Internet Terrorists

[Dicko]

The Joy of Six: Memories of 2010 | Scott Murray | Sport | guardian.co.uk

 

1) Barcelona's tiki-taka masterclass

 

So yet again, the World Cup was a cataclysmic disappointment. In the new millennium, we're now three in the hole. As in 2002 and 2006, there really wasn't much to write home about. The varied humiliations of Marmite quintet Italy, France, England, Argentina and Brazil were amusing enough, providing every football fan on the planet with at least one malevolent belly-laugh, but fun though schadenfreude certainly is, it's no way to measure the success of a World Cup. Ghana nearly made things special, a spot-kick away from becoming Africa's first semi-finalists, but bottled it big time (and no you can't blame Luis Suárez). And New Zealand enjoyed a joyful campaign, the minnows going home unbeaten, but seeing even Scotland have managed to pull off that trick in the past, there's only so much credit on offer there.

 

As it turned out, Spain's tiki-taka stood out from the packa. Yet there was something unsatisfying about their victory, and not just because Holland disgraced themselves by disfiguring the final. Like the Spanish will care: you can't criticise a side for delivering four knockout-stage 1-0 wins in a row when the ultimate pressure is on, nor blame them for doing what they had to do to land their first World Cup. But neutrals aren't obliged to enjoy the spectacle. Spain may well have scaled virgin technical heights with their systematic unstitching of a devil-may-care German side, for example, but there's no shame in wishing a side containing Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, David Villa, Xabi Alonso, Fernando Torres and David Silva had showcased skills less cerebral and more visceral. Spain's clinical passing was routinely described in glowing terms as "metronomic", a curious adjective to use as a compliment when all the funkiest tunes are backed by half a pound of fatback drums.

 

With Spain failing to daub their prints on a signature performance, tiki-taka could have been in danger of going down in history as a philosophy to be respected rather than loved. (And if you think that's overstating it, consider how Total Football would be viewed if Holland hadn't qualified for the 1974 World Cup, and we just had Ajax's three unspectacular European Cup final wins to remember the period by, or how the history books would view Puskas's Hungary if they'd come to Wembley in 1953 and satisfied themselves by grinding out a 1-0 win.) Thank the footballing gods, then, for Barcelona, the most prominent practitioners of the style at club level. Having spent the last three or four years honing the tactic, barely a week now passes without them walking, and sometimes sashaying, the ball into the net.

 

Only time will tell whether last month's 5-0 disembowelling of Real Madrid at Camp Nou will eventually be recognised as the pinnacle of tiki-taka as an art form; it's difficult, beyond replicating such a performance in a European Cup final, to see how the team could do any better. But whatever happens, the result will never be forgotten. Not least because you just know José Mourinho isn't going to take this lying down, and another leftfield turn in the history of El Clásico is sure to be coming somewhere down the line.

 

2) The meltdowns of Dustin Johnson

 

Europeans just don't win US Opens. It's not the done thing. Nobody from this side of the pond had won the trophy since Tony Jacklin in 1970, and before that you're looking back to Willie McFarlane in 1925. 1925! But Graeme McDowell cocked a snook to decades of failure, marching around Pebble Beach on the final day with a quiet intensity. Holding his game together under extreme pressure to card a gritty 74 on a tough track, using up the slack he'd bought himself with a superb second-round 68, G-Mac secured a nerveless maiden major. He ended the tournament one shot ahead of the unsung Gregory Havret, but this was no weak fourth-day leaderboard: the next three places were filled by Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods.

 

Breaking with modern sporting mores, McDowell eschewed supercool professionalism and instead allowed himself to take a boyish pride in what he'd accomplished, and actually enjoy basking in the enormity of his achievement. (He was famously snapped by Ian Poulter, a few weeks later, still hugging the trophy. And why the hell not?) Not that he rested on his laurels. A decent showing at the Open was followed by that performance at Celtic Manor, first tutoring his young countryman Rory McIlroy in the ways of Ryder Cup righteousness, then sinking what was effectively the winning putt, once again refusing to buckle under intense scrutiny. The world sporting star of 2010, no debate.

 

But the line between roaring success and abject failure is thin. McDowell proved himself the pick of the bunch at Pebble Beach, but he really shouldn't have been allowed to get anywhere near the trophy. Johnson had it in the bag, but melted down in the most spectacular way. Three shots ahead going into the final round, on a day when there was never likely to be a blizzard of sub-par scores, the long-driving American should have sealed the deal by keeping it staunch and steady. That, however, was something he failed to do. By the time he'd played the fourth hole, his three-shot lead had turned into a three-shot deficit. Johnson carded a triple bogey, a double bogey and a bogey on holes 2 through 4, duffing greenside chips, losing balls in forests, and flaying drives into the sea like a rank amateur. He ended the day with an 82, the worst score by a 54-hole leader in the tournament since 1911.

 

Two months later, at the US PGA, it looked as though catharsis was on the cards. Standing on the 72nd tee, Johnson only needed to par to win the final major of the season. Cue the inevitable disintegration. He hoicked his drive deep into the crowd, hacked his second off a dusty track into a thicket, then failed to scramble up and down. Bogey. He'd have to contest a play-off. Except it soon transpired the dusty track was actually, under local rules, a bunker, and as he'd grounded his club he was penalised two strokes. For the second time in the year, he had tossed away a major in the most preposterous of circumstances. Martin Kaymer grasped the prize, the German's first major extremely unlikely to be his last. And you wouldn't bet against McDowell, now well schooled in holding it together down the final furlong, adding another major too. Whether Johnson will ever get over his double disaster is another matter altogether.

 

3) Shahid Afridi's alternative captain's innings

 

It wasn't much of a year for Pakistani cricket, so please let's remember the good times. Against Australia at Lord's, playing his first Test for four years, and his first as Pakistan Test captain to boot, one-day specialist Shahid Afridi came into bat with his side in terrible trouble at 83-5. He flicked the second delivery he faced over midwicket with a disdainful sniff. "Boom boom," namechecked commentator Shane Warne. "You pay your money to come and watch, you're going to get full value if he hangs around."

 

Afridi didn't hang around, but the crowd got their value for money in an amazing 13-minute vignette: fifteen balls, four fours, two sixes, 31 runs. His strike rate for the innings was 206.66, which sounds ludicrous enough even before you realise his strike rate in Twenty20 cricket is only 143.

 

In the second innings, with his side still chasing 213 of a world-record 440 target, Afridi once again strode out with the intent of setting off another box of fireworks, but slogged his fourth ball to deep midwicket. As the ball looped up into the air, then sailed down into the hands of Mike Hussey, Afridi there and then decided to quit the captaincy, and Test cricket, citing an inability to concentrate over the long haul. Predictably, he received pelters for both shot and decision, accusations of selfishness thrown at a born entertainer whose only crime was to suffer from a six addiction.

 

4) Liverpool's 'internet terrorists'

 

BBC News Channel presenter Ben Brown wins our inaugural Putting The W Into Anchor award for rubbish interview technique, after his outrageous and hilariously inept grilling of protestor Jody McIntyre. But Jim White over on Sky Sports News ran him pretty close. Interviewing James McKenna, a spokesperson for the Liverpool supporters union Spirit of Shankly, during the fag end of Tom Hicks and George Gillett's ownership of the club, White launched a red-faced attack on protesting fans.

 

"Nothing you can do will speed up the sale," White ranted. "They won't be removed until the time is right. Nothing you can do will change that. Do you not concede that? … Why should they hurry up a sale because supporters are protesting that they should do so? It's not up to you to tell Hicks and Gillett when to sell!" McKenna stood firm and kept his cool. "I disagree," he replied. "Hicks, when he put the club up for sale – interviewed on this very channel – said the pressure fans have put on him has told."

 

White was left seething, floundering, having revealed to viewers exactly how highly he thinks of the people who pay good money to go through the turnstiles each week. McKenna would later be fully vindicated when Hicks and Gillett were forced out of the club, the former whining like a stuck pig about online campaigns waged by "internet terrorists".

 

5) Kurt Warner's final fling

 

From the supermarket to the Super Bowl: the journey of one-time shelf-stacker Kurt Warner to the very top of the NFL, the quarterback winning Most Valuable Player in leading the St Louis Rams to victory in the 2000 championship game, is one of the sport's most outlandish. So it was fitting that his final victory would be in the craziest play-off game ever.

 

In 2005, Warner had joined the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals franchise had been a total waste of time for decades: the team had only won one post-season match since 1947. A brilliant Warner would buck that trend during an Indian summer, leading the Cardinals to the 2008-09 Super Bowl, where they were less than a minute from victory before being pipped by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Cardinals were slightly less impressive in 2009-10, but still topped their division and made it through to the play-offs, where the Green Bay Packers and their up-and-coming quarterback Aaron Rodgers awaited. With much debate raging over whether this would be the ageing Warner's final year – he said he would have to discuss the matter after the season with his family and God – it was possible every game would be his last.

 

This wouldn't be it, though. The Cardinals sped into a 17-0 first-quarter lead, and were still in control, 24-10, at half time. After masterminding an 80-yard drive at the start of the third quarter, Warner's side had extended their lead to 31-10. It seemed all over. And yet the game had hardly started: in a lunatic 11-minute whirlwind, the Packers ran in four touchdowns to Arizona's one, tying the game at 38-38. The defences all over the shop, the teams exchanged a further touchdown as the match ended 45-45. The offences having been magnificent, the defences offensive, there was of course only one way overtime would be decided: a fumble by Rodgers being returned by linebacker Karlos Dansby. The resulting 96-point total – the Cardinals winning 51-45 – was the highest-scoring playoff game in NFL history.

 

Warner enjoyed a victory lap around his home field, a gesture perceived to be a wave of goodbye. "Everybody relax," he said that afternoon. "That was my way of saying thanks to the fans because we're not coming back here this year." In the divisional play-offs, though, the Cardinals were whipped 45-14 by eventual Super Bowl winners the New Orleans Saints, Warner taking a particularly violent hit from Saints defensive end Bobby McCray which hastened his retirement. Warner went on to appear in Dancing With The Stars: here he is gadding around in 1950s London.

 

6) Redemption for John Higgins

 

If anyone owed the struggling sport of snooker a shot in the arm, it was John Higgins, who had foolishly got himself involved in that frame-throwing scandal. Anyone who watched his comeback against Mark Williams in the final of the UK Championship last weekend – winning the last five frames, having required snookers in one, and sealing the decider with an outrageous double on the brown down the length of the table – will know that he has done exactly that.

 

The Wizard of Wishaw's win was the greatest comeback in any major final since Stephen Hendry won the last seven frames at the 1991 Masters against Mike Hallett, turning an 8-2 deficit into a 9-8 victory. Williams may like to take some succour from the fact that, unlike Hallett that night, he didn't get home to find he'd been burgled.

Well done everybody, well done Jay.

[Randy Marsh]

Jim White is a fucking global cock end.

[RedinSweden]

Ha. Ace.

[TheHitman]

I remember that interview absolute vermin that Jim White, if you ever needed a reason to not give Sky another penny, then watch that interview. As he tries to goad the sos representative.

[Trumo]

Jim White is a fucking global cock end.

 

Needs a swift kick in the cunt. LIVE AND EXCLUSIVE ONLY ON SSN!!! IN HIGH DEFINITION!!!

[Monkey Plunkett]

Jim Shite.

[dave u]

There's a lot of twats on sky, but Jim White angers me more than any of them. An absolute fucking smug, arrogant, irritating, condescending cunt.

[bouncebrigade]

And a cock muncher into the bargain.

[Soup]

All of Sky is just massive cuntage of the higest degree.

[Anubis]

Wouldn't know him if I stepped over his piss-stained corpse in the gutter.

[andrew78]

Do you ever think the time will come when we can fuck sky off ,and sell our own tv rights

[Redder Lurtz]

Anyone know of a link to that interview?

[Guest TK-421]

All of Sky is just massive cuntage of the higest degree.

 

Is correct.

[redsoxs]

Anyone emailed it to Jim White yet? Rub the cunts noise in it.

 

HeHeHe

[JohnnyH]

Internet terrorist to Internet twat is a fine line....

[Randy Marsh]

I know I am going well off topic here and this matter is something being discussed in the general forum, but the current Sunday S*n scandal got me thinking about our 'Internet Terrorist' campaign. Would be great if some kind of orchestrated effort was launched to bring that rag down, a concerted email campaign on the heads of all companies connected with sponsorship of the Sunday S*n. I'm not necessarily saying that it should come from here, more just discussing how effective this tactic can be as we know more than anyone.

[WaltonRed]

The tactic should be used on the daily S*n not just the sunday one

[Randy Marsh]

Just found this on Twitter

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?hl=en_GB&key=tNYNhuJL7bcUwlXMQJ4zF9g&toomany=true

[zigackly]

[redsoxs]

Anyone got white Email Addy, maybe we should rub salt into the wound. Hehe

[Joe Le Taxi]

[The Special One]

Would love a viewing link to that Jim White interview.

[gaz181]

The way James McKenna handled that interview was just outstanding. He kept his cool while White was getting more and more upset, and talking more and more shit. It was great to watch.

[Jonny83]

[YOUTUBE]1c3WpxqV32U[/YOUTUBE]