Saturday, December 17, 2011

SOCCER'S 12th PLAYER AND HIS PALL POSSESSION

SuperSports' Gavin Hunt
still hunting for that winning streak
The idea of the 12th player (instead of only 11) is just another pall of smoke over lazy minds who refuse to subject a game to more rigorous analytical prediction.  Why did I fall for that humdrum?



A soccer game, that spectacle of men half-naked 22 in number (with each side sporting 11), muscles shimmering with sweat,  sinews jiggling and jostling, only for the purpose of ball capitalism o shucks, "ball possession", it's called!




Great stuff, indeed soccer is; but the sport does need better philosophies and indicators than "The Twelfth Player" or "Ball Possession".


The Twelfth Player is apparently the concept that the side with more spectators stands a better winning chance.  What rubbish is this? Spectator intimidation for the side with fewer howlers...huh? Are we living in the dark ages?


Ball possession is in particular for me, a real "balls-up" indicator, indicating a player jumping up high not only for a header of the ball... the "ball is up", see?...but also for a heady whiff from this illicit drug polluting the air of reasoning.




Ball Possession is presumably the product of team superiority  B-U-T** T-H-E-N** W-H-Y** O-N** E-A-R-T-H** D-O-N-'-T** Y-O-U** S-C-O-R-E, to prove topdog?


OK, I am angry and too often you are warned never to put pen to paper while your innards are still begging out your heart and your chest.


Still I fail to reconcile myself to the fact that two home teams last night, both with at least 50% Pee Wee Possession (sorry again, it's apparently called "Ball Possession") over and above the proverbial Twelfth Player, will each with no surprise whatsoever be walked into their own den by only 11 men armed with scissors right in front of their spectators, be shorn clean and humiliated while their goal keepers are each blinded enough not to see what the ball, coming from their front, is doing in their back with the net.


Very long balls indeed, right?



Is this really how my first-ever soccer bet goes up in smoke?


Anyway, thus along with two of my R1 coins succumbed yesterday otherwise better teams Supersport United (to Sundowns) as well as Santos to Amazulu who had apparently travelled all the way from the Zulu Kingdom to the Cape for the humiliation rite at the expense of hosts Santos.

I take comfort in the fact that the losers stand to be hanged (and I can freely walk to their pockets in search of my R1 wager from each).  But please, let the execution happen before Christmas, and on a public square for that matter, Pretoria's Church Square, for example.  (as Atterdidgeville's Lucas Masterpieces Moripe Stadium saw enough yesterday as coach Gavin Hunt, for crestfallen Supersport United, was made to eat his pre-match jingoism suggesting [a most probable beating of rival Mamelodi Sundowns]).




It would seem like the killer shots came from Sundowns’ South African Teko Modise (28' and 73'), and  Zimbabwean lifestyle exemplar and very ambitious Nyasha Mushekwi on the 48th minute of the game.




Final score: 3-1, a consolation from the boot of Supersport United's Malawian Atusaye Nyondo.



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