Madrid faces challenge from Elche in La Liga match

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Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Before an engorged international break we have a gala weekend of derby games. Some of them are familiar, others rather longer in the waiting, others spurious in their definition but shoehorned in for tea-timely email purposes. Thursday night’s Bigger Vase defeat by Ferencvaros was not a great result for angry Martin O’Neill’s Celtic, coming three days before the Old Firm/Glasgow derby (delete as applicable according to adherence to Scottish company law), and four days after losing to Rangers in the Old Firm/Glasgow derby. In Spain, Atlético v Real Madrid will see Diego Simeone and José Mourinho bring the morbo ruckus to the sidelines. A football match might actually break out, though that cannot be guaranteed when considering the managers involved. I also met Ludek Miklosko (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), but in a way that now seems rather surreal. When I was a kid, my junior Sunday league team trained at West Ham’s Chadwell Heath training ground every Friday night in their sports hall. In them days, anyone could drive into the car park and walk through the gym to the hall – and on one particular night my dad dropped me and a teammate off and told us he’d be back in an hour. When we walked into the hall we were more than surprised to find that our team had cancelled training, with nobody else turning up, and half of the West Ham first team were in there doing drills instead. With nowhere to go (and no mobile phones) they invited us to join in. As an Arsenal fan, I didn’t really care much for West Ham players, but their goalkeeper was a lovely man and spent most of the hour playing with us and encouraging shots. I never forgot Ludo after that night” – Nicholas Larkin. I was struck by the sentiment of Christopher D’Cruz that it is not possible to dig yourself out of a hole (yesterday’s letters). OK, I know it is not exactly the same, but it is still a similar principle … they have clearly never heard of Baron Munchhausen pulling himself out of a swamp with his own hair” – Andriy Zavgorodniy. Christopher has clearly never had to dig a trench, moat, ditch, etc. Sure, there has to be some downward digging to start, but then most of the work is going sideways. Similarly, if you’re stuck at the bottom of a steep-sided hole with nothing but a shovel then the move to get oneself out is digging a gentler slope back to ground-level. Or, to quote the intellectual leviathan, Homer J Simpson: dig up, stupid!” – James Humphries (and 1,056 others). Continue reading...

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Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Anxious to sample some traditional Spanish culture while taking in a La Liga match years ago, Football Daily and some friends decamped to Gran Alicant. As we prepared to leave a quaint bodega (the Dick Turpin), where we’d been sampling the local hooch (Guinness), to travel to the nearby stadium, an elderly local resident with an unmistakable mackem accent informed us that the Elche home game to which we were heading was not being played until the following evening. It had fallen victim to Spanish TV’s infuriating habit of rescheduling random top-flight matches with little or no notice or consideration for Johnny-come-latelys who might have travelled from afar to watch them. We never did get to see Elche play in the flesh but did get to watch the current La Liga basement-dwellers give José Mourinho an almighty fright on TV on Tuesday night, as they went this close to snatching a point from Real Madrid. I almost wish I was a West Ham fan. As an eternally suffering Spurs supporter, I find myself looking enviously towards the London Stadium these days. The Hammers are top of the table, banging in goal after goal (already 20 more than Spurs’ tally in the league). They score even when they lose and seem to have bought a proper No 9. My Spurs, meanwhile, continue the tradition of the last two years in style, sitting comfortably in 17th with 1,047 wingers on contract, and getting knocked out of one of the competitions they could ‘conceivably’ have won, the only competition they seem to be able to score goals in as well. In hindsight, West Ham made the right choice to go down. Hammers fans, you are welcome!” – Yannick Woudstra (and no others). Hugh Fordham’s idea [Tuesday’s Football Daily letters] has some merit. But it reminded me of a pithy comment by Bill Nicholson. ‘Do you think he was interfering with play?’, he was asked. Nicholson responded: “If he’s not interfering with play, what’s he doing on the pitch?!’” – Harry McDonald. In support of Hugh Fordham’s suggestion, I remember discussing the idea of interfering with play while on a training course for referees back in the 1960s. We were told that unless someone was ‘lying injured near the corner flag’ any player should be treated as being involved in play. Not a lot of room for subjectivity in those days. And obviously no thought of stopping play for the hypothetical injured player!” – Trevor Field. Continue reading...