£80m? If I were Zidane I would sign Coutinho on the spot

Joe Williams
Philippe Coutinho Lionel Messi Barcelona

If you have anything to say on any subject, you know what to do – mail theeditor@football365.com

 

Philippe Coutinho struggling? How?!
I’m at a loss to figure out how a player as good as Phillipe Coutinho is struggling at Barcelona. He is custom made to play in that side. Technically brilliant, good passer, quick, small and nimble with a ferocious long range drive on him. He has Barcelona written all over him.

Were it not for Messi single handedly destroying teams in La Liga, I think Valverde would come under criticism for failing to get the best out of Coutinho, I mean, come on, who ‘gives up’ on Coutinho? He is a creative genius, only ranking slightly below Neymar.

£80 million you say? If I were Zidane I would sign him on the spot!

Regards,
Kiarian

 

Jinx
Sat down yesterday afternoon what with having some time off, to watch Kazakhstan v Scotland. As our manager is Paul Lambert and everything I suppose he may have done the same. The pre match ramble much like the F365 Championship review of Ipswich at the start of the season, considered that Scotland could struggle in their group. However, much like the optimism I had in Ipswich at the start of the season, I thought that there were chances for Scotland. Belgium aside, why the hell not if you look at the remaining teams in the group?

Decent start in the game, win on the board, San Marino next. Potential. I sat down to enjoy the match.

F***ed it all up in 10 minutes.

As an aside, as the 3rd went in I recognised my involvement, so I’m happy to jinx any other team by offering them my support for the remainder of the season, given appropriate justification from opposition fans of course. Suggestions and reasons in the comments.

But given the recent bad feelings between certain clubs in the mailbox, I rule out the budgies.
Chris ITFC, (Come on Engl… Czech Republic) Liverpool

 

Just a story…
In 1979 we were in Anaheim for the summer as feckless students. George Best was playing for Fort Lauderdale against the California Surf. We had worked out by then that having Irish accents was a passport to getting Americans to believe anything we said. So…We got free tickets as the ones the George was supposed to leave for us were not there. (our acting was Oscar worthy)
We talked our way into the after game party as George was so keen to see us…(he will be so disappointed if you don’t let us in Mr Security Man)

Gerd Muller was there!! !Gerd Muller!!!
Then we started chatting to Clive Walker, who your older readers will remember as a fleet of foot white blonde winger at Chelsea. He was a lovely bloke. The cheerleaders came over to Clive to ask him for his autograph. He signed, turned to us and said to them – “Do you know these two guys?”

It may surprise you, but they didn’t. At this stage, we didn’t even know ourselves.
“Meet Tim and Ross, they’ll be playing for the New York Cosmos next year!”
What!!??

Being sharp enough we soon were the future stars of the Cosmos.

So we signed autographs. Lots of gorgeous cheerleaders, lots of other people who saw us signing autographs and so thought we were someone other than students from Belfast.

So we had our 15 minutes of fame. And got the party on the following Saturday too.
Thanks, Clive, it was great!
Tim

 

Try refereeing
Enjoying the discussion on refereeing,

Its obviously not feasible but I’d encourage anyone to get out there and try refereeing a game or even some five a side. You should learn two things:

1.       You receive some education about the actual laws of the game and discover that plenty of players and pundits actually don’t know the laws. From the way its talked about you get the impression that some misconceptions are actually quite common. Sometimes you will see an ex-ref talking about a controversial decision with pundits and have to educate the pundits that things they think are crucial are actually irrelevant in the application of the law. Players at all levels, as well as fans and pundits normally have some pretty big blind spots not just due to bias, but because they simply don’t know the laws.

2.       You will find out that refereeing is much, much harder than playing. You are often sprinting at full speed (unless you are an elite player you won’t cover as much distance in a game as a hard working ref) when incidents happen so its quite hard to see properly, you are also multitasking more than players who typically have a specific role which doesn’t involve trying to manage conflict between players, communicate with players, having good position on the whole pitch (not just your defined position) and focusing on the play as well as trying to keep an eye on off the ball incidents.

Unlike A ref from the earlier mailbox, I don’t mind the ref being miced up for great transparency, though I’d rather they only make it audible during VAR and playbacks of key incidents rather than always audible during a tv game as the amount of talking a ref does would almost become additional commentary (they do that with Aussie Rules here and while it seems popular and does raise respect levels for referees its also a bit annoying to listen to).

One reason I’d love it is that the accountability would also fall on the players, you’d get to hear their pathetic excuses and constant whinging, and it would probably both shame them into better behaviour and give us some moments of comedy. I’d love to hear a ref responding to a player complaining with “I know you did it because I saw you do it. You know you did it because you did it. Why are you complaining?”  image in that getting played back for a week for giggles? Imagine the memes? Players would have to behave if they wanted a marketable “image”. Dissent would almost disappear overnight and we’d know a player was only protesting when they actually genuinely  did believe they were innocent.
Hugo (NUFC) Adelaide

 

Mark (77 mins gone and Scotland are 3 nil down. Ohhhhhhh dear) makes a point that we shouldn’t mic up refs as players would continuously receiving yellow/ red cards. Good. The regular abuse that refs receive has somehow become so acceptable that everyone at every level is totally desensitised to it. It’s happening from Premier to Sunday league and even kids level – it should be punishable. If Harry Kane does it and is carded (as an example), he’ll stop doing it and this will be reflected in playgrounds and in the next generation of Sunday league player.

We shouldn’t ever differentiate the rules because people can’t follow them.
Jonny (it’s been so long since I’ve written in, I can’t remember if brackets are cool anymore), Hartlepool

 

Enjoying everything
About 10 years ago, I accompanied my father to visit our sardar, who has been hospitalized, for quite some time.
At the ward, he was attended by his youngest son, who, I think, is about my age.

As my father was happily chatting with his friend, the sardar, I try to have small talk with the sardar’s son.

Since I never met his son, not much there is talk. His son is wearing an Arsenal jersey. Thus, I blurted “Gunners’s fan eh?”
Yes! He replied.
I went on to tell him I supported Liverpool.
And, he replied “I supports Liverpool too!”
Now, this is getting interesting.
He then went on to tell me, I support all the best team. Chelsea, MenUtd, Liverpool, Arsenal, and sometimes, Spurs too.
He then explained, all of them played good football. It is hard for me to choose only one.

Therefore, I asked, last year (2008) CL Final. Who did you support? He answered, both, Chelsea and MenUtd. Both are good.

Then, I said, but, United won the double.
And he replied, that why I support all of them. It makes me happy.

And, now, even though I think this guy can be categorized as a combination of glory Hunter and plastic fan … I think, he is the most stress free guy on the planet.

While we are bickering who should win/lose, and what not, this guy is enjoying it any which way! He’s truly a football fan. Not a club supporter.

And, if he is in this mailbox, telling us he support all the big team, I believed, the tribalism instinct in us well dress him down and beat him for not being faithful.

Tribalism. Not a good thing.

And, just a thought. Maybe that guy is supporting all the top 10 teams this year. Lucky him.

Enjoy your EPL sabbatical.
Khairur (maybe I’ll choose 3 teams) Penang

 

Roberto Carlos to Boro
In response to Andy’s sliding door question concerning players I have two tales,

The first was that if Middlesbrough had not been relegated after the three point deduction in 1997 for not playing against Blackburn (farce) then they would have signed Roberto Carlos in the summer, apparently the deal was signed, Boro just had to stay up. . .

The second is slightly more recent in that Diego Forlan was due to sign for Middlesbrough but Manchester United picked him up at the airport, although not great at Man U he showed his real class at Villarreal and then Athletico, I feel that if he had signed for Boro we might have been able to have a real crack at breaking into the top six, instead I believe our strikeforce that year in 2002 was Dean Windass and Joseph Job

Regards,
Michael (Boro fan trapped down South), Crawley

 

A quick response to Andy, London’s mail about potentially game-changing missed transfers; sometimes it can work the other way.

I remember for a couple of years Chelsea were relentlessly linked with Neymar whilst he was still doing rainbow flicks at Santos, even allegedly putting in a number of bids from 20-40 million Euros. Yet for whatever reason (most likely the need to pay off his agent/father/distant aunt) we cooled our interest and he moves to Barca.

Yet had we actually succeeded in bringing him in, it’s highly likely that this alternative history would have turned out worse for Chelsea. Assuming he joins in 2010, it’s then highly unlikely we splash out on Torres in January. Fast forward a season, and Chelsea have won the Champions League. This success still feels like the result of hundreds of tiny factors playing in our favour to create a perfect storm, and the signing of Neymar and subsequent failure to sign Torres feels like it would have been enough to derail it.
This failure to win the trophy means we never sign Hazard, who announced his signing with the tweet ‘i have signed for the champions of Europe’.

So, in short, we end up with no Torres, no Hazard, and probably no Neymar after a few years as he makes his inevitable move to Real/Barca/PSG. But most importantly no Champions League, with the lack of closure for Drogba, Terry, Cech, Lampard etc that comes with that.

There’s a lot of What-Iffery involved, but with our Champions League victory being as reliant on circumstance as it was, and also its importance in terms of bringing in the players that have been at the core of Chelsea for the last 5 years, i can’t see things having turned out better had he signed.
Freddie, CFC, Sheffield

 

The what if…
With all of the ‘If only this signing had come off’ emails, I want to remind everyone of perhaps the biggest one to get away. It’s back in the mists of time, pre-premier league, in the summer of 1983. At that point English teams were dominating Europe, and Liverpool were looking for a new signing to bolster their midfield. Enter 18 year old reigning Danish player of the year, one Michael Laudrup. Liverpool were set to sign one of the greatest midfielders of his generation, but at the last minute tried to shoe horn him into a 4 year contract. Off went Laudrup to Juventus, then Barcelona and Real conquering all before him.
To be fair in the 80s, Liverpool didn’t miss him that much dominating for the rest of the decade, but what a miss.
Stephen

 

..also, there’s no Easter Bunny
Howard Jones – David James signed for Liverpool in July ‘92 and Schmeichel joined Utd in  August ‘91.

Also, the 55 goal season you’re referring to was all competitions. In the league they scored 42 between them – still an excellent return, but important to clarify that 13 of those 55 goals had no bearing on league position ( 3rd, 11 points behind Utd & 7 points behind Newcastle )
Doug, AFC, Belfast

PS I forgot to mention, that season in question was 95 / 96.  Liverpool conceded 34. That’s less than Utd ( 35 ) and Newcastle ( 37 )

 

Deep heat
Ah Chris and your deep heat memories, you’ve “reignited” one I’d buried.

Many years ago I played in a 5-a-side league in Ardwick, Manchester, just great for a LFC fan like myself, but anyway… One winter we’d turned up for our Friday night game and as it was cold slapped on the Deep Heat and made our way outside. No sooner had we made it to our allotted pitch we were told the other team hadn’t turned up and a 10-0 win complete with 3 points was ours. Happy at this news we went back inside and got dressed without showering as we’d only walked to the pitch and back. Let me tell you, denim jeans on top of Deep Heat is not a sensation I ever want to experience again as I drive anywhere. It felt like someone had torched by legs etc.

Always shower off the Deep Heat before getting dressed
Lee

 

Love and gratitude
I would like to express some love and gratitude…

Thank you to all The Mailbox contributors this morning, especially Alay, N15 Gooner. That was a much more enjoyable read.

Thank you to football365 for selecting content that made The Mailbox a much more enjoyable read.

And thank you also to everybody who mentions how intolerable it will be for us to have to listen to Liverpool fans if they win the league.  You have made me focus on my own self awareness.
Naz, Gooner.