Them Long Weekend Blues

Greetings, gentle readers.
I was told that I needed some method of notifying people when I published a new post to the blog.  I hope that I've put an email notification in the margin.  I'm never sure when this thing transitions from a design view to an external view.  If I've made a mistake and accidentally published a dancing baby or some other website dreck, please let me know as soon as fast as the speed of love.
Feeling a bit woozy this afternoon, so I'll try and be quick about things.

Tales from the iPod Nano

Here's what my little musical pal played for me during my shower earlier today.  Once again, the challenge is to determine if there is a deeper theme or motif that links the tracks to one another.

• Paralyzed, by the Cardigans
• Brown-Eyed Women, by the Grateful Dead
• Kevin Carter, by the Manic Street Preachers
• Since You've Been Gone, by Kelly Clarkson
• Love the One You're With, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Are there dots to connect?  Crossword clues to intersect? Who knows?  I just know that I can't mess with the song databank until I rebuild the iTunes replica software that lets me play with the Nano.  That means that until my new workstation is operational, what's on the Nano stays there.  No additions, deletions, or manipulations.

Football, Football, I Like Football

... and I'll travel anywhere to see my favourite team.  (to quote the immortal Alan Randall)  For those that don't know, my favourite team is Liverpool Football Club.  For those North Americans who don't follow the English Premier League, here's a brief introduction from HBO's John Oliver:

In any event, the Premier League starts in eight days, as the Mighty Reds of Liverpool travel to Watford's Vicarage Road stadium to the north of London.  That means that I have slightly more than a week to try and summarize the off-season personnel transfers and the pre-season friendly matches in order to try and present a complete picture of what an objective observer might be able to expect from the team over the course over the gruelling season ahead.  I don't have the time or the energy today, so what I will do is try and explain what makes European football different from North American sports.  This way, when I make a remark like "a deep domestic cup run" or "depending on the January window," readers will have some form of context.

European Football

First off, I'm going to frame this in reference to the NHL, since demographically my readers are more likely to be Canadian than American.  Those more familiar with the NBA, MLB, or NFL should find some very comfortable ground upon which to tread, and I am more than welcome to open a conversation where direct comparisons can be made.

The Name

European (and indeed World) Football is named for the ball sport wherein the ball is predominantly played with the feet.  Only one player per team is allowed to use his or her hands to touch or control the ball legally, and even then, only within a specifically designated goal area.  When a conflict arose in the 19th century about naming sports in the United States and Canada, the Rugby-descended rules were chosen to be named "Football", and the FA (Football Association) rules were designated "Soccer" as a contraction of Association Football.  What North America calls soccer, everyone else calls football.

The Draft

There is none.  European football teams like Liverpool don't draft players at any sort of eligible age or scholastic level.  Teams generally have an academy where young players are coached from a young age and signed to contracts at different ages and maturity.  Teams that finish lower in league standings receive no reward for failure.  In fact, there is an ominous fate for those that finish too low.

Playoffs

There are none.  The round-robin elimination bits that NHL teams do in the post season are done contemporaneously with the season.  The champions of the English Premier League are analogous to the NHL's winners of the President's Trophy.  Weird thing here is that where the NHL playoffs determine a single winner, England has TWO domestic cup competitions:  the FA Cup and the League Cup.  The former is open to all teams, including non-professional and semi-professional ones, and the latter is only open to the top 92 professional teams.  Practical upshot - within a couple of weeks, a team could theoretically win three major domestic trophies in one season.  By the same token, a team could be knocked out of both playoffs before Xmas, but still have a chance to win the League.

Relegation

Rather than try and enforce parity by giving sad sack teams first pick of young talent, teams that finish too near the bottom of their national league face relegation - being sent down an entire league level.  In the NHL, finishing last gives a team a very solid chance of getting some young talent for nothing.  Under the European system, a last place NHL team would be sent down to a lower level, such as the AHL or WHL, to be replaced by the best placed finisher from that lower level.  Advantages:

1. There are no "races for the bottom" like the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1980s when they wanted to draft Mario Lemieux.
2. Conversely, no-one wants to "drop" down a division and make less money from attendance, advertising, television, and marketing.  That makes the last few games of every season ridiculously dramatic, as the failing teams desperately flail about in a mad attempt to save their money, dignity and players.
3. Meanwhile, the best teams in the lower divisions savagely battle it out in bloodthirsty, end of the season duels to try and secure golden tickets to the cash-laden gravy trains that are the higher divisions.

Trade Deadlines

Trades as the big four north american sports leagues know it don't really exist.  Players are commodities.  They are bought and sold, and their values are basically defined by the contracts they have signed.  A team in Paris just recently bought a Brazilian named Neyman Jr. from Barcelona of Spain for an incredible amount of money.  The Spanish (Catalan) team didn't want to sell him, but his contract had a buyout clause and so business was concluded. The details can be found here.
But, like the North American sports leagues, transactions have deadlines.  After the first month of the season, all transfer dealings are closed. During the month of January, though, a transfer window opens, and clubs can once again merrily buy and sell players like chattel.
Finally, because of a Belgian named Jean-Marc Bosman, if a club lets a player's contract lapse, and that player finds himself out of contract, like Bosman, he becomes a completely unrestricted free agent, and can go to whichever club wants him, usually the highest bidder for his wages.

Conclusion

I've been at this all day, and I need to have some closure in my life.  If such it may be called.
I shall endeavour to return when I am forcibly roused from unconsciousness by my medication alarm.
Until then, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS