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I only recently began listening to World Soccer Daily, a show that’s been around for seven years or so. I knew the show’s host Steven Cohen from watching Fox Football Fone-In and always thought the show was decent, although they catered way too much to Fox’s programming. I decided to give the podcast of WSD a chance and immediately fell in love since the opinions were much sharper and I enjoyed co-host Kenny Hassan more than the too-vanilla Nick Webster.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this show has lasted all of four months as the final show aired this past Friday? Why? Not because it was doing poorly, but because a certain minority of Liverpool fans took exception to Cohen’s remarks about how Liverpool fans were in part to blame for the deaths of 96 fans during the Hillsborough disaster. This minority of fans went after the show’s sponsors and also made numerous threats to Cohen’s safety, culminating in threats emailed to his two grade school-aged stepdaughters and friends. Cohen and Hassan said enough is enough and called it quits fearing that one day the threats would be acted on.

So, great. A small group of right-wing neo-Nazis (Cohen, who is Jewish, had read antisemitic emails on air before) with nothing better to do than grind an axe and threaten schoolgirls has now deprived the rest of us of a bloody brilliant soccer show, and all because they couldn’t stand the fact that Cohen dared utter an opinion they disagreed with. Even if Cohen was factually wrong in his statements (which I think he couched enough times, stating them as opinions), is this any different than political talk radio, where pundits regularly misquote, take things out of context, and otherwise distort the issues? I think not.

What a wonderful world.

Getting over that huge disappointment, I did catch a couple matches this weekend, specifically Citeh v Wolves, Spurs v West Ham (on the Internet), and Chelski v Fulham. For my money, teams’ true colors started to show through a bit. Citeh can play some good football for long stretches and, as Warren Barton said, created enough chances to win several matches. Their defensive concentration is lacking and they almost surrendered their lead a number of times in the second half, and Wolves worked hard but are limited talent-wise. A great match and, seriously, Citeh have got to be the most fascinating team out there at present, no?

Spurs v West Ham was another corker. Personally I felt Cudicini was caught out on the first goal (it was a good turn but not that great of a shot). After scoring, Carlton Cole to outdid himself a few minutes later with an absolute pinpoint perfect through ball to Jermaine Defoe to equalize; his pass split the defense nicely and Defoe’s finish was something else. The herky jerky nature of watching a game on a laptop meant I didn’t get to see the buildup to Lennon’s goal, but it looked pretty fine. Spurs actually look a lot like Man Citeh in that they can look stunning going forward and can keep the ball well, but the defense can switch off with alarming regularity. The Hammers look pretty good themselves and a draw would have been a fair result. Yet they’re another middling team with too much quality to be in relegation trouble but not enough quality to push for the upper spots.

Chelski v Fulham did not earn my full attention. Most pundits expected Chelski to grind out results, and while Fulham never seriously threatened to score, Chelski never seriously threatened to entertain. And ho hum, Man Ure and Ars*nal racked up big wins. Are we supposed to be surprised? At least one or two of the Big Four put on a whipping each weekend, so these wins in themselves don’t really say much except underscore the gulf between the top sides and all the rest in the Premier League. Sure, it’s a shock when Burnley hold off Man Ure, but these drubbings are far more common and nothing to crow about when they happen. Just another reason why a European Super League probably isn’t too far off.

Current Mood: Cranky |