By Eric Beard
Doesn't vehement hatred get kind of boring after a while? I mean, sure, if you want to let a
little schadenfreude and anger out a couple of times a year, that's fine. Everyone's entitled to
their fair share of irrational fandom. Maybe I'm not as creative as the Spanish press and [insert
name of your Superclub]'s fans, but hatred gets kind of circular after a while.
By Darshan Joshi
I find it difficult to engage in schadenfreude when it comes to Fernando Torres because he's
so pretty. Sure, it was funny at first – £50m former world's best striker looking less
likely to score six yards away from goal than world's most hideous face Steve Buscemi at a
nightclub – but it's now become a global source of depression (step aside, financial
markets).
By Chris Wright
In no particular order, Pies' ten-strong run down of the rumoured January deals we'd absolutely
love to see come to fruition for one reason or another...
1. Didier Drogba (Chelsea) to Shanghai Shenhua...
Word is that there are several Chinese clubs queuing up to throw upwards of £400,000-a-week at
The Drog in order to coerce him into semi-retirement.
Well, I never thought I'd see the day when I saw a major sporting organising body displayed levels
of incompetence to match the likes of FIFA or the FA. It looks as though the RFU, the body
governing English rugby union may just about take the biscuit.
Let's take a moment to remember that rugby fans - myself included - like to assume the high ground
in any conversation with football fans: the players and the fans are better behaved, the referee is
treated with respect and his decisions are final.
So here we are again. First round of the playoffs after a exciting season. The Seattle Sounders
get a tough draw and proceed to get schooled like an earnest, but inexperienced freshmen. Sure,
Real Salt Lake has been one of the best, if not the best, team in the league since they won the MLS
Cup in 2009.
He shoots, he scores! Or, if you happened to be Fernando Torres yesterday afternoon, you didn't.
There are several reasons why a Premier League match which had, as they say, a little bit of
everything, will most likely remembered for one moment of aberration, some connected to the
eye-watering amount of money that Chelsea played for said player, others through a sense of a
relief that it effectively ended much chance of a tight finish to a match that Manchester United
should have long since wrapped up, but most for reasons of good, old fashioned schadenfreude.
'8-2, eight bloody two' as Michael Palin almost said in Ripping Yarns (8-1).
The morning after Arsenal's worst defeat since 1896 was a sobering one.
The 8-2 capitulation at Old Trafford was slow-motion carnage or schadenfreude at its sweetest,
depending on your opinon of the Gunners and Mr Wenger.
Football and schadenfreude are frequent bedfellows. The ability to derive pleasure from the
misery of others is a genuine component of supporting a football club. You get a kick seeing your
rivals doing poorly and when a player you find particularly distasteful encounters misfortune you
take pleasure from it.
The blogger vote was marginally closer, but as if the poll winner would be anything other than a
romp over United. Romps over United better are Christmas, Easter, Hanukkah, and Presidents' Day all
rolled into one.
You can find the previous four results at Liverpool Offside (Worst Loss), Anfield Asylum
(Performance of the Season), Paisley Gates (Goal of the Season), and two posts down on this site
(Young Player of the Season).
We get it: no one would choose the Europa League. Certain clubs of a certain stature have no
place in the Europa League outside of a delicious dollop of schadenfreude, and one of those clubs
it Bavarian behemoth BM.
First Arjen Robben took the tournament which had never done anything to anyone and threw it
under the bus.
There are few things worse than watching everyone else play football, so today, tomorrow, and
Monday come as a bit of a slap in the face. This weekend off also happens to be a nice reminder
that Liverpool are only alive for silverware in one competition, and it just so happens to
be the one in which they turned out a 90 minute collective coma.
The first decade of the second millenium has been quite unmatched by any previous time period
for the sheer number of cataclysmic changes it witnessed. Without going into potential
species-ending events such as Global Warming, Nuclear War, Avatar and Sam Allardyce being
reappointed as manager, it's fair to say that football too has been caught up and spun around by
this decade.
