In For The Hat Trick

Earlier today, as I looked for highlights of Real Madrid’s 4-0 win over Bayern Munich, I stumbled upon an interesting Foxsoccer.com video: “Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid: Best of Gus Johnson.” In it, Johnson, an accomplished basketball commentator, describes (or tries to describe) Real’s four goals. Clearly, Fox still loves this guy. Which is a shame, because, as far as I can tell, more than a year after calling his first Champions League game, Johnson has barely improved: I cringed when he announced that “Los Blancos can smell Lisbon.” He sounds like a man trying to prove to the world that he understands soccer — that he knows Real Madrid’s nickname and is confident enough to, you know, use it in a sentence.

Click here for an article I wrote about Johnson last year.

And watch the Fox video here.

Check out my latest World Soccer Talk post. It’s about former soccer broadcaster Steven Cohen’s controversial comments on the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Let me know what you think.

On April 13, 2009, two days before the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster, Steven Cohen said something stupid. “In this weekend’s Sunday papers in England, where they’re all doing big commemorations about the 96, and why we should never forget, nobody discusses the six to eight thousand who showed up without tickets,” Cohen said on the radio show World Soccer Daily. “I’ll leave it at this: if those people don’t show up, this never happens.”

To the uninitiated, Cohen’s claim might seem plausible: ticketless fans force themselves into a crowded stadium and create a fatal crush. But according to Lord Justice Taylor’s report on the incident, although “small groups of fans without tickets were willing to exploit any adventitious chance of getting into the ground,” the primary cause of the disaster was the incompetence of the police officers patrolling Hillsborough. Moreover, Liverpool fans have spent decades making that very point.

Read the full article here.  

Earlier this week, Zlatan Ibrahimovic got the full New York Times treatment — a lenghy-ish profile by Sam Borden that ran in Monday’s Sports section. It’s a good story, and it raises some interesting questions. For instance: Is Zlatan as conceited as everyone seems to think? Or is he just having a laugh? At one point, Ibra tells Borden about his two sons:

“‘I changed diapers when they were babies,’ he said, adding, ‘I know other footballer may not, but I do.’ Then he shrugged, as if slipping back into character. ‘Of course, I am very good at it,’ he said with a grin.” 

In December, Zlatan claimed that “I don’t need the Ballon d’Or to know I’m the best.” Judging from Twitter, some people thought he was serious. Maybe now they’ll finally get the joke.