Louie Van Gaal not Loving the Leonardo Love-In
Inter Milan manager, Leonardo, stated that his natural fit is working behind the scenes of a club, which comes as a surprise as the Brazilian has won-over the fans and players lost under Rafa Benitez.
3/16/11
Barcelona 3—Arsenal 1
Robin van Persie’s sending-off for time wasting threatens to turn the philosophical aphorism That is football into a joke.
Robin van Persie realizing that he’d just been sent off for time wasting.
The argument over which league is the best in the world is truly one of the most absurd held today. Since it can never be tested, the contest remains purely speculative and completely open-ended. But it is also one of the more interesting arguments for its ability to pull in criteria lying well beyond the pitch. In fact, it can’t stay on the pitch. It is a football argument with a long cultural reach.
People weigh in wholeheartedly with unsubstantiated positions; one’s feelings are sufficient once declared. Others set about on quixotic analyses, devising classifications and headings, measuring factors and assigning them values. Anything and everything from anywhere is used to make the case; style, individual skill, recent club domestic and European success, league parity, where the best players play, league and club financial strength (from television rights to tax codes), international appeal, fan attendance, stadium atmosphere, governance, weather. In the end this is just a thought experiment no matter the weight given to global finance or Ronaldo step-overs.
There will always be disagreements and irreconcilable positions when it comes to who is the best player in the world, which is the best team, the greatest XI, the best Cup final. A manager’s strategy, a starting eleven, a substitution, or a referee’s call will be endlessly contentious. There will always be tireless (and tiresome) arguments about football matches for as long as there are football matches, from the course of a match’s unfolding events to what should have happened and what didn’t happen.
Football prides itself on indeterminacy. It is the only condition where competing truths of subjective experiences and the emotions of partisan loyalties can co-exist. Multiple perspectives are validated by their inability to be disproved. Somewhere along the way, discussions and arguments break free from the point-by-point rhetoric and float around inconclusively.