Barcelona – Chelsea 2-2

I can’t believe Barca still somehow managed to lose this game in overtime. There’s no way they would have let the lead slip last season. Somehow, they seem to miss urgency this year. And Eto’o. I can’t stress how much they miss Eto’o. Only now it becomes apparent how much work he did, even in games where he didn’t create too many chances. However, he always kept two or three defenders busy, allowing the wide men more space. Eidur is less mobile, and thus less effective in this role. I hope Barca are at least still in this competition when they get Eto’o back after the winter break. I’d hate to lose the defending champs this early in the competition. They need a win in their next game, and then, depending on the result Chelsea gets against them, they need another win or a draw against Werder
Bremen.

Still do-able, but you would have expected them to be through by this stage.

Guilty pleasures

Guilty pleasure songs. What’s are most embarrassing songs on your iPod. Somehow the topic of discussion got to music over lunch, and we both fessed up what were the most uncool and anti-hip songs on our respective mp3-players. Of the stuff currently loaded onto my mp3 player, this could fall into the category guilty pleasures:

Fernando by ABBA

Als de dag van toen by Reinhard Mey

Tous les garcons et les filles by Françoise Hardy

Africa by Toto

More than this by Roxy music

Blauw by The Scene

She drives me crazy by the fine young cannibals

Sugar baby love by the rubettes

Once again, Sylvie proved to be way cooler than I am. Her guilty pleasures were some early Oasis stuff, Love Hurts by Nazareth and Black and White by Micheal Jackson. All of which I don’t consider to be guilty pleasures. I’m getting old… :p

The Wicker Man

So Sylvie and I went to see the Wicker Man last night. As first dates go, a movie is always a pretty good choice. Too bad it was a mediocre remake. It seems like all that has come out of Hollywood in recent years is either a big screen conversion of a TV series/comic book/cartoon, or a remake of a Hollywood classic, most of the time not adding anything to the original. What has happened to Nicolas Cage that he is now devoting his time to crap like this? I know he hasn’t been that picky with roles in recent years, but Leaving Las Vegas is a decade ago. What has the man done since then that was worth seeing? Except for Adaptation and Lord of War, I can’t think of much. And those two were great because of their script, not because of some great performance by Cage.

 Anyway, the bad remake did prove for some fun conversation after the movie. The theme of a woman seducing a man to then mislead him into becoming a human sacrifice seemed to amuse her, and she teasingly struck comparisons with us.

3-5-2

Interesting article by Norman Hubbard about the much maligned 3-5-2 formation. (Especially after the last few disastrous games for England’s Steve McClaren) Am I the only one who never liked the 3-5-2 formation? It was widely used all through the nineties. Unfortunately, most of the time it meant teams would revert back to a 5-3-2 formation when the opposition had the ball. I believe it lead to the multitude of crap ultra-defensive teams we had in the late 80s and early to mid 90s. 

Untill Ajax came to save the day with their splendid 4-3-3, ultra-offensive formation. Speaking of which, I don’t understand why most Dutch teams now adopt a 4-3-3 with the creative man pointing backwards. They used to have the creative man (Litmanen) playing just before the holding midfielders. Now they insist on having him playing behind the holding midfielders. I always prefered the way Jari Litmanen played, moving from box to box, depending on whether his team were defending or attacking. Now, Wesley Sneijder hardly gets into good positions any more. Henk Ten Cate has started mixing it up with a 3-4-3 formation now. A nice variation, but he still insists on having the ball distributor playing just in front of the defense. It makes no sense. At least not to me.

And now for something completely different: what has happened to Christian Vieri? It’s not just the age, he slowly withered away the last couple of seasons. It seems most people (including me) have forgotten how great he was in the 97-00 era. I had totally forgotten about this gem: Vieri versus PAOK. He really should have remained in Spain.

Of beauty and comfort

Welcome to my brand new blog space. I’ve decided to make the leap, because I’ve been looking for an outlet for some of my more creative ramblings for quite some time now. I hope I don’t annoy you all too much.

So I’ve finally started reading Wim Kayzer’s book of beauty and comfort. For those of you who never heard of it, or of Wim Kayzer himself, it basically comes down to this: He asked 29 writers, scientists, philosophers, painters, sculpters and musicians what makes life worthwhile. More specifically, he asked them what they considered to be beautiful, and what in their life and the world in general gave them a feeling of comfort. The result is a great and diverse book. I’m only halfway through it by now, but it’s been a long time since a book gripped me like this. I greatly recommend it to anyone lacking direction and hope in their life. I’m not saying the book will change your life. 

Yet the greatest minds of our time struggle with the same issues we do, and somehow find new perspectives and angles to look at what makes life beautiful, and the general value of life itself. Up to now, I’ve read these essays on beauty and comfort:Tatjana Tolstoja, Roger Scruton, Stephen Jay Gould, Freeman Dyson, Elizabeth Loftus, George Steiner, Wole Soyinka, Steven Weinberg, Rutger Kopland, Jane Goodall, Leon Lederman, Simon Schama, Karel Appel, Edward Witten.

We go, but beauty remains – Joseph Brodsky