summerof69

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/neil-cameron-newcastle-united-should-7564419? Try to imagine a football club who for one day of every year invites its supporters to meet the players and manager. No boundaries. No PR person in your way. You get to say hello, shake hands, maybe grab an autograph of two and ask those questions which has been on your mind. The Director of Football will be also there. As will all the coaching staff and some former heroes as well. Oh, and did I mention there will be beer? And a free helicopter ride over the stadium. And a bouncy castle shaped as a football pitch. What more could you want? Last Sunday morning I strolled through a football fan open day, or Schalke Day as it’s known, hosted by the club in the shadow of their home, the rather magnificent Veltins-Arena. The sun was shining. Over 100,000 people in total wandered through the various tents, exhibitions, kids activities and had a go at taking a penalty, which the adult men took way too seriously. They drank, despite it being in the morning, but nobody was drunk, and there was more currywurst and bratwurst than any one person could take. I joined in as the crowds wandered through the Academy, a chance for them to see what goes on behind the scenes as their club attempt to produce the next World Cup winner, such as Gelsenkirchen’s favourite son, Manuel Neuer of whom there are pictures everywhere. A small boy played footie with his dad on the very same pitch the first team train on. It was nothing special. They do it every year, I was told that 12 months ago some 150,000 people passed through this free event. That shouldn’t come as a great surprise as the regular open training sessions attract 2000 fans. This is the first team we a talking about. Now imagine Newcastle United, or any Premier League team come to think of it, doing any of this. As I happily wandered around, I got talking to a man called, honestly, Rolf who came every year with his extended family, despite now living in another part of the country. He told me; “The club has a close bond with the supporters. They recognise our loyalty and passion, so days like this are like a present to us. “We don’t win trophies like Munich or Dortmund (Schalke’s big rivals) by we have a pride in our football club. “I wouldn’t want to support anyone else. This is a special thing to be a part of.” It has become almost a cliché now to suggest we always look to Germany in an attempt to improve all aspects of our own national game. But the thing is, they do get almost everything right. Schalke 04, especially, are run in a way that would make any fan green with envy. This is arguable the most popular club in Germany, but is some way from being the most successful. There are almost 100,000 paid up members of the fan club and there are now over 1300 supporter groups worldwide. Gelsenkirchen, the large city which is the home of Schalke 04, is a bit like Newcastle and indeed the North East as a whole. It’s very industrial, think Teesside but with more smoke billowing factories, is predominantly working class, although fewer work today as one in five adults are unemployed, and they are football mad. I mean utterly obsessed. The club are not successful in terms of winning trophies. Schalke won the old Uefa Cup in 1997, but you need to go back to 1958 for their last championship, although three years ago they did win the German Cup. Schalke are a cut above in other way. The open day is just one example of this. This is a football club built by the fans and is run for the fans. A supporter representative enjoys a permanent seat on the club’s supervisory board, a body that can veto transfers worth more than 300,000 euros. Apparently Felix Magath tried to change this. He didn’t last much longer as manager. Season tickets are sensibly priced. There is free transport to home games if you live within 50 miles of the stadium. There is a suggestion a similar scheme is to be brought in for away games. This is the present. They don’t forget the past. A real hero in these parts is ex-player and local boy Olaf Thon who won the World Cup with West Germany in 1990. There was a sign outside of a tent that promised he would be there to chat and sign autographs for an hour, starting at 1.30pm. And sure enough, the great men turned up exactly at that time to be greeted by an already large queue. Insert Germany efficiency joke here. This all took place before final day of the Shalke tournament, which of course included Newcastle United. It was brilliant. And it got me thinking, why do Newcastle not do something like this. Would it not be great if for one weekend every summer, the fans were allowed complete access to St James’ Park and the training ground, just as Schalke do. Admission is free, but there is plenty merchandise about so it’s still a commercial enterprise, plus it wins the hearts and minds of young fans whose head may be turned by more, shall we say, glamorous clubs. Would it be impossible to set up stalls, activities, the odd beer tent or two in Leazes Park? Schalke fans, a bit like those who have pledged their lives to Newcastle United, sadly don’t expect to win much. However, they do expect to feel part of their football club. I came away from Germany with a new favourite team. Their PR worked on me and I am almost terminally cynical about anything football clubs get up to. Seeing so many young people, boys and girls, dressed in their blue kit having a wonderful day made you want to be part of it all, as Rolf and his family were. Newcastle should do something like this. It’s not a lot to ask. Mike Ashley even has a helicopter he could loan out for an afternoon. I wish this could be us

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/jul/30/luzenac-french-fairytale Finally we will then find out whether France’s favourite football fairytale from last season can have a happy ending, after all, and thereby wreak havoc with league planning. AP Luzenac, the side from a village with a population of just 650 up in the Pyrenees, amazed and enchanted the country last term by gaining promotion to the heady heights of Ligue 2; they were already the tiniest club to feature in the third tier, now here they were in the second. Their rise was recounted all around Europe and cited as an inspiration for small clubs everywhere, proof that even in the heavily corporatised world of modern football, the little guy still can still enjoy upward mobility. But then, just as the celebrations over an incredible campaign started to abate, the dream was dashed, as the league’s financial regulator banned the club from accepting their promotion. This, grumbled critics, was a case of the The Man putting upstarts back in their box. The Direction Nationale de Contrôle et de Gestion (DNCG) is the body set up by the French Football Federation in 1984 to check the financial rectitude of professional clubs, with each having to submit accounts for approval every year. The declared aim is to preserve clubs by making sure that expenditure does not exceed income but Luzenac claim that the body, whose inner workings do not seem entirely in synch with the transparency that it demands from others, is now being used to uphold the status quo and prevent unfancied new faces from joining the elite. Luzenac professed to being “stupefied and shocked” when their appeal against the DNCG’s decision was rejected earlier this month, the news becoming somewhat buried under previews of France’s World Cup quarter-final showdown with Germany the next day. On Thursday, 30 July, the club will make their last stand when the case is heard by a Toulouse court whose verdict will be final: if Luzenac lose, they will have to accept getting no reward for last season’s heroics and they will consigned to an uncertain fate; if they win, Ligue 2 will have to be expanded to feature 21 teams rather than 20 next season and organisers will have to devise a new fixture list accordingly – just two days before the campaign kicks off. Until the legal ballyhoo, Luzenac was an entirely lovable story. Only five years ago they were an amateur team in the regional leagues; in 2009 they won promotion to the Championnat de France National – the country’s third tier – but it seemed unlikely that they would last there. After narrowly avoiding relegation for two seasons, Luzenac seemed set to go under due to financial problems – then in stepped Jérôme Ducros, a wealthy Toulouse businessman, to stave off extinction. Last summer Ducros hatched a bigger plot and appointed a new managing director with a mission to recruit a team to deliver an unlikely promotion. That man was Fabien Barthez, the former France and Manchester United goalkeeper and a native of Lavelanet, another small town in the region. The team’s budget for the year was increased – to around £2m – and Barthez proved a shrewd operator, luring players jettisoned by other clubs to form, under manager Christophe Pélissier, a robust and incisive unit that finished the campaign as the top scorers in the division and, most importantly, second in the table. “We had planned to gain promotion in three years so we are well ahead of schedule!” declared Ducros. “It’s incredible, exceptional, extraordinary!” exulted the club’s long-serving defender Jérôme Hergault. “When I came here we were struggling to stay up in CFA [fourth tier], now to be going up to Ligue 2 is hard to believe. People often just saw us as mere peasants playing football – this will make a lot of people shut up.” Back in the 1980s, Auxerre rose from the amateur regional leagues to become an enduring force in the country’s top flight, crowning their ascent by becoming French champions in 1996; that success has served as a reference point for underdogs across the land – Luzenac even coming close to matching that feat would be far more outlandish and lovely. With promotion secured, the club began preparing for the next step, which, first of all, meant finding somewhere to play: their own ground, the Stade Paul Fédou, has only one stand and 400 seats so was not even deemed worthy of the National, which is why they played last season at a ground in nearby Foix – but that only has a capacity of 3,000, far fewer than is required to meet Ligue 2 standards. Luzenac had made arrangements to play their home games this season in Toulouse, some 80 miles away. It has been suggested that concerns over the club’s ability to pay the rent for that on an on-going basis was one of the chief factors in the DNCG’s decision to refuse admission, although Luzenac complain that one of the most vexing things about their rejection is that they have not been given any precise explanation for it. “I want to stress how discourteous the authorities have been,” Ducros stormed after his club’s failed appeal. “I didn’t even get a mail informing me about the decision, I had to hear about it in the media and on the internet … it is shameful to treat us like this. They didn’t even say a single word to Fabien Barthez during the appeal. “Imagine behaving like that just 24 hours before France play in the quarter-final of the World Cup! I’ll say it again: shame on the FFF! We answered every question and presented fully audited accounts. I’m going to fight to bring this system down, they are ruining the hopes of an entire district!” Luzenac insist that they have a sound budget for the season ahead and that their books are perfectly balanced – “we are not even one euro in arrears,” said Barthez – and that they are being punished not for anything that they have done but rather for what the league suspects they will not be able to continue doing; in other words, not for any mismanagement, just for being small. The DNCG has blocked the promotions of big clubs in the past – such as Nice in 2002 or Lens (from Ligue 2 to Ligue 1) just this summer – but both those decisions were overturned on appeal. Luzenac, meanwhile, fear going the way of AS Valence, who were repeatedly denied entry to Ligue 2 in 2004 and soon ceased to exist.

Full match has been uploaded on youtube

Staggering.

Really sad. R.I.P

Don't know if he still lives in Newcastle, but he still ties himself with the region. He bought, Durham city Associatioin Football Club, not too long ago.

Decent video of him, playing against Arsenal, on youtube.

That's the one Unreal. My favourite of the tournament

Roma kit is sexy as f***. https://www.facebook.com/SPORTbible/photos/a.338257439653128.1073741828.338233632988842/527747230704147/?type=1&theater

Siems like a good signing

He's a good lad in fairness, just think he's swallowed a load of media bullshit.

Just been talking to a Pardew fan, his main points were denies players have regressed, and isn't his job to improve players anyway Who cares about attractive football, when he gets results ben Arfa doesn't defend and doesn't beat his man, and too often goes for the simple pass, should have got rid two years ago His embarrasing media antics are irrelivent managers need stability

Oh Aye

In a thread where we are discussing a potential new signing, i think the "Pardewed" comments are relevant.It's part of the debate as th whether or not hte player will be a good signing. Can be tedious, in threads or discussions where Pardew or even NUFC, are not even part of the discussion.

Not as if they haven't taken the piss many times before

" Clap my fans".

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=282654.2640

"The guy was a turncoat. From county Durham supported Newcastle says it all really, typical plastic mag, with no ties to them whatsoever, disgrace." "I'm totally indifferent to him in all honesty, I think SNQ had a lot to do with him being accepted by SAFC as being ok and he enjoyed a lot of hospitality at the SOL in his final years, and said he enjoyed it a lot more than his outings to The 03, according to a mate who new him very well. I doubt his wife thought he was much of a 'Gentleman' when he was knobbing his secretary for donkeys years though.... " "Back in 1982, Geordie fans hurled abuse and spat at Robson for having the temerity to drop their hero Kevin Keegan from his first squad after being appointed England manager. It was a rude introduction to the job, but set the tone for his eight years in charge." "His father supported Newcastle as did Bobby. My grandad worked with his father, Philip, for years. Its a myth that all County Durham miners were Sunderland supporters. Well his dads a turncoat then, something not right there IMO. From C Durham and support the mags."

http://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/bobby-robson-why-is-he-so-revered.912656/ What a terrible thread, up there with the worst rtg has ever had, imo

Very sad. RIP.

Also claiming Y.N.W.A

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Government-rejects-petition-calling-Leicester/story-21000473-detail/story.html

Link ?

Is this a troll ?