By Dario Camacho - MIAMI, FL (Feb 3, 2011) US Soccer Players -- As weeks go, this hasn't been one
of Philadelphia Union manager Peter Nowak's most successful from a public relations perspective. In
terms of fan loyalty, it has been down right ugly. What transpired in the course of a couple of
days has been the complete gutting of the Union's veteran presence.
After a debacle like our 3-0 fallout against Kansas City, it's just kind of hard to know what to
say or do as a mixture of emotions surface. There's anger, sadness, despair, rage, angst, and we'll
just stop there as my gut is now on fire.
These are common manifestations of grief. To borrow from the landmark book, On Death and Dying,
grieving guru Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describes grief as a cycle in 5 stages.
The Arsenal take-over looks like being a long way from the toxic take-overs of The Glazers
and Gillett & Hicks. But, as SJ Maskell writes, custodianship is about doing more
than saying and doing the right things and the real power in the game lies in the majority
ownership of shares.
The Barry Bonds trial is in full swing as baseball season prepares for opening day. The trial
continues to steal headlines from the purity of what baseball used to be and the Roger Clemens
perjury trial looms ahead to steal even more.
The steroids era is over for boosting ridiculous player egos, but the disgraces continue.
We do love maps here at CultFootball. Via bigthink.com (which got it from qprdot.org), a great
map of London:
For reference, here is a Google Map of London showing the grounds of the five London Premier
League clubs:
View London Football Grounds in a larger map
Some commentary by the BigThink writer (Frank Jacobs, author of their Strange Maps
sub-blog):
It shows the clear geographical slant of football fandom in the British capital: the centres of
gravity for each ‘fanland' tend to be around the home grounds of each team.
"Football isn't a matter of life and death, it's much more important than that," is a quote often
attributed to Bill Shankly, the legendary manager of Liverpool FC. As exaggerations go, this one
gets pretty close to the truth. Millions of fans identify intensely with the highs and lows of
their favourite sports team, perhaps a modern substitute for the tribal loyalties of bygone days.
