North Korea Looking for a Coach

Think about it. You're a soccer coach with some international chops. Speak two or three languages. Have done coaching time on a coupla-three continents, working through interpreters in countries you normally wouldn't visit unless someone held a gun to your head.

Bora Milutinovic, Guus Hiddink. You know, those guys. Carlos Alberto Parreira.

Then you see this want ad on the "internationalsoccercoaches.com" jobs website*:

"Hermit Kingdom, ruled by a legitimate madman, a country where half the population could starve to death at any time, looking for coach for South Africa 2010 World Cup. Oh, and only if you win will any of your matches be shown on TV back in Pyongyang. On the 104 licensed TVs in the country. Feel free to use corporal punishment on any players who deviate from party line or finish last in wind sprints. Send resume, video of players cowering and fraternal socialist references to ... Kim Jong Il, c/o Axis of Evil, PRK Division."

You're intrigued, right?

What could be freakier than coaching North Korea? What would be crazier, more random and madcap?

Anyway, North Korea is looking for a World Cup coach, and Philippe Troussier apparently is a candidate.

I say, "Go for it!"

North Korea is the country no one gets into. And hardly anyone gets out of. It has been the strangest place on the planet for about 60 years now, and without any real rivals since Albania opened up about 20 years ago. (OK, maybe Myanmar. With Equatorial Guinea and Yemen shaping up as wannabes.)

Most of what any Westerners know about Kim Jong Il is thanks to the Trey Parker/Matt Stone/South Park crew's marionette movie entitled "Team America: World Police". And they portray Kim as crazy as a loon, a guy in thick glasses who drops F bombs and feeds Hans Blix of United Nations fame to the sharks in his monster fish tank.

So, yeah, you get to go work with him.

You will spend months in beautiful downtown Pyongyang, or in some work/re-education camp. Whatever you prefer. They money will be pretty good, but you can't ever talk about it. You won't be able to say much of anything about the competence of your team ... but you sure as heck can keep a diary (if you code it cleverly enough) and write a great book when it's all over.

Dealing with the soul-crushing bureaucracy of the PRK. Maybe meeting Kim Jong Il. Detailing how the players cringe when you raise your hand ... to scratch the top of your head. What the crowds are like if and when you play a home friendly. What your living quarters are like.

The little stuff; like what the players eat. How you don't trust your translator and are sure he works for the secret police and records everything you say. And those four goons who insist on driving you around.

How locked down your training site in South Africa is. How nobody from North Korea actually came to see you play in South Africa. How the players whimpered in fear of retribution when they went out in the first round without scoring a point. (North Korea is in the Group of Death, remember?)

On and on. This is a book waiting to be written. I would buy it right now.

And the one really weird thing of this? Somebody in North Korea is clear-minded enough (and has enough political power) to convince a rabidly nationalistic government that, really, comrades, we have to have a foreigner coach the team or we're going to get destroyed. (Or maybe a foreign coach to blame when we get destroyed.)

Almost makes you a teeny bit optimistic that not every single guy in the PRK politburo is nuts.

Anyway, this should be fun. Well, interesting, anyway. The planet's last great paranoid Communist state, with one of the planet's elite Cults of the Personality going on right this minute.

Can't beat that with a stick.

* -- And no, there isn't such a website. I just made it up. If there were, Bora would sign up for the RSS feed. Read more!

France Misses Chance to Abandon Domenech

I'm not sure any but the greatest of coaches make much difference in the fate of a soccer club or a soccer nation. If the talent is there, some very mediocre managers can coach champions.

However, I do believe that a bad coach can destroy a good team and waste great talent.

Which brings us to Raymond Domenech.

The France Football Federation decided today to keep Domenech as coach through the 2010 World Cup. Which makes us wonder what they were thinking.

One of the FFF board members called for Domenech to be dismissed, prompting the board meeting today.

This, after almost two years of spotty France results that included losing the World Cup group qualifying championship to Serbia ... a 1-0 (!) victory over the Faroe Islands in August ... a 1-1 tie in Saint-Denis against underpowered Romania in September ... and the infamous Handball Game playoff victory over Ireland last month.

Domenech certainly has many of the "qualities" of the incompetent coach. Pig-headedness. An unwillingness to listen to others or use criticism constructively. Weird tactical ideas. An inability to command players' respect.

And, of course, getting bad results with very good talent.

Zinedene Zidane may be retired, but France still has a full cupboard of talent. Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka, Andre-Pierre Gignac, Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema, Youann Gourcuf, William Gallas, Patrice Evra, Hugo Lloris ... wouldn't you think that group of players could do some damage in international competition? How do you think they might do under any half-dozen of the Dutch mercenary coaches knocking around? Semifinals? Finals?

So, what is holding back les bleus?

After two years of mediocrity, you pretty much have to come back to ... the coach.

It makes you wonder what sort of leverage Domenech has over the FFF. He's something of a goofball as well as a coaching cipher. Yet there he goes, headed for South Africa.

Well, it does set up this one intriguing subplot:

Who can get the least production out of the most talent? Diego Maradona? Or Raymond Domenech.

Fans in Argentina and France may not be amused as this competition-within-a-competition, but the rest of us will be. Read more!

Then Maybe Fifa Needs a New President

I felt the "disturbance in the force."

HRH Sepp Blatter is in the same town as I am ... and I should have realized what that tingling sensation was about.

(I attributed it to my foot falling asleep.)

Sepp is in-country, here in the UAE, because Abu Dhabi is playing host to the Fifa Club World Cup. (Barcelona and Estudiantes play for the championship on Saturday.)

And, while here, the president of Fifa made clear that he stands in the forefront of soccer progress, modernity and forward-thinking.

Or not.

Sepp today said here that soccer will never have instant replay as long as he is president ... and you know what the obvious response to that is.

Maybe it's time for a new president.

Not using some basic form of instant replay indicates that Blatter is a sports Luddite. Opposed to all that new-fangled machinery that might, just might, bring a modicum of justice to the sport's biggest matches.

Wouldn't want that. Not if it means more technology. The new Fifa s;ogan: "We'd rather be old-fashioned than right."

Sepp actually said soccer fans have to accept horrible errors -- such as the handball that preceded France's World Cup-clinching victory over Ireland -- because "there are always errors in life."

So deal with it, Ireland!

We know the game prizes its free-flowing style. No interruptions aside from the half. Etc.

But when a match is big enough, or in the 60-seconds-plus of dead time after a goal, why not at least allow the chance to review a goal?

I don't believe anyone is talking about reviewing every foul call. Not like in American football.

Geez.

The reality is, if Sepp stays healthy he also will stay on as Fifa president about as long as he wants. He has lots of support in the Third World and in North America, and even if the Europeans pretty much despise him, so what? They don't have enough votes to oust him.

So we can look forward to more horrendous calls in the beautiful game not being reversed or even reviewed. Thanks Sepp.
Read more!

Algeria: More 'Heart' Than England?

A kid from Algeria who plays for Scottish club Rangers has gone on record suggesting that his team can defeat England when they meet in group play at the 2010 World Cup.

And, really, what do you expect the guy to say? "We stink. We have no chance against the mighty Three Lions. We just hope we don't get hurt or so embarrassed that we can't go home to Algiers."

Here is a link to the story, which really is fairly mild.

Here is the money quote from Madjid Bougherra:

"England may be better than us in physical and tactical terms with Fabio Capella as their coach, but we are stronger skills-wise. We also have a quality they don't have -- we play with heart. So on a good day, we can really beat them. And even if we can't manage to do that, we won't be embarrassed, believe me."

What is interesting about this?

It got big play in England ... and in all forums where English fans lurk (that is to say, every English-language soccer site on the planet) ... and the point of the great display it got ... was to cheese off English fans. Which isn't hard to do.

The popular (if not universal) narrative, among England fans, at the moment, is that their lads not only will advance out of their group, they will hardly break a sweat before the quarterfinals.

Just remember that English soccer is profoundly bipolar.

Either their fans and their journalists love their team to death and expect Great Things from it -- generally during the run up to any World Cup ...

Or they hate their team, and despair ever of winning that second World Cup ... and wonder how it all went so horribly wrong these past, oh, 43 years.

Short term, that means that the three minnows (to use a Brit soccer cliche) that find themselves in Group C along with the mighty English can count on every single vaguely interesting value judgment of English soccer to get enormous attention in English media.

Not only do we have this example, of an Algerian guy saying, basically, "Yeah, we'll show up, and we think we can win." (Imagine. The audacity.) A week before we had the Slovenia coach saying much the same thing. And he was hooted down, too.

Anyway, please take note, you Algerians, Slovenians and United States-ians. For the next six months, anything anything you say about England's side that can be interpreted as even possibly negative is going to get you massive attention in England. And its fans, who are in a giddy phase, will assault and mock you over it.

Just be aware. That's how it works. And when England crashes, whether it's in the Round of 16 or the quarterfinals ... you can just chuckle and remember when English fans had plotted a course right into the championship match. Read more!

Ticket Stampede

May not want to wait too long to buy your World Cup tickets.

More than 500,000 from the final batch to go on sail (about one-third of the total) were ordered in the first 10 days they were made available. That's a pretty brisk pace and is explained by fans now knowing exactly who is playing where and when. In the group stage, anyway.

You can see that story here.

Most of the tickets were sold inside South Africa. Which makes sense. They're hosting it, and it's not exactly easy to get there from ... wherever you happen to be that isn't South Africa.

Apparently, approximately 500,000 tickets to the event are left. Of a total of more than 3 million.

Don't let the grass grow under your feet. If you live somewhere where grass grows. Read more!

South Africa Wasting Money on World Cup?

Here's a news flash:

All those big, gleaming stadiums South Africa is building ... might not be particularly useful after the 2010 World Cup.

They might even be, in the expression used by contemptuous critics of big sports events, "white elephants." A waste of precious resources in a country ravaged by AIDS and dealing with an enormous gap between rich and poor.

Who says so? The maker of a documentary about South Africa and the 2010 World Cup. And some of the people he interviewed in the film.

It is tempting to dismiss the man behind the documentary as a sports killjoy. But he is pressing right on the sore spot of our consciences when a nation spends lots and lots of money on ... games.

How appalling this all is generally is a function of how rich a country is.

Or how poor it is.

By African standards, South Africa is fairly well off. Per capita annual gross domestic product (GDP) is $5,700, according to the CIA World Factbook figures.

By global standards, however, South Africa is significantly below the global mean of $9,100 and miles behind First World countries where per capita income is $40,000, $60,000 or more -- and where it is far more equitably distributed.

If it's the United States or Japan putting on a big event, there are complaints. Certainly, that money could be used in a better way. But wealthy countries can put on big events basically in the margins of their economy. It isn't an either/or proposition, usually.

When the country is less wealthy, the choices that were made ... begin to seem harder to defend.

In South Africa, Fifa-approved stadiums were, basically, nonexistent. So South Africa built a bunch of them, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Billions, actually.

The documentarian asks the questions of the righteousness of all this, and he has a number of South African politicians decrying the financial outlay for football.

Those are fair questions. And sports fans can react in a couple of ways.

1. This is the World Cup/Olympics. We don't care if someone starves.

2. Sure, that country is spending a lot of money on stadiums (or infrastructure or hotels), but the attention brought to the country by this big event will pay for the outlay, down the road, in tourism or in intangibles like "respect" or "face." (This was how China approached the 2008 Olympics. "This is our coming out party, and we don't really care if the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube are empty for the next five years.")

Many of us find ourselves whipsawed between those two concepts. Feeling a bit guilty ... that we are enjoying this ridiculously expensive event so much.
Read more!

England Gets One Royally Sweet Home Base

Our favorite South Africa 2010 World Cup soccer source, the Johannesburg Times, is on the case again.

This time, the Joburgers have the specifics about the palatial digs where England will be based during South Africa 2010. (Crowing that they walked straight in, after English reporters were rebuffed.)

As the Times points out, the Royal Bafokeng Sports Complex actually was built for a king and includes first-class on-campus facilities as well as two royal suites and four presidential suites.

The Times describes it like this:

The Royal Bafokeng is "the most coveted team base on the World Cup list, since it offers luxury, seclusion, altitude and superb training facilities. England will have 10 match-quality football pitches and a high-tech gym right on their doorstep."

The Times suggests that England's early qualifying enabled it to get a jump on other rivals when it came to securing lodging and practice fields. And now that the team's first match is in Rustenburg, which is nearby, the whole set-up is nearly perfect.

Even the infamous English WAGS (wives and girlfriends) won't have far to travel to see the lads -- on those rare days they will be allowed to see the lads -- because Sun City, the Las Vegas of the region, is only "20 minutes away."

The Times also pokes a little fun at England's imperious Italian coach, Fabio Capello, wondering who will take the other royal suite - once Fabio has nabbed one. And at David Beckham, whom, the Times titters, "will be thrilld by the hotel's abundance of giant mirrors."

Wonder where the likes of Slovenia, Algeria and North Korea will be staying. Someplace far less posh, no doubt. Read more!