Clotted Hinderparts and Privy Drains: Game of Thrones and a History of Death on the Toilet

The twentieth century saw an abundance of famous toilet-related deaths. Elvis died in 1977 at just forty-two years old, found on the bathroom floor of his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, apparently having fallen from the toilet seat. Obese, and struggling with glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, the cause of his death was given as cardiac arrhythmia: essentially an irregular then stopped heart, widely believed to have been a direct consequence of his abuse of prescription drugs. However, with Elvis theories abound, including the idea that he faked his death, that he succumbed to Hirschprung’s disease, and that – as recent DNA analysis has suggested – he suffered from genetic heart disease. Elvis is buried, alongside his mother, father, and grandmother, in Graceland’s Meditation Garden.

Comedian Lenny Bruce died at forty in 1966, having overdosed on morphine while seated on the toilet of his home in Hollywood Hills. Phil Spector, a close friend, paid $5,000 to the Los Angeles police department for a set of photographs taken of the scene of Bruce’s death, in order to keep them from the press – though he sold at least one of the photographs years later to the filmmakers of a documentary about Bruce. Spector also took out an advertisement in Billboard magazine, stating that Bruce – whose career was hampered by numerous arrests on charges of obscenity – had died owing to an ‘overdose of police’.

The architect Louis Kahn died in 1974, aged seventy-three, in the public lavatory of Penn Station in New York. Kahn – the creator of some of the most influential and starkly beautiful architecture of the century, including the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, and Jatiyo Sangsad Bhaban, the parliament of Bangladesh – had just returned from a work trip to India, and was set to take the train home to Philadelphia. When he died – of a heart attack – he had with him a briefcase containing his final drawings for a memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt, to be located on the southern tip of the recently rechristened Roosevelt Island. While Kahn’s designs for the memorial park were retained, it was not until 2005 that the funds were raised to advance the project. Ground was broken in the spring of 2010, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park opened in October 2012. Back in 1974, Kahn died with little on his person in the way of identification; and it took his wife in Philadelphia two days to discover that her husband was deceased.

Don Simpson – the producer of films including Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun, and The Rock, and well known in Hollywood for his drug use –  died in the toilet of his Bel Air home in 1996, of heart failure after taking a combination of cocaine and prescription drugs. And the writer Evelyn Waugh died in 1966 aged sixty-two, purportedly passing on the toilet on Easter Sunday having attended a Latin Mass earlier that morning. Waugh was a devotee of the Mass in Latin, lamenting the changes instigated by the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, which allowed for the vernacular language to be used over Latin, and brought about the eventual replacement of the Tridentine Mass, celebrated in the Catholic Church since 1570.

Amidst the celebrity and the diversity of the above figures, there shows an important issue of classification. We may distinguish between those who die only within or in proximity of the toilet or bathroom, inevitably a fairly typical occurrence; and those who die asquat the toilet seat. Of course, even ‘seat’ may be a misnomer. In an episode from the fourth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled ‘The Weatherman’, Larry David attempts to go to the toilet but – refusing to turn on the bathroom light – doesn’t realise that the toilet seat is up, and thus falls into a potentially perilous position. There are toilet-centric deaths too on the small and big screens. In The Sopranos episode ‘He Is Risen’, from the third season of the show, Gigi Cestone, capo of the Aprile crew under Tony Soprano, has a heart attack while struggling with his bowels on the toilet. However, in Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega – played by John Travolta – finishes his business on the toilet, and is only shot and killed as he emerges from that dwelling place. The point is that we will consider here only those whom we can reasonably suspect to have passed away atop the toilet, in seated position.

More, toilet-based deaths seem to impel an inclination towards particularly obscene exaggeration and rumour. The fact of a death upon the toilet is taken as license for the promulgation of all manner of hearsay, and for the development of sordid addenda which come to furnish or replace initial accounts. There is, for instance, the scurrilous suggestion that – rather than owing to drug abuse or the affects of any disease or illness – Elvis died simply of constipation. Catherine the Great died at sixty-seven in 1796, having greatly expanded the Russian Empire throughout her thirty-four-year reign, winning control over Crimea from the Ottoman Empire, partitioning the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and beginning the Russian colonisation of Alaska. There is some dispute among historians as to whether she suffered the stroke which brought about her death only in her dressing room, or on the toilet seat. Robert. K Massie provides the following description:

The next morning, November 5, she rose at six, drank black coffee, and sat down to write. At nine, she asked to be left alone for a moment and went into her dressing room. She did not reemerge. Her attendants waited. Her valet knocked, entered the room, and saw no one. He waited a minute, then pushed on the door of the adjacent water closet. It was partially jammed. He and a maid forced the door open and discovered the empress unconscious on the floor against the door. Her face was scarlet and her eyes were closed […] thirty-six hours after she was stricken and without ever recovering consciousness, Catherine died. (Massie, chapter 73)

Whatever, the apparent relationship between Catherine’s death and the restroom soon resulted within Russia in the commonly held belief that she died after the toilet she was seated upon cracked and broke underneath her. This version of her death was alluded to in a poem by Alexander Pushkin, ‘Мне жаль великия жены’. Equally popular, and eschewing any notion of a stroke, became the story that Catherine suffered death squashed by a stallion: according to this tale, her attendants were lowering the horse onto her for the satiation of her sexual desires, when the harness broke, and the horse fell and saw her killed. Thus along with precision when it comes to identifying the site of these deaths, we must also allow for the tendency for such accounts to become overblown, or to show the considerable bias of their narrators.

The concluding episode of the fourth season of Game of Thrones  – ‘The Children’, which aired in June – showed Tyrion Lannister avenge a litany of abuse by killing his father, shooting him with a crossbow while Tywin sat in his dressing gown on the privy. Perhaps George R. R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire books upon which the television series is based, drew something in his depiction of Tywin’s murder from the infamous and untimely deaths of the last century. Yet for the sort of bloody political intrigue which defines both the novels and the show, we have to look further back in history, to a religious heretic, a number of English Kings, a Japanese feudal lord, and an American judge.

Arius (256-336) was a presbyter, apparently of Libyan descent, who ministered in Alexandria, which was in the beginning of the fourth century one of the centres of Christendom. Considered a heresiarch – someone who, more than a mere heretic, led a sect which opposed the accepted beliefs of the Church – the school of thought which he popularised, Arianism, has been described by Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, as ‘the archetypal Christian deviation, something aimed at the very heart of the Christian confession’. At a time when the precise nature of Jesus Christ was still being defined within Christianity, Arius argued that Christ was not co-eternal and equal with God the Father. Accepting that Christ was begotten, and came into existence before time, Arius nevertheless held that God was the only being without beginning.

Within the Christian world, this was seen as a divisive challenge to the conception of the relationship between Father and Son. In an attempt to settle what had become a pressing issue, particularly in the Greek-speaking east of the Church, the Roman Emperor Constantine – the first Christian ruler of the Empire – convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325. After heated debate, the Council of Nicaea decided firmly against Arius. A creed was established which determined Father and Son to be co-eternal and ‘homoousios’, which means of the same substance.

Arius was exiled from the Church. Yet his views and his charismatic presentation continued to exert a strong influence, and by 336 it seemed likely that he would be restored to communion, only for his death to preempt this conclusion. The circumstances of Arius’s death were first recounted by Athanasius, his chief ideological opponent, and the Bishop of Alexandria in six spells between 328 and 373. Despite Athanasius’s lack of impartiality, he affords us with the only allegedly eye-witness account of Arius’s demise; and his letter to Serapion was the source for all later retellings.

Ecclesiastical writers from Epiphanius to Sozomen elaborated after Athanasius on the manner of Arius’s death. Socrates Scholasticus’s account is the most explicit: affording details of the place of Arius’s death, which he depicts as Constantine’s Forum in Constantinople, today the site of Çemberlitaş Square in Istanbul; and describing in lurid imagery the ‘evacuations’ of Arius’s bowels, ‘followed by a copious hemorrhage, and the descent of the smaller intestines: moreover portions of his spleen and liver were brought off in the effusion of blood’. Yet it is Sozomen, who wrote following Scholasticus, who perhaps best summarises the occurrence of Arius’s death and its aftermath:

Late in the afternoon, Arius, being seized suddenly with pain in the stomach, was compelled to repair to the public place set apart for emergencies of this nature. As some time passed away without his coming out, some persons, who were waiting for him outside, entered, and found him dead and still sitting upon the seat. When his death became known, all people did not view the occurrence under the same aspect. Some believed that he died at that very hour, seized by a sudden disease of the heart, or suffering weakness from his joy over the fact that his matters were falling out according to his mind; others imagined that this mode of death was inflicted on him in judgement, on account of his impiety. Those who held his sentiments were of opinion that his death was brought about by magical arts. (in Schaff, 279)

Arius’s death on the toilet was recalled early in the twentieth century by James Joyce. In ‘Proteus’, the third episode of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus walks along Sandymount strand and considers to himself:

Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch! In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts. (Joyce, Ulysses, 3.50-54)

In April 1016, King Æthelred II (Æthelred the Unready) of England died and his son, Edmund, gained the throne, becoming Edmund II (Edmund Ironside). A succession of Danish raids on the English coast since the 980s had forced Æthelred in 991 to pay a tribute to the Danish King, as a means of keeping the peace. Despite the repeated paying of the Danegeld, Danish raids continued until, in late 1013, King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark invaded and took the English crown. Æthelred was forced into exile in Normandy, but was restored the following year upon Forkbeard’s death. Soon Forkbeard’s son, Canute, began laying his claim to the English throne, and engaged in a series of battles on English shores, first with Æthelred, then with Edmund.

In contrast to his father, Edmund is widely considered to have been a brave and competent leader, but he was ultimately defeated by Canute at the Battle of Assandun in October 1016 – after being betrayed by Eadric Streona, the Ealdorman of Mercia. Respecting Edmund and realising he still had much support in London and Wessex, Canute agreed with Edmund that they would divide England between one another. Yet by the end of November, Edmund was dead. The cause of his death is debated, but writing in the 1120s, Henry Huntingdon offered the following version:

King Edmund was treasonably slain a few days afterwards. Thus it happened: one night, this great and powerful king having occasion to retire to the house for relieving the calls of nature, the son of the ealdorman Edric, by his father’s contrivance, concealed himself in the pit, and stabbed the king twice from beneath with a sharp dagger, and, leaving the weapon fixed in his bowels, made his escape. Edric then presented himself to Canute, and saluted him, saying, ‘Hail! thou who art sole king of England!’ Having explained what had taken place, Canute replied, ‘For this deed I will exalt you, as it merits, higher than all the nobles of England.’ He then commanded that Edric should be decapitated and his head placed upon a pole on the highest battlement of the tower of London. Thus perished King Edmund Ironside, after a short reign of one year, and he was buried at Glastonbury, near his grandfather Edgar. (in Forester, 196)

Other accounts of Edmund II’s death which posit murder suggest he was killed by a spear rather than a dagger; or indeed by a sort of crossbow, booby-trapped to fire when Edmund put his weight on the privy seat. And the specifics of Eadric’s subsequent demise at the hands of Canute also vary, with Florence of Worcester writing that it occurred at ‘the Lord’s Nativity’, the Christmas of 1017, with Canute ordering that Eadric’s body ‘be thrown over the wall of the city and left unburied‘. Such an analysis suggests that Canute had Eadric killed owing to concern over his treacherous nature,  and not as a direct response to the demise of Edmund II.

Edward II is alleged to have been murdered in 1327 by means of a red-hot poker shoved up his anus – gossip which gained traction through the Brut chronicles and Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon. While other interpretations of Edward’s death are more widely supported – including the view that he escaped death entirely in 1327, and lived out the rest of his life as a hermit on the continent – the image again calls to mind The Sopranos, and the murder of Vito Spatafore, who is sodomised with a pool cue in a brutal remark upon his homosexuality. James I of Scotland died trapped in a sewer in 1437; but we must move to Japan for our next enthroned death, and to the daimyo Uesugi Kenshin. Kenshin was a powerful feudal lord, who ruled Echigo province until his passing in 1578. His death while seated on the toilet has been attributed to a lifetime of heavy drinking, to stomach cancer, or to a ninja who rose from beneath the latrine before stabbing Kenshin with a spear. Kenshin’s downfall allowed Oda Nobunaga to initiate what would be the eventual unification of Japan, and the onset of the Edo period.

The spectacle returned to Britain in 1760, when George II – already blind in one eye and hard of hearing – passed away on his close stool aged seventy-six. The account is provided in the memoirs of Horace Walpole:

On the 25th of October he rose as usual at six, and drank his chocolate; for all his actions were invariably methodic. A quarter after seven he went into a little closet. His German valet de chambre in waiting, heard a noise, and running in, found the King dead on the floor. In falling, he had cut his face against the corner of a bureau. He was laid on a bed and blooded, but not a drop followed: the ventricle of his heart had burst. (Walpole, 302)

Webster Thayer was a judge of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, who achieved notoriety for his role presiding over the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born Galleanist anarchists, who were accused in 1920 of murdering two men during the armed robbery of a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts. At their trial the following year – despite apparently strong alibis, inconclusive ballistics evidence, and the dubious testimony of some prosecution witnesses – they were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Thayer was roundly criticised for his conduct during the trial. It was argued that he had shown consistent prejudice against the defence; and more, it emerged that in private he had referred to Sacco and Vanzetti as ‘Bolsheviki’, remarking that he was out to ‘get them good and proper’.

Supported by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee – which in seven years raised $300,000, and hired legal professionals, organisers and publicists to aid the cause – a series of appeals ensued, but dismissing claims of evidence tampering and the confession of another man, Thayer repeatedly denied motions for a new trial. After a second appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court was rejected in early 1927, Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller – beset by calls for clemency – established an Advisory Committee to review the trial’s proceedings. When this committee determined that the trial had been fair and should stand, there was nothing left to be done, and Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by electric chair on August 23, 1927. Their case and their eventual demise was accompanied by a spate of demonstrations in cities across the world, and by letters from major international figures including Anatole France, John Dos Passos, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells. In October 1927, Wells wrote in The New York Times:

The guilt or innocence of these two Italians is not the issue that has excited the opinion of the world. Possibly they were actual murderers, and still more possibly they knew more than they would admit about the crime…. Europe is not “retrying” Sacco and Vanzetti or anything of the sort. It is saying what it thinks of Judge Thayer. Executing political opponents as political opponents after the fashion of Mussolini and Moscow we can understand, or bandits as bandits; but this business of trying and executing murderers as Reds, or Reds as murderers, seems to be a new and very frightening line for the courts of a State in the most powerful and civilized Union on earth to pursue. (Wells, The New York Times, 16 October, 1927)

In rejecting Sacco and Vanzetti’s second appeal, the Supreme Judicial Court had declared, ‘It is not imperative that a new trial be granted even though evidence is newly discovered and, if presented to a jury, would justify a different verdict’. The extent of the ordeal and the ramifications of this statement ultimately brought about significant judicial reform, requiring that all capital cases be subject to review. Meanwhile, anarchists sought retribution. On 27 September, 1932, Thayer’s home in Worcester was destroyed by a bomb, which saw his wife and maid injured by falling debris. He lived the remainder of his life under guard at his private club in Boston, and died there of a cerebral embolism, aged seventy-five, on 18 April, 1933. The anarchist Valerio Isca commented on the rumour that Thayer had died on the toilet seat, adding ‘and his soul went down the drain’.

——————

Forester, T. (ed. and trans.) The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon (London: H. G. Bohn, 1853)

Joyce, J. Ulysses ed. Gabler, H. W. (New York: Bodley Head, 1986)

Massie, R. K. Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Head of Zeus, 2012)

Schaff, P. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II, Volume 2 (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Company, 1886)

Walpole, H. Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second: Volume III (London: H. Colburn, 1847)

Wells, H. G. ‘Wells Speaks Some Plain Words to US’ The New York Times, 16 October, 1927

Highlights of the 2014 European Athletics Championships in Zurich

Fast Times in the 200 Metres Sprints

Opting to run in the 100 metres at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, and coming away with a silver medal, finishing between the Jamaicans Kemar Bailey-Cole and Nickel Ashmeade, twenty-year-old Britain Adam Gemili returned in Zurich to his favoured event. Last summer at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow, Gemili broke the 20-second barrier in the 200 metres for his first time, running 19.98 on his way to the final, where he finished in fifth. The time of 19.98 was a significant improvement upon his previous personal best – 20.17, a time he set in the championship’s heats – and made him the second fastest Britain ever over the distance. John Regis retains the national record, having run 19.87 in Sestriere, Italy, back in 1994. Regis was a European 200 metres champion, and during his career achieved a silver and a bronze in the event across two World Championships: he was a top-class athlete, but Sestriere was also a meet renowned for fast times. At high altitude, over 2000 metres above sea level, in the mid-1990s the organisers of the meet enticed athletes with a Ferrari for any new world record.

Having navigated a heat and a semi-final, in the men’s 200 metres final in Zurich, Gemili took the gold medal, finishing ahead of Christophe Lemaitre and Serhiy Smelyk, and again running a time of 19.98. Thus equalling his personal best, this makes Gemili the only Britain to have broken 20 seconds twice. More, his run in the final arguably bettered his run in Moscow last year, given the adverse conditions this time round: damp weather and a headwind of 1.6 metres per second. While his form in the heats suggested him as the likely champion, upon finishing the race Gemili turned his head and seemed especially delighted with his time, which is also the fastest ran by a European this year.

Gemili is one of the most fluid athletes over the distance, and possesses the potential to challenge the world’s elite. He can go faster still. An exceptional bend runner, his bend was arguably smoother in the semi-final, where he finished with a time of 20.23, but only after shutting down entirely over the last 50 metres, preserving his energy with the race already won. He added to the medal haul which he has accrued over the summer on the final day of competition in Zurich, by taking the last leg and leading the British team to gold in the 4×100 metres relay.

In the women’s 200 metres, Dafne Schippers won her second gold medal of the championships, having taken the 100 metres title earlier in the week. She obliterated the rest of the field in the 200 metres final, running a time of 22.03: a new Dutch national record, and the best time in the world this year by some margin. Establishing so thoroughly her credentials as a world-class sprinter, Schippers’ performance in the 200 metres final was a strong contender for the performance of the Zurich championships.

A World and European Junior champion in the heptathlon across 2010 and 2011, and a World Championships bronze medallist in the event last year in Moscow, Schippers only began focusing on the sprints this season. Already accomplished in the 100 metres and the long jump, her sprint times have rapidly improved through the course of the year. She set a personal best and a Dutch national record in the 100 metres last month in Glasgow, running a time of 11.03; before improving in Zurich on the 22.34 in the 200 metres which she recorded at the same meet.

The closest anyone has come to her 22.03 this year is the 22.18 set by the American Tori Bowie in Eugene, Oregon, at the end of May. Though it is worth noting that the Americans sometimes resemble the Russians in eschewing international events for localised meets – which produce results which do not always translate to successes at major international competitions – Bowie seems like the real thing, and in fact is following a similar trajectory to Schippers, transitioning this year into the sprints having previously specialised in the long jump. Bowie is the year’s world-leader over 100 metres, having run 10.80 at the Diamond League event in Monaco last month. Still, Schippers is the best 200 metres runner in the world at this moment in time – and yet her future over the distance remains unclear.

While she obviously possesses the talent to specialise, and could compete in two years time at the Olympics in Rio for gold medals in what remain the sport’s most prestigious events, Schippers is an ardent fan of the heptathlon; and it is uncertain, at this stage, whether she will return to that event or stick with the sprints. As former heptathlete Denise Lewis concisely explained, there is the feeling that Schippers could break records in the heptathlon too – with the sticking point being the high jump, which is one of her weakest events, but one that affords a considerable number of points. A similar conundrum potentially awaits Jessica Ennis-Hill, who was running world-class times in the 100 metres hurdles in 2012 – on route to eventual Olympic glory in the heptathlon – before taking time out due to an ankle injury in 2013, and in 2014 owing to pregnancy and the birth of her first child. Ennis too, upon her return to the sport, will have to decide whether to stay with the heptathlon or look towards the sprint event.

Distance Running for a Lady and a Man

After Schippers, the Netherlands’ other star performer in Zurich was Sifan Hassan. The world-leader and favourite going into the women’s 1500 metres, she won the gold medal after a storming finish, ahead of Sweden’s Abeba Aregawi and Britain’s Laura Weightman. In the 5,000 metres, however, Sweden avenged this defeat, as Meraf Bahta held off Hassan for the title. Hassan and Aregawi both hail from Ethiopia, while Bahta was born in Eritrea – a country, incidentally but interestingly, from which there has been a marked increase in asylum seekers, particularly to northern European countries over recent months. All still in their early twenties, Hassan especially – at only twenty-one years of age – is full of potential, and should be one of the main contenders for the 1500 metres in Rio in 2016.

At the other end of the age spectrum, Britain’s Jo Pavey backed up her outstanding 5,000 metres Commonwealth bronze with a gold medal in the 10,000 metres. Pavey took silver in the same event at the European Championships two years ago in Helsinki. The gold medal this time around was the first major gold of the forty-year-old’s long career, which has seen her consistently make world finals since her senior international debut in 1997.

In the men’s long-distance events, Mo Farah took gold in the 10,000 and 5,000 metres. Having spent the early part of the season preparing for the London Marathon, then withdrawing from the Commonwealth Games owing to injury, illness, and infection, Farah had only appeared on the track once this year prior to the 10,000 metres final. If his victory in that race seemed understandably tentative, he was more impressive at the end of the week in the 5,000 metres, kicking powerfully away from a persistent Hayle Ibrahimov over the last lap. Farah’s compatriot Andy Vernon managed a bronze behind Ibrahimov, having won silver in the 10,000 metres – ahead of Ali Kaya, whose bronze medal in a personal-best time gave Turkey their only medal of the championships.

Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad and High Drama in the Men’s Middle Distance Events

The men’s middle distance events were a world onto themselves, defined by the French runner Mehiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad. Twice a World Championships bronze medallist, twice an Olympic silver medallist, and twice a European gold medallist at the 3,000 metres steeplechase, Mekhissi-Benabbad is known as a centre of controversy as much as for his undoubted talent. Most infamously, he is a repeat offender against mascots.

After pushing over Barni somewhat playfully in Barcelona in 2010, in Helsinki in 2012 he achieved a similar feat, slapping the parcel ready to be gifted to him upon his victory out of the hands of Appy – the Helsinki mascot, apparently meant to resemble a mobile app, but looking instead like a one-pint carton of milk –  before pushing the mascot firmly in the chest. The incident drew particular condemnation because – presumably unbeknownst to Mekhissi-Benabbad – the Appy costume was being worn by a fourteen-year-old girl. Refusing to allow a year to pass between without provocation, in 2011 in Monaco Mekhissi-Benabbad fought on the track, immediately after his 1500 metres race, with his international teammate Mehdi Baala. While Baala seemed to instigate the brawl which ensued, attempting a headbutt as the two men confronted one another, both athletes were given five-month suspensions from IAAF competition – though they were allowed to compete in the year’s World Championships.

So in Zurich as the steeplechase drew to a close, Mekhissi-Benabbad once more found himself at the head of the race, and set to claim his third European gold in the event. He was so far ahead of his competitors, in fact, as he came into the home straight, that he pulled off his vest and put it into his mouth before clearing the last jump, holding onto it as he crossed the line for apparent victory. Yet removing one’s vest is against the rules, and while he was initially shown only a yellow card by a European Athletics official, the Spanish team – whose athletes had finished in fourth and fifth – made an official complaint, which saw Mekhissi-Benabbad ultimately stripped of his title.

He returned for the 1500 metres, and won the event comfortably, pushing well ahead of his challengers at the start of the final lap before engaging profusely in celebration as he slowed towards the finish line. While this provoked further criticism regarding a perceived lack of respect for his fellow runners, Mekhissi-Benabbad was at least defended by the always engaging Brendan Foster who, making allowances for his own rebellious nature, pointed out that the athlete had crossed the line first on two occasions, to receive just one gold medal. Perhaps Mekhissi-Benabbad serves as a reminder that good sport is not always acutely sportsmanlike.

British Success Comes on the Track

With twelve gold medals and twenty-three medals in all, Britain had their best ever European Athletics Championships and finished atop the medal table for only the third time. Mo Farah’s two golds made him the most successful non-relay athlete in the history of the championships, boasting a total of five gold medals and one silver. And his triumph in the 5,000 metres on Sunday contributed to the five golds which Britain won on the last day alone.

Despite the contributions of Farah and Pavey, what proved decisive were the performances of Britain’s host of talented sprinters. Besides Gemili’s success in the men’s 200 metres, James Dasaolu came away with the victory in the men’s 100 metres, winning in a time of 10.06, while Harry Aikines-Aryeetey finished with a bronze medal in third. The men’s 400 metres saw gold and silver go to Martyn Rooney and Matthew Hudson-Smith respectively: Rooney now one of the veterans of British athletics, while Hudson-Smith is just nineteen and has emerged only during the course of the summer.

Ashleigh Nelson grabbed a bronze for Britain in the women’s 100 metres, and twenty-year-old Jodie Williams took silver with a personal best in the women’s 200 metres, building convincingly on the same result which she achieved at the Commonwealths. And it was the British women’s 4×100 metres relay team who produced one of the performances of the championships, winning gold and setting a national record time of 42.24. Britain fought for golds too in both of the men’s relay races – the old proclivity for mistimed or fumbled baton changes seemingly left in the past.

France finished in second place in the medal table, still with twenty-three medals in total, but with nine golds to Britain’s twelve. Though still performing to a high level, their hopes of topping the medal table were scuppered as they were routinely second best across the sprints. Jimmy Vicaut’s withdrawal after his 100 metres heat left Christophe Lemaitre to carry the flag for the French in the men’s sprints, and he finished behind Dasaolu and Gemili for two silver medals. In the women’s events, Myriam Soumare managed only silver in the 100 metres, and bronze in the 200 metres. Likewise in the men’s hurdles, Pascal Martinot-Lagarde finished with bronze – behind Russia’s Sergey Shubenikov and Britain’s William Sharman – over 110 metres despite entering the competition as favourite; and in the women’s 100 metres hurdles, Cindy Billaud came second behind Britain’s victorious Tiffany Porter. In the men’s 800 metres, Pierre-Ambroise Bosse got his run disastrously wrong, and ended up finishing last after being overtaken by the eventual race winner, Poland’s Adam Kszczot. The French at least managed a gold medal in the women’s 4×400 metres relay – one of the most engaging finals of the week, as three teams finished within 0.07 seconds of one another, the French team coming through on the line over the Ukrainians and Brits.

With so much success on the track, there was a marked contrast in Britain’s performances on the field. Greg Rutherford was Britain’s only medallist in the field events, taking gold in the long jump to consolidate an excellent summer and a thorough return to form. Elsewhere there was little for Britain to get even moderately excited about. The women’s pole vaulter Holly Bleasdale, and men’s high jumper and 2012 European Champion Robbie Grabarz, were both absent through injury. Phillips Idowu, at thirty-five nearing the end of his career, was a late withdrawal from the men’s triple jump; and Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Shara Proctor similarly withdrew from the women’s long jump, leaving Britain with no representative in the event, in spite of Jazmin Sawyers attaining Commonwealth silver just several weeks ago. Goldie Sayers, Britain’s team captain for the duration of the championships, did compete in the women’s javelin, but finished in a disappointing eighth place.

Otherwise in the field, Renaud Lavillenie in the men’s pole vault and Robert Harting in the men’s discus both retained their titles. Finland’s Antti Ruuskanen threw a huge 88.01 in the men’s javelin; while Krisztian Pars of Hungary in the men’s hammer and Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus in the decathlon achieved world-leading results. In the women’s hammer, Poland’s Anita Wlodarczyk set a new world-leading and national record distance with a throw of 78.76. In the women’s long jump, France’s Eloyse Lesueur relegated Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic and Russia’s Darya Klishina to second and third. Russia also missed out – in the absence of Anna Chicherova – on gold in the women’s high jump, which saw Spain’s Ruth Beitia hold on to her European title ahead of Mariya Kuchina, while Ana Simic of Croatia took bronze.

Cooly the Cow’s Rhythm and Blues

Zurich’s mascot, Cooly the Cow, has had a busy time of things promoting the championships across the last year – making over 150 appearances at a variety of events throughout Switzerland and Europe, and meeting athletics superstars including Haile Gebrselassie and Usain Bolt. Amidst the competitive athletics on display, Cooly proved one of the highlights of the championships, remarkably agile and full of a surprisingly bold and playful humour throughout the week. Balancing one evening on the ledge in front of the first row of spectators, Cooly lost his footing, and found himself painfully straddling the advertising hoardings, before righting himself and breaking into spontaneous dance. A few days later, he made merry splashing in the steeplechase’s water pit.

Always ready to thrust up his arms and gyrate vigorously from the hips, Cooly successfully completed attempts at the high jump and the hurdles and, perhaps most impressive of all, the pole vault. He rode a bicycle, slid across the wet track in the rain, and performed all manner of rolls and acrobatics. Finally, he challenged former 110 metres – and still current 60 metres – hurdles world record holder Colin Jackson, but after making a meal of the barriers, could only manage to finish behind Jackson in second place. Cooly has been acclaimed the best mascot to ever appear at a major championships; but thus far the heated question has been left coldly unanswered as to just who has been underneath the suit.

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Four Diamond League events remain on this year’s athletics calendar: Stockholm, on Thursday, 21 August; Birmingham, on Sunday, 24 August; back to Zurich on Thursday, 28 August; and finally Brussels, on Friday, 5 September.

Premier League 2014-15 Preview

Arsenal

Arsenal led the Premier League for the majority of last season, but fell away towards the latter stages and finished seven points behind champions Manchester City. Mesut Ozil’s signing last summer served as a statement of intent which – as much as Ozil’s capabilities on the pitch – seemed to spur the rest of the squad to significantly improve upon past performances. Aaron Ramsey in particular was arguably the league’s best player until suffering an injury last Boxing Day; and his form in the pre-season suggests he will continue to be central to Arsenal’s title hopes this time round.

While much of the focus last season centred upon Arsenal’s lack of firepower, the signing of Alexis Sanchez from Barcelona for £35 million seems to have sated many fans’ desires. Sanchez offers Arsenal options: he can play as a wide attacker, off a central striker, or utilising his pace at the head of the attack. He will play either alongside or instead of Olivier Giroud; and with Yaya Sanogo continuing to progress, Joel Campbell an option for the first time on the back of a promising World Cup, and Theo Walcott and Lukas Podolski too, Arsenal seem set in the attacking positions.

Yet they still appear lacking defensively. While they have replaced Bacary Sagna and Thomas Vermaelen with Mathieu Debuchy and Luke Chambers, and possess a solid first-choice back four, they have a squad which contains only three centre-backs and one right-back, having allowed Carl Jenkinson to depart on loan. A strong defensive midfielder may add the most to Arsene Wenger’s first eleven – but there he seems content with Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Flamini, while surely recognising that reinforcements further back are a must for the sake of a competitive season.

Last Season: 4th – Predicted Finish: 2nd

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Szczesny, Debuchy, Gibbs, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Arteta, Wilshere, Cazorla, Ramsey, Sanchez, Giroud

Aston Villa

Labouring under an owner in Randy Lerner who – after investing considerably in the early years of his ownership – baulked a couple of seasons ago at the costs involved in Premier League football, Aston Villa have again underwhelmed in the transfer market. While Lerner struggles to find a buyer for the club, Aly Cissokho should prove a solid purchase for the left-back position, but the signings of an aged Joe Cole, Kieran Richardson, and Philippe Senderos are hardly inspiring. Once promising youngsters Marc Albrighton and Nathan Delfouneso have been let go; while Nicklas Helenius, Antonio Luna, and Yacouba Sylla have departed on loan. Goalscorer Christian Benteke will remain out of action with his achilles injury until October.

Roy Keane has been appointed as manager Paul Lambert’s assistant, and whatever the impetus behind that decision, the media will undoubtedly build it into a point of contention should Villa begin to struggle. The signing of Colombia’s Carlos Sanchez, still in the process of being finalised, will at least provide much needed bite in the middle of the pitch; and as well as retaining Ron Vlaar after an impressive World Cup, Lambert has begun the process of reintegrating Charles N’Zogbia, Darrent Bent, and Alan Hutton into worthwhile members of the first-team squad.

Last Season: 15th – Predicted Finish: 11th

Potential XI: (4-3-3) Guzan, Hutton, Cissokho, Vlaar, Okore, Westwood, Sanchez, Delph, N’Zogbia, Weimann, Benteke

Burnley

Sean Dyche will be relying predominantly on last season’s promotion-winning players for Burnley’s survival, as the club have spent conservatively this summer, spending just a few million pounds on the attacking players Lukas Jutkiewicz, Michael Kightly, and Marvin Sordell – each proven only in the Championship – and bringing in Matt Gilks, Matt Taylor, and Steven Reid on free transfers. Stephen Ward has completed his signing from Wolves for an undisclosed fee, just ahead of the season opener at home to Chelsea.

Burnley look set to retain the 4-4-2 formation and the compact, passing, high-pressing game which brought them last season’s success. They will hope for Danny Ings to maintain good goalscoring form; but there will be concerns regarding the overall strength of the squad, and at the potential for being overrun in the centre of midfield.

Last Season: 2nd (Championship, Promoted) – Predicted Finish: 20th

Potential XI: (4-4-2) Heaton, Trippier, Mee, Shackell, Duff, Marney, Jones, Arfield, Kightly, Ings, Jutkiewicz

Chelsea

Having convinced sufficient people that Chelsea weren’t in a position to compete last season, Jose Mourinho has been obliged to praise his squad in the lead up to this campaign. Chelsea have completed the signings of Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas, and Filipe Luis, while Didier Drogba returns for a second spell with the club. The cost of those transfers has been significantly offset by the sales of Romelu Lukaku and David Luiz. Meanwhile Chelsea continue to hoard youngsters who they can loan out and sell on in a year or two, their values having risen by virtue of playing time or merely by association.

All the same, Chelsea find themselves with an impressive and fairly concise squad. Lacking natural wide players, Luis and Cesar Azpilicueta will start as the side’s full-backs, with Branislav Ivanovic the first port of call for defensive cover. Kurt Zouma – a £12 million signing from Saint-Etienne in January – will provide further reinforcement at centre-back, while the nineteen-year-old Dutchman Nathan Ake may prove a versatile part of the first-team picture . In the attack, Fabregas will likely slot in behind Costa in a 4-2-3-1 for the big games; but he may play a deeper role against lesser opposition, with Drogba, Fernando Torres, Eden Hazard, Andre Schurrle, Oscar, and William to satiate. Thibaut Courtois returns from Atletico Madrid to challenge Petr Cech for the goalkeeper’s jersey – despite their wealth, the only one which Chelsea possess.

Last Season: 3rd – Predicted Finish: 3rd

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Cech, Azpilicueta, Luis, Cahill, Terry, Matic, Ramires, Hazard, Fabregas, Schurrle, Costa

Crystal Palace

After eleven games last season, Crystal Palace had four points and were lying at the bottom of the Premier League;  by the end of the season, they had forty-five points, and finished eleventh. The turnabout orchestrated by Tony Pulis showed a capacity which often went unrecognised during his seven-year spell at Stoke, and made him one of the manager’s of the year. So his sudden departure with days to go before the beginning of this campaign throws Palace’s preparations into disarray, and means instead of building upon last year, the focus will again be on scrapping against relegation.

Whatever claims may be made regarding ulterior motives and areas of responsibility, it is hard to argue that – after such a strong close to last season – Palace’s transfer activity hasn’t been insufficient. Just £2.4 million has been spent, with Martin Kelly from Liverpool and Frazier Campbell from Cardiff arriving for fees, and Brede Hangeland and Chris Kettings coming in on free transfers. Still, the squad have last season’s experience to draw from, and Joe Ledley, Dwight Gayle, and Marouane Chamakh will hope to flourish in their second seasons with the club.

Last Season: 11th – Predicted Finish: 18th

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Speroni, Mariappa, Ward, Dann, Hangeland, Jedinak, Ledley, Puncheon, Chamakh, Bolasie, Gayle

Everton

Owing to the idiosyncrasies of the modern loan market, Everton have spent considerably this summer and shown significant intent with their purchases – yet their squad isn’t vastly different from the one which finished fifth last time round. Romelu Lukaku has returned to the club after last season’s loan spell for a fee of £28 million, and has the tools to become one of the game’s best all-round centre forwards: quick and powerful, but with the awareness to bring others into play. Gareth Barry has also joined the club on a permanent deal from Manchester City. Christian Atsu, on a season’s loan from Chelsea, will fill the role taken last year by Gerard Deulofeu, providing pace and dribbling and an option from the bench.

Muhamed Besic has been bought after a solid showing in the group stages of the World Cup for Bosnia and Herzegovina. He will provide competition in the centre of midfield for James McCarthy and Barry, while freeing up Everton’s attacking midfielders. More, Roberto Martinez will welcome back Bryan Oviedo and Arouna Kone after both suffered long-term injuries last year. A repeat of last season’s placing would be an achievement, but Roberto Martinez has developed a coherent system, settled yet versatile, and a challenge on the top four is within the squad’s potential.

Last Season: 5th – Predicted Finish: 5th

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Howard, Coleman, Baines, Jagielka, Distin, McCarthy, Barry, Mirallas, Barkley, Pienaar, Lukaku

Hull City

Hull’s league form fell away towards the tail end of last season, with survival secured and an FA Cup final on the horizon. They still have a playoff to navigate before entering this season’s Europa League proper; and their preparations for the year ahead may have been compromised by Shane Long’s surprise £12 million move to Southampton. Long developed a hardworking partnership with Nika Jelavic in Hull’s attack after both signed for the club in January, and while the offer from Southampton was much too good to refuse, it leaves Hull looking for replacement before the close of the transfer window.

Elsewhere Hull look done and dusted, having signed the midfielders Jake Livermore, Robert Snodgrass, and Tom Ince, and the young defenders Andrew Robertson and Harry Maguire. Steve Bruce has utilised his 3-5-2 extensively during the pre-season, and it remains to be seen whether he will revert to a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 for Hull’s first run of league games.

Last Season: 16th – Predicted Finish: 17th

Potential XI: (3-5-2) McGregor, Chester, Davies, Bruce, Elmohamady, Livermore, Huddlestone, Snodgrass, Robertson, Aluko, Jelavic

Leicester City

Like Burnley, who they beat to the Championship title, Leicester have been prudent in the transfer market, paying money only for the twenty-eight-year-old Argentine Leonardo Ulloa, an £8 million purchase after impressing with fourteen league goals last season for Brighton & Hove Albion. Otherwise, Leicester have relied on frees, bringing in Marc Albrighton, Matthew Upson, and goalkeeper Ben Hamer.

Nigel Pearson is likely to stick with the 4-4-2 formation which saw Leicester break a hundred points in achieving their promotion to the Premier League. Dave Nugent has been the standout of the pre-season. They may still be on the lookout for an additional full back and central midfielder for the battle against relegation which awaits.

Last Season: 1st (Championship, Promoted) – Predicted Finish: 16th

Potential XI: (4-4-2) Schmeichel, De Laet, Konchesky, Moore, Morgan, Mahrez, Drinkwater, James, Albrighton, Nugent, Ulloa

Liverpool

Liverpool haven’t looked to replace Luis Suarez, but instead have added significant depth to the remainder of last season’s title challenging squad. While the quantity of their purchases and the money they have spent has drawn comparisons with Tottenham after last summer’s sale of Gareth Bale, Brendan Rodgers has focused more closely on players who will fit into an already established pattern of play – and on Premiership experience in the Southampton trio of Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, and Rickie Lambert. While Lallana and Lovren seem significantly overpriced in a market that is increasingly distended and difficult to judge, Lallana provides close control and steady creativity in the final third, while Lovren may stake a readier claim to a starting berth in the centre of Liverpool’s defence.

If Lallana and Lambert suggest the possibilities for a slightly slower tempo, Lazar Markovic is blessed with pace and is Liverpool’s most exciting summer signing. Emre Can may be their most astute, shoring up the centre of the pitch. Long-term loanee Javi Manquillo is an unknown quantity, at twenty having played only a handful of games for Atletico Madrid; but he seems set to compete for a first team place at right-back. Divock Origi is a signing for the future, and will spend 2014-15 back at Lille. The question, of course, is whether Liverpool can maintain something approaching the same attacking dynamism and goalscoring capacity now that Suarez has departed – all in all, a loss for English football, as flawed characters litter the game, but few possess his vigour, determination, and talent.

Last Season: 2nd – Predicted Finish: 4th

Potential XI: (4-3-3) Mignolet, Manquillo, Johnson, Lovren, Skrtel, Gerrard, Can, Henderson, Coutinho, Sterling, Sturridge

Manchester City

After falling foul of financial fair play, City have been limited in the transfer market this summer, and have focused on defensive acquisitions. Most of their £49 million budget has gone on the centre-back Eliaquim Mangela, a £32 million signing from Porto. Fernando arrives from the same club, and will sit in the midfield, allowing Yaya Toure and Fernandinho to push on into the attacking areas. Willy Cabellero will compete with Joe Hart in goal. Bacary Sagna has signed on a free transfer from Arsenal. Midfielder Bruno Zucolini – twenty-one years old, and signing for around £1.5 million from Racing Club in Argentina –  has worked himself into the picture with a string of good performances in pre-season. City will also have Frank Lampard available on loan, until he returns to partner club New York City next January.

As well as releasing Gareth Barry and Joleon Lescott, City have made back £23 million via the sales of Javi Garcia and Jack Rodwell. With Alvaro Negredo missing the start of the season and Sergio Aguero suffering persistent injury problems, Stevan Jovetic should see more game time this season. Despite the more celebrated signings of their title competitors, City will remain the team to beat.

Last Season: 1st – Predicted Finish: 1st

Potential XI: (4-2-2-2) Cabellero, Sagna, Kolarov, Kompany, Mangela, Fernando, Toure, Silva, Nasri, Jovetic, Aguero

Manchester United

Undoubtedly one of the game’s greatest as well as most influential and intriguing managers, Louis van Gaal poses a problem for those of us predisposed to dislike Manchester United. The renewed optimism in and around and at sizeable distances from Old Trafford is understandable, especially after the Netherlands’ showing at the World Cup; yet Van Gaal has his own problems to face.

The 3-4-1-2 he has utilised in pre-season aims to get the most out of Juan Mata, Wayne Rooney, and Robin van Persie – allowing each to occupy their preferred central attacking positions. But it asks questions of the side’s defenders, with only three first-team centre-backs – in Jonny Evans, Chris Smalling, and Phil Jones – in the squad after the departures of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic; Rafael suffering constant injury niggles; and Luke Shaw – signed for £27 million based on potential talent and potential longevity rather than for any outstanding ability which he possesses at present – not ideally suited for a wing-back role.  Ashley Young and Antonio Valencia can fit into the system down the right, but it still leaves a lopsided squad, with Danny Welbeck sure to receive games, but less space for Shinji Kagawa, Nani, Javier Hernandez, and Adnan Januzaj. To really challenge, Manchester United will need to spend on at least one centre-back; and they may require another central midfielder to partner Ander Herrera, lest Marouane Fellaini ever find his way onto the pitch.

Last Season: 7th – Predicted Finish: 7th

Potential XI: (3-4-1-2) De Gea, Smalling, Evans, Jones, Rafael, Herrera, Carrick, Shaw, Mata, Rooney, Van Persie

Newcastle

While the club have received praise for the apparent haste and extent of their summer incomings, the truth is that Newcastle have again – rather than building a competitive team – simply replaced what has been lost, and at a crucial moment after the horrid close to last season, which saw an impotent attack allied to a porous defence and an increasingly disgruntled fanbase. So Siem de Jong has replaced Yohan Cabaye; Daryl Janmaat has replaced Mathieu Debuchy; and Emmanuel Riviere and Facundo Ferrerya have replaced Loic Remy and Shola Ameobi. Jack Colback comes in to take a spot alternately occupied by Jonas Gutierrez – frozen out of the squad on his return from a loan spell at Norwich – and Dan Gosling. Remy Cabella is an exciting addition; but woeful mismanagement of Hatem Ben Arfa leaves Cabella the side’s only genuine wide attacker, and it is not improbable that Cabella will go the same way as his compatriot under a manager and a coaching setup which has proven entirely incapable of implementing any attacking style of play. Youngsters too do not develop here, which does not bode well for the future of Ayoze Perez, who may be a peripheral figure anyway owing to his age and lack of experience.

Meanwhile in the defence Steven Taylor continues to regress and Fabricio Coloccini – after gallant service – looks increasingly past his best and shorn of interest. Davide Santon has stagnated; and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa has been shunted out of position and thus appears shaky when asked to fill in. When they are tasked with finding players, Newcastle’s scouts have invariably found some good talents for low prices – but the club is in a rut under a thoroughly inadequate and unpleasant manager. They should finish mid-table again, but could struggle without a proven goalscorer to tide over a lack of substance elsewhere.

Last season: 10th – Predicted Finish: 10th

Potential XI: (4-4-1-1) Krul, Janmaat, Haidara, Williamson, Coloccini, Sissoko, Tiote, Colback, Cabella, De Jong, Riviere

Queens Park Rangers

An unwelcome return to the Premier League for Harry Redknapp, who apparently would have retired from the game had QPR missed out on promotion last season, which they achieved through the playoffs after finishing only fourth in the Championship. They have had a good summer in the transfer market, signing Steven Caulker and Jordan Mutch who impressed during the last campaign for Cardiff. Caulker will be partnered in what looks set to be a three-man defence by Rio Ferdinand, arriving from Manchester United on a free; while the signing of Chile’s Mauricio Isla on loan is a coup even after his indifferent spell at Juventus.

Isla is ideally suited to the 3-5-2 system with wing-backs which Redknapp has used in the pre-season. Armand Traore can fulfill the same sort of role down QPR’s left. In the attack, with various proposed moves for Loic Remy falling through seemingly thanks to his exorbitant wage demands, QPR have been left with options in Remy and Mutch, Charlie Austin, Bobby Zamora, Junior Hoilett, and Adel Taraabt. If Remy does find a move before the close of the window, QPR will need to find a striking replacement. Otherwise, they look weakest in the centre of midfield, while Caulker may have to cover for a lack of pace elsewhere in the defence.

Last Season: 4th (Championship, Promoted) – Predicted Finish: 9th

Potential XI: (3-4-1-2) Green, Caulker, Ferdinand, Onuoha, Isla, Barton, Faurlin, Traore, Mutch, Austin, Remy

Southampton

New manager Ronald Koeman has found himself thrown into the midst of a side which has been dismantled over the summer. Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Calum Chambers, and Rickie Lambert – essential first team players last season under Mauricio Pochettino – have all left the club. Morgan Schneiderlin and Jay Rodriguez seemed well on their way towards moves to Tottenham, only for Southampton to end negotiations apparently at a late stage, and owing to the fans’ growing discontent.

Provided he does not leave before the end of the window, Koeman will happily reintegrate Schneiderlin into his team – and he will have to play to the best of his abilities if Southampton aren’t to fall into a relegation struggle. They have just about replaced the players lost, but have largely gambled on players untested at the same level. Ryan Bertrand – brought in on loan with an expensive £10 million option to make the deal permanent – is an uninspiring replacement for Shaw, after a poor spell on loan last term for Aston Villa. Florin Gardos, a 6’4” centre-back, has arrived from Steaua Bucharest. Saphir Taider has come in on loan from Inter Milan, after a bright showing for Algeria in the World Cup. Fraser Foster, signed for £10 million from Celtic, has surely been bought to replace Artur Boruc as Southampton’s first-choice goalkeeper.

While these seem competent enough defensive reinforcements, Southampton’s difficulties may arise at the other end of the pitch. Shane Long’s £12 million fee seems excessive for a player who is undoubtedly a nuisance, with pace, work-rate, and an inclination to foul his opponents – but for all his qualities he doesn’t score goals. For creativity, Southampton will be largely reliant on Dusan Tadic, a talented left-footer with exceptional passing and dribbling ability. Tadic, however, lacks stamina and a turn of pace; and like Graziano Pelle, also signed from the Netherlands, will face a challenge adapting to the league.

Last Season: 7th – Predicted Finish: 14th

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Foster, Clyne, Fonte, Gardos, Bertrand, Schneiderlin, Wanyama, Tadic, Davis, Long, Pelle

Stoke City

Bojan Krkic’s move from Barcelona – after a series of extended loans and temporary departures over the past several years – to Stoke is one of the most interesting transfers of the summer. It remains to be seen whether he will feature as a striker, or predominantly from the left side of a front three. Mame Biram Diouf has also signed from Hannover, to add a more direct and physical presence to what is now a roundly talented front line. Stoke have been locked in negotiations with Liverpool for Oussama Assaidi, who did well for them on loan last term – but the loan signing of Victor Moses from Chelsea, completed today, may put an end to that endeavour.

Further back, Steve Sidwell and Phil Bardsley have joined on frees to add experience, if not ability; and the centre back Dionatan Teixeira has arrived from Slovakian football. All in all, Stoke under Mark Hughes seem well placed to repeat last season’s strong, upper mid-table showing.

Last Season: 9th – Predicted Finish: 8th

Potential XI: (4-3-3) Begovic, Bardsley, Pieters, Shawcross, Wilson, Whelan, N’Zonzi, Ireland, Arnautovic, Bojan, Diouf

Sunderland

For a club with a large and devoted fanbase – consistently drawing over 40,000 supporters to their home games – Sunderland plod on from season to season, intermittently facing some sort of crisis in form or personnel, failing to assert a long-term strategy or emboldened style of play. Losing Jack Colback and moving on Ignacio Scocco, Phil Bardsley, and Craig Gardner, Sunderland have signed Jack Rodwell and Will Buckley, and full-back Patrick van Aanholt; while Costel Pantilimon, Billy Jones, and Jordi Gomez have arrived on free transfers. Santiago Vergini comes in on loan from Estudiantes.

Gus Poyet is likely to retain last season’s hardworking, counter-attacking 4-5-1, with the wide players pushing on, and the team headed by Connor Wickham – who looks set to remain at the club despite a contract dispute and interest from West Ham – or Steven Fletcher. Rodwell will hopefully add some class and composure through the middle of the pitch.

Last Season: 14th – Predicted Finish: 15th

Potential XI: (4-5-1-) Mannone, Vergini, Van Aanholt, Brown, O’Shea, Larsson, Cattermole, Rodwell, Johnson, Wickham, Fletcher

Swansea

Swansea have made some promising signings over the summer. Gylfi Sigurdsson returns for a second spell with the club, a £10 million signing from Tottenham. He will slot into the attack alongside the Ecuadorian winger Jefferson Montero, and Bafetimbi Gomes, finally making the move to English football after year’s of speculation linking him with a mass of clubs. Swansea have retained Wilfried Bony, and with the addition of Marvin Emnes too, can boast a quick and determined attack.

With Ben Davies and Michel Vorm departing for Tottenham, Lukasz Fabianski has arrived on a free to take the goalkeeper’s jersey. Swansea will look to retain the passing approach developed across recent seasons, but the additional pace on the flanks and the presence of Gomis gives them the possibility of playing more directly as and when the situation demands. Doubts remain over the slightly aggravating Gary Monk’s suitability as manager.

Last Season: 12th – Predicted Finish: 12th

Potential XI: (4-3-3) Vorm, Rangel, Taylor, Amat, Williams, Britton, Ki, Sigurdsson, Routledge, Montero, Bony

Tottenham

A relatively quiet summer for Tottenham has seen the arrival of four players: young left-back Ben Davies and goalkeeper Michel Vorm from Swansea; the twenty-year-old English centre-back Eric Dier from Sporting Lisbon; and DeAndre Yedlin from Seattle Sounders – though the promising twenty-one-year-old right-back, who impressed with storming runs down the flank for the United States during the World Cup, will remain with Seattle for the time being.

Mauricio Pochettino will focus on moulding the players signed last summer into a coherent team. Tottenham certainly have the squad to excel in his preferred 4-2-3-1 system, and players capable of passing the ball incisively and quickly building attacks. As well as the emergence of Dier in the defence and Nabil Bentaleb in the centre of midfield, this season should see improved performances from Christian Eriksen and Erik Lamela.

Last Season: 6th – Predicted Finish: 6th

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Loris, Walker, Rose, Kaboul, Vertonghen, Capoue, Holtby, Lennon, Eriksen, Lamela, Adebayor

West Brom

The appointment of Alan Irvine as West Brom’s new manager, and only on a twelve-month rolling contract, has underwhelmed. West Brom have been busy in the transfer market. The striker Brown Ideye, from Dynamo Kiev, is the club’s most expensive purchase at £10 million – but he is also the club’s only attacking signing. Otherwise, a host of defenders have arrived, including the attacking Costa Rican right-back Cristian Gamboa; the experienced left-back Sebastien Pocognoli; another left-back in Australia’s Jason Davidson; Joleon Lescott and Chris Baird, who have signed on frees transfers; and Andre Wisdom, from Liverpool on loan. Craig Gardner also arrives on a free from Sunderland to add depth in the midfield.

Gamboa may be utilised higher up the pitch, but West Brom need additional pace and quality in the attack if it isn’t going to prove a very long season. As things stand, whatever qualites Victor Anichebe presents, he is not a goalscorer, so the side will be heavily reliant on Ideye.

Last Season: 17th – Predicted Finish: 19th

Potential XI: (4-5-1) Foster, Gamboa, Pocognoli, Olssen, Lescott, Mulumbu, Yacob, Sessegnon, Dorrans, Brunt, Ideye

West Ham

Still under Sam ‘Fat Sam’ Allardyce, West Ham have been unusually outgoing with their summer incomings. Enner Valencia arrives for £12 million after three goals for Ecuador in the World Cup. In Andy Carroll’s ongoing absence owing to a litany of injury troubles, Diafra Sakho has also signed for around £3.5 million from Metz, to provide West Ham with a new-look strikeforce going into the season. In the long term, though Valencia is blessed with a prodigious leap, it will be interesting to see whether Allardyce relies on him to lead the attack – or instead plays him from wide or partners him with a taller striker in Sakho or Carlton Cole.

The defensive midfielder Cheikhou Kouyate comes in for £7 million from Anderlecht. And West Ham have also signed the left-back Aaron Cresswell from Ipswich, the young midfielder Diego Poyet from Charlton, and forward Mauro Zarate – once of Birmingham, and looking to revitalise his career – on a free transfer. Carl Jenkinson arrives from Arsenal on a season-long loan.

Last Season: 13th – Predicted Finish: 13th

Potential XI: (4-2-3-1) Adrian, Jenkinson, Cresswell, Collins, Reid, Kouyate, Noble, Downing, Nolan, Diame, Valencia

Athletics at the Commonwealth Games; Looking Ahead to the European Championships

Athletics at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow saw over 1,000 athletes from more than sixty-five nations compete in fifty events. On the morning of Sunday, 27 July, the men and women’s marathons began the seven days of athletics competition, and were won by Michael Shelley of Australia – the first non-African winner of the men’s event for twenty years – and Kenya’s Flomena Cheyech Daniel. With no walking events on the calendar, the track and field programme which then commenced was held at Glasgow’s Hampden Park: Scotland’s national football stadium, converted into an athletics stadium for the games. With work beginning last December, and costing £14 million, this involved digging up the football pitch, and raising an athletics surface on steel posts and beams 1.9 metres above pitch level in order to meet Commonwealth size requirements. Eight rows of seating were taken out, but Hampden still afforded space for just over 40,000 athletics spectators throughout the duration of the games.

While this construction work was described as ‘pioneering’, from a sporting perspective athletics at the Commonwealth Games remains notable for incorporating – since Manchester in 2002 – para-sports within the mainstream of competition. The standout para-sport event at Hampden saw Scotland’s Libby Clegg triumph in the T12 100 metres, alongside her guide Mikail Huggins. It was Clegg’s first Commonwealth gold, and she came into the competition as a strong favourite, having taken silver medals at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, a gold and then two silvers at the 2011 and 2013 World Championships, and golds in the 100 and 200 metres at the 2012 European Championships. Fanie van der Merwe from South Africa won the men’s T37 100 metres; while in the women’s T54 1500 metres – a wheelchair event – Australia’s Angela Ballard narrowly beat out Canada’s Diane Roy and England’s Jade Jones.

Blessing Okagbare starred on the first full evening of competition, as she won the women’s 100 metres ahead of a strong field, which saw the Jamaican former Olympic-medalists Veronica Campbell-Brown and Kerron Stewart finish in silver and bronze. Campbell-Brown was returning to major competition on the back of contentious proceedings which saw her provisionally suspended from the sport, then cleared, after testing positive in June 2013 for the diuretic HCT. HCT is one of a group of banned substances which encourage the body’s production of urine, and therefore may be used to mask performance enhancing drugs. After testing positive in 2013 and missing out on the World Championships, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a Jamaican appeal in February, citing blatant flaws in the collection procedure which had resulted in Campbell-Brown’s positive test, and thereby reinstating her right to compete. On the back of her silver and Stewart’s bronze, both athletes went on to help Jamaica to relay gold in the 4×100 metres. Just as Usain Bolt did for the men’s team, so Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce eschewed the individual events, but emerged to effortlessly take the last leg and lead her compatriots home.

Okagbare, from Nigeria, took her 100 metres gold medal in a games record time of 10.85. Starting out in the sport as a jumper – competing in the juniors at both long and triple jump – her first major success came at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when she achieved a bronze medal in the long jump. She has increasingly turned her attention to the sprints, complementing her silver in the long jump at last year’s World Championships with a bronze in the 200 metres. And at the Commonwealths later in the week, she added the 200 metres gold – ahead of the young Englishwomen Jodie Williams and Bianca Williams, both twenty years old, but not related – to complete an impressive sprint double which could prove the impetus for a challenge upon the world’s elite.

Her black hair tipped with pink, Stephenie Ann McPherson continued her rise in the 400 metres, heading a Jamaican 1-2-3 which also comprised Novlene Williams-Mills – running well at thirty-two and having overcome surgery for breast cancer in late 2012 – and Christine Day. The women’s middle distance events saw one of the most popular achievements of the games, as Scotland’s Lynsey Sharp fought for silver in the 800 metres, behind Kenya’s Eunice Sum. Sharp has suffered a series of leg and foot injuries over the past couple of seasons, which have resulted in a leg infection which has yet to heal. Worse, a virus saw her in the hospital and on a drip the night before her final, combatting the affects of dehydration. Her silver followed Eilidh Child’s silver in the 400 metres hurdles the night before; and allied to Libby Clegg’s gold and a bronze in the men’s hammer for Mark Dry, saw the home nation come away with four medals from the athletics events at the games.

Elsewhere in the field, Greg Rutherford backed up his 2012 London Olympics gold with a victory in the men’s long jump, while Nigeria’s Ese Brume edged England’s Jazmin Sawyers by two centimetres in the women’s affair. Closely fought too were the men’s shot, won by Jamaica’s O’Dayne Richards; and the men’s javelin, which saw a three-way battle eventually won, with a games-record throw, by Kenya’s Julius Yego, ahead of Keshorn Walcott, from Trinidad and Tobago, and Hamish Peacock, from Australia.

The long distance running events were marked by two exceptional and palpable displays of will. In the women’s 5,000 metres – won comfortably in the end after an accomplished performance by Mercy Cherono – Jo Pavey, at forty years old and with two young children, finished with a bronze medal. While Pavey’s age and perseverance make her result exceptional, equally so was the performance itself, which saw Pavey push a trio of Kenyans from the front only to be passed by them twice in the closing two laps. When they ran past her on the bell, with a lap to go, and kicked away, Pavey could easily have folded; but instead she clung on and, having regained a little ground, drove in the home straight to take the bronze, delighted although only narrowly missing out on silver.

It was a similar story in the men’s 10,000 metres. Mo Farah’s absence from the Commonwealth Games owing to abdominal pain seemed to leave the men’s distance events open. Moses Kipsiro, who had won both the 5,000 and 10,000 metres four years ago in Delhi, was coming into the games still struggling with knee and hamstring injuries, and he finished only eighth in the 5,000 metres final this time around. Yet he returned for the 10,000 metres, and stuck with the race’s leaders on into the final lap. As the Kenyan Josphat Bett Kipkoech and Canadian Cameron Levins kicked with 150 metres to go, Kipsiro grimaced – and appeared to determine at once that he wasn’t in the shape to win the race, but would hang on all the same and see what might happen. As things did happen, he squeezed through on the inside of Levins and won the race on the line, his chest ahead of Kipkoech’s – with the Kenyan initially thinking himself the winner, having failed to spot Kipsiro coming through on his inside.

Perhaps only superficially surprising was David Rudisha’s defeat in the 800 metres. The Olympic champion and world record holder, Rudisha is still recovering his fitness having missed the 2013 season thanks to a knee injury. Though he attempted to control the race from the front, and kicked with just over 100 metres remaining, he was run down with ease by a sprightly Nijel Amos. Botswana’s Amos, who took the silver medal at the Olympics two years ago, is still only twenty and will undoubtedly prove a match for Rudisha as and when the older man regains full fitness and form. He is already the joint-third fastest man of all time over the distance, behind Rudisha and Wilson Kipketer, and alongside Sebastian Coe. Meanwhile, in the 400 metres, Olympic champion Kirani James managed a games record of 44.24 in taking gold.

Hot on the heels of the Commonwealths, the European Championships begin in Zurich tomorrow, lasting until Sunday afternoon. The absence of the Jamaicans and Nigerians in the sprints, and the Kenyans in the distance races, means that the Championships should see a host of new faces and alternative victors. While Adam Gemili will look to continue his good form after a silver medal in the 100 metres, the men’s sprints provide strong opportunities for the French, with the fastest times in Europe this year belonging to Jimmy Vicaut in the 100 metres, Christophe Lemaitre in the 200 metres, and Pascal Martinot-Lagarde in the 110 metres hurdles. In the 800 metres too, Pierre-Ambroise Bosse is second only to Nijel Amos in this year’s fastest times.

Mo Farah will be back for Britain in the men’s distance events; a returning Christine Ohuruogu will compete in the 400 metres; Lynsey Sharp will look to defend her 800 metres title; and Jodie and Bianca Williams and Asha Philip will be bolstered by the eighteen-year-old Dina Asher-Smith for the women’s sprints. The Netherlands’ Dafne Schippers and France’s Myriam Soumare will be the athletes they have to beat over 100 and 200 metres; while France’s Cindy Billaud may force Tiffany Porter to be content with another silver in the 100 metres hurdles. The Dutch are strong too in the women’s distance events, with Sifan Hassan preeminent in the 1500 metres and accomplished also at 5,000 metres.

In the field, one of the battles of the championships should see Germany’s shirt-tearing Robert Harting challenge for gold in the discus against Poland’s Piotr Malachowski. The javelins will be hotly contested between athletes from the Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Finland, and Ukraine. Christian Reif will push Greg Rutherford in the men’s long jump; and Russia’s Darya Klishina has been the most consistent performer this season from a competitive group in the women’s event. Renaud Lavillenie will see how high he can go in the men’s pole vault. The women’s high jump is routinely a highlight of major international athletics competition, and will see Blanka Vlasic hoping to fend off the Russians Anna Chicherova and Maria Kuchina.

Amsterdam Watercolour: Apartment View

And so here lies a second painting, in ink and watercolour, of the view from the rear balcony of my old apartment in the Oud-Zuid neighbourhood of Amsterdam.

While the first looked down from the balcony toward two sheds, showing their roofs and yards in autumn with the patternation of fallen leaves, this watercolour shows a perspective across the complex of apartments. I always appreciated the view sitting out on this balcony because – while enclosed – the distance and design was sufficient so that you could be aware of the presence of bodies on other balconies, but rarely noticed anything egregious in their expressions or behaviours. In short, you were well secluded – and the situation reminded me a little of Rear Window, though to the cinema’s potential loss, I never suffered while living there a broken leg.

A Sporting and Cultural History of the 2014 World Cup

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In five parts and totalling about 15,000 words – analysing the final of the tournament, viewing all thirty-two competing nations, and offering a wider perspective comprising fashion, politics, music, technology, and football’s myriad engagements with popular culture – my site may provide what is, at this point in time, the definitive history of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The image above affords a perverse but pretty way of accessing the five articles I’ve posted since the event in Brazil came to a close three weeks ago. They are, in turn, Germany 1-0 Argentina: An Analysis of the 2014 World Cup Final; What’s Wrong with Brazil? Evaluating the World Cup: Groups A-D; Evaluating the World Cup: Groups E-H; Fashioning a World Cup Final: How the BBC Dressed; and The World Cup in Wider Culture. Simply click upon the image or image-section which most intrigues or excites.

The World Cup in Wider Culture

While on the field, the 2014 World Cup saw the rise of new superstars, the decline of footballing philosophies, the interplay between varying formations, and appeared to demonstrate the narrowing of traditional power gaps in the international game – in the knockout stages, from the round of sixteen through to the final, only three of fifteen matches were won by a margin greater than one goal – this piece extends beyond the confines of the pitch and beyond the immediacies of the sport. It looks at the wider cultural aspects which informed or which emerged from the World Cup.

In turn, it considers how Brazilian society functioned towards and about the tournament, and the ways in which the mass media depicted Brazilians; views the psychology and sociology of individualism as it is increasingly made manifest throughout the game; analyses the rise and spurt of soccer in the United States, and Twitter’s role in soccer’s recent prominence; plays upon the nature and extension of World Cup chants; and contemplates the innovative and encompassing uses of technology which influenced and drew upon the month-long affair.

Brazilians: Competent Organisers, Not So Crazy About Football

The buildup to the 2014 World Cup was dominated in the Anglophone media by apprehension over Brazil’s capability to host the event. The issue at the forefront of the story was the building of Brazil’s World Cup stadiums. Countless articles suggested that stadiums would not be finished in time for the beginning of the World Cup. Posited problems covered everything from incomplete roofing, exposed wiring and concrete, loose scaffolding, and unstable staircases, to blocked exits, no internet, and insufficient catering and transportation. As NBC put it, ‘Brazil will welcome the players and fans to unfinished airports, drive them past uncompleted transport systems, through streets that have been clogged with rioters protesting the cost of the tournament and into stadiums that have cost lives to build and haven’t all been finished.’

Even FIFA delegates described the preparations as ‘hell’ and the ‘worst ever’ – allegations which have already been made regarding Rio’s progress towards the Summer Olympics in 2016. Across the couple of weeks immediately preceding the start of the World Cup, it was repeatedly asserted that Brazil was not yet ready to hold the tournament, with particular worry over the stadiums in Sao Paulo and Manaus. Manaus was the target of additional mockery when, just days before the venue was to host its opening match between England and Italy, it was claimed that ground staff had been painting the pitch green to hide the fact that it was dry and underfed.

There remain vital concerns over the extent of Brazil’s expenditure on World Cup stadiums – which is thought to have totalled $3.6 billion – and over the simultaneous lack of work completed on local infrastructure projects. Despite spending over €11 billion on infrastructure, half of the projects intended for completion back in 2007, when Brazil was awarded the World Cup, were subsequently scrapped. These included the proposed high-speed rail line between Rio and Sao Paulo; although a small number of projects did find happy conclusions, with a line of the Salvador Metro in Bahia finished just prior to the onset of competition after fourteen years under construction, and taking spectators to the Arena Fonte Nova. More, some of the stadiums are without top-level clubs and will struggle to be utilised beyond the World Cup, bringing into question the long-term legacy of the tournament.

At the same time, the World Cup itself appeared to suffer little from any architectural or infrastructural issues. The stadiums were ultimately all completed in time; few problems were reported with travel between airports or to and from stadiums; and even the pitch in Manaus held up for its four group games. Preparations for major sporting events tend to prove problematic. It must be remembered that the City of Manchester Stadium, built with two temporary stands for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, was still undergoing work in the days before the event’s opening ceremony, and a metro link between the stadium and the city went incomplete. The Athens Summer Olympics in 2004 saw soaring costs and a race to be ready amid numerous delays to construction. While the Olympic venues were completed well within schedule for Beijing 2008, the Games brought considerable controversy over forced relocations: which affected somewhere between the Chinese government’s suggested 6,000 families, and the 1.5 million residents predicted by human rights groups.

In fact, many quarters have acclaimed the organisational achievement on display in Brazil. A survey of foreign journalists suggests an overwhelmingly positive response to the travel provision, airport service, and level of personal security afforded during the World Cup, as well as towards Brazilian culture and nightlife. David Ranc of the Football Research in an Enlarged Europe project has argued that the World Cup in Brazil was better organised than the 2012 London Olympics, citing routinely full stadiums and relatively conservative large-scale security measures. The counter argument has also been made that – despite problems with the provision and construction of stadia and the continuing inequality which is characteristic of Brazilian society – Brazil’s hosting of the World Cup ought to be seen as a testament to the country’s growth, and to the significant improvements made in health and education over the last decade.

Beyond the headlines regarding unfinished or unfurnished stadiums, fears were expressed in bursts that the World Cup would be beset by riots. A wave of protests took place across Brazilian cities in June 2013, with the impetus being fare increases to public transportation, but feeling soon extending to encompass anger over other social issues, over perceived governmental corruption, and at the excessive police response to the protests, which included the use of rubber bullets. The protests became known inside Brazil as the ‘V for Vinegar Movement’, after groups of protesters were allegedly arrested for carrying vinegar, intended as a remedy against the police’s use of tear gas and pepper spray. The height of these protests intertwined with Brazil’s hosting of the 2013 Confederations Cup. With the protest movement and football linked, growing upset over the cost of the World Cup, and a sense of complicity between the Brazilian government and FIFA, belief built that the tournament was liable to see trouble on the streets and around the stadiums.

While there were clashes in Brazil’s major cities as the World Cup got underway – which saw the police again use tear gas on those demonstrating – these soon subsided. With little to report, conjecture arose that an early exit for Brazil would prove the catalyst for violent manifestations of unrest. Given the context, these fears were understandable, and aired by committed and talented journalists, including the BBC’s Tim Vickery. However, vague and concerned premonitions became, in the tabloid presses, scaremongering invoking the potential for widespread rioting and dirty bombs.

So as Brazil’s drubbing at the hands of Germany in the semi-finals was still being digested, speculation proliferated online and across social media as to whether it would provoke the Brazilian people into rioting. By late evening, sensationalised reports of rioting, flag-burning, and mass theft were being published. Such accounts were soon being tempered, however, with the Brazilian police suggesting that some disturbance on Copacabana beach had amounted to little more than fighting between opposing groups of supporters, and reports of theft and gunfire remaining unconfirmed. A number of photos eagerly circulated as evidence of renewed rioting turned out to be deceptive, with the images actually drawn from the Confederations Cup protests a year ago.

The argument persists that the response of the Brazilian police has been marked by aggression, and that their heavy-handed approach limited the capacity of demonstrators during the World Cup. Still, there appears a discrepancy between the notion of Brazilians set upon trouble – and distraught to the point of violence or insensibility upon the loss of a football match – and what actually occurred after their side’s capitulation. Instead of attacking or mourning, Brazilian supporters seemed models of magnanimity following the game against Germany, recognising the flaws of the Brazilian team, and praising the abilities of their competitors. Appreciative of good football rather than narrowly and viciously partisan, the positive atmosphere in Brazil around the game and around the teams of the World Cup remained for the duration of the competition.

A Surfeit of Individualism

Though individuals have found themselves the centres of attention at many previous World Cups – Diego Maradona in Mexico in 1986, for instance, and again for less savoury reasons eight years later at USA 94; while Ronaldo came to dominate the world’s focus in the buildup to the final of France 98, as he suffered a convulsive fit just hours before kickoff  – never before has a tournament been built so thoroughly upon individual players. Many of the top teams seemed structured round one player, whether by design or by necessity.

Brazil and Argentina, the two favourites going into the tournament, were – despite a divergence in experience and subtly differing gameplans – from the start orchestrated around their outstanding attacking players, Neymar and Lionel Messi. Though both players had strong tournaments, finishing with four goals apiece, Brazil floundered dramatically after Neymar suffered an injury in their quarter-final game against Colombia, while – despite leading Argentina to the final with an array of crucial goals and assists – the unduly critical perception shared by many was that Messi had failed to excel. After a lackadaisical close to the season with Barcelona, it was thought that he could go on to consolidate on the international stage his reputation as one of the world’s greatest ever players. He was awarded the Golden Ball, and so officially declared the tournament’s best player; but this decision was broadly derided, by figures including FIFA President Sepp Blatter and by Maradona, who triumphed with Argentina back in 86.

Elsewhere, with their striker Radamel Falcao out of action owing to a knee injury, and despite impressive performances by Cuadrado and their defensive players, James Rodriguez became the figurehead for Colombia and – though Monaco spent €45 million on him a season ago – the breakout star of the World Cup. Alexis Sanchez occupied a similar position for Chile, and was the standout from their side especially as Arturo Vidal struggled for fitness. Arjen Robben was clearly the Netherlands’ exceptional player, the impetus to their attack as Robin van Persie stuttered and Wesley Sneijder indicated a career on a steep decline. Uruguay were capable and committed with Luis Suarez on the pitch, but abject without him. Clint Dempsey for the USA and Tim Cahill for Australia – attacking midfielders or second-strikers for much of their careers – were tasked with leading the line and focusing their sides. And likewise Nigeria and South Korea were largely reliant on their wide attackers, Ahmed Musa and Son Heung-Min respectively.

While the focus on individual players was variously tactical it was also philosophical, and extended beyond the immediate contexts of the sport to reflect a wider sociological impulse. Even where facts on the pitch seemed to refute the reliance upon star men, still nations clung to individuals. Wayne Rooney continued, in the lead up to the tournament, to be regarded England’s best hope for success, and he continues to be considered the squad’s only world class player, quite ignoring a litany of mediocre performances at major tournaments and the emergence of youngsters who would seem to challenge his place in the team. Didier Drogba was restored to the Ivory Coast eleven for their decisive group encounter against Greece, despite looking his age and in spite of Wilfried Bony’s two goals in the two previous matches.

Most egregious, however, was the decision to interrupt the World Cup final itself with an individual awards ceremony for FIFA’s chosen players. Thus – before Germany were able to lift the World Cup – Manuel Neuer and a defeated and deflated Lionel Messi ascended to receive their awards for Golden Glove, as the tournament’s best goalkeeper, and Golden Ball. James Rodriguez, the winner of the Golden Boot with six goals, and Paul Pogba, decreed in association with Hyundai the tournament’s best young player, were not dragged out for the occasion; but postponing the celebrations of the victorious team in order to regale and reify the individual contribution seemed an error indicative beyond football, and especially absurd given that one of the awarded individuals had just lost arguably the most important game of his career.

Twitter and the Rise of Soccer in the United States

The World Cup final between Germany and Argentina was the most-watched football game in the history of American television. 26.5 million viewers tuned in overall to watch the match live on television, with 17.3 million following in English via ABC, while 9.2 million watched in Spanish over on Univision. The figure of 26.5 million compares with the 24.7 million who watched as Spain beat the Netherlands four years ago in 2010; with the 14.5 million who watched the final of the World Cup held in the USA in 1994; and with the average audiences of 15 million obtained by both this year’s NBA Finals and last year’s baseball World Series.

A further 1.8 million people viewed Germany vs. Argentina online using WatchESPN. Adding those online viewers via ABC and Univision, the total number of people on all devices watching the game live came to just over 29 million. And these figures remain restricted to those who watched within the confines of their own homes: the figures do not account for the people who packed America’s bars to watch, or attended viewing parties hosted in clubs, parks and cinemas, and in their potential thousands at local stadiums.

The 2014 World Cup averaged 4.557 million viewers in the US, in contrast to the 3.273 million who watched each match on average in 2010, the 2.321 million from 2006, and the 2.801 million who watched back in 1994. Such numbers do not guarantee that the game’s appeal will continue to grow, or that it will flourish inside America. Viewing figures this time round have been aided by the proximity of US time zones with those in Brazil; while for 2018, ESPN – who have led soccer coverage in the US and dedicated considerable television time to analysing the latest tournament – have lost the World Cup rights to Fox.

Domestically, the average attendance figure for the 2014 season of Major League Soccer so far has been 18,704: a slight increase on the previous season’s average, but still marginally down on the number from 2012, and leaving many stadiums well short of capacity. In fact, despite rising from a low of 13,756 in 2000, since the first season of Major League Soccer in 1996, match-day attendances have hardly boomed: then, a novelty and just two years after the 1994 World Cup, 17,406 people on average attended Major League Soccer games. If the trend is for more and more people in the United States to watch football on television, this does not appear to be translating into behinds upon stadium seats. Perhaps this will change in 2015, on the back of a World Cup which has been so popular – and which has been widely discussed as a turning point for the game in the US – and with new players, including Kaka, David Villa, and Frank Lampard, set to bolster the domestic league. Meanwhile NBC continues to invest time and effort in the English Premier League, having spent £250 million for the rights from 2012; and Fox have acquired the rights to the Bundesliga for five seasons starting next year. Major international football will return to the US in 2016, when it will host the Copa America Centenario: a special edition of the Copa America to celebrate its centenary, which will feature the ten South American teams plus the United States, Mexico, and four others from CONCACAF still to be determined.

The popularity of this summer’s World Cup in the US owes significantly to the rise of Twitter. In 2006, Twitter was just starting out, first being launched publicly that July. By the second quarter of 2010, it had grown to boast 40 million monthly active users. Yet four years on, that number has risen to 255 million. Over 62% of these active Twitter users live in the United States. And throughout the World Cup, Twitter was a prominent force for the spread of US soccer fervour. During the United States’ three group matches, over 15 million tweets were sent relating to the team’s progress. During the round of sixteen game against Belgium, Twitter recorded more than 9 million tweets sent. Major American companies took to Twitter to post images of themselves laying aside work to watch the games. Sites like Mashable came replete with postings which simply highlighted Twitter responses to the US team’s highs and lows.

Rihanna – who has the eighth most-followed Twitter account, with over 36.5 million followers – emerged as an ardent fan of the sport throughout the World Cup’s proceedings, tweeting photographs of herself at the final at the Maracana in Rio, and then with the German players as they celebrated their victory on into the night. Overall, Twitter reported that 672 million tweets were sent pertaining to the World Cup across its one-month duration. 35.6 million tweets were recorded as Germany beat Brazil 7-1; and a record 618,725 tweets were sent per minute as Mario Gotze scored Germany’s decisive, cup-winning goal against Argentina.

The Sacred and the Profane: The Extension of World Cup Chants

The 2014 World Cup saw innovations in the realm of football chants, as they became increasingly elaborate, frequently political, and transcended the sport to become part of the summer’s pop-culture. Spain’s early exit from the tournament – aside from damaging the prospects of national retailers grown accustomed to the team’s success – meant that short shrift was given to ‘Yo soy Español, Español, Español’, the chant which characterised Spain’s triumph in South Africa four years ago. England persisted at moments during their brief stay with the jocularly antagonistic ‘Two World Wars and One World Cup’, sung to the tune of the minstrel song ‘Camptown Races’; and Germany introduced a contemporary political perspective to proceedings when, in their match against the United States, their fans responded to shouts of ‘USA! USA!’ with ‘NSA! NSA!’. Algeria progressed to the round of sixteen with their famous chant ‘One, two, three – viva l’Algiré!’ – recited in English, and an emblem of the Algerian revolution against French rule. Hosts Brazil stuck with ‘Eu sou Brasileiro, com muito orgulho, com muito amor’ – ‘I am Brazilian, with a lot of pride, and a lot of love’.

Brazil were involved in one of the minor controversies of the tournament when their game against Mexico highlighted the Mexican supporters’ use of a contentious chant during opposition goal-kicks. In recent years, Mexicans have taken to shouting ‘puto’ just as an opposition goalkeeper makes contact with the ball. The endeavour to perturb an opposition goalkeeper is not unique, and similar goading occurs throughout football. Yet it has been strongly argued that ‘puto’ is a homophobic insult, more than simply an allegation of cowardice or an indistinct profanity. After Brazil faced Mexico, and at the instigation of the anti-discrimination group Fare, FIFA opened an investigation into both nations, who they ultimately cleared from any wrongdoing. Brazil had apparently retorted in kind to Mexico’s chants. For their part, Mexican supporters responded to this perceived mendacious and unnecessary meddling by subsequently changing the chant from ‘puto’ to ‘Pepsi’ – the leading competitor to Coca-Cola, who were one of the tournament’s main sponsors.

The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’ can already claim a rich history upon football’s seating areas and terraces. The basic melody of the song – thought to be derived from Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony – was first appropriated back in 2003 by Club Brugge of Belgium, before being co-opted by AS Roma when they met Brugge in the 2005-06 UEFA Cup. By the summer of 2006 – and still known phonetically among Italian players and supporters as ‘Po-po-po’ – it had become the unofficial theme for the Azzurri, as Italy won the 2006 World Cup. The melody was a prominent facet of the celebrations, led by Francesco Totti, as the Italian squad arrived, triumphant, back in Rome.

Still sung for and most closely associated with the Italian national team, the melody has since extended throughout the world of sport. It was ubiquitous during the 2008 European Championships in Austria and Switzerland; and featured again four years later in Poland and Ukraine. In the United States, ‘Seven Nation Army’ has become a staple of college football and college basketball games, and has been utilised through the NBA and in the NFL, where it is especially favoured by the Baltimore Ravens. Emerging amidst the 2006 World Cup which was hosted in Germany, greeting the goalscorers of the 2013 Champions League final between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, and becoming – in remixed form – an anthem of the Bayern side, ‘Seven Nation Army’ is also entwined with German football, and sometimes sung by Germany’s supporters – so that it remained present in Brazil even beyond Italy’s early elimination.

Germany’s World Cup final opponents Argentina are known for a vocal support and an ability to produce an array of innovative chants – which sometimes descend towards the bawdy. ‘Vamos, vamos, Argentina’ encodes a reference to a brothel; and at a previous World Cup Argentinians sang in memory of their Brazilian counterparts, ‘They’re all black, they’re all sexual deviants, everybody knows Brazil is in mourning’. For the occasion of a World Cup in the home of their fiercest rivals, Argentina’s supporters devised a brand new song, to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’. Entitled ‘Brasil, decime qué se siente’, when translated into English, ‘Brazil, tell me how it feels’ reads:

Brazil, tell me how it feels

To have your Dad in your house,

I swear that even as years pass

We will never forget

That Diego tricked you

That Cani scored against you

You’ve been crying ever since Italy

You’re going to see Messi

The cup will be brought to us

Maradona is greater than Pele

The chant became so popular that it spread beyond the supporters to the centre of the Argentinian squad. Argentina’s players were videoed singing ‘Brasil, decime qué se siente’ in their changing room as they progressed towards their semi-final against the Netherlands.

The culturally outstanding chant of the tournament belonged to the Americans. With its beginnings over a decade ago in the United States Naval Academy – and in Navy football, American style – ‘I believe that we will win’ ascended rapidly throughout the World Cup, usurping the traditional three-syllable utterance ‘USA!’, to become one of the hallmarks not only of the US team but of the entire competition. Impelled by ESPN, who used it for its World Cup commercial, the chant soon grew to dominate in the bars of America and at public screenings. On the page, ‘I believe that we can win’ initially appears debased, a reduction of the football chant to absurdity: its words offering only the slightest of sentiments, a simple belief that the essence of sport – a physical competition in which the winner is uncertain – remains its essence. Yet when performed, the chant is both powerful and memorable, drawing from gospel music in its call-and-response and simple rhythms, which drive towards a crescendo.

Technical Innovations and The Time of the Game

Technological innovation – not usually one of association football’s bedfellows – abounded on the pitch for this World Cup. Goal-line technology was implemented for the first time, courtesy of the German company GoalControl – who beat off the challenge of rivals including Hawk-Eye, before their technology was implemented in competition at last year’s Confederations Cup. GoalControl’s setup involves fourteen cameras, each capable of taking five-hundred photographs per second. It thereby determines in real-time whether the ball has crossed the goal-line, and whether a goal should be awarded or play allowed to continue. Its decision incontrovertible, a message is passed wirelessly to a watch worn about the referee’s wrist. Despite working perfectly, the system caused hilarity when an irate BBC commentator Jonathan Pearce misunderstood its functioning and railed against being so deceived.

The other bold innovation of the World Cup has in fact already been a feature of Brazilian domestic football for eight years. This was the ‘vanishing spray’, a white foam which referees may use in an attempt to ensure that defenders remain the requisite ten yards from the ball upon attacking free-kicks. So during the tournament referees sprayed a white mark by the site of the stationary ball, then a horizontal line by the feet of defenders – meant to keep them at bay, and disappearing after a minute or so on the playing surface. Hitherto used in the domestic leagues of Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, there is no conclusive evidence that the spray contributes to more goals scored from free-kicks. Still an eminently sensible if only partial solution to a real problem, the spray has been ratified for the forthcoming seasons in Italy, Spain, and France, and will feature in the UEFA Champions League. While the English Premier League first proposed compiling a series of reports on the issue, and allowing the spray from 2015 at the earliest, it has ceded ground and will now introduce it too in 2014-15. The Germans are still contemplating whether to use it for the coming season.

Away from the pitch, The Time of the Game drew upon a variety of interconnected technologies – televisions, and the other screens through which we watch; cameras, which as facets of mobile phones and tablet computers have become extensions of ourselves, and allow us to share images seamlessly; and online social networks – to provide an interactive history of how the world saw the World Cup final. A collaborative project devised by the writer Teju Cole, and achieved alongside software artist Jer Thorp, and artist and developer Mario Klingemann, The Time of the Game describes itself as ‘a synchronized global view of the World Cup final’. Before Germany and Argentina kicked off, Cole asked his 160,000 Twitter followers to post photographs of their screens as they watched the game, noting the minute of action and their own location, and using the hashtag #thetimeofthegame.

Collecting all the submissions which used the hashtag – and those too which used the tag #timeofthegame – resulted in a body of over 2,000 images. The Time of the Game collates these images and shows them chronologically. Fixed and centred upon the viewing screen – most often a television, but also frequently a laptop or tablet – the photographs flash consecutively across the 120 minutes of football played. So The Time of the Game offers a unique perspective, a fractured collage of the World Cup final, and it can be viewed with an eye for the football on display: showing players’ expressions, decisive moments, even differences in coverage between broadcasters from different nations. But more than this, it provides the specifics of how people watched the World Cup – the devices which they used, their surroundings, the materiality of their lives – and a broader sense of a communal experience shared equally among people between different time zones, parts of different cultures, and living with differing circumstances.

As Cole wrote when introducing the project, ‘We live in different time zones, out of sync but aware of each other. Then the game begins and we enter the same time: the time of the game.’ While the images are ‘formally satisfying’ because the focus on the screen affords a ‘frame within a frame’, in an interview with The Atlantic Cole conceptualises the cumulative result as an investigation of ”public time’ […] which is the chronological equivalent of ‘public space’.’ Indeed, The Time of the Game plays thoroughly with the concepts of public and private. It seems to publicise the private space as much as it makes the public space intimate; and contrasts the public sphere of football – which moves beyond the playing of the game, and beyond its broadcasters and analysts, to the discussions we share about football with others – with the individual act of sitting, often alone, and staring and viewing. In addition to the full thread of pictures, it is possible to select via the site a range of images based on time or location: selecting all photographs taken, for instance, in Brooklyn, or in the 45th minute, or for the thirty-minute duration of extra time.