Tuesday 10: Fabregas in Fiction

Editor's Note: We continue a great new feature on the Free Beer Movement site. In collaboration with the quality soccer site, "The Other 87 Minutes" we present the "Tuesday XI" (and sometimes the "Tuesday Ten") a thoughtful list on a variety of topics in the world of soccer.

Make sure you head over to "The Other 87 Minutes" and check out all the... well... other great writing on their site. What do you think of the "Tuesday XI"? Let us know in the comments section!

The career of Cesc Fabregas, from his transfer to Arsenal until his arrival at Barcelona, summarized in ten book titles.

Stranger in a Strange Land – Hindered by language and culture, he is unsettled in his new home. A Portrait of the

Artist as a Young Man – Soon providence provides a path, and over many years the Spanish son becomes a hero for his club.

Things Fall Apart – The Catalans beckon their youth product home; the captain’s reign of peace is cast in doubt by the decision he now faces.

A Wild Sheep Chase – Months pass as the Spanish giants make offer after unsuccessful offer.

War and Peace – Tempers boils over and an exchange of hostilities ensues; however, Cesc pledges his loyalty to his club.

Catch-22 – A year passes and his manager is left with an unsavory decision – decline the transfer and keep an unhappy player, or accept it and lose a captain.

A Light in August – Finally, in August, the Spaniard’s odyssey concludes. He returns home.

In Search of Lost Time – Eight years have passed; Cesc plays catch-up.

Great Expectations (epilogue) – Following this biography’s denouement, will its protagonist live happily ever after?

About "The Other 87 Minutes"

What is this new site we're exposing you too? We'll let them explain:

The Other 87 seeks to provide something that’s not instant analysis or eve of matchday previews. Think of us as the good bits of your favorite soccer coverage: the profiles that examine what makes a certain player tick, the historical background that sheds some light on how the sport has evolved to the present day, the silly features that are more than just tacking names on a list, but considering and explaining why each one deserves to be there.

O87 wants to be a home for soccer writing that makes you think, but that also treats the game as just that, a game. The greatest game, the one we obsess over and fixate on, to the point where we can’t read that gas costs 3.43 a gallon without thinking of Ajax’s 1995 Champions League winning team. But a game nonetheless.

“When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball three minutes on average. The best players – the Zidanes, Ronaldinhos, Gerrards – will have the ball maybe four minutes. Lesser players – defenders – probably two minutes. So, the most important thing is: what do you do those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball…. That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not.” –Johann Cruyff

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Tuesday XI: Transfer Rumor Anagrams

Editor's Note: We continue a great new feature on the Free Beer Movement site. In collaboration with the quality soccer site, "The Other 87 Minutes" we present the "Tuesday XI" (and sometimes the "Tuesday Ten") a thoughtful list on a variety of topics in the world of soccer.

Make sure you head over to "The Other 87 Minutes" and check out all the... well... other great writing on their site. What do you think of the "Tuesday XI"? Let us know in the comments section!


There’s nothing crueler for a soccer fan than the three month summer hiatus from European football. Sure, there’s the after-work entertainment of the MLS, and yes, international fixtures provide a much needed reprieve, but we still crave the glitz of England, Spain, and Italy like a tapeworm craves steak.

My summer ritual? Pop on the headphones, put Carly Simon’s “Anticipation” on loop, and refresh my browser incessantly hoping for a mega transfer to break. If you’re wondering who to keep tabs on, this week’s Tuesday XI is a line-up of the big names likely to move in the coming weeks (and a couple who already did).

The catch? All the names are anagrams. Because we can.

Manager: “Amicable Loser” (Marcelo Bielsa) – Inspired by our attack-oriented formation, Marcelo Bielsa was a clear inclusion as coach. Can he bring Bilbao to the same glory as Chile, or will he simply be a nice guy finishing last?

Keeper: “Unremarkable Gets Ten” (Maarten Stekelenburg) – At a club where the manager once called Almunia the world’s next number one keeper, Stekelenburg should have no trouble scoring high marks.

Left Back: “Coos Shakily” (Aly Cissokho) – If the French leftback indeed replaces his outgoing compatriot at Arsenal, he’ll certainly be nervous in the new look Gunners side.

Center Back: “Lyrical Hag” (Gary Cahill) – Completing the Arsenal transfer rumor backline trifecta is another overrated English defender.

Right Back: “A Barefoot Icon” (Fabio Coentrao) – Boots on or off, he’s made splashes at Benfica and will certainly terrorize La Liga’s wings.

Left Mid: “O, Ugly Hyenas!” (Ashley Young) – There’s no sense to this anagram, but it was too poetic not to include.

Center Mid: “Generic Looker” (Nigel Reo-Coker) – He may look the part, but he’s really quite average.

Right Mid: “Clamour Kid” (Luka Modric) – He’s created a lot of buzz in England, and now it looks like he’ll stay with Spurs. Shame.

Attacking Mid: “Need Jewelry, Sis?” (Wesley Sneijder) – Sneijder’s contract is certain to grow if he moves to United, and you can be sure he’ll be sending plenty of gifts home to Holland.

Left Forward: “Evil Donkey” (Kevin Doyle) – Is this the answer to your problems, Wenger?

Radamel Falcao (left) and Kuzco (right)

Right Forward: “Asinine Proverb” (Robin van Persie) - The countless inane adages about RVP’s quality may disappear if he exits this summer.

Striker: “Llama, or Facade?” (Radamel Falcao) – Because I can’t be the only one who thinks he looks like Kuzco from The Emperor’s New Groove.

About "The Other 87 Minutes"

What is this new site we're exposing you too? We'll let them explain:

The Other 87 seeks to provide something that’s not instant analysis or eve of matchday previews. Think of us as the good bits of your favorite soccer coverage: the profiles that examine what makes a certain player tick, the historical background that sheds some light on how the sport has evolved to the present day, the silly features that are more than just tacking names on a list, but considering and explaining why each one deserves to be there.

O87 wants to be a home for soccer writing that makes you think, but that also treats the game as just that, a game. The greatest game, the one we obsess over and fixate on, to the point where we can’t read that gas costs 3.43 a gallon without thinking of Ajax’s 1995 Champions League winning team. But a game nonetheless.

“When you play a match, it is statistically proven that players actually have the ball three minutes on average. The best players – the Zidanes, Ronaldinhos, Gerrards – will have the ball maybe four minutes. Lesser players – defenders – probably two minutes. So, the most important thing is: what do you do those 87 minutes when you do not have the ball…. That is what determines whether you’re a good player or not.” –Johann Cruyff

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How To Calculate a "Silly Season" Rumor

How much for this guy?

Late July and early August might be the deadest time in the news year. People are taking summer vacations, spending their time outdoors, and generally not paying attention to the world around them.  Unfortunately we're all still stuck with the 24-hour news cycle and the media's desire to make news, any news, important to us in hopes of snagging readers and viewers.

That's why you'll see lots of stories about shark attacks only in August (and this "Shark Week" on the Discovery Channel) or Lindsey Lohan's jailing as "breaking news".

For the soccer world and particularly the Euro-centric world this summer time is referred to as the "silly season" and it's particularly bad following a World Cup.  The silly season is defined by an echo chamber of ridiculous rumors about a certain player and a certain team and some absurd amount of money that they might pay for said player. Pretty much anyone that showed a shred of talent in South Africa is a moving target for the press and their appetite for making (as opposed to breaking) news.

In year's past the American media has been immune to the silly season because, well, few were looking through the American storefront. But in the four years since the last World Cup in Germany much has changed.

In 2006 the U.S. was coming off a disappointing Cup run and few American players were seen as attractive to Euro-sutors.  Certainly a few went across to pond to ply their trade (Dempsey, Edddie Johnson, Howard, etc), but real deals were to be found elsewhere.

With the electric performance of the 2010 U.S.squad there is plenty of interest around Europe for many American players. Some are looking to jump from stateside to Europe (Donovan) and many others are looking infinitely more attractive to larger European clubs (Bradley, Dempsey) or bigger North American clubs (Bornstein, Gomez). Even Americans that didn't make the South African journey have picked up European contracts (Kljestan).

Another important side to the silly season is that the money of clubs in Europe has gotten beyond "silly".  With the oil bucks of Manchester City in the market in 2010, as That's On Point joked, they'll be the first senior side with 100 players on their roster. There is more money to be splashed that ever before.

Lastly, the media world has grown by leaps and bounds since the previous World Cup.  The advent of Twitter and other social media, the growth of blogs and other similar publications, alongside the mainstream sports media has made the echo chamber of news, views, and rumor more "echo-y" than ever. The desire for each semi-professional soccer writer in the U.S. to make their views heard via blog post, Tweet, or online smoke signal has flooded the silly season rumor mill with more worthless opinions that ever before. 

Granted their are many intelligent online voices contemplating the weight of such transfer whispers, but most spend their time cranking out 500 words of nothing on their sites or several 140 character word vomits to their followers.

Us Americans are no longer safe from falling into the silly season trap.  We laughed while European clubs splashed crazy cash for players and speculated until blue in the face about player moves, but now we're apart of it all.

So how do we sort through all of the BS of the now-Americanized silly season? Well, we're pretty fond of statistics, so why not a formula to determine the accuracy of such rumors swirling about the Inter-Net-Blogo-Sphere?


For your consideration:
Player A X European Super Club + Ridiculous Sounding Monetary Amount X Number of News Articles, Blog Posts, Guardian Sport and The Sun Articles Written  / Amount of Rational Thought and Consideration of Said Club's Actual Needs Applied to Situation = Accuracy of Rumor




Let's see how this plays out and define our variables:
Player A is Landon Donovan
European Super Club is Manchester City
Ridiculous Sounding Monetary Amount is $15 million
Number of News Articles, etc is 650 news reports, 2,190 blog posts, 1 The Sun article and 2 Guardian Sport articles (2,743 in total)
Amount of Rational Thought and Consideration of Said Club's Actual Needs Applied to the Situation is Undefined (We're still searching for a sound voice on all this madness.)


Either way you run the numbers this whole situation is absolutely bonkers.


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