sunderland

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Ian W for Colo's replacement, easily the best defender of everything and anyone I've ever witnessed.

 

 

It would be hilarious if TT had actually read or understood what I posted.

[Guest ObiChrisKenobi]

Bizarrely this has really increased their world profile.

[Super Duper Branko Strupar]

Paul W Cook -> Sunderland AFC

ALL sunderland fans should be behind Di Canio even if you don't agree with his political comments, this is about keeping us up and we should get behind the manager and team! If Adolf himself had a few tactics he could have deployed to keep us up....he would have got my backing! Those of you who are ashamed of having Di Canio as manager should be ashamed to be a sunderland fan. Club is more important than any one man or his views on non football related matters.

[Dokko]

Ian W for Colo's replacement, easily the best defender of everything and anyone I've ever witnessed.

 

 

It would be hilarious if TT had actually read or understood what I posted.

 

Unfortunately I did and you said it hasn't been a problem at previous clubs. Not only do you head straight in defending a fascist and his 'interesting' views (your words) you cant even be bothered to get your facts straight before doing so.

 

Thick doesn't even cover it.

 

Your Suarez style argument of its different from where he's from is just laughable as well.

[Wilson]

Paul W Cook -> Sunderland AFC

If Adolf himself had a few tactics he could have deployed to keep us up....he would have got my backing!

 

Is there a face big enough for a palm this size?

[Guest neesy111]

Paul W Cook -> Sunderland AFC

ALL sunderland fans should be behind Di Canio even if you don't agree with his political comments, this is about keeping us up and we should get behind the manager and team! If Adolf himself had a few tactics he could have deployed to keep us up....he would have got my backing! Those of you who are ashamed of having Di Canio as manager should be ashamed to be a sunderland fan. Club is more important than any one man or his views on non football related matters.

 

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L6z9CmpAo4k/UUau1kYCEuI/AAAAAAAAANU/BCCD3DJj_Ic/s1600/2891002-triple_facepalm_by_spottedheart98464-d3kuyp3.png

[mrmojorisin75]

anyone bringing hitler into this on either side of the so-called argument needs to have a serious fucking think like

[Dokko]

Ssns interviewing mackems in the street, brilliant viewing. 

[Kimbo]

Adolf would have been a long ball manager, he liked an aerial bombardment, and he'd probably fill the midfield with tanks like Papa Bouba Diop. It would look outdated in this day and age.

[loki679]

They just make a complete mess of everything, it's brilliant   Best thing is they don't even realise it until about 6 months after the normal people.

[mrmojorisin75]

Adolf would have been a long ball manager, he liked an aerial bombardment, and he'd probably fill the midfield with tanks like Papa Bouba Diop. It would look outdated in this day and age.

 

pressure teams from the kick off, lay into them hard and fast, try and get it finished early doors

[Kimbo]

Adolf would have been a long ball manager, he liked an aerial bombardment, and he'd probably fill the midfield with tanks like Papa Bouba Diop. It would look outdated in this day and age.

 

pressure teams from the kick off, lay into them hard and fast, try and get it finished early doors

 

he'd probably try to compete on too many fronts aswell, then endlessly whinge about it. Or is that Pardew?

[loki679]

Adolf would have been a long ball manager, he liked an aerial bombardment, and he'd probably fill the midfield with tanks like Papa Bouba Diop. It would look outdated in this day and age.

 

pressure teams from the kick off, lay into them hard and fast, try and get it finished early doors

 

Has trouble with people coming off the bench in the second half though.

[Guest ObiChrisKenobi]

What was the reaction like when Di Canio joined Swindon?

[mrmojorisin75]

What was the reaction like when Di Canio joined Swindon?

 

[themanupstairs]

What was the reaction like when Di Canio joined Swindon?

 

Who or what is Swindon? Never heard of it.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Ian W for Colo's replacement, easily the best defender of everything and anyone I've ever witnessed.

 

 

It would be hilarious if TT had actually read or understood what I posted.

 

Unfortunately I did and you said it hasn't been a problem at previous clubs. Not only do you head straight in defending a fascist and his 'interesting' views (your words) you cant even be bothered to get your facts straight before doing so.

 

Thick doesn't even cover it.

 

Your Suarez style argument of its different from where he's from is just laughable as well.

 

Don't why you're so set on following me around the forum having a go. I never defended anything, I would hardly defend anyone I thought was racist or fascist.

 

All I did was raise some points I had heard about cultural differences and the actual quotes that have been brought up when discussing Di Canio. There's nothing thick about that, unless you think there is no such thing as cultural differences between nations.

 

I suspect you know all this but are choosing to go on the windup anyway. Or you don't understand the argument I'm making, which is fair enough as well I suppose. Just hold off on the personal digs FFS. I admit I didn't know about the complaint from that Swindon player, fair cop.

[Raconteur]

they do if the places have a political identity to speak of, what's NUFC's political identity out of interest?  i'd suggest there are a few exceptions in the game where politics and teams are inextricably linked and mixed, but it's very far from the norm especially in the UK

I'm from the other side of the world, have no family links to the city (or even the club) - I follow NUFC for a range of reasons that formed more than 20 years ago, but I think as an outsider I can help answer this.

 

Newcastle (and more broadly the North-East) have a deeply-grained disdain of the central London government; not quite seperatist but I would certainly suggest that Geordies see themselves as "apart" from a London-centric England. As evidence, consider the disdain shown towards our "Cockney" leadership or the railing against the "Southern" media. You might consider that a social analysis, but I'd suggest it is indeed political. Consider the comment earlier in this thread about how much of Sunderland's resentment of Newcastle is due to the "favouritism" Newcastle got when it came to government funding of North-East rejuvenation.

 

NUFC is the embodiment of the city, the success of the club is a vindication of the city's unique identity. When the club does poorly, the city pulls its cloak tightly around itself, sticks two fingers up to the south and creates a genuine seige mentality. Again, that's political identity, not just social or regional.

 

At least, that's how it seems from half a world away...

 

On a similar note I'm saddened by those who choose to view the Celtic v Rangers rivalry as religious rather than political. It's got nothing to do whether you pray kneeling or standing up; it's Republicanism v Unionism.

 

Politics is woven into the fabric of football, and it doesn't need to be left v right to be political.

 

Finally, maybe there are people who didn't become "outraged" when Di Canio joined Swindon because the news cycle deemed it worthy of a single report and it passed them by? I know that's certainly true in my case (again, from half a world away)...

 

[Dokko]

Ian W for Colo's replacement, easily the best defender of everything and anyone I've ever witnessed.

 

 

It would be hilarious if TT had actually read or understood what I posted.

 

Unfortunately I did and you said it hasn't been a problem at previous clubs. Not only do you head straight in defending a fascist and his 'interesting' views (your words) you cant even be bothered to get your facts straight before doing so.

 

Thick doesn't even cover it.

 

Your Suarez style argument of its different from where he's from is just laughable as well.

 

Don't why you're so set on following me around the forum having a go. I never defended anything, I would hardly defend anyone I thought was racist or fascist.

 

All I did was raise some points I had heard about cultural differences and the actual quotes that have been brought up when discussing Di Canio. There's nothing thick about that, unless you think there is no such thing as cultural differences between nations.

 

I suspect you know all this but are choosing to go on the windup anyway. Or you don't understand the argument I'm making, which is fair enough as well I suppose. Just hold off on the personal digs FFS. I admit I didn't know about the complaint from that Swindon player, fair cop.

 

This is just you deflecting your ignorance saying it hasn't effected him at other clubs without knowing the facts. Its not my fault you waded in without knowing this, it has been said several times already in this thread, so really there is no excuse. You got it wrong so don't blame me. 

 

Also I was just having a light hearted dig, you started with the insinuation i couldn't understand what you were talking about, I do, however i don't see it as an excuse for him to act like he has done at other clubs, something which you denied.

 

[Ryan_Taylor]

We're far to bothered about this. Just sit back and enjoy the madness.

[Benwell Lad]

Aside from the current political discussion surrounding his appointment, I commented a few weeks ago, when he was in the News, (can't remember what for) that I couldn't see any club touching him with a bargepole because he's a nutcase apart from anything else.  Add to that his lack of experience and mixed reviews at lower level and it really is quite a mystifying appointment.

 

[Disco]

There is no place for intolerance in football

 

Full of hormones and righteous indignation, powered by a desire to fight half of the world and bed the other; that was me in the mid-1980s. I was an opinionated twerp back then (don’t say anything), convinced that I had all the right answers and that mine were the only answers which counted. I marched and demonstrated and wore badges (and didn’t have sex with anybody) and believed with ferocious sincerity that it would change things.

 

It was such a polarising era that it felt like you had to be political back then, certainly in the North East. I was lucky – my background was middle class, I was never hungry – but I grew up in pit villages in County Durham and saw how communities withered and died in the aftermath of the miners’ strike, how a region which was once known for industry and making things was left to rot.

 

We worried a bit about nuclear war and danced with abandon to Free Nelson Mandela (burgundy trousers, grey shoes, burgundy tank-top since you ask). On a couple of occasions, a little earlier in the decade, I caught the bus down to London with my family for those huge CND marches.

 

Once, I accidentally knocked a policeman’s helmet off with a placard (“watch ma ha’, son,” – he was Scottish). I hated Margaret Thatcher and still do.

 

Looking back, it took some doing to be a football supporter. We all were, of course – birthright, heritage – and it was great in its way, raw and vivid, but our grounds were grimy, unsafe and unpleasant, we were treated as undesirables, cattle to be herded and penned in. Some away trips were dangerous. It wasn’t fashionable. The glamour did not kick in until after the World Cup in 1990 and the arrival of the Premier League.

 

Amid that flux and displacement, the politicisation and unemployment, football was viewed as a recruiting ground for extremism and so us pimply idealists made that another battleground. It seemed wrong and hateful that the National Front should routinely distribute literature and sell magazines outside our stadia. Football, I believed, should unite towns and cities, not divide.

 

So I joined the – bit of a mouthful, this – Tyne and District Anti-Fascist Association (I think that’s the right name) and we stomped across the Tyne Bridge, baited by a gaggle of knuckleheads and took our place outside St James‘ Park, curled around our enemies. We gave out stickers that read ‘Geordies are black and white‘ and chanted the same. “Black and white, unite and fight, stop the fascists now,” was another. Cringe.

 

A copper gave me a shove and said “if you’re going to give out your puffy bits of paper, do it over there.” A bloke wearing a Newcastle United scarf leant through a police cordon, stuck two fingers in my face and yelled “F*** OFF.” I was spat at once, the phlegm dribbling off my chin, but that just made me shout louder. I felt like the world’s greatest freedom fighter; I was an adolescent doused in dribble.

 

There wasn’t much nuance in what I thought. Conservatives were bad, white South Africans were evil and fascism was fascism. My grandad died at the end of the Second World War fighting fascists. There weren’t good fascists and bad fascists or shades of fascism, there couldn’t be context; it was a term which, to my mind, was interchangeable with racism and intolerance, stifling democracy and hate. Black and white.

 

In the decades that followed, society softened again and football changed beyond recognition, shoved that way by the national outrage and personal tragedy of the Hillsborough disaster, and encouraged by Gazza’s tears, Gary’s goals, Bobby’s little jig and the rest of it. By comparison, our game now is welcoming and clean. Multi-racial, multi-cultural, safe for families.

 

You don’t get those magazine-sellers any more, but kids shaking buckets to collect money for charity or local teams. You don’t hear the monkey-chants or see inflatable bananas tossed at the feet of black footballers. It has taken effort to reach this point, effort and education by important groups like Kick it Out and Show Racism the Red Card and it took an uncompromising approach when flare-ups took place.

 

But there should not be complacency, either. So it is right and proper when a man who has described himself as a fascist takes a position of prominence at one of our clubs that this should be discussed and pored over.

 

What does it mean? What was Paolo di Canio getting at when he described himself as “a fascist not a racist,” in 2005, after he had given a stiff-arm salute to Lazio supporters? Why the fascination with Benito Mussolini?

 

 

 

There are football and societal aspects and sometimes they conjoin. At previous elections, the British National Party have made Sunderland – staunchly Labour by tradition, but with high unemployment and pockets of real poverty – a target area. The English Defence League held a rally there last weekend.

 

And now a beacon of the city has a self-professed “facist not a racist” as first-team coach.

At the very least, there should be an explanation. Some did not wait for it. David Milliband, the former Foreign Secretary and MP for South Shields, stepped down from his position as Sunderland’s vice-chairman because of Di Canio’s political views. The Durham Miners’ Association are demanding the return of the Wearmouth Miners’ Banner from its permanent loan at the Stadium of Light, which was built on the site of the colliery.

 

In a statement on Monday, Margaret Byrne, the club’s chief executive, expressed disappointment that “some people are trying to turn the appointment of a head coach into a political circus.”

 

Was that a reference to Milliband? The previous week there had been satisfaction when Milliband, whose Jewish family fled to Britain to escape fascist persecution, said he would remain in his non-executive role after accepting a new job in the United States. That delight was reaffirmed in Saturday’s match programme.

 

The resignation of a Sunderland director over the appointment of Martin O’Neill’s successor turned an issue into a controversy; it was not the work of a malicious media. “To accuse him now, as some have done, of being a racist or having fascist sympathies, is insulting not only to him but to the integrity of this football club,” said Byrne, but that was risible. Di Canio own words: “a fascist not a racist.”

 

The attempt to stifle debate is self-defeating and ludicrous, because the debate is important. Debate helped the game evolve to where it is. It challenges our perceptions, forces us to (at least temporarily) abandon our own certainties and listen to others. “We are a football club,” Byrne said and here she was right; one lodged deep in its community and with a responsibility to it.

 

From reading interviews with Di Canio and profiles of him, it is clear that this is not a man readily pigeon-holed. There is more subtlety in the opinions I’ve read than I believed possible as a teenager. He has written positively about immigrants who integrate (less so about those who don’t), and his admiration for Mussolini (also inked on his skin) comes with parameters. To my way of thinking, the whole Adolf Hitler thing was a bit of a deal-breaker, but I’m prepared to be educated further. I’ve got an open mind.

 

Life is a series of small compromises. As years go by, we can change. In the 1980s, the person I was could never have contemplated working for News International. My aunt did, but she stopped when the company moved to Wapping and stood on the picket lines. My dad had been offered a job and did not take it. When I was offered this role in 1998, I talked it through with both of them and sought their blessing. It was hard.

 

I still have touchstone beliefs – words like racism and fascism provoke an immediate response – and I’m still a leftie. I don’t march much any more and, in fact, the last demonstration I attended was against the war in Iraq, a war which David Milliband supported. That episode was painful and it just shows how causes and ideals you hold dear can be challenged.

 

But the war was debated and so should Di Canio’s views and if he is not prepared to clarify what he meant – he refused to do so repeatedly in his media briefing this morning – then it doesn’t help. I respect those people who feel that this is too much to bear, just as I respect those who thought something similar about Newcastle’s sponsorship by Wonga, the payday loan company, or a million other pricks to the heart.

 

 

 

We do not look to football to save our souls. Most of us do not look to it for moral guidance. We have a pie and a pint on a Saturday afternoon (Sunday morning, Tuesday evening, Thursday night), and wipe our feet on the way out. For some, that is enough. For others, turning up and singing your heart out whatever your club puts you through is the only point of being a supporter.

 

Just as Wonga made some Newcastle fans Google-search experts on comparative interest rates, so Di Canio prompts some at Sunderland to memorise the Wikipedia entry for Italian fascism. Fair dos. But claiming it is not an issue, after the journey football and North East football has undertaken, is blinkered, naive and offensive. It may not relate to his ability to set up a team, but it is a footballing issue to its core.

 

There is no place for intolerance in our game; my teenage self believed that and I agree with him (me). I have to be honest, I’m not sure about Mussolini’s views on rigorous questioning, open debate and a free press, but I hope mine are reasonably transparent.

[Guest TheGreatBeardo]

Adolf would have been a long ball manager, he liked an aerial bombardment, and he'd probably fill the midfield with tanks like Papa Bouba Diop. It would look outdated in this day and age.

 

pressure teams from the kick off, lay into them hard and fast, try and get it finished early doors

 

he'd probably try to compete on too many fronts aswell, then endlessly whinge about it. Or is that Pardew?

 

Yeah, but Hitler wouldn't have got us past Anzhi in the europa league. Say what you like about Pardew, but he has a better record in Russia in the winter than Hitler.

[robm]

they do if the places have a political identity to speak of, what's NUFC's political identity out of interest?  i'd suggest there are a few exceptions in the game where politics and teams are inextricably linked and mixed, but it's very far from the norm especially in the UK

I'm from the other side of the world, have no family links to the city (or even the club) - I follow NUFC for a range of reasons that formed more than 20 years ago, but I think as an outsider I can help answer this.

 

Newcastle (and more broadly the North-East) have a deeply-grained disdain of the central London government; not quite seperatist but I would certainly suggest that Geordies see themselves as "apart" from a London-centric England. As evidence, consider the disdain shown towards our "Cockney" leadership or the railing against the "Southern" media. You might consider that a social analysis, but I'd suggest it is indeed political. Consider the comment earlier in this thread about how much of Sunderland's resentment of Newcastle is due to the "favouritism" Newcastle got when it came to government funding of North-East rejuvenation.

 

NUFC is the embodiment of the city, the success of the club is a vindication of the city's unique identity. When the club does poorly, the city pulls its cloak tightly around itself, sticks two fingers up to the south and creates a genuine seige mentality. Again, that's political identity, not just social or regional.

 

At least, that's how it seems from half a world away...

 

On a similar note I'm saddened by those who choose to view the Celtic v Rangers rivalry as religious rather than political. It's got nothing to do whether you pray kneeling or standing up; it's Republicanism v Unionism.

 

Politics is woven into the fabric of football, and it doesn't need to be left v right to be political.

 

Finally, maybe there are people who didn't become "outraged" when Di Canio joined Swindon because the news cycle deemed it worthy of a single report and it passed them by? I know that's certainly true in my case (again, from half a world away)...

 

Good post. I do think the EDL and other right wing nutters will be clapping their hands over this. A ready made poster boy to recruit new members in Sunderland.

[LooneyToonArmy]

:lol:

 

http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showthread.php?t=771282