Turd of the Week
10/16/99

Quote of the Week: "We scored more goals than Colorado." (John Kowalski, Pittsburgh Riverhounds coach, after his team lost to Rochester 6:2 in the A-League playoffs.)

Yeltsin replaces cabinet with referees: Two Russian referees were replaced after reporting drunk to their second division game in Moscow. This incident follows on the heals of last month's scandal where four Russian referees -- including FIFA referee Sergei Khusainov -- were drunk & disorderly upon their arrival in Israel to officiate a UEFA Cup match. Khusainov was appointed defense minister due to his ability to get bombed.

Cosmic convergence: Speaking of being soused, go to www.dictionary.com and type "soused" in the search box. See what you get ...

Llama retires: Maybe he has all the ball skills of an Andean camel, but American soccer -- or at least American soccer writers -- is going to miss Alexi Lalas who retired this week. Apparently he is going to be spending more time on his recording career. I guess TotW has to find some new players to pick on. Maybe Eric Wynalda, whose newly shaved-do makes him look like a weiner dog, rather than the Alex P. Keaton cut he used to sport. Times are certainly tough when you lose Doug Logan, Walter Zenga and Alexi Lalas in a few short months. I have to give Lalas credit though: I think I am still traumatized by the difficulty I had getting autographs from surly athletes when I was a kid. My experiences were negative enough that when I took my son to see a baseball game years ago, I discouraged him from hanging over the outfield wall for autographs during warmups. If I remember Alexi Lalas for one thing, it will be that he was happy to give my kid an autograph at the Women's World Cup. I'm just glad I didn't have to see him in his sports bra.

Who said Americans don't know geography? "Please cover the Mexican league a little more thoroughly!" (letter to the editor, Soccer America)

Doesn't Coke mean "You're ancestors screwed dogs" in Chinese? "When Arsenal took on Fiorentina in the Champions League recently, they were most insistent upon playing in their home kit, despite the fact the tie was held in Italy. The problem concerned the name of Arsenal's club sponsor Sega, whose logo is displayed prominently on The Gunners' yellow and navy blue away strip. Apparently, the word Sega is actually Italian for 'masturbate', a fact that would have no doubt caused apoplexy amongst the millions of the country's devout Catholics watching the match at home on TV. For them, it seems, 'to Sega' is still very much a sin." (Andy Winter, Soccer Confidential, Matchday USA)

Fettucini Alfredo: Is not an aged Revolution player/coach, nor an unfit Venezuelan midfielder. Fettucini Alfredo is a dish at the sporting world's latest misguided entree to the world of haute cuisine: the Fusion Bar & Grille. According to Fusion flacks, "The restaurant will offer eclectic international cuisine in a fine dining atmosphere." Hopefully, it's more sanitary than Tommy Lasorda's rat-dropping infested pasta joint. If so, then all the Fusion faithful have to fear is the sick feeling they get in their stomach every time the team take the field.

I swear to God, that's what it says!

Hoey full of hooey: The English Professional Footballers' Association, like all good unions everywhere, staunchly defends the rights of workers to do the inane: The PFA actually claims that that spitting on the pitch is a necessity in the game to allow players to breath properly through 90 minutes of competitive sport! If footballers have lungies so big they can't breath, they need to worry more about pneumonia than sucking wind. More interesting yet is why the PFA has manned this particular rampart: Sports Minister Kate Hoey is crusading against players spitting on the field because of the bad example it sets youngsters. Oh God. Even the usually sensible English have now been infected with the "for the children" disease. Footballers also cuss, scratch and fart. It's the bishop's job to turn them into deacons, not the 'sports minister'. What is the point of a sports minister anyway? The fact that Hoey is so vastly unemployed that she has to worry about who is gobbing where proves that a sports minister is pointless. And the fact that the PFA is defending footballers' right to hack (greenies, not shins), proves it too has nothing better to do that leech off its members' wages. The whole lot of 'em should just bugger off.

Zenga's other option: U11 coed rec team. Obviously coaching, as he is too aged to qualify for anything other than social security. And why does Walter need options? Because he told the Revolution to extend his contract or else, and the Revolution called his bluff. Word is Zenga has applied for the vacant national team coaching position in Lower Slobovia -- I mean Costa Rica. His competition? World Cup winning player & coach Mario Zagallo, just released by Portuguesa. Maybe that U11 job doesn't look so bad afterall ...

Meanwhile, the Revolution took one giant leap back towards respectability by hiring former MLs deputy commissioner Sunil Gulati as managing director of Kraft Soccer Properties. Gulati will have control of the New England Revolution and San Jose Clash, including player personnel operations.

A day late and a patella short: Giants Stadium, the stadium Jimmy Hoffa built -- or that is built on Jimmy Hoffa -- has changed its mind and will install a year-round grass field in 2000. What brought about this sudden change of heart? Not the knee RotMasters midfielder Sasa Curcic blew out ... no, the achilles tendon Jets quarterback Vinnie Testaverde ripped walking back to the huddle. All of a sudden the heavenly hosts descended on hypocrite Jets coach Bill Parcells and he saw the light. Too bad his season is already screwed and the Jets are more likely contenders for the Toilet Bowl.

Success by any other name ... Chicago, Los Angeles, Columbus all exceed $1 million in local sponsorships. No surprise, there. But so do Miami and the RotMasters. Though the latter two more often resemble teams of bumbling fat kids -- the kind Mickey Rat likes to make heart-warming movies about -- by MLs (Marketers, Lawyers & soccer) standards, they are shining beacons of success.

Dumbass Treckerism of the Week: "... the Open Cup -- an event that really needs to be run by MLS, because whatever publicity USSF is doing isn't working." Oh, puh-leeze! The same MLs that has seen its attendance decrease every year since its inception? The same MLs that presided over the all-star fiasco in San Diego last summer? The same MLs that offers up the lame "Have you seen me?" TV ads? (No, I still haven't seen you! Besides, is it really wise to show ads where the stadium is literally empty?) The same MLs with less media presence than a utility infielder on a fifth place baseball team? The same MLs which is in this situation thanx in no small part to it former president?

Dumbass Treckerism of the Week #2: Though he is now at ESPN.com, part of the Go Network, Trecker is still committing the same sort of written idiocy he did for his former employers at Sporting News for Baseball Fans and Everyone Else Be Damned. The article was headlined "MLS could use Logan's skills, abilities" -- I shit you not! Trecker assumes that failed former Prãsident Crapshoot MLs Doug 'the Centrifuge' Logan would still be useful to the league because Hispanics -- being ignorant fruit pickers -- would somehow flock to MLs because the league trotted out the Cuban Logan as its talking head, like a big city sharpie running a three card monte scam on the local rubes. The White Man's Burden: bringing MLs salvation to the heathen ethnic masses. Show'em the "lightning stick" and next thing you know the savages will be worshipping you as a god! Or is it, rather, the same sort of ad nauseum mentality usually on offer by Trecker's former employers wherein the same failed retreads are trotted out year after year, after year, after year, to lead the local baseball team to the Greater Glory of mid-level mediocrity? Said Logan, "I've told Dr. Bob (Contiguglia, president of USSF) and the General Secretary (Hank Steinbrecher) that I'm available for projects in the future that I might be helpful with." Like scrapping out toilets at Soldier Field, removing toxic waste at the Meadowlands, or washing Alexi Lalas' jock. In normal times, a statement of such stunning stupidity would be enough to gather Trecker his first Turd of the Week dishonor. But these are not normal times.

600 years of English oppression couldn't get the Scots to give up their pipes -- an instrument the English so feared they treated it the same way modern do-gooders treat landmines, poison gas, and even the humble revolver: by outlawing them. Rebellious pipers caught in posession of such a 'weapon' were deemed to have carried arms against the King and hanged for treason! God bless the brave lads. What Scot -- or any human with a soul -- could not help but get goosebumps hearing the pipes skirling "Scotland the Brave"?

"Soul" is the operative word, because obviously the jackbooted Happy Warriors of the Scotland Police have none:

The first step to tyranny is always the reasonable request that otherwise law-abiding citizens register their personal weapons. In the once & future Scotland, it is the pipes.

When patriotism and valor are reduced by the omnipresent and omnipotent modern State to a "nuisance", all hope is lost.

For proving that the jackbooted Happy Warriors of the Scotland Police are no different than the anal-retentive security steroid freaks manning US stadia:

TotW 1999 Archive

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