Martin Samuel in the Mail

[sparta7]

If Dirk Kuyt worked in the kitchens of your stately home, you'd have him washing the pans and roasting tins rather than the plates. They'd be spotless. And still intact even if he didn't quite get hold of them properly as he tried to clean them.

 

You'd certainly not stick him on "fine china" or "cut glass" cleaning duties.

 

As for the names for that Scottish guy - Taggart. You forgot Taggart.

 

Nobody has said "Cunt" yet, so I will. I call him Cunt.

[Guest Ulysses Everett McGill]

Samuel has written some really good articles since his move. He's really surprised me by often showing a deeper and more supportive understanding of what's going on at our club than lots of our fans.

 

 

He wrote some really good stuff for The Times, but alot of it went largely unnoticed as the spectre of working for the NOTW still followed him, especially as he stayed within News International.

 

It was his work for The Times that got him his big move

 

Since his move he's getting noticed more, but then again, considering he's on more or less double than his nearest rival, you could argue he's only justifying his salary

[zigackly]

Nobody has said "Cunt" yet, so I will. I call him Cunt.

 

*cough*

[Barrington Womble]

Nobody has said "Cunt" yet, so I will. I call him Cunt.

 

too slow son.

[Guest Ulysses Everett McGill]

It must be something to do with The Times. They replaced Samuel with Patrick Barclay and he comes out with utter drivel at all times.

 

When Samuel left, they split his job in two as he was Chief Football Correspondent and he had his column

 

Barclay got his column, and has always talked shite, and was only brought in because the editor, not the sports editor, but the actual editor of the paper wanted a "name" and no one else was available

 

The lads in the sports department wanted Oli Kay to get both posts, but he had to settle for the Chief Football Correspondent post, which is a shame, because as Barclay was working his notice, Oli filled in writing the column and it was far better than what is currently being served up.

 

But Barclay has already been signed up, so it was too late to change anything.

[WaltonRed]

Barclay used to be okay

[gkmacca]

It must be something to do with The Times. They replaced Samuel with Patrick Barclay and he comes out with utter drivel at all times.

 

Yes. When Peter Robinson was still at the club he was very positive about us, but he's gradually turned into a really negative curmudgeon. I guess spending any time with Brian Woolly Woolnough abd Co would drive most sane people crazy, but Winter and Holt seem to be coping.

[Kevin D]

Isn't Samuel the softlad who had a go at Liverpool fans for singing " Inter,Inter" in the San Siro instead of " Ingerlund,Ingurland"?

['Kaka]

I've found myself flip-flopping between the Indy and the Times recently, Sam Wallace is a fine writer, but The Game pull-out is a great read. I'm not sure what's happened to Barclay, he was a cracking read in the Telegraph, but seems to have gained an air of superiority over the last year or so, his articles seem to have an "I am right, and you WILL agree with me" tone to them.

['Kaka]

Just to add - much like his persona on Sunday Supplement.

[Ian Sea]

I've found myself flip-flopping between the Indy and the Times recently' date=' Sam Wallace is a fine writer, but [b']The Game pull-out is a great read[/b]. I'm not sure what's happened to Barclay, he was a cracking read in the Telegraph, but seems to have gained an air of superiority over the last year or so, his articles seem to have an "I am right, and you WILL agree with me" tone to them.

 

I like looking for the pie.

[bobhorse]

If Dirk Kuyt provided nothing more to the team than a 1-4 goal ratio he would still be worth his place in the team and yet he provides much much more with his all round game i dont know of any other wide player available for 10m who has a 1 in 4 strike rate over the last 4 seasons at the highest level

[RobbieOR]

Martin Samuel: Can't England get United behind the red half of Manchester? | Mail Online

 

On the day of the game, when Manchester United last played in Lisbon in 2007, Sir Alex Ferguson commandeered a crew from in-house broadcasters MUTV and headed out to Oeiras, west of the city.

 

In the Jamor sports complex, surrounded by woodlands, lies the Estadio Nacional, an oval arena, medium-sized, that is the traditional setting for the Portuguese cup final. Ferguson had the crew film him walking out on to the pitch and at various points around the stadium.

 

The footage has never been publicly broadcast. Indeed, it was never intended to be. This was for Ferguson’s personal collection of memorabilia, the humble Estadio Nacional being the venue at which Celtic became the first British team to lift the European Cup in 1967.

 

To this day Ferguson remains in awe of Jock Stein, the manager, and his Lisbon Lions, a fact some will find strange.

 

That same summer, Ferguson signed for Rangers, the club he had supported since attending Broomloan Road Primary School. Anyone that has ever been to an Old Firm game will be surprised that a Rangers man could be moved by Celtic’s greatest triumph, but Ferguson is unrepentant.

 

‘I was in Hong Kong with the Scotland team when Celtic won but I know that, from my part of Glasgow, everyone was behind them, even the Rangers fans,’ he said. ‘Maybe there was the odd one who was against, but you are always going to get that. Basically, we all thought it was an amazing achievement for Jock Stein to build that team of players, all from within 20 miles of the Glasgow area.’

 

Nearly half a century on, it is a different story. Last week Ferguson was bemoaning the fact that many English football supporters will be cheering for Barcelona on Saturday.

 

‘It’s a different story these days,’ he said. ‘We live in a country of tribalism.’

 

There is no doubt attitudes have changed. Growing up in the years when Liverpool dominated in Europe it is hard to remember anything but pride in their victories. We cheered for the English team in the final back then, we cheered for Nottingham Forest, we cheered for Aston Villa. Maybe that was because there was often only one English club in the competition, so it felt as if they were representing us all.

 

Now it is not unusual to have four in the last 16, or even the last eight, and the line-up is a United Nations. It no longer feels as if they are our guys. Even so, there is a single English club at Wembley, against one from Spain. Why would anyone want United to lose?

 

Maybe it helped the young Ferguson that his father was a Celtic supporter. Leaving all else aside, Celtic’s win in 1967 would have made his father very happy and why would any son not want that?

 

 

 

Enchanting: Ferguson visited the scene of Celtic's triumph, the humble Estadio Nacional on the outskirts of Lisbon

 

 

In our house we have divided loyalties over West Ham United and Chelsea; five people, three in claret, two in blue. We can’t all hate each other over a football match. But that is the modern way. Liverpudlians were rightly proud of the friendly derby, where families stood together, some in red, some in blue.

That good humour seems to have evaporated. The city is a poisonous place when Liverpool and Everton meet these days. This isn’t progress and don’t let anyone kid you that the new tribalism is what football has always been about. It never used to be that way. It is only the new fans, or the middle-class warriors, who know nothing else.

 

 

My enemy's enemy is my friend: A house on Merseyside shows where their support is ahead of the Champions League final

 

Stringently enforced segregation is partly to blame because it creates two tribes, often unnecessarily. Could the supporters of AFC Wimbledon and Luton Town really not have mingled at the City of Manchester stadium on Saturday? Was it absolutely necessary to introduce a rule at Charlton Athletic that made failing to support the home team in the home end punishable by ejection?

 

All we have done is add to this cocktail of insularity and intolerance until we reach the stage where an English team is playing in a European football final and can probably rely on more consistent support in Malaysia than it can at home.

 

United we stand: Manchester United head into the Champions League final without the full backing of the country

 

‘We don’t have a problem with that,’ said Ferguson but, deep down, he must.

 

It would surely have been a warmer feeling in 1968 to have the country behind Manchester United going into the game with Benfica. Sure, Ferguson has thrived off negative energy in the past, generating a siege mentality, us against them — but that is of most use inspiring a successful band of millionaires to summon the desire to stick it to Sunderland or Blackburn again.

 

 

Division: Unlike rugby grounds where fans mix together, football stadiums never allow such freedom

 

He does not need cheap motivational tricks in a Champions League final against Barcelona. It truly will not matter to his players whether the country is with them or against them; it would just be better for the soul of the sport if we could recapture that distant sense of unity.

Three years ago, at the San Siro in Milan, after Liverpool had become the fourth of four English teams to qualify for the Champions League quarter-finals, I thought I heard the travelling supporters spontaneously chant ‘England’ as acknowledgement of a remarkable achievement.

 

 

En-ger-land: Fans come together for international fixtures but are never caught backing an opposing club team when they play in Europe

 

On reporting this, many wrote to tell me the chant was ‘Inter’, out of respect to their hosts. That was a decent gesture, too, yet some of the correspondents were quite irate. How dare I suggest Liverpool fans would chant ‘England’? Liverpool fans would never chant ‘England’. I get the impression many Manchester United supporters feel the same.

 

So should we be surprised that so few beyond Old Trafford will take pleasure from a Manchester United win on Saturday? Probably not. Times change and football changes with them. And we’re so much more grown-up than we used to be, don’t you think?

 

Read more: Martin Samuel: Can't England get United behind the red half of Manchester? | Mail Online

 

 

 

 

I dont think he actually gets how to support a football club.

[JohnnyH]

We would Martin, if they weren't such a pack of cunts.

[goatboy59]

His WUM-mode is getting very easy to spot nowadays.

 

The other thing this week was Owen for England, this from the cunt who in 1999 rubbished the (then) 19 year old and wrote a huge article demonstrating why he was nowhere near as good as the 30 year old Batistuta!

 

My dad put a West Brom pic in our window before the 68 cup final. Samuel's sepia-tinged nostalgia just won't wash I'm afraid.

 

The only reason I'm not cheering for Barca is that I don't want to be doubly snarked when it all goes tits up.

[milky]

Just to add some balance from the Mail: Sir Alex Ferguson: A genius, yes, but he is also a lout | Mail Online

 

A genius, yes. But Alex Ferguson is also a lout

By MICHAEL HENDERSON

 

The grumpy Glaswegian who has built a career on confrontation was at it again this week.

Facing journalists at a press conference in the build-up to Saturday’s Champions League final against Barcelona at Wembley, Sir Alex Ferguson took exception to a straightforward question from an Associated Press reporter who asked ‘how important’ Ryan Giggs — United hero and (we are now permitted to know) love rat — was for the game.

Turning to United’s press officer, the wonderfully named Karen Shotbolt, Ferguson muttered a comment sotto voce which was picked up by television microphones: ‘We’ll get him . . . ban him on Friday’ [from the pre-match press conference].

It was Ferguson all over, great football manager and small-town martinet; Arthur Scargill in a tracksuit. This is my world, and don’t forget it. The rest of youse just live in it, so be thankful.

Before we bury Ferguson, who is now 69 but still going strong, it is necessary to praise him. It isn’t difficult to laud the football man. Even if he had never left Aberdeen, where he turned a provincial club into the best team north of the border, he would be acclaimed as a superb manager.

With the Reds of Old Trafford, however, he has achieved greatness: 12 Premier League titles, five FA Cups, and two victories in the Champions League.

 

In his recruitment of top-class players, and the sympathetic handling of younger ones, he has shown himself to be a master of the sport. After 25 years in Manchester he continues to send out teams which maintain the club’s reputation for adventurous football.

United may not have the lustre of Real Madrid or Milan, whose record in European competition is far superior, but they are unquestionably the most famous club in this country, followed by millions beyond their native parish.

 

The Manchester Utd manager took exception to the questioning and was heard on microphone saying the reporter who asked about Giggs would be banned

This week those supporters will flood into London from all corners of the globe, to see if Ferguson’s latest team can overcome the ball-players of Barcelona, led by Lionel Messi, the dazzling inside forward from Argentina.

Most neutrals may well hope they cannot. Over the years the irascible Jock, who seems to live in a state of permanent anger, has made sure of that.

 

Throughout his life this highly intelligent, unusually driven man has observed one golden rule: Fergie Contra Mundum — me against the world. It is as if he has gone out of his way to make others dislike him.

Along with his great success as a manager has come the incessant belittling of referees, the bullying of journalists, and his utter disdain for the football authorities, and indeed all those who see the world in a different light.

 

Fergie is a giant of football, but as a human being he has let the side down

Even now that he is a knight of the realm he behaves like a lout, lighting up the night sky with his glowing conk, effing and blinding at those who stand in his way.

The knighthood, incidentally, was bestowed on him at the urging of that thoroughly nice chap, Alastair Campbell. Rarely in the affairs of men have two people so richly deserved one another.

Yet, for all his success on the field, Ferguson has failed in the thing that matters most. All great sporting personalities serve not only their team. They serve the game itself. If they are very great — Jack Nicklaus, say, Rod Laver, or Sir Garry Sobers — they come to represent that game. They are not necessarily role models, but they are figureheads.

 

Stan Cullis, who built Wolverhampton Wanderers back in the Fifties, represented English football. So did Bill Nicholson, the manager of Tottenham Hotspur’s Double-winning side of 1961.

There is room in the pantheon for Sir Matt Busby and Bill Shankly, who did more than anybody to make Manchester United and Liverpool the famous clubs they are.

Brian Clough, who led Derby County and Nottingham Forest from second division obscurity to the championship, and who then took Forest to supremacy in Europe not once but twice, is also a true great. He may, as some have alleged, have taken backhanders for player transfers, but his teams never cheated.

 

Along with his great success as a manager has come the belittling of referees, the bullying of journalists, and his utter disdain for the football authorities

Clough, it should be noted, loathed Ferguson. He liked to laugh, while Ferguson sees jokes strictly by appointment — in other words, he does not appreciate people laughing at him one little bit.

Not for Clough, nor for those other great men, the sniping at referees and those who try, in their imperfect way, to administer the game. None of them were angels, yet they tried to honour football’s best traditions.

Myopic Fergie, unchallenged at Old Trafford, where he is surrounded by yes-men, sees only his own club. The bigger picture is beyond his imagination.

Even within his fiefdom he behaves like a tartar.

For a man from Govan, who considers himself to be a proud son of the Labour movement, Ferguson’s management style owes more to the iron fist of the old-fashioned mill-owner. Busby, his great predecessor, also did things his own way. He just accomplished them with rather more style.

 

As Sir Bobby Charlton told Jeff Powell in yesterday’s Mail, he was a man ‘none of us ever dared let down for fear of incurring his disfavour’.

Nowhere is Ferguson’s bullying manner more apparent than in his treatment of the BBC, which was declared non grata in 2004 after a programme investigated the activities of Jason Ferguson, the manager’s son, and acting as a football agent.

 

What a pity Ferguson has chosen not to honour the game that has given him such a grand living

Whereas other managers make themselves available for interview after games, Ferguson Snr still refuses to speak to the BBC, even though he was happy to promote his autobiography on Five Live.

Yet his antipathy to the Corporation predates the investigation into his son’s business activities. After a clash with John Motson, the mild-mannered commentator, some years before, Des Lynam, the then presenter of Match Of The Day, urged the show’s editors to run the Ferguson interview without interruption, with the Scot’s swear words and all.

Perhaps, if Lynam’s editors had shown greater courage that evening, television viewers would have been granted a more realistic portrait of the master manager.

To some extent we get the figureheads we deserve: the question is whether the age we live in has coarsened their characters, or the other way around.

 

Fellow true great: Brian Clough liked a laugh, while Ferguson does not appreciate people laughing at him one little bit

A new biography of Jack Hobbs, the first professional cricketer to be knighted, quotes John Arlott, that great broadcaster, who said that Hobbs ‘wore his knighthood with the dignity of a prince’. Could we say the same of Sir Alex?

It can be done. Bobby Charlton also wears his honour with dignity. The most famous player ever to have represented Manchester United, Charlton has never done anything to sully the game, or his club. He is admired, loved even, the world over, four decades after he retired. Having survived the Munich air crash in 1958, he knows there is much more to life than winning on the football field.

What a pity Ferguson has chosen not to honour the game that has given him such a grand living.

Instead of reaching out to the world outside Old Trafford, he has opted instead to pile the sandbags high and declare: what we have, we hold.

He even defended Wayne Rooney, the foul-mouthed striker, after he swore into the television cameras recently.

When the United fans sing ‘we do what we want’, they are taking their cue from a manager who spies enemies wherever he looks.

Flame-nosed Fergie is a giant of football. By any standards he has achieved greatness.

But as a human being, he has let the side down. Which is why so many Englishmen, the most fair-minded of judges, will be cheering lustily for Barcelona on Saturday.

 

Come on, you wondrous Catalans. Get him.

[Carra_is_legend]

Why don't you go and ask their manager Martin?

 

2007:

 

"I'd bet for sure that Milan will win the Champions League. I'm absolutely certain of it.

 

"I told their manager Carlo Ancelotti at the end of our semi-final that there is no way he cannot win it now."

 

"Carlo gave me a magnificent bottle of wine. But I immediately told him I would only drink his wine once I see him lifting the Champions Cup."

 

I would rather cut my cock and feed it to birds than supporting those horrible vermins.

[The Party Boy]

Why don't you go and ask their manager Martin?

 

2007:

 

 

 

I would rather cut my cock and feed it to birds than supporting those horrible vermins.

 

Ha someone should email that to Samuel. I hope he eats himself the fat twat.

[RobbieOR]

I think Antynwa got it spot on earlier.

 

'Id rather toss a coin on me getting aids than them winning the European cup'

[goatboy59]

Strange bedfellows; Michael Henderson is an utter cunt and has an anti-Liverpool crimesheet (disaster invective included) as long as your arm.

[Jonny83]

To be fair Bluto does nail a couple of important points. That so many people I've spoken to in the past missed in the whole "supporting English teams in Europe debate"

 

-Teams used to have more English players.

-The country used to have just one representative in the EC (unless the holders were in it too), so they were representing us in a way that one of four CL entrants don't.

 

There is a third factor he's missed that's also different to the past. I'm sure the prize money didn't hurt back in the old EC days, but with the CL being such a money making machine these days, in a way I actively don't want our domestic rivals to do well in it as it will strengthen them further financially against us.

 

OK the Mancs are the Mancs, but for instance had I been around when the likes of Forest and Villa were keeping our trophy warm, I'd have probably been like "good for them" while not out-and-out supporting them enthusiastically. Whereas if say Arsenal or Man City (who I similarly neither support nor have a hatred of) won the CL I likely a wouldn't give a toss either way, and even then I'd probably rather they didn't win it if given a straight choice

[Ted]

Hope they get twatted, but I won't be sticking any Barca stuff up anywhere. That's akin to when the bloos were putting AC Milan colours inside the Evertong badge. Knobs.

[The Woolster]

One of the first chants I learnt a a kid back in the 80s started "We hate Nottingham Forrest..."

[moof]

Fuck all that "supporting english teams in europe". European football is our bag, it fucking breaks my heart every time theres an english team doing well in the chmpions league that isn't us.

[goatboy59]

It isn't just about rivalry anyway, it's about other clubs (whoever they are) not emulating what we've done.

 

I recall being quite chilled (pleased, even) when Withe scored Villa's winner, but we had 3 by then. Wasn't that arsed about Forest v Malmo, probably because I thought they were clear favourites.

 

But I was supporting Hamburg the following season; Keegan a slight factor, but only slight.

 

Stuck up for United when they beat Everton in 85 but only because I didn't want the blues getting the Double before us.

 

And no European Cup for London is hilarious.