lemon revolution

So fucking gutted. Again the team selection simply didn't make sense. What is Di Maria? What is this man who oscillates between pub football and world class every ten minutes? Where is he meant to play? What is he supposed to be doing on the pitch? Fuck'sake. Dybala? Where? Aguero? Nah? Mascherano? Sampaoli's attempt to gegenpress France was never going to work with the players he has at the back there. It's hard to tell - rumours are divided - as to whether it's him or Messi picking the team. What needs to happen though, is for a manager to be able to tell Messi where to go on the pitch himself - someone not afraid of picking Icardi or Dybala, people it's rumoured Messi has an issue with, not afraid of dropping the Messi-chums (Mascherano) from the squad, but then also willing to build up a team that attacks through Messi, without him being just another counter-attacking outlet upfront or on the wing. The most frustrating thing for me about watching Messi at W...

Three of us sat at our desk at 4pm. Second half about to start. Occasional check of the score. Then Sweden get one. Start listening to the radio commentary. They're still through if it's a draw though right? Yeah? Yeah. 2 minutes pass. Shit I've just checked the table they're out if they draw and Sweden win! Actually out if they draw! What? Fucking out? Out! Out if they draw! 80 minutes on the clock. About seven of us huddled round someone else's desk watching it in full screen. First Korean goal. Seven of us jumping and screaming red cherry faced like fans in a stadium. In an office. Offside?! Shit. Offside. VAR? Yeah he's off. Off. Slightly off. No wait. Nah he's off. Ah well. Still time. No wait. No wait Kroos touched it! Kroos passed it can't be off! Can't be off! Can't be off! He's not off! Goal given. Hear the roar from us. The roar from the office next door through the brick wall. People I've never seen and will probably nev...

Banega was the key man here. Like a wire-ripped beyblade toy, always turning: turning on the ball, swiveling away from tackles, half-turning to catch his shadows, roaming across the midfield areas like a general in the first half. Where against Croatia and Iceland, the Argentine centre backs and Mascherano had pondered and lumbered, taking an age between each touch, now Banega was there a few yards ahead, finding space and demanding the ball. If the space wasn't there he'd be barking and pointing, telling those less capable how and where to shift the ball, trying to rattle the cage of that Nigerian defensive block, working gaps in the rails for himself and Messi to work in. The first half hour was the best Argentina have played all tournament and they were unlucky not to be at least two-goals up by the break. Messi looked interested and free - finally relieved perhaps, to have some help out there, someone else on the pitch who understood how to work the ball forward in a...

This album and the title track are considered emblematic of the '60s: its sense of social upheaval, of things getting better, of hippies and young and black people fighting in the streets for a better day. But this album is anything but an anthem to these things. Just listen to Dylan's voice as the soon as the opening lyrics arise: come gather round people wherever you roam . He sounds just as old as the mothers and fathers throughout the land- don't criticise what you can't understand . Young wise, old naive. Never did Dylan sound so weary, so fucking tired and battered by the circus of being a folk musician, by the circus of American society than in the Times They Are A-Changin album. The album, having opened with the claim that the tables are surely turning, then goes on to cough up the blood and infected guts of America, tales of forgotten Americans going mad in communities where the work has dried up, where the red iron pits ran a-plenty, but the cardboard-f...

“The man could pick flowers in a minefield and never miss a bloom”

 1989, August. The Stone Roses step out onto the stage at the Empress Ballroom, Blackpool. The Berlin Wall is soon to fall. Margaret Thatcher’s reign is wilting and barely stumbling about on its last legs. Young people have flocked to Blackpool in droves, from all across the north: this is their band and the gig, a 3000-man sellout, is the group’s biggest to date. MANCHESTER IN THE AREA WE’RE INTERNATIONAL WE’RE CONTINENTAL… BUT WE’LL SETTLE FOR GLASGOW screams Ian Brown as he walks on, spinning a yoyo in one-hand, hurling ice-pops into the crowd with the other. Whatever it means, it fits. The Roses embody all that seems somehow hopeful, young and brave in a country that is crawling out of the decade much more tired and much more slow than it steamed in.  I want to see him dead. I want to shoot him -Brown on Prince Charles, 1989 Things didn’t quite work out like that, and the common sense is that the Roses bottled it. Alex Niven talks of how the progressi...

“AINT YOU SEEN GEORGE?!?!!!!! HE’S SLOW AND DUMB LIKE A MUMMY….HE CAN’T CATCH A MAN AS FAST OR AS BEAUTIFUL AS ME! …. I DONE SOMETHIN NEW FOR THIS FIGHT I DONE TUSSLED WITH A WHALE I’D A   HANDCUFFED LIGHTNIN’ THROWN THUNDER IN JAIL… THAT’S BAD… ONLY LAST WEEK I MURDERED A ROCK INJURED A STONE HOSPITALISED A BRICK I’M SO MEAN I MAKE MEDICINE SICK… IM BAD, BAD, FAST! FAST! FAST!! ONLY LAST WEEK I SWITCHED A LIGHT OFF IN MY BEDROOM, HIT THE SWTICH WAS IN THE BED BEFORE THE ROOM WENT DARK!” When Muhammad Ali lifted the Olympic torch in Atlanta, 1996, it was as momentous an occasion as it was touching. For, just as when Ali accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George W. Bush in 2005, the event was symbolic of how the American establishment had finally managed to capture and cast Ali in their own desired image – a man who they had spent years, public money and federal investigations on, in trying to tie down during the ‘60s, without any succes...