It’s a ritual we are now highly familiar with. An international football match approaches. (For the record we detest international football. It gets in the way of the real thing, club football. International football is by and large watched by provincial wankers with no decent team of their own to support. There. It’s off our chests).
Anyway, Romania plays Serbia in Constanta tomorrow, and as usual the circus that surrounds the Romanian team has jumped into action. Romanian sports journalists with copious amounts of space to fill – there are no ads these days, you see – hang on every word every player says.
Then comes the best bit: the opposition arrives and the questions are always the same:
“You are afraid of Mutu yes?”
“Mutu is great yes?”
“Say something nice about Mutu please we beg you”
On Antena 1 (which has the TV rights to show the Romanian team’s home games), every sentence is followed by the words “un meci transmis in direct de Antena 1...”
What pisses us off most however is the habit of taking an interview with somebody, and then dragging it out over three or four stories in the course of one sports bulletin. Parts of interviews can even be used days later.
(This is not exclusive to sports reports: so bad is TV news now it goes on there too. It’s cheap and easy to take an interview with politician and get three stories out of it).
Oh, and before we wrap upfor the weekend, here’s another cliche
au asteptat cu sufletul la gura
Everyone praises us, they say we’re very good and after that they beat us.
Piturca’s dices could have rolled 6-6 if Mutu converted the penalty against Italy but there comes a time when a gambler must stand up and leave the table.
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Yea, you’re right Gordon!!!
I felt that when I was younger and used to play Championship Manager: whenever I caught a nice run there was a period of international games from where my players returned either exhausted or injured and after two weeks of pausing the league and the CL my team’s form was gone!
Club football is the real football, only a few international teams can match the strong Champions League squads!
By the way, I support Arsenal, we have a very big chance to play the CL final this year since we’re gonna meet Manchester United in the semi-finals and between the 4 strong English clubs anything can happen
Unfortunately my other teams from the strong leagues in Europe are doing quite badly, with a positive remark for Athletic Bilbao who reached the Spanish Cup final :-s Otherwise, Borussia Dortmund and Parma are having mediocre seasons… considering that an UEFA Cup place and promotion from Serie B can not be something to be proud of when in 96-99 we were dominating European football…
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