Winter has arrived in England. Everywhere there was football it seemed to be lashing down rain, and perhaps nowhere was the gloom more apparent than in the stands. Chelsea supporters at Stamford Bridge were stirred from silence to proclaim their disapproval of new interim manager Rafa Benitez, while over at White Hart Lane the visiting West Ham supporters’ anti-Semitic chants overshadowed Clint Dempsey’s return to form. Football, bloody hell indeed.
In this week’s Men in Blazers podcast, Michael Davies and Roger Bennett review a soaking-wet Premier League weekend — the good, bad, and the plain old unclassifiable. We mean you, Kolo Touré, who apparently enjoyed a two-year affair while passing himself off as a used-car salesman named Francois.
There’s no place like home. After slumming it on a muddy cricket field in Antigua, the United States returned to the warm, juiced embrace of LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, where Jurgen, Clint, and Michael Bradley collectively throttled Guatemala 3-1 to enter “The Hex,” the final stage of World Cup qualifying. To mark the occasion, the Men in Blazers welcomed U.S. legend and ESPN studio analyst Alexi Lalas to the pod. The well-known defender, who played both Stateside and in the celebrated Serie A, offered his thoughts on head coach Jurgen Klinsmann and reminisced about his own experiences with the U.S. team in the dark ages of the 1990s, before closing with a heartfelt message for gingie kids everywhere: Stay the course, and maybe you, too, can support Hootie and the Blowfish on a European tour.
As expected, Michael and Roger also paused to comment on England’s World Cup qualifying blight, analyzing the least-impressive 5-0 blowout in the history of the game. Their opponent? The mighty enclaved micro-state San Marino (pop. 32,140). It got us thinking. If San Marino can field a side to play internationally, why not GFOP Nation? We intend to challenge the Sammarinese on their own turf. To participate in this historic campaign, please send your footballing résumés our way.
Send your telegrams via raven to the Crap Part of SoHo, reach us @MeninBlazers or drop an email at meninblazers@gmail.com. You can subscribe to the pod in iTunes or via our RSS feed.
Not exactly sure what kind of dirty deeds this training apparatus hons for English footballers, but Kate Middleton seems to be enjoying herself at the opening of the National Football Centre.
GFOP Scott Balling (@moodonthepitch) ran into the infamous “Hart Twins”, one of whom is the hero who dropped trou to aid England’s PK efforts, outside a pub in Kyiv before that fateful game.
If you know either of these English gentlemen, please do let us know. We’d love to hear the story behind the story.
Winter has arrived in England. Everywhere there was football it seemed to be lashing down rain, and perhaps nowhere was the gloom more apparent than in the stands. Chelsea supporters at Stamford Bridge were stirred from silence to proclaim their disapproval of new interim manager Rafa Benitez, while over at White Hart Lane the visiting West Ham supporters’ anti-Semitic chants overshadowed Clint Dempsey’s return to form. Football, bloody hell indeed.
There’s no place like home. After slumming it on a muddy cricket field in Antigua, the United States returned to the warm, juiced embrace of LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, where Jurgen, Clint, and Michael Bradley collectively throttled Guatemala 3-1 to enter “The Hex,” the final stage of World Cup qualifying. To mark the occasion, the 
