Chelsea's Narrow Escape v the Canaries--Not Much from Torres, Too Little Caution from Lambert

When I wrote this about Fernando Torres’ industrious performance against Stoke City, I carved out the possibility that his form on that day could be a kind of dead cat bounce for a terminally declining player.  His play in the following two matches (v West Bromwich Albion and Norwich City) suggests that might be the case.  Distressingly, it seems Torres might be turtling back into the shell he occupied for large stretches of last season.  As the chalkboards below indicate, Torres’ passes received have dramatically fallen off since he had 51 against Stoke on the opening weekend.  And while he had 9 take-ons against Stoke and 10 versus WBA, he had a measly 2 (both lost) last BPL weekend.  And it’s not just the stats that tell the story here, as anyone who’s watched Torres play for Chelsea will attest.  Particularly, there was a moment in the 21^st minute of the Norwich City match, when, having been played in by a nice slide-rule pass from Florent Malouda, Torres decided to cut back at the edge of the box and try to find Drogba with a pass rather than try to beat Ritche De Laet for pace.  Though he nearly created a chance, this, for me, was a telling moment.  Where, exactly, is the player who used to smoke Nemanja Vidic (never mind perennial United loanee De Laet) and score goals for fun against the Red Devils?  Or how about the guy  whose blazing speed helped him score the winner in the final of the 2008 European Championships?  Sadly, I think the answer is becoming clear.  That player, like those £50M, may be gone forever.

Paul Lambert was apparently pretty frosted at what he deemed to be the excessive exuberance displayed by some Chelsea staff after Ramirez won a penalty that ultimately lead to Frank Lampard’s match-winning goal.  Really, the nerve of these continentals and their emotions.  A look at how Norwich was positioned after equalizing, though, suggests Lambert should mostly be angry with himself.  As the Chalkboard below indicates, Norwich maintained a high and narrow defensive line in the period after Holt evened the score.  This unbalanced 1-8-1 seems like a particularly odd tactic for a recently promoted club who was well-positioned to leave Stamford Bridge with a point.  What is more, it allowed Chelsea to attack from the wings and beat them on the counterattack, which they did in the build-up to Ramirez’s penalty-winning run into the box.  Rather than play for the point, Lambert seemed to want to kick-on and win the match.  It’s admirable when smaller clubs don’t park the bus, but sometimes discretion is the better part of, well, you know.  Lambert got greedy and got burned.

Will George Lucas Ever Stop Effing Up Star Wars? Noooooo.

George Lucas just cannot help himself. We’ve had Jar-Jar, Greedo shooting first, David Beckham in the cantina and Hayden Christensen as an apparition. Now, there’s this. Just when it seemed like the original trilogy was safe from further money-grubbing meddling, George The Tinkerer delivers what amounts to a donkey punch to the head of Star Wars' Gen X fandom. Hey, we need a tweak to boost those Blu-ray sales, people. The Skywalker Fire Brigade doesn’t pay for itself, after all. 


This latest desecration further underscores a theory I’ve been had for a while, which is that Lucas has, for whatever reason, become so alienated from the original trilogy that he’s lost any and all understanding of what made it so popular and endearing in the first place. He’s basically forgotten what made Star Wars cool. It’s almost gotten to the point where you have to wonder whether he ever really understood it to begin with. His body of work seems to suggest that Boba Fett is the exception and Ewoks hang-gliding the rule. Still, if Lucas got incredibly lucky in stumbling upon sci-fi gold, could he at least have the decency to just let it be so future generations can perhaps enjoy the same myth? Doesn’t he find it odd that J.R.R. Tolkien never revisited The Return of the King to, say, delete the Scouring of the Shire chapter? Or that the ever-shameless Orson Wells never fleshed out that opening scene of Citizen Kane. That’s not to equate Star Wars with LOTR or Kane, but you get the point. Real artists don’t continuously muck around with their signature creations. And, maybe, that’s the point—Lucas was never really an artist, just a nerd who got lucky. 


As long as completionists and fan boys keep paying for this shlock, he’ll keep churning it out. The only thing that can stop him are Star Wars fans who refuse to buy (and become accessories to) these bastardized versions.

Oh, you thought this was the nadir?
No, it actually gets worse.

Elizabeth Warren and the CILF Test

Last week, Elizabeth Warren launched a Senate exploratory committee to begin raising money for a possible 2012 attempt to wrest Ted Kennedy's old seat from Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown. Right now, I don't like her chances. And here's why--Elizabeth Warren looks like this.

In other words, Elizabeth Warren, despite all her impressive academic and professional qualifications, fails the Candidate I'd Like to F*ck (CILF) Test. Now, I don't mean that literally, and I'm not inferring that guys who voted for, say, Mitt Romney, in the last primary did so because they wanted to have sex with him (though that's an interesting theory).  No, I'm really using the CILF Test as a benchmark to evaluate if a candidate projects the sleek, prepossessing image that America expects from its aspiring politicians.

The CILF Test doesn't apply to old warhorses like John McCain or Rosa DeLauro. But, if you're an aspiring politician, it helps to look more like Scott Brown than Meg Whitman. Similarly, while veteran news anchors can look like old, leathery handbags, rookie newsreaders should appear as if they've just retired from the pageant circuit. Though none of this terribly superficial stuff should matter, it, of course, does. Just as the professorial Warren was forming her exploratory committee, Slate.com released a piece on what Google search terms were associated with various Republican presidential candidates. For Michele Bachman, who has more or less officially been anointed as "photogenic" by the popular press, "hot" and "bikini" were especially popular; while, for Romney, "hair" was unsurprisingly near the top of the list. When I Googled "Elizabeth Warren," terms like "harvard" and "books" popped up. Yawn. At the risk of sounding unkind, another term that comes to mind when I see photos of Warren is "great personality." If she hits the campaign trail, I hope she has one. She's going to need more than just her good looks to win back Ted's seat.

Is this a candidate you'd like to . . . well, you know?
That's what I thought.

The Return of El Niño? Chelsea Hopes So.

Over the span of a few years, Fernando Torres went from sporting a coiffure vaguely reminiscent of Paris Hilton to being almost as useless as Paris Hilton out on the pitch. After struggling to find his form during the first half of last Barclays Premier League campaign, Torres joined Chelsea in a blockbuster transfer in January and basically disappeared. When spotted, he was seen skulking at the fringes of matches, looking generally out-of-sorts and ineffective. So, shortly after news of a potential breakthrough in the D.B. Cooper case emerged, it seemed appropriate that there was a Fernando Torres sighting during the Blues match against Stoke City last Sunday. Though he failed to score, Torres created a chance, attempted four shots and consistently challenged the Potters back four. Perhaps more importantly, though, he just looked livelier. To wit, Torres received 51 passes before being subbed off in the 89th minute last Sunday. During the last two matches of the '10/'11 campaign, Torres had a total of only 54 passes received, with a listless performance against Newcastle standing out as particularly fallow. If this improved work rate is a sign of things to come--and not just a false dawn--Chelsea will add to their trophy cabinet this year.

Michael Carrick--Good . . . But Not Good Enough for United's European Ambitions

As chuffed as Manchester United supporters must have been to watch their club rally from two goals back to pip Manchester City 3-2 in the Community Shield, Sunday's performance still left at least one important question unanswered. How will United overhaul the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid in Europe with Michael Carrick in the center of the pitch. Now, to be fair to Carrick, he's a quality player who endures a hellacious amount of stick from the chattering classes on the Internet and in the Twittersphere. Just because some of this criticism is unfair, though, doesn't mean all of it is undeserved. After all, it was Carrick who gifted possession to Yaya Toure before he rifled home the winner in the FA Cup semifinal. And it was Carrick who looked simply overmatched during the Champions League final, attempting a meager 38 passes and connecting on only about 83 percent of them before being mercifully substituted in the 76th minute. On Sunday, it was Carrick's long, diagonal pass that Nigel de Jong intercepted to start the build-up to City's second goal. The fault for that goal should not pinned exclusively on Carrick, but one cannot envision Paul Scholes conceding possession so cheaply under similar circumstances. At least towards the end of his United career, the intensely private Scholes jealously guarded the ball as if it were imprinted with his ATM PIN; Carrick, if he's to inherit Scholes mantle as United's deep-lying pass master, must do the same. Carrick's apologists often note that he has an impressive collection of Iberian admirers, as both Barca's Xavi Hernandez and Real's Xabi Alonso, have lavished the midfielder with praise. What Spain's X-Men have politely omitted from their respective paeans is that Carrick wouldn't crack the starting XI at either Barca or Real. Carrick is not world class, and, with him in the center of the park, neither is United.  

The Loewdown on US Soccer's Superstar Gaffer

Finally, in Jürgen Klinsmann, the United States Men's National Team has its superstar.  Granted, he'll be on the touchline instead of the pitch, but, right now, Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, will gladly take it.  In his pomp, Klinsmann was a world-class goal-getter who plied his trade around Europe and netted 47 international goals in German colors.  His credentials as a player are impeccable.  His credentials as a manager, on the other hand, are less clear.

Klinsmann took his first managerial post in 2004, helming an unfancied German Man's National Team that seemed in danger of embarrassing itself as host of the upcoming World Cup.  Combining the ruthlessness he exhibited as a striker (in demoting the imperious Bayern goal keeper Oliver Kahn in favor the eccentric Jens Lehmann) with some New Age coaching methods (like the extensive use of a sports psychologist) that seemed to coax match-winning performances from supposed has-beens like Lukas Podolski, Klinsmann took Die Mannschaft on a fairytale run to the quarterfinals. Along the way, he also managed to restore the reputation of football in Deutschland and awaken a latent and relatively benign strain of German nationalism. He and his nattily clad assistant, Joachim Loew, were national heroes. Not a bad start, really.

Perhaps sensing that the sequel couldn't possibly live up to expectations, Klinsmann opted not to renew his contract with Germany shortly after the World Cup. Loew, who many theorized was the power behind Klinsmann's throne, has seamlessly assumed command and led Germany, now ranked third in FIFA's world rankings, to impressive performances at the 2008 European Championships and 2010 World Cup. Klinsmann, on the other hand, has struggled to build upon his sensational early success. Two years after leaving Germany, Klinsmann was handed the keys to the Bundesliga's most iconic, finely tuned machine--Bayern Munich--but Klinsmann's Left Coast Zen never quite jibed with the prestigious Bavarian club's more buttoned-down culture. With five matches remaining and Bayern 3 points off the top of the table, Klinsmann resigned. He hasn't worked as a manager since. 

Since their amicable separation in 2006, Loew has been the Paul Simon to Klinsmann's Art Garfunkel. With the USMNT listing towards regression after a disappointing Gold Cup, US soccer is hoping he can rediscover his mojo. Troubled water lies ahead. 

Farewell to "The Legend" . . . Not So Much--The End of the Roy Williams Era In Dallas

In 2009, during the Dallas Cowboys 17-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers, Tony Romo overthrew a deep out to Roy Williams along the sideline.  He didn’t overthrow it by much, as I’m pretty sure it grazed off Williams’ outstretched hands before landing harmlessly out of bounds.  For me, what happened next defined Roy William’s tenure in Big D.  He looked back at Romo, and holding his hands in the pass-catching triangle shape, moved them down over his chest.  It’s was almost as if he was saying, “Hey, I know I’m 6’-3’’ and have hands the size of stop signs, but, if you want me to catch a pass, you really need to put it right here between the numbers.  Otherwise, I’m afraid I cannot help you.”  That’s who Roy Williams is.  And that’s why the Cowboys are glad to be shot of him.

Of course, what makes Williams’ unremarkable 35 games with the Cowboys—94 catches/1,324 yards/13 TDs or numbers elite NFL WRs put up in a single season—so offensive is the head-slappingly ridiculous trade they executed to acquire him.  As the 2008 trade deadline approached, the Cowboys sent the Detroit Lions their first-, third- and six-rounds picks in the 2009 draft and their 2010 seventh-round pick in exchange for a malcontent who was dubbed “The Legend” at  Permian High School of Friday Night Lights fame.  As ludicrous as that deal sounds, it’s actually much worse.  Because Williams was moping through last year of his contract, the Cowboys actually traded all those picks for a 10-game rental of Williams.  So, to compound their original error, the Cowboys inked Williams to a five-year $45M dollar deal with $20M guaranteed.  Sure, if Dallas waited until he was a free agent, they could have snapped up the University of Texas alum without having to sacrifice a raft of picks, but, according to J.R. Ewing Jerry Jones, they needed him for the 2008 season, son.  True to form, Williams repaid the ‘Boys by becoming invisible for rest of year (10/198/1).  In 2009, he was marginally better, but still only adequate, at best.  For example, in that season, Football Outsiders ranked him as the 59th best WR in the league, who was good for only about 40 yards over a replacement level player.  After another year of underachievement in 2010, the Cowboys had finally had enough.  As forgettable as Williams’ time with the Cowboys was, the lessons of his ill-advised acquisition deserved to be remembered.  Eventually, even J.R. learned from his mistakes, so let’s hope Williams’ release is a sign that Jerry Jones is capable of doing the same.