Fabio Capello managed to do what no other England manager has in the last 43 years and beat Sweden…though admittedly Sven did manage to pump at least one Swede while England boss. Perhaps the most famous image associated with an England-Sweden encounter – Terry Butcher covered in blood – came back to mind for other reasons this week too as Big Butch was inducted into the Scottish Football Hall of Fame. People frequently mention him playing on in that match despite suffering massive blood loss and say that players today wouldn’t do the same. That’s an incredibly unfair view when you take into account the amount of blood that Ashley Cole and John Terry are probably losing on a daily basis to paternity tests. Meanwhile, Capello has confirmed that David Beckham won’t feature in his Euro 2012 squad, saying, “I think he will only be involved in the Olympic Games”. Becks is apparently looking forward to getting his hands on the javelin. As he calls her.
Scotland defeated Cyprus 2-1 in Larnaca, courtesy of wonder-goals from Kenny Miller and Jamie Mackie. If Mackie wondered what he had to do to stop the Tartan Army questioning his selection, the correct answer is ‘that’. Well, that and attempt a CIA-style black-op in which he erases any trace of Ross McCormack’s existence. Craig Levein’s started the ball rolling by taking the Leeds striker’s number out of his phone but McCormack may be able to enhance his chances of a call-up by forging a birth certificate showing that he was born outside Scotland. Levein has been unsuccessful in calling up Liverpool’s Sebastian Coates (Scottish dad) as he’s already been capped by Uruguay but is apparently on the trail of the same club’s Jonjo Shelvey (currently on-loan to Blackpool). Despite showing great promise at Charlton, Shelvey currently remains best known for a photo of ‘little Jonjo’ appearing on his Twitterfeed. Exciting news for the Tartan Army. English born? Famous for an ill-advised photograph? He’s the new Don Hutchison! Jordan Rhodes also made his debut for the full Scotland team, leading his Huddersfield boss, Lee Clark, to ward off suitors by saying that £2m wouldn’t even buy his socks. A sure sign that the Yorkshire foot-fetish market is bucking global financial trends.
In other international news, England may have beaten Spain at the weekend but the first team to beat the Spaniards after they became world champions was Japan…who then remained unbeaten until this week’s 1-0 defeat in Pyongyang to North Korea. This of course makes North Korea unofficial world champions. Apart from in North Korea, where they’re official world champions. The Republic of Ireland qualified for Euro 2012 after easing past Estonia over two legs, leaving Giovanni Trapattoni saying that there’s no reason why the country can’t emulate Greece. A message that it’s government and bankers seem to agree with.
There was also time for a blast from the international past as David Ginola announced his intention to sue Gerard Houllier. It’s still unclear as to whether this is because of the ex-Liverpool boss’ frequent assertion that France’s failure to qualify for World Cup ’94 was down to a failed attempt at a cross by Ginola in their final qualifying match, or because of Houllier once muttering that David “doesn’t have great looking hair”.
Sticking with world football news, Sepp Blatter has of course made his typically ineloquent entry into the debate over racism in football. His comments that racist abuse should be settled with a handshake have done nothing to help. Especially for paranoid white people, who are now too scared to shake a black person’s hand in case it’s interpreted as a sign that they’ve just been racially abusing them. Blatter, the man who changed a handshake from a sign of trust or greeting into the body language equivalent of “What’s wrong with that? My granny says that word all the time and she’s no more a racist than the people at her BNP meetings.”
Onto club matters, and in Scotland Rangers have been linked with moves to bring in two Indian players on trial and a South Korean player on-loan…as well as announcing plans to tweet match commentary in Hindi. The only way the club’s attempts to target new markets could get any more brazen would be to sign up a porn-star. Though that might make Allan McGregor feel a little undermined. Special mention should also go to The Sun’s attempts to deal with the Hindi story. Scotland’s biggest-selling newspaper failed to understand that Hindi is one of the two official languages of India and not only spoken by Hindus, by saying that using Hindi is an attempt to target India’s “280 million Hindus”. Suspicion of this misunderstanding seems to be confirmed by the fact that Wikipedia says “280 million” people in India speak Hindi. As for the number of Hindus? Approximately 80% of India’s one billion population are reckoned to be Hindus. Happy to be of service.
Rangers aren’t the UK club you’d expect to be making the running with regards breaking the Indian market, but Blackburn probably need to concentrate on how they’re doing in England before they can look elsewhere. Steve Kean made a surprising blunder by saying that the squad of players the club have is good enough to finish in the top ten of the Premier League. Though he did manage to stop himself from adding in the obvious next line “Which means I’m doing an even worse job than everybody previously thought.”
According to The Metro, Wayne Rooney has hired a team of top architects to design an 11-foot high garden shed.Something that he can only have done to tease comedians into writing hack jokes about the need to have somewhere to keep his hoe. That’s also high enough for her to wear her heels in. Damn you Wayne, another one falls into your cunning trap.
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About the Author
Twice runner-up in Scottish Comedian of the Year finals, Teddy was named ‘Best Up and Coming Comedian’ at the Scottish Variety Awards in 2010. He’s written for two BBC Radio 5 ‘Unsporting Reviews of the Year’, and has also worked as both writer and script editor on the BBC1 Scotland football shows ‘Offside’ & ‘Only An Excuse?’. He’s been a Rangers season-ticket holder for the past 17 years, but he’s all about the football not “all that other shite”. Also has a fondness for Dynamo Kyiv that can be traced back to an unhealthy obsession with Alexei Mikhailitchenko (or Oleksiy Mykhalychenko if you prefer to transliterate from the Ukrainian rather than the Russian. That’s the unhealthy obsession we’re talking about.)
“brilliant Scottish comic” Kate Copstick, Scotland on Sunday
“Head, shoulders, knees and toes above the rest…mighty stage presence and impressively high punchline ratio” Brian Donaldson, Scotsman
“freshly minted topical gags…pin-sharp lines…great routine…a class act” Steve Bennett, Chortle.co.uk
“has flourished…cracking lines” Jay Richardson, Scotsman
“there are few of his Scottish-based contemporaries that can spin the same high standard of punchlines” Brian Donaldson, Scotland on Sunday
You can follow Teddy on Twitter: @ComedyTeddy
Check out Teddy’s website: http://comedyteddy.com/
