brasil, especially in South America, compels teams to try and play like them. It's one of the intangibles of joga bonito; teams disastrously try to match it. This was not the case when Dunga had them playing a 4-5-1. A four-five-one people, and no, that's not four forwards and one sweeper. Now they seem to be playing a 4-3-3, and it's a good thing I have to use the word seem.

But there's still one problem. His name is Lucas Leiva. It's not his fault, I guess, it's more that Brasil has nobody else to play his role. That is to say, Lucas Leiva is the best pass-first defensive midfielder they've got. If Brasil had, I don't know, Xabi Alonso on one leg and no arms, they'd win every game by 8 goals.

They may not win the Copa America. They may not even beat Venezuela right now - it's still 0-0 in the 60th minute - but they're not playing for this tournament. The Copa America, unless you have $70 on Uruguay to win at 11-1, is a mostly useless tournament. Brasil is preparing for 2014, and by the look of things, they'll be fine.

OK, more than fine.

Charlie Good Update

It's about a two hour drive to Querétaro from Mexico City. Instead of renting a car, you could always spend a few more bucks and fly there directly. Querétaro is the perfect place to run away.

It's not as difficult as you might think, running away. And there's plenty to do once you get there. Once you stop thinking about what you're leaving behind, and instead start thinking about what's waiting for you, you're ready.

I know why I would go - the white roosters. Well, that's not entirely true, it's actually one man: Charles Nice. When Carlos Bueno scores, you can't help but smile. His dances make you feel like a kid again, and that's no coincidence. He celebrates the same way his 8-year-old son does, whenever his son scores a goal in little league. And when Carlos Cozy shows you his magic, he evokes a roar from the crowd that kids dream about.

If I had only seven and a half minutes to convince you that you'd love Mexican league soccer, I'd show you this video.

And if you watched it all, well, then, I'll see you there. I hope you like Corona.