Fantasy Football: Pick your team now

Well, a bit of self-promotion is to be expected, perhaps. But now that’s out of the way, we can get to the business at hand - sports news. What’s the second most important story of the hour?

Fantasy Football: Win 50k

Ah.

Still, we shouldn’t take it too personally. After all, this is a newspaper who, presumably with no trace of irony, like to put news in inverted commas:

John Cross is up to his usual trick of forgetting things that he has put his name to in the Mirror this morning. Today his subject matter is Cesc Fabregas. Droning on about Cesc Fabregas needing now to show some loyalty to Arsenal after the summer saga with Barcelona, there’s plenty we could pick apart.

We could, for instance, question this line:

After all the talk, interviews and cheap shots, now is the time for him to say something publicly to reassure the fans who have stayed so loyal to him.

Ok, we will say something. Cheap shots? Like suggesting that a harmless interview for the BBC comparing and contrasting life with Arsenal and with Spain somehow ruins Fabregas’ relationship with his club, John?

But no, we thought we’d point out this part of the article, in which John exposes what he calls an urban myth:

Others have gone in a different direction, saying that he’s signed a pre-contract with Barcelona to join them next summer for the 2011/12 season. It’s been repeated all over the internet.

That of course happened with Cristiano Ronaldo. Except that it didn’t. Ronaldo didn’t sign a pre-contract while still at Manchester United to join Real Madrid a year later.

But it has become almost an urban myth that he did because, after all, he did go to Real Madrid last summer for £80m.

All of which is eminently reasonable, of course. Players with several years on their contracts cannot sign agreements with other clubs. Governing bodies are very strict on this, because if they weren’t, the transfer system would be anarchic to say the least. We suspected that a pre-contract deal was nonsense, and the Ronaldo deal happening in the summer of 2009 was a coincidence. Much like John says.

Not so much like John says in January 2009, however:

16 January - Real Madrid want Jermaine Pennant on loan until Cristiano Ronaldo arrives in June

Real Madrid have made a fresh move to sign Jermaine Pennant - as a stopgap before landing Cristiano Ronaldo in the summer.

The Spanish giants believe they have clinched a deal sign the newly-crowned World Player of the Year the end of the season.

[...] United boss Sir Alex Ferguson insists Ronaldo is not for sale - even in a deal which could be just as big as Manchester City’s £100m offer to sign Kaka from AC Milan.

But Real have never given up on the Portuguese star who last summer only pledged his future to United for another year.

His promise to stay at Old Trafford after picking up his award in Zurich this week was less than convincing.

Privately Real have already begun negotiations with Ronaldo’s advisers.

A club insider said: “Everyone at the club sees Ronaldo as a done deal for next season.”

Royston Drenthe, the 23 year-old Dutch left-back on the fringes of the Real Madrid squad, is ripe for a transfer rumour. And the rumour is a fair sight easier to muster when he does all the hard work for you. According to his Facebook page, it appeared that a deal was in the offing:

“I will soon be joining Liverpool FC. I hope I will have a good season.”

Too good to be true? Well, yes, apparently. Soon the denial came from his agent to the BBC, and in even more vociferous terms than usual:

However, his agent told BBC Sport: “Royston does not have a Facebook page, a Twitter page or a MySpace page. We will be taking legal action against the person who set up this false Royston Drenthe account.

“Royston is definitely staying at Real Madrid. He is happy there, he has spoken to the club directors and is looking forward to the new season at the Bernabeu.”

Now that’s settled, let’s have a look at the stories that took the story at face value:

Daily Star - Real Madrid’s £9m-rated wideman Royston Drenthe has used Facebook to say he is joining Liverpool. He said: “I will soon be joining Liverpool. I hope I will have a good season.”

So the Daily Star didn’t fact-check the Facebook page. But that’s no real surprise - after all, in the last week they’ve run a story suggesting that Rockstar Games were going to release Grand Theft Auto: Rothbury on the basis of a crude mock-up of the game cover based on Raoul Moat’s last days (yes - really, see the full story here at the excellent Tabloid Watch), only to have to issue the most grovelling of apologies when it became apparent that it was bull of the shittiest kind:

ROCKSTAR GAMES - GRAND THEFT AUTO - AN APOLOGY

On 21 July we published an article claiming that the video games company Rockstar Games were planning to release a version of their popular Grand Theft Auto video games series titled “Grand Theft Auto Rothbury”.

We also published what we claimed would be the cover of this game, solicited comments from a family member impacted by the recent tragedy and criticised Rockstar Games for their alleged plans.

We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event.

It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member.

We unreservedly apologise to Rockstar Games and we have undertaken not to repeat the claims again. We have also agreed to pay them a substantial amount in damages which they are donating to charity.

Read that again, by the way - it gets better with every reading. So the Daily Star failing in the most basic elements of journalism is no surprise. Slightly more surprising, however, is the Independent presenting exactly the same story as fact:

Mascherano heads for exit as Drenthe claims transfer on Facebook

Perhaps our favourite aspect of this headline is the use of ‘claims’ - as if it’s ‘Drenthe’ who needs to get his facts straight.

Liverpool also moved last night to reject a claim by Real Madrid’s £9m rated Dutch player Royston Drenthe that he is moving to Anfield, a development that did nothing to solve the club’s problematic lack of a left-back.

That’s a curious angle to take on the story, too - Liverpool denying the story. After all, the club’s official site was quite happy to reprint the Belfast Telegraph’s version of events a day after said denial on their site:

£9m Drenthe will lift Liverpool

Liverpool appeared last night to have moved to solve the problem of the left back position at Anfield by attempting to secure the signature of Real Madrid’s £9m rated Dutch player Royston Drenthe.

[...] Drenthe, who can also operate as a left winger, claimed on his own facebook page that he is set to move to Anfield. “I will soon be joining Liverpool FC. I hope I will have a good season,” he said.

Which begs this question: Why would the Liverpool website carry a story which “Liverpool moved to reject” the previous day? Running speculation on official channels surely only fogs an increasingly muddy picture.

All of this leaves us with the following. Drenthe didn’t post a message on Facebook. Liverpool denied their interest. And yet on the grounds of precisely nothing positive from either club or player the rumours persist.

]]> http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/2010/07/28/royston-drenthe-and-fact-checking-his-liverpool-move/feed/ http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/2010/07/27/f1-and-new-lows/ http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/2010/07/27/f1-and-new-lows/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:11:39 +0000 Sport without Spin http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/?p=4088 Some cracking over-reaction from the Daily Mail in the wake of the German GP. Fernando Alonso eased past Felipe Massa thanks to a brilliant overtaking manoeuvre instruction from his team and won the race, and nobody much cared for it.

People don’t like the fastest driver having to pull over to one side and let his team-mate win a Grand Prix. It seems to go against the nature of fair competition. That said, the situation is far from straightforward. There was no objection to Felipe Massa dallying in the pits to allow his then colleague Kimi Raikkonen to take the lead in the final race of the 2007 season and secure the title in the process. Team orders are despised and yet occasionally understood.

So, in the midst of this fascinating grey area in the ethics of sporting morality, we could reasonably expect the Daily Mail to take a measured view of the issue:

Ferrari pull fast one! Outrage but no surprise as F1 hits a new low after Fernando Alonso usurps Felipe Massa at Hockenheim

Harry Redknapp wants to keep Robbie Keane at Tottenham

Harry Redknapp intends to name Robbie Keane in his 25-man squad for the Premier League despite persistent speculation that he will allow the Irish international to leave White Hart Lane.

Sounds good, but it doesn’t mean anything. To summarise briefly (apologies if it’s old news), the Premier League rules specify that you register up to 25 players for your squad.  Eight of these must be ‘home-grown’ (have spent up to 36 months registered for clubs in England before the age of 21), and anyone under 21 can play without having to be named in the squad list.

And, most importantly, those lists are open and changeable right up until the end of the transfer window:

The 25-man squads must be submitted to the Premier League by 5pm on the day following the close of each transfer window. For the 2010/11 season the first window will close at 6pm on 31st August and final squads must be registered by 5pm on 1st September. Before then Clubs will not be required to name their squads and may select their teams from any registered players.

While the transfer windows are open, clubs may change their squads as many times as they want.

Armed with that information, it means that Keane’s future is only safeguarded by being in the 25 when it is confirmed on September 1st. And the transfer window shutting the day before will probably be a more telling factor.

And if you’re Harry Redknapp, well, you’d be mad not to put him in the squad. After all, you’ve not bought his replacement (yet), and if you go to the lengths of excluding him from the 25, not only are you admitting that you’re ready to sell, but you’re also allowing his value to plummet as buying clubs have the upper hand. In short, being on the squad list now means nothing.

It’s pretty cheap transfer logic from a broadsheet paper. And although there is encouragement in Redknapp’s quotes for Keane, frankly it would be unwise to take too much the Spurs manager says about prospective transfers at face value:

“His situation is that he is still a very good player,” said the Spurs manager. “He looked sharp and bright here. He wants to play every game and if he keeps playing like that, there is no reason why he cannot. It was a fantastic finish. He is one of our better players. I cannot say for certain that he will stay, because who knows what can happen in football, but at the moment I see him as part of our team.

“There is every chance he could start the season, but if it does not work out, he will be one of the first one to come and tell me he needs to play somewhere.”

All in all, we’re not much further on, are we?

And if there were any doubt as to Samuel’s point, this morning Martin Lipton in the Mirror obliges us with nonsense which is almost beyond satire.

Capello snubs U-19s final… to host a fund-raising golf event!

Fabio Capello will turn his back on England’s emerging generation next week - in order to host a fund-raising golf tournament.

The first line is a repeat of the headline - that’s a big old warning on the filling your word count with any old tat radar.

The England boss, who earns £6million a year, has no intention of travelling out to watch Noel Blake’s under-19 side in their decisive European Championship group game against France tomorrow.

And even if Blake’s Young Lions get through to the Final in Caen tomorrow week, Capello will be 900 miles away on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, where he is hosting a Charity golf weekend at the La Quinta course near Marbella.

Instead of looking at potential England recruits, Capello will be hosting the pre-tournament party for the four-man teams, who are paying over £1000 per head to take part in the event that will raise cash for the Seve Ballesteros Cancer Foundation and ends with a Gala Dinner on Sunday evening.

Firstly, a golf weekend that raises money for the fight against cancer? What a horrible man he must be.

Secondly, if this is such a big issue, it seems a real shock that Lipton is only working himself up about it now. After all, it’s not as if Capello arranged this yesterday in a deliberate two fingers to the young footballers of England - a (very) quick check on this golf day proves that it was agreed and confirmed at least as long ago as May - here’s La Quinta Golf Course’s Twitter feed of May 21st:

We can’t wait for the FABIO CAPELLO Charity Golf Day Here at LQ this summer!!

Yes, that was indeed before the World Cup started.

Capello has been given the green light by the FA to duck out of what would have been a chance to see if any of Blake’s youngsters could be in contention for the upcoming Euro 2012 qualifying campaign.

Yes - and evidently before the World Cup ever started. And in what world is the accepted career progression of young footballers (1) a decent showing at England U19 level then (2) a spot in the Euro 2012 qualifying squads? They play Premiership football, Capello watches them and picks them accordingly. If Capello plucked someone out of the squad who had a good tournament but had barely featured at domestic level he’d also be pilloried. At least pick them at U21 level first!

Oh - speaking of which:

The FA believe that only three eligible players, Everton’s Jack Rodwell, Arsenal midfielder Jack Wilshire and Blackburn defender Phil Jones, are realistic senior side contenders, and all of them have already been earmarked for Stuart Pearce’s under-21 side for the coming season.

Pearce and FA director of football development Sir Trevor Brooking have both been in Normandy.

So it’s not exactly a no-show is it? And Capello’s not exactly ignored the tournament altogether, either:

but Capello has decided not to attend, although he has promised to study the DVDs of the games.

Which, from the sounds of it, is more than enough.

The farce of the Capello Index and the failure of efforts by the FA and Capello’s lawyer, his son Pierfillipo, to get the 64-year-old’s connection with the internet site withdrawn, have not exactly helped the Italian’s image.

We covered this earlier in the week. No. No. No. Not what happened.

Three months ago The Sun ran a story headlined Abu are ya? in which it was claimed that Marlon King had converted to Islam, had asked to be known as Abu Hamza Tariq in honour of the well-known cleric and hate figure, and that he was telling people he was all set to join Chelsea on his release from prison. The story went up on The Sun’s website and disappeared in about 24 hours. That was long enough, however, for the story to be picked up by the Daily Mail, and to be discussed on message boards and other blogs up and down the internet.

When we saw the story back then, we said the following:

The genie is long out of the bottle, regardless of whether it was true or not. Marlon might be a particularly nice man, but if this was fictitious, it doesn’t make it right.

Then, thanks to a tip-off from one of our readers, we saw a statement on the PFA website from the wife of Marlon King suggesting that another Marlon King story, suggesting he had been involved in cocaine-dealing, had been referred to solicitors.

We said at the time:

We are about to find out whether being a famous footballer in prison makes you fair game for spurious stories.

The best part of a quarter of a year later, we have our answer. Here’s something that appeared on the Daily Mail’s website last week:

An article on 12 April referred to reports which suggested Marlon King had converted to Islam in prison, his hero was hate preacher Abu Hamza and cocaine had been found in his cell. In fact, these reports were untrue and we apologise for any contrary impression that may have been given.

This morning, may we present conclusive evidence that nobody is listening to anybody when it comes to transfer rumours. Thank you for your co-operation (or lack of) in advance, The Sun and Manchester United:

It all begins here, when yesterday Neil Custis reporting from Philadelphia on Manchester United’s pre-season records the following:

Fergie: I’ve got all I need

But Fergie said: “I can’t speak for other clubs but we’re comfortable with the squad we’ve got.

“I’ve bought players at the right time of the season and we are quite happy with that.”

Then, apropos of nothing, The Sun also print the following story on the same day:

Alex lines up Ozil swoop

[...] Fergie is aware Ozil, 21, has only a year left on his deal with Werder Bremen, who want to cash in before the midfielder is available on a free.

The Bundesliga side did want £20million to let Ozil move on but have now dropped their asking price by £8m.

United’s transfer kitty is tight but if a deal can be struck Fergie will push hard to get the cash.

If you’re having a hard time reconciling those two stories, both printed happily as fact, then you’re obviously not an editor at The Sun - according to Football 365’s Mediawatch, not only did the stories appear in the same paper on the same day, but brilliantly they were on the same page.

Still (and infuriatingly) it’s hard not to have a measure of sympathy with The Sun here. Rewind to last season’s summer window, of course, and we witnessed the value of Ferguson’s word on transfer dealings first hand:

July 13th 2009 - BBC - Ferguson rules out more signings

“It is the end of our business,” he said. “Stories about who we are supposed to be getting - forget it.”

Which was promptly followed up by:

July 18th 2009 - The Independent - Manchester United sign Diouf from Molde

[...] Speaking at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today, manager Sir Alex Ferguson said: “We’ve been looking at him for two years.

“We weren’t intending on signing anyone else after last week - we feel we have a full squad - but the situation accelerated to a point where other clubs started to make bids, so we had to decide whether we acted or didn’t act.”

So when Ferguson says he’s done in the transfer market, that may be what he means, it may not. And when The Sun publish on the same page that Ferguson is done spending and that he’s hot on the heels of another player, well, they’re going to be right and wrong - and we have no way of being sure which way round.

All we know for sure, however, is that it’s almost entirely pointless trying to glean any information from the press about transfers. Which, given the saturation levels of coverage they get, is a somewhat exploitative and unnecessary way of selling newspapers.

]]> http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/2010/07/21/what-good-are-words/feed/ http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/2010/07/20/storms-in-teacups-the-capello-index-reappears/ http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/2010/07/20/storms-in-teacups-the-capello-index-reappears/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 09:16:25 +0000 Sport without Spin http://www.sportwithoutspin.com/?p=4062

The Capello Index. It’s a simple concept. Players are rated according to a complex formula based on their every contribution to a game of football, and the results are laid out in statistical form with a score of 100 being the best and 0 being the worst. And to give the stats a shot in the arm at a time when quite a few other statistics are being compiled (Opta, Infostrada, Castrol Index and so on) they turned to Fabio Capello to lend it a touch of credibility.

Understood?

Well, no.

Back in May when it was announced and immediately put on ice until after the World Cup, the media wilfully misunderstood it and wondered if it would be a destabilising factor in the quest for English glory in South Africa.

So imagine the newspapers’ glee when they see that the Capello Index relaunched after the World Cup - and - get this - England, who had a crappy tournament, saw their players get crappy ratings!

Has Fabio and his farcical Capello Index put English football at its lowest point for 40 years?

That’s what Terry Butcher in the Mirror is asking, anyway. The answer is no, Terry, by the way.

When I entered Capello’s name into his own Index, no data was found and therefore no mark was issued.

It’s a rating system for players, Terry, not for managers. That’s literally why.

The players would not have expected Fabio Capello to draw even more attention to their shortcomings by highlighting their failure on his lucrative website.

Perpetuation of a myth! Nobody called Fabio after the 4-1 thrashing and asked him to award Steven Gerrard a score out of 100 for his performance. He lent his name to an algorithm.

I wonder how highly the ­players rate Capello today.

Well, there’s no need to wonder because the tabloids found plenty of them who were prepared to mouth off - so long as they remained anonymous - and by extension potentially fictional.

The Sun - A senior England player said: “If he had distanced himself from the Index,why did marks appear after the World Cup?

“Now the players want to know when they’ll get the chance to mark him.

“There was an easy way to avoid all this - don’t mark the players in the first place.”

The Mirror - A senior England player said: “I wonder how he would like it if we marked his World Cup performance out of 100 and gave him -20? The ratings are a complete joke.

Another England star said: “It’s bad enough the manager seems to have laid all the blame on the players doorstep without trying to humiliate us by publicly giving us woeful markings.

Surely his position is untenable, he’s done his level best to lose the dressing room, that’s for sure.”

The Mirror - An England star said: “The FA should either fire him or he should do the honourable thing and resign.”

Many of the players who flopped so badly at the World Cup are still on holiday. But calls were bouncing around the world yesterday between the outraged stars.

The senior England international added: “Given all the controversy over our collective performance in the World Cup it is an absolute disgrace that the manager has got involved in this.”

Incidentally, the Mirror has the gall to call these unattributed quotes an ‘exclusive’. And whoever these senior internationals are, they really seem to have misunderstood what happened here. “Don’t mark the players in the first place” - he didn’t. “What if we marked his World Cup performance out of 100 and gave him -20?” - well, you’d have misunderstood the basic concept. “Trying to humiliate us by publicly giving us woeful markings” - yeesh, do you remember the World Cup? It really wasn’t that long ago. If the woeful markings are what bother you… but hey, we’re wasting our time. Assuming these quotes are fictional, we’re correcting the ruminations of thin air, and if they’re not, then perhaps the players were beyond help anyway.

And as for the idea that “it is an absolute disgrace that the manager has got involved in this” - well, given his unambiguous denial of any involvement in it, perhaps Capello is the wrong target here. After all, stop and think about it. If you’d invented the Capello Index and you wanted to make some money off it (and for the time being we don’t see any reason to link Capello himself to this) - wouldn’t you put these ratings up after the World Cup? You’ve got the domestic leagues about to start, and you need to generate some interest again. And, as for gaining notoriety, there’s a British media waiting to have a shitfit about them. Hell, we wouldn’t take them down either.

But we would put up the following notice on the front page, so for the hundred millionth time people understand how the ratings work:

“Football Cap Index, owner of the trademark and “know how” of the Capello Index, wants to clarify that the evaluations of the World Cup made public, are the result of a complex analytical calculation system denominated the Index.

Fabio Capello contributed, with his indisputable knowledge and experience, in the laying down of the foundations of this project: from then on, a team of professors and experts in mathematical and statistical calculations, then went on to create the system used in order to generate the ratings.

The Capello Index cannot, and must not, be summarised as “The vote given by Capello” to the players, but is the result of a system which is capable of analysing and evaluating the actual performance adding various scientific variables.

For this reason the Capello Index website allows one access to all the relevant events taken into consideration when calculating a players’ performance with the possibility of publishing, in future, some of the elements that are part of the calculation algorithm.

In the era of advanced technology, in which the American sports are a perfect example, we believe that there are many opportunities to enhance the users’ knowledge of football thanks to the use of an objective evaluation system.

We have no intention of generating any doubt regarding the professionalism of the great actors of this marvellous sport, purely creating an unbiased and universal rating system. As far as the evaluation of the performance of the players in the South African World Cup is concerned, we would like to clarify that Fabio Capello did not contribute in the formulation of the results now available online. They were obtained thanks to our unique scientific system that is, and will remain, transparent.”

There is literally no chance that the press or the (probably made-up) players will understand this.

The last race at Silverstone was notable for being the race where Red Bull largely stopped pretending that they had two drivers on an equal footing, as a new piece of kit which failed on Vettel’s car in practice was taken off Webber’s car and put on Vettel’s. Webber didn’t find it hugely amusing, and concluded as he won the GP that it wasn’t “bad for a number two”.

In the space between Grands Prix Red Bull have been pedalling furiously to suggest that there is no favouritism whatsoever. Fair enough - they have a driver relationship to maintain, and a championship to win. But, don’t, as Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko attempts, propose the worst conspiracy theory imaginable:

“If Mark imagines there’s a conspiracy between us and Vettel against him, then he is on the wrong track,” Marko said. “If I was Vettel then I would have suspected the opposite. Which car has permanently had something damaged?

“Did Mark have the defective spark plug in Bahrain, the loose wheel in Australia, the broken brake disc in Barcelona, the defective chassis in Monte Carlo, the transmission problems in Montreal and now the broken wing at Silverstone?”

As a theory, the Webber-as-favoured-son conspiracy theory only works if you believe that Red Bull have actively sent Sebastian Vettel out in a car likely to break down. Conspiracy? Probably not. Bad luck? Well, hopefully.

The Vettel-as-favoured-son conspiracy works a little better if you note that new technology is lifted off Webber’s car and given to Vettel without explanation, and that Webber is blamed for a crash earlier in the year when there was obviously blame attached to both sides. Different. The trouble is that pronouncements like Marko’s in this instance draw attention to the iniquity rather than defuse it.