#i made a football edit that got over 1000 notes

[dirtydobrik]

autumn leaves - d.d.

requested: nope! just a cute fluffy piece i was inspired to write

word count: 1000

author’s note: sorry for being so inactive lately! i’ve had a little bit of downtime this week to write, but i am no means back to posting on a normal schedule. i’ll try to post once or twice a week but it’ll definitely be inconsistent posts for the next fewweeks

masterlist 

You held David’s hand as he drove, trying to calm him down. You didn’t know why he was nervous, but his leg was shaking and his palms were sweaty.

“You okay?” you asked in a low whisper. David nodded, before pushing his door open and hopping out of the car.

A smile spread across your face as you walked up the driveway. The front door swung open and you were greeted by your mom and older sister who quickly pulled you into a tight hug. The familiar scent of home filled your nose and you let out a sigh. It felt good to be home, and it felt good to have David by your side.

You set the apple pie you had spent all morning making on the kitchen counter, before pouring yourself a glass of wine and joining your aunts on the couch. David headed down to the basement to watch the football game with your dad, uncles, and cousins. It was incredible how well he got along well with your family, considering none of your other boyfriends ever had.

Dinner was enjoyable, everyone was just chatting and catching up on life. You told your cousins stories about life in LA and they told you about college and the jobs they had on the east coast.

“I can’t believe you’re dating David Dobrik!”  your fourteen-year old cousin exclaimed. “My friends are so jealous. They always ask me to have you introduce David to them.”

“It’s pretty crazy,” you giggled. “And tell your friends that we’ll stop by next time we’re in town,” you winked.

You got up to clear the dishes, overhearing your mom and David talking as you walked into the kitchen.

“How are you feeling about tonight?” she asked, keeping her voice low. Her back was to you, so she didn’t know it was you.

“Nervous,” David confessed.

“Don’t be,” you mom said, and you knew she was smiling. You couldn’t help but wonder what they were talking about.

You set the plates in the sink, turning around to see David sitting at the island behind you. “What?” you asked when you realized he was blushing.

“Golden hour suits you,” he smiled, and you glanced over your shoulder to see the backyard glowing.

“He’s right,” your sister added, walking into the kitchen with another stack of plates. “We should have a photoshoot. It’s been forever since you and I have taken a picture together,” she insisted, pulling you outside.

The yard was littered with red and orange leaves that had fallen from the trees during the changing season. You could hear the crunch of the crisp autumn leaves under your heeled booties.

David took a few photos of you with your sister before he asked her to take some of you and him. She happily agreed, positioning you so the light hit perfectly. The trees were bare, but she had you both toss leaves up to get a cute picture. David’s hand fidgeted with something in his pocket and you gasped when he turned to face you and got down on one knee. He slipped a small black box out of his coat pocket and tears streamed down your face before he had the chance to say anything.

He lifted the top of the box to reveal a stunning but simple diamond ring and David took your hand in his free one. You could barely hear what he was saying through your sobs. You just nodded and kept repeating “yes”.

“Will you marry me?” you heard him ask, and you collapsed to the ground, wrapping your arms around his neck and kissing him.

“Yes. Absolutely, yes,” you whispered, giving him another kiss. David slipped the ring on to your finger. “I love you,” you smiled, hugging him tightly.

You stood up and David hugged you again. He lifted you off the ground and spun you around. You looked over to see your sister on the verge of tears, a huge smile on her face, as she continued to take pictures of you and David.

“You guys are so perfect for each other,” she sniffled, giving you both hugs.

You headed back inside, your ruined makeup an obvious indicator that something had happened. You gathered your family together and held your hand up to reveal the ring. Gasps echoed throughout the room as everyone inched forward to get a good look at the ring.

“Congratulations, you two,” your mom smiled, giving you and David a hug.

You circled the room giving hugs and saying thank you to everyone else. You then excused yourself to tell your friends.

“I want to vlog their reactions,” David said. “But I also want to post about it tonight.”

“FaceTime them right now, that way it doesn’t come as a shock when you put it on Instagram,” you chuckled, curling up next to him on the couch.

David called his mom first. Then Ilya. Then Jason. Then Natalie. And then you two took turns calling people to tell them the news. David recorded the reactions for the most part, keeping a few for just the two of you. You called your friends from home and your friends in LA that weren’t part of the vlog squad. Everyone you told said that it was about time that David proposed, and apparently you were the only one who didn’t see it coming.

You edited the pictures you had taken, trying to come up with a cheesy caption for your Instagram picture. You settled on “thankful you made me get a manicure yesterday so you could propose to me today,” and posted a picture of you sobbing as he slipped the ring on your finger.

“I can’t believe I get to spend the rest of my life with you,” you grinned, resting your head on his chest. David wrapped his arms around you and leaned his head against you. “I love you.”

“I love you, more,” David beamed, kissing the top of your head.

[celticnoise]

How many of you know who Eddy Snelders is?

I don’t know who Eddy Snelders is.

I had no idea what his background was until today. He’s a former assistant manager to the national team in Belgium apparently, although we’re not quite sure when he last actually sat in a dug-out. Any more than that and I’d be guessing, and Wikipedia isn’t much more help. This is his entire biography as it appears there:

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“Eddy Snelders (born 9 April 1959, in Kapellen) is a retired Belgium footballer who played as a defender.”

I am not joking. That’s literally all it says, apart from listing the teams he played for, none of them exactly star-spangled names.

But he is apparently some kind of go-to guy when it comes to the Belgian national team. Hey, either that or Mark Walker – an equally obscure member of our esteemed media – went through an entire phone book of ex-players over there until they found one willing to have a pop at our central defender, Dedryck Boyata.

Because here Snelders is, appearing in not one but two newspapers, offering his “opinion” on the big man’s inclusion in the national side.

Snelders is described as a “former Belgium No.2, turned pundit”. And it becomes a little clearer; he’s their version of Kris Boyd.

I mean, what is this? Help A Foreign Hack Day?

Are they trying to get this guy a gig on Radio Clyde?

Amazing that Walker, whoever the Hell he is, got such a luminary of football to go on the record with such an Earth-shattering view as the one he’s given on this decision.

“Boyata is too slow for me,” said the guy who never managed a team in his life, who played for such footballing giants as Standard Liege, Royal Antwerp, Lierse and KV Kortrijk and who made one solitary appearance in a 1981 Belgian team that was so bad it should have stuck to making waffles.

The writer, Walker, has actually accomplished a rare feat here; his ridiculous “article”, which contains a single quote and has been blown up a thousand times by lurid headlines, has actually got this “work” published in both The Sun and in The Record, which is quite amazing and leads me to inquire as to how that happens. These papers are rivals. To get in the online edition of would take quite some doing … unless your “article” is nothing but a PR piece sent out to numerous different outlets, who ran it without checking that out.

Which is, of course, exactly how it reads … the wording in both articles isn’t similar; it is identical.

Here’s The Record’s headline; note the name of the writer.

Now, read the first paragraph.

Now check the idential story in The Sun …

And the next bit … you can see clearly that it’s word for word …

Now you tell me how that happens, in two newspapers who’s sports sections are actually in competition with one another?

Serious questions need to be asked about our “journalistic standards” in this country.

There are honest professionals trying to make it in that business and newspapers are running cut-and-paste garbage like this, trying to pass off the opinions of complete non-entities as if they are inspired pieces of insight.

You could be forgiven for wondering what the agenda here is; our country should be celebrating the fact that a player in our top flight has been selected for an outstanding international side like Belgium.

Instead, we get this … a two-bob attempted hatcher job which somehow manages to be a headline story on the websites of two national titles.

It’s beneath contempt.

http://ift.tt/2ndGoLX

[thefootballlife]

Attack on Titan - A response to James Gheerbrant's Times Article on if Celtic's dominance is damaging Scottish football

I received an email on Wednesday evening asking if I'd like to help a journalist with an article he was writing. I spent 10-15 mins on the phone to him on Thursday morning having a pretty pleasant chat and then received an email later in the day asking if it was OK to put my name in as a quote. I replied this was fine (because, the amount of people who don't ask is far larger than those who do!) and awaited to read it.

The article itself can be read on The Times’ website at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/scotland-the-worst-title-race-in-europe-since-1932-z68l83g02

While it's always fair to be sceptical of any article which describes me as an expert (including, if not especially, those where I describe myself as such), Gheerbrant’s article was one described by Duncan McKay as “here’s my agenda and I'll find ways of showing you how right I am”. This much was, to be fair, fairly apparent from my conversation with him. He was given (or had already come to) a conclusion and his role as writer was to make everything stack up to prove that hypothesis.

Every writer does that. Even me. If I'm writing an article, I'll often know the end before the start because one of my focuses is to attempt to both start and finish a piece with a good line. From a perspective of method, generally I do about 50% of articles on a “I should write on this to be timely”, 25% on “this idea has come into my head and I want to get it down” and the other 25% is where I have a witticism I want to use and build an article round.

Obviously, someone making their way in the world with the fricking Times of London has less freedom. A quick flick of his articles shows an EPL focus and then bits where he has clearly been tasked with a specific article that’s a “story”. So, before I get into the nitty-gritty of today’s article, let me note that, from having spoken to James Gheerbrant on both email and phone, I agree with Duncan McKay’s quote above and got that feeling in advance.

In the English bubble, it is very easy to just take a pop at Scottish football when you need to feel a bit better about yourself. It was, bluntly, an article that justifies why the Times do next to nothing on Scottish football the rest of the season. As an example, why comment on Hamilton’s average attendance so far this season being down by 443 as proof Scottish football is dying when you could just as easily take the fact that St Johnstone’s has risen by an almost identical amount as proof it is in rude health or that Kilmarnock’s attendances have risen by over 1000.

I can do anything with statistics to prove a point and to pick on two clubs, Aberdeen and Hamilton - one of whom are not challenging for the title his season and one who are the smallest club in the league - to show proof Scottish football is on the rocks is a bit of a stretch. So far this season, in the Premiership, attendances outside of Celtic and Rangers have risen by an average of 70 fans per game. Now, that, to me, is more or less static - you can merely say “attendances are on the up” and use that to prove that Scottish football is on the rise. To see those statistics and argue that they prove that Scottish football is in some sort of terminal decline is to wilfully ignore certain parts of evidence.

Now, you will note that in none of this am I claiming that I was personally misquoted - I was not. My part in the article is a brief two paragraphs about a section of the season in which Celtic games drew lower than usual ratings which I surmised could only have been due to fans turning off because of Celtic's dominance. And the fact that SPFL ratings are strong overall has not been missed.

What most will know without me having to say it is that one thing I am incapable of is getting my point across so succinctly. In my ten or so minute chat I also mentioned that that short period had rebounded back to normal now, that I felt the issue was less to do with Celtic and more to do with the promotion of the league as a whole by the SPFL, and that it would be difficult to blame Celtic for certain based on only half a season. There was no mention of elements such as the external factors such as Rangers, unlegal streaming in Scotland being higher than average and the fact that Celtic were crap to watch last season - all things I said.

Now, I would be a complete hypocrite to call someone out for selective quoting - everyone does it, including me. It is not my right to say that someone should present work that is contrary to the brief they have been given and how they get there. It is my right to then say that I disagree with the overall conclusion and to offer an argument to back up my position. I cannot imagine that many people would have a ten minute conversation with me about Scottish football and come to the conclusion that I'm really pessimistic about it or that I hold the opinion that the club I support is somehow killing the game (and, if that was a view I held, I'd say it because I do believe I call Celtic out on their shit more than most Celtic fans).

Here is something I do believe - this Celtic team are a once in a generation freak. Had they got third in the CL group, they would be live contenders for the Europa League. Gordon Smith and Archie McPherson may have lost interest, but I haven't. Celtic might be 27 points clear but there is a live race for Europe, there is a relegation dog fight. If we want to discuss dominance and lack of interest, we could look to Slovakia whose league is all but won and who won't have a relegation this year thanks to Spartak Myjava going crazy.

Even if one subscribes to there being a decline (which, long term, there has been, but medium term there has not), blaming it on Celtic is a bit rich. It is not for Celtic to justify UEFA only giving small countries on CL place. If one wants to criticise Celtic for having larger revenues, then one must lay the blame at the door of UEFA for creating a system which only increases the disparity in revenues in smaller countries. Basel - on for 8 in a row, Dinamo Zagreb - going for 12 in a row - yet are there articles calling out Basel as killing the Swiss Super League? Is Celtic’s dominance a problem or a natural by-product of other problems endemic in football? Is this a short term issue or a long-term reaction to changes made by UEFA in the Champions League, etc 25 years ago in an effort to increase its commercial appeal?

Issues like this cannot be taken in isolation but they are, ultimately, works of opinion. My opinion is that the opinion espoused by the Times is incorrect. This Celtic team is the best for 15 years and, excluding relegations, etc, are there really any sides in the SPFL Premiership who are actually worse than 5 years ago, in the first season after Rangers’ collapse? Would we rather see Louis Moult or Michael Higdon?

The Times opinion has been backed up using alternative facts and the basis of two football games. Had Gheerbrant viewed St Johnstone 2 Celtic 5 or Motherwell 3 Celtic 4 instead of Celtic-Inverness or a midweek game between Accies and Aberdeen (which naturally has a low turnout because it’s a work night and Hamilton is a 7 hour plus round trip in rush hour) then would he have not seen a really entertaining game of vibrant football rather than an epic rearguard effort or an expected trouncing? Putting in the headline “Attendances have collapsed across the league” is, bluntly, an outright falsehood - as mentioned earlier, on average even without Celtic or Rangers, attendances are up and, when the two Glasgow giants are included, that propels it up massively to around 14,000 extra fans on average across the league. If that is collapse, I would love to see what success looks like.

Scottish football is not in this sort of dramatic collapse as pictured by the Times. The game in Scotland is comparatively trouble free compared to other leagues in similar states such as Croatia, who not only have to deal with a decade of domestic Dinamo dominance (that may end this season) but also empty stands far worse than seen in Scotland - Dinamo have a stadium for 35,000 and a highest domestic attendance of 11,000. No-one is going to argue it is in the rudest of health, but failing to appreciate there are legitimate external factors around why Scottish football isn’t where it was 20 years ago is the height of ignorance. Nor, for that matter, is dipping in once a season to talk down to Scottish fans anything approaching comprehensive coverage nor does it give you any right to claim it is in terminal decline.

Does Celtic’s dominance damage Scottish football? Why not ask, does UEFA’s coefficient system damage smaller nations? Have the economics of football reached a point where leagues tend towards monopoly?

Or most importantly, why not ask a question that might actually challenge your readers as opposed to selectively quoting to reach a lazy conclusion that was already decided before pen was put to paper?

We’d all benefit if journalists did a bit more of that.

Also, the second paragraph of the Times’ article features the word “Rodgers’s”. If you can carry on reading after than piece of punctuation homicide, well done.