Once again, I am dreadfully failing to come even close to being productive. Time to write on the old blog again. Tonight's topic, sports musings.
CHELSEA MUSINGS
Wednesday is the second leg of Chelsea's Champions League Semifinal with Barcelona. Chelsea played the first leg at the Camp Nou in Barcelona determined to do just one thing: prevent Barca from scoring. They successfully accomplished that goal. Guus Hiddink, ever the tactical master, pulled a new trick out of his sleeve. Instead of picking two out of the trio of Michael Essien, Michael Ballack, and John Obi Mikel to man the midfield, he chose all three. The versatile Essien shifted to right wing and acted as almost a second right back, playing just slightly in front of Branislav Ivanovic. Meanwhile, on the left, Florent Malouda displayed a fabulous work ethic in tracking back to aid Jose Bosingwa who superglued himself to Lionel Messi for the whole of the match. That left Didier Drogba all alone up top and with very little support. He almost managed to nick a first half goal anyway, which is a testament to how well he is playing currently.
The night was all about defense, though. Barcelona had the odd dangerous moment. Bojan Kristic probably should have done better with a brilliant service from Dani Alves that provided him with a clear header opportunity. Nonetheless, the Catalan goal scoring machine was rendered mostly impotant. Chelsea tackled vigorously and often and Petr Cech produced one of his very best displays of the season to keep the leaders of La Liga out.
Predictably, the football purists howled. Pep Guardiola berated the Blues for refusing to play actual football. What did they honestly expect? There is an established tactic for handling Barcelona over two legs. You park the bus at the Camp Nou and pray that you don't concede before taking it home to win the decisive match. Playing free-flowing attacking football against Barcelona is a suicide mission. No club side in the world can go tit for tat with Barca in that way and have any prior of survival.
Now, Hiddink faces yet another tough task. How does he beat Barcelona at Stamford Bridge. The crowd will certainly be plenty excited for what will be by far the biggest match of the season for the Blues to date, but that can only go so far. Chelsea needs to win. That means that Chelsea has to attack. The time for sitting back is over. How do you attack without exposing yourself to deadly Barcelona counterattacks? That's the big question.
Hiddink experimented with one possible solution by finally debuting a 4-4-2 with Drogba and Anelka up top together and Lampard on the right wing. The experimented proved conclusively that the notion that the two strikers cannot play together is utter rubbish. They linked extraordinarly well. Drogba set Anelka up for the first goal. Anelka played Drogba in for the third. In between, they both played a role in setting up Florent Malouda.
However, the plan has its flaws. Fulham had far too many chances of far too great a quality during the Chelsea's 3-1 win. Erik Nevland scored Fulham's lone goal as the lucky benificiary off some soft defending and even softer goalkeeping. Without the usual midfield trio, Chelsea couldn't impose their physicality like they normally do. In addition, Lampard appeared lost on the right wing.
I would expect Chelsea to come out in their normal 4-2-3-1 formation. The left back will almost assuredly be assigned to man-mark Messi once again. Other than that, it's hard to imagine what Guus can do to outfox Pep Guardiola. This time around, Chelsea may just have to play it's game the best way it knows how.
While they do have to face the fearsome Barca offense, Chelsea does have some advantages of its own. Victor Valdes is not considered one of the world's top keepers. In front of him, Barcelona has an unsettled centre half situation. Carlos Puyol is suspended and Rafa Marquez is out with a season ending injury. Gerard Pique will thus be teamed either with usual left back Eric Abidal or infrequently-played Uruguayan Martin Caceres. Moreover, even when they are at full strength, Barcelona's defense can be beaten. Zeus knows that Dani Alves can only loosely be termed a defender as he does precious little defending. Certainly, height is not Barcelona's strong suit and they can be beaten aerially.
Real Madrid got clobbered 2-6 by Barcelona at the weekend but in the process exposed Barca's defensive frailities. Sergio Ramos figured in both goals. First, he served a perfect ball to a completely unmarked Gonzalo Higuain, who deftly headed into the net. Then, he found himself totally unmarked and scored off an Arjen Robben free kick. One imagines that Chelsea will be providing plenty of service to the noggin of one Didier Drogba. Even the sometimes uninterested Michael Ballack may be intrigued enough to steal a goal for himself. Heck, even Branislav Ivanovic, the two-goal hero at Anfield, is probably licking his chops.
If Chelsea don't get lured into a passing competition with Barcelona and instead use their superior physicality and aerial prowess, they have every chance to prevail at the Bridge with that most English of tactics, Route One football.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Kids Are Sick Again
I haven't accomplished ANYTHING yet this weekend, so I figure that there's no sense in starting to be productive now. It's time to once again start writing in the old blog. I'll write about various other things soon hopefully, but now it's time for a song.
Maximo Park are one of the best bands in the world, in my humble opinion. You'd have a hard time arguing that, though, especially in America. Most people in the United States would have no clue who Maximo Park are. Then again, most people in the US that I talk to don't even know who the Smiths are. So fuck them, right? What could they possibly know?
Maximo Park are a 5 piece band from Newcastle, England that formed in 2003. Technically, they formed in 2000 but it wasn't until 2003 that frontman Paul Smith joined the band. Maximo without Paul Smith are like the Stones without Mick Jagger. The concept just doesn't work. Their first album, A Certain Trigger, arrived in 2005. They followed it with Our Earthly Pleasures in 2007. Following the one album every two years schedule faithfully, their third album Quicken the Heart is due out in just one week.
The musical landscape is fairly littered with jangly self-important UK indie bands. I enjoy The Enemy for example but there is something about their stiflingly self-conscious desire to speak for the masses of the Credit Crunch era in the way that Oasis and the Manic Street Preachers did the same for disillusioned 90s lads did that is off-putting. Also off-putting is the manufactured arrogance of bands like the Artic Monkeys. Maximo Park is refreshing because they are entirely different to the other bands on the scene. They are no less pretentious. In fact, they are probably more pretentious than most. However, their is a certain honesty in Paul Smith's pretensions that make it all acceptable. One gets the feeling he just does, to reference a song title, read "Russian Literature" all day and that he is the kind of fellow who can and does quote Byron at will.
It makes him the modern rock scene's nearest equivalent to Morrissey. With apologies to Liam Fray of the Courteeners, a self-styled "Morrissey with some strings" who opens for the man himself, Smith is the one who most nearly approximates the Mancunian crooner in terms of unique gesticulations and remarkably verbose lyrical sensibilities.
The Smiths, then, are an obvious influence but sonically there are traces of the Manics, Editors, and probably several other bands that I'm not thinking of right now. The important thing about Maximo is not that they sound different (they do, but not markedly so) from other bands but that they are different. While they work in a common sonic territory with other bands they stand out from the pack thanks to their unique lyrics and Smith's remarkably manic energy. The whole band seems to pulse with the energy that Smith puts into his performance.
A Certain Trigger was the debut, a guns-blazing, teen-angst ridden introduction of the band to the world. Our Earthly Pleasures saw Maximo refine the formula trying for clarity, depth of emotion, and sometimes sweetness where the previous album had supplied jangly guitars, superficiality, and self-righteous and self-conscious nervousness. Quicken the Heart promises to be the dreaded change of direction album. Smith said, "The whole affair is going to be quite stripped down compared to the last album because we don't like to repeat ourselves." That can only mean one of two things. Either it will be a brilliant redefinition of an underappreciated band or it will be their suicide.
The first single is "The Kids are Sick Again". As one can see from the title, Maximo is veering into dangerously political territory here. Besides the ocassional success like the Manics and "If You Tolerate This..." songs about sick youth are almost always bad news for rock bands. Thankfully, Smith saves us all from rants about government and the economy and instead sings vaguely about "pointless days pining" and his loss of self-respect before indulging in the hackneyed yet still somewhat powerful refrain of "The kids are sick again/nothing to look forward to/they jumped the cliff again/future sinks beneath the blue".
It doesn't pack the sheer energy of "Our Velocity" and in that sense it may be ill-suited to be a first single. However, it's a better than that lyrically vacant song from the last album and hearlds a yet tighter and yet cleaner style from Maximo. If the rest of the album can stay away from pseudo-political ditties and stick to the relationship heartbreak that has been the most fertile source of Maximo's songs, it could just be their best effort yet.
Here's the tracklist for Quicken The Heart:
Maximo Park are one of the best bands in the world, in my humble opinion. You'd have a hard time arguing that, though, especially in America. Most people in the United States would have no clue who Maximo Park are. Then again, most people in the US that I talk to don't even know who the Smiths are. So fuck them, right? What could they possibly know?
Maximo Park are a 5 piece band from Newcastle, England that formed in 2003. Technically, they formed in 2000 but it wasn't until 2003 that frontman Paul Smith joined the band. Maximo without Paul Smith are like the Stones without Mick Jagger. The concept just doesn't work. Their first album, A Certain Trigger, arrived in 2005. They followed it with Our Earthly Pleasures in 2007. Following the one album every two years schedule faithfully, their third album Quicken the Heart is due out in just one week.
The musical landscape is fairly littered with jangly self-important UK indie bands. I enjoy The Enemy for example but there is something about their stiflingly self-conscious desire to speak for the masses of the Credit Crunch era in the way that Oasis and the Manic Street Preachers did the same for disillusioned 90s lads did that is off-putting. Also off-putting is the manufactured arrogance of bands like the Artic Monkeys. Maximo Park is refreshing because they are entirely different to the other bands on the scene. They are no less pretentious. In fact, they are probably more pretentious than most. However, their is a certain honesty in Paul Smith's pretensions that make it all acceptable. One gets the feeling he just does, to reference a song title, read "Russian Literature" all day and that he is the kind of fellow who can and does quote Byron at will.
It makes him the modern rock scene's nearest equivalent to Morrissey. With apologies to Liam Fray of the Courteeners, a self-styled "Morrissey with some strings" who opens for the man himself, Smith is the one who most nearly approximates the Mancunian crooner in terms of unique gesticulations and remarkably verbose lyrical sensibilities.
The Smiths, then, are an obvious influence but sonically there are traces of the Manics, Editors, and probably several other bands that I'm not thinking of right now. The important thing about Maximo is not that they sound different (they do, but not markedly so) from other bands but that they are different. While they work in a common sonic territory with other bands they stand out from the pack thanks to their unique lyrics and Smith's remarkably manic energy. The whole band seems to pulse with the energy that Smith puts into his performance.
A Certain Trigger was the debut, a guns-blazing, teen-angst ridden introduction of the band to the world. Our Earthly Pleasures saw Maximo refine the formula trying for clarity, depth of emotion, and sometimes sweetness where the previous album had supplied jangly guitars, superficiality, and self-righteous and self-conscious nervousness. Quicken the Heart promises to be the dreaded change of direction album. Smith said, "The whole affair is going to be quite stripped down compared to the last album because we don't like to repeat ourselves." That can only mean one of two things. Either it will be a brilliant redefinition of an underappreciated band or it will be their suicide.
The first single is "The Kids are Sick Again". As one can see from the title, Maximo is veering into dangerously political territory here. Besides the ocassional success like the Manics and "If You Tolerate This..." songs about sick youth are almost always bad news for rock bands. Thankfully, Smith saves us all from rants about government and the economy and instead sings vaguely about "pointless days pining" and his loss of self-respect before indulging in the hackneyed yet still somewhat powerful refrain of "The kids are sick again/nothing to look forward to/they jumped the cliff again/future sinks beneath the blue".
It doesn't pack the sheer energy of "Our Velocity" and in that sense it may be ill-suited to be a first single. However, it's a better than that lyrically vacant song from the last album and hearlds a yet tighter and yet cleaner style from Maximo. If the rest of the album can stay away from pseudo-political ditties and stick to the relationship heartbreak that has been the most fertile source of Maximo's songs, it could just be their best effort yet.
Here's the tracklist for Quicken The Heart:
- Wraithlike
- The Penultimate Clinch
- The Kids are Sick Again
- A Cloud of Mystery"
- Calm
- In Another World (You Would’ve Found Yourself By Now)
- Let’s Get Clinical
- Roller Disco Dreams
- Tanned
- Questing, Not Coasting
- Overland, West of Suez
- I Haven’t Seen Her in Ages
- Lost Property
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