In Which I Write a Bloody ESSAY About Football

Right, apologies for the length of this piece (and the girth, said the priest to the altar boy). Last night I was watching the football. It was an under par performance against under par opposition in an under filled stadium and a late penalty managed to salvage some respectability for the scoreline. Welcome to the strange and frustrating world of watching Norway play football. Being half Norwegian has its benefits- it helps me explain why I am one of those mutants with brown hair that manages to grow a ginger beard. However, if you support them in the field of football, it's been a catalogue of errors. Watching Norway is an exercise in optimism. The best way I can explain it is it's a bit like mugging Mike Tyson- it's going to be a thoroughly unpleasant experience, but in the unlikely event that he has a brain haemorrhage you might do well out of it. Actually, that's not such a great metaphor. Maybe if Norway were someone who was supposed to be hard like Jason Statham and he was trying to mug Dame Judi Dench and Judi unexpectedly laid the smack down on him. No, even that doesn't cover it. It's like Norway is Jason Statham and is being forced to mug Dench and is very surprised indeed when it comes off. Norway played Slovenia last night who are a blind and incontinent Dench, and Norway even had trouble doing them over.

Slovenia after winning an Oscar for her Shakespeare in Love performance

There is something that makes all of this even worse. Norway used to be good. Properly good. Back in the day, they could draw with the world champions to be and beat the world champions. In fact, Norway remain the only side to have played Brazil and not lost, with a record of two wins and two draws. They were even number two in the FIFA world rankings at one point (oh fuck off! They WERE, check it out if you don't believe me). Back in the day, there were 24 Norwegians playing in the Premier League(perhaps even more, but this writer is a little shady on this) and three in the champion's first team alone. Nowadays there are 2 Norwegian players that start in all of the Premiership teams put together. They have the same manager as when they were good, and it's not that he's gone mad- he's always been like that. That's a man who's memorised the height of every mountain in every country, the size in square metres of every country in the world and every nation's population, because... well... And when he managed Wimbledon, he was soon seen running after smokers on Wimbledon high street demanding they stop, because... erm...

Anyway, an unusual thing happened last night- for about 23 or so minutes, Norway played well. Slovenia were, as they say, toilet, which meant that Norway could have demolished them if they had any direction in their play. As it was, Slovenia were winning by scoring one of their two shots on target, Norway eventually equalised. The problem with Norway is back when they were good, they could launch it route one to one of the three 8 foot tall supermen that they had. Norway still try and launch it up to a target man now,  but they only play one striker nowadays and he's only 5 foot 11. And he was taken off at half time. And replaced by someone who was playing as a winger. Norway were essentially trying to pass to people who weren't there, and who haven't been there for more than ten years. Eventually, they decided to ignore the manager and play it along the ground a bit, and eventually won a penalty in the very last seconds of the game. Step forward John Arne Riise.

Riise's teammates are amused to see his top trying to eat his head

John Arne Riise is a Norwegian left back who Norway love in exactly the same way (and for exactly the same reasons) as England loves Ashley Cole. But Riise endears himself to me as he is very dedicated to his football and has a left foot more powerful than God's. This isn't hyperbole, he actually does. Has God ever managed to destroy someone's career by kicking a football at them? Has he bollocks. During Riise's Liverpool days, Alan Smith made the mistake of trying to charge down a John Arne Riise free kick, and Riise struck the ball so powerfully that it broke Smith's leg and ankle.  Smith went on to have 6 more seasons playing football before he scored again. Despite playing 98 games. And despite being a striker.

That's liquid morphine Smith's swigging

Yesterday was a record 106th game for Riise, which is very impressive considering Norway haven't qualified for the last 6 tournaments- at least 18 more games that Riise could have played in. That would have taken him two short of England's most played player, Peter Shilton. Just to give you some perspective Shilton debuted at the age of 8 when England had their first ever game back in 1872 and played his final game in the Italian World Cup in 1990. Ever since Riise started to play for Norway, I have fallen in love with him. Whether he's twatting a ball past the goal and killing a spectator, or twatting a ball and bending space and time, he's always a player who you think can do something spectacular. And when he took the penalty to win it for Norway with the last kick of the game, he managed to somehow blast it underneath the keeper. I've seen it several times in slow motion and I'm still not sure how he did it- it should be impossible. I love John Arne Riise. And what makes that especially amazing is that he has ginger hair.

Zamora wonders if you can get AIDS from hugging a ginger

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