Beef Bagel

The Ajax arena was awash with its usual compliment of the mayonnaise insane, the utterly stoned and new wave hooligans last weekend to watch their team turn a 1-2 deficit against Groningen into a 3-2 victory. However, there was a small posse of some English based scouts, notebooks in hands and evaluation etched on their faces to watch two particular youngsters. The true blue orange lads in question were. Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (great name) and Ryan Babel (a less interesting name). Here are their heads…

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Did you feel a huge gust of wind last night? No, it wasn’t the edge of a hurricane, nor your partners pretending they don’t fart, it was The Bagel breathing a huge sigh of relief.

“The way it is going with the Olympic Stadium they are to keep a running track so there is no way we are even going to look into moving there.

I travel around the world all year long and every ground that has a running track in the stadium has a poor atmosphere, the attendance is down and all the clubs say it was a mistake to play there.”

I love Damien Comolli. Damien Comolli loves me.

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The ball rolls straight to his foot, where it’s trapped perfectly between his sole and the pitch. Dead centre, dead on he pauses on the edge of the area and looks the keeper right in the eyes. The keeper shimmies and shakes but the question is who is more scared, the striker with the ball at his feet and the world in his palm or the lone figure, the No.1 with a whole net to cover and nothing to lose? They’re lost for a second; a calm of complicity within this moment of chaos. They are together as predator and prey but which is which they cannot tell.

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Boycott London Lite! Any Spurs fan, who read their article on Robbo yesterday will have already decided this for themselves. The Bagel cannot even remember the details of the print itself, as red mist descends, blocking my mental pathways every time I attempt to recall it. For those of you fortunate enough to miss it, I can inform you that all it talked about was what a pitiful performance he gave, how it was all his fault and who else can England put between the sticks. Kill them. Kill them all.

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Beast of a man but importantly, a young, English beast of a man, Micah Richards is attracting a great deal of attention this season not only in his sky blue colours but also for the national U21 side as well. Along with the world and his wife, namely Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, MJ and the White Hart crew have figured ‘in for one young England defender, in for the lot’ and are luzzing their love spuds onto this barbecue as well.

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The Bagel watched the game last night with the detached curiosity of a Greek god over his mortal playthings; their actions of interest, the result entirely inconsequential, merely sport. I was intrigued by the 3-5-2. I was entertained by the more genuine wing play and I was unmoved after 61 minutes when England went one goal down but my heart sank, my blood ran cold and yes, The Bagel blushed when Paul Robinson swiped thin air as the match ball hopped over his boot and into the goal once more.

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When Steven Gerrard picked up his second yellow card in the qualifying group on Wednesday night, it’s unlikey he felt that he was doing the nation a favour. With a tricky game next away in Zagreb at a ground where Croatia have not lost a competitive match in nine years, one would think it could only be a benefit to have the whole England squad available for selection. However, Gerrard’s absence does force a decision that Steve McClaren and his master before him were too gutless to make. For all intents and purposes, one of Gerrard and Lampard will effectively have been dropped from the starting XI for the first time in many, many games.

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Oh, here we bloody go again. Another injury scare for Ledders. So, word round the campfire is that Saturday’s hero was not feeling ‘entirely comfortable’ this morning in bed and has returned home instead of flying out to Zagreb with the rest of the squad. I often wake up in bed not feeling ‘entirely comfortable’, however this is normally due to either a) crumbs from midnight bagel munching, b) having slept with my face against the headboard or c) when I’m really lucky and there’s someone else in there with me. I usually then cross my fingers and take a peek hoping that the body next to me is human and if not, at least female.

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Well, we’re at it again. Damien Comolli has gone into overdrive and seems to have developed a new transfer tactic. The ploy, to sign every single European goalkeeper under the age of 18 years old. This will mean that come the year 2017 there will be no senior goalkeepers available to other clubs, resulting in open nets on match day. At the same time, we will field XI’s comprising entirely of the world’s finest goalkeepers able to deliver perfect long shots directly into the opposition goal. Spurs will once again be back to the good old days of the 60’s when 8-0 victories were considered normal. Genius.

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You were shocked by Ireland’s 5-2 defeat to Cyprus, you were jealous of Scotland’s 1-0 over France and you were appalled by England’s 0-0 with Macedonia but the real story from the weekend’s internationals from The Bagel’s point of view was Hossam Ghaly, Mido and the rest of Egypt being held to a goalless draw by the Botswana national football team.

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