Football is not a matter of Life and Death ... it is more important than that

Head Down Eyes Open has been sucked into the end of year bottle neck of work and festive cheer leaving little spare time or thought for more regular updates. In order to breach the gap I would like to share with you a remarkable multi-media video piece (under four minutes) which documents a crucial football game in the Brazilian league last Sunday. The red and black supporters were waiting to see Flamengo win the Brazilian National Soccer Championship for the sixth time. A seventeen years wait for Flamengo. Moments of tension, joy and ecstasy on a day that will never be forgotten, an epic day. The Maracanã stadium was completely full for the red and black party. Rio de Janeiro is no longer the same. For those who believe football is more than mere sport, that it is a triumph of tribalism, a global religion that can rise to the heights of pure theatre and dive to the depths of tragedy (remember the hand of Henry a few weeks back? How could we forget?), then this piece is for you. Sit back and enjoy!

Flamengo Hexacampeão Brasileiro from Gustavo Pellizzon on Vimeo.


For those interested to know the nuts and bolts about how this video was produced, Gustavo Pellizzon, the Brazilian photographer and multi-media artist who created this impassioned tribute to football, tells us that the gear used was a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon lens 600mm 4.0, 70-200 2.8, 35mm 1.4 and a 12mm Sygma. Video tripod and a little monopod to help stabilization on his shoulder. Audio recording with Zoom H2. Edited in Final Cut and Adobe Camera Raw.


"Football is not a matter of Life and Death .... it is more important than that" (Bill Shankly)
/PC

La Honte de Henry

It hurts. Sweet Lord how it hurts. A night of fitful sleep punctured by dreams of a winning goal on 121 minutes has passed and it still hurts like a punch in the solar plexus. It was one of the best performances ever seen from an Irish team, men who grew from journeymen in Stoke and Wolves, to giants playing with composure and skill. The truth is we deserved it. We deserved it more than the French. And for so long we had the champagne on ice, only for the grapes to turn sour by a mind-blowing piece of cheating.

But amid all that, amid the heartache and the tears and the it’s-just-not-fair of it all, three things stand out. One, that FIFA is a farcical organisation dancing on Jules Rimet’s dream by seeding playoffs (how, I mean HOW can they justify it, other than telling the truth – that a Mondial without Ronaldo and Henry rather loses its sheen). Two, the ref had a good game, apart from the obvious. He could easily have given France a penalty late in the second half and then it would have been good night Josephine anyway.

And third, though it hurts like hell to write it, Henry did the decent thing. OK, ok, he could have run over to the referee and said no, fair cop, I handled it. But would Robbie Keane have done that? Would Bobby Charlton, the cleanest player ever? Would he f…

Henry could have done a Maradonna and been smarmy in a hand of God way but no. He went straight over to our boys and didn’t just mutter “sorry lads” and give a patronising ruffle of the hair. He sat with them, while million voices roared “CHEAT” at screens from Dallas to Darwin (I, rather pretentiously hollered “La Honte” and worse at the few Frenchies in O’Brien’s of Kiev).

After the game Henry told the press: “I said that I handled it to Richard Dunne but he said to me … you’re not the referee”. 

And Sean St Leger, who’s hip deflected the ball into the net in Croke Park put it well: “it doesn’t look great, but he’s got his team to the World Cup finals. If it had been one of our team we’d have probably done the same. The blame doesn’t necessarily fall on him, but he’s handled it. Everyone can see it around the world.”

Sometimes luck vanishes. We had ours in ’87 when Scotsman Gary MacKay put us into our first finals with a goal from nowhere on a cold night in Sofia. But we’ve had precious little since. All the way from Schillaci to Squillaci, you might say.

/JL