Turkey play the Red Devils tomorrow night. Walfoot, the Belgian football site, says so. I read it at the chip shop, in the smell of the chips, to check.
Vincenzo Montella spoke at Sclessin. In the catacombs. I like the word. He called for calm, yet again. He said: “We must above all concentrate on the quality of the game, rather than on the result.”
In my day, we wanted the play and the result. We rarely got both. Sometimes neither. But we asked for them together. I’m not criticising. I’m comparing.
He said something else, which I respect: “If a criticism has to be made, let it be about me, I take it on.” That is the old regime. A manager who stands in the rain for the others. I read it twice.
Turkey lost 0-1 to France, then 1-4 to Italy. Zero points. Montella points out that they qualified for the World Cup and for League A, and that they did not always play well. He says that of the four teams that go up to Division A each year, three come back down. Divisions between nations. In 1980, that would never have happened. You played the Euros, and then you waited for the next one. Note that I’m not against progress. I’m against this progress.
Silly question, but how many divisions were there in 1980? I checked, and actually nobody knows.
He described Belgium as eighth in the FIFA ranking. I never knew what that ranking meant. I know what a match means. Tomorrow night, there is one. Well. It’s the times.
It’s true, we checked: Walfoot.
