ChristopherWhite.info

It’s often claimed that the number of foreign players playing in the Premier League has a detrimental effect on the English national team.

But the two teams contesting last night’s Euro 2008 final, Spain and Germany, have 41% and 51% of their respective domestic leagues made up of foreign players. The Premier League has 63%.

If the flood of foreign players into the domestic leagues did adversely affect a country’s national team’s performance, and a 10% difference in the number of foreign players only translated into a one-goal difference in international tournament success, would a further 12% really make so much greater a difference that a country wouldn’t even qualify?

Or is it more likely that England are just crap?

NB * In Italy (who lost a quarter-final to Spain on penalties), 36% of players in Serie A are foreign.
* You’d probably have to take account of the size of the countries’ native populations to look at this properly.

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A “monkey’s heid” he may have, but he’s right about one thing:

Former Manchester City, Sunderland and Leeds boss Peter Reid has called for Fabio Capello to make Steven Gerrard the permanent England captain.

Reid, who will take charge of the England Legends against Scotland Legends live on ITV4 at Southampton tomorrow (Thursday 15 May), says the Liverpool skipper has the same qualities as England’s iconic Captain Marvel, Bryan Robson. Robson will be captaining the Legends team.

Speaking ahead of the game, Reid said: “There’s different types of captains but I think the inspirational ones in the middle of the park, like Robson, like Gerrard, galvanize the team when they need galvanizing.

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“South American, African and other non-European footballers who cannot speak English will be barred from joining Premier League clubs from the autumn under the new points-based immigration system detailed by ministers yesterday.

“The introduction of an English language test, covering everyday phrases and simple conversation, forms part of a package of tougher rules for skilled migrants from outside Europe applying to work in Britain and for temporary workers and students.

“The immigration minister, Liam Byrne, said that there would have been 20,000 fewer migrants coming to Britain last year had the new rules been in force.

Aside from the obvious irony — that native players can hardly speak English — this is pretty silly on at least two counts:

1. It implies that, for example, a bunch of South Americans running round a pitch speaking Spanish is somehow “worse” than a bunch of Spaniards running round a pitch speaking Spanish. (Only there’s obviously nothing Liam Byrne could do about the latter even if he wanted to.)
2. If these guys’ employers don’t believe it’s necessary for them to speak English — and not just within football — then it’s got precisely cock-all to do with anyone else.

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Portsmouth are now the only Premiership club through to the semi-finals of the FA Cup, guaranteeing a place in the final for a team from the lower leagues — the way the FA Cup is supposed to be.

But if it’s this easy for little teams to knock out the big ones, maybe it’s too hard for them to move up the leagues.

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Via Dan:

A non-league club faces suspension by the Football Association from all competitions for refusing to pay an ex-player jailed on a robbery charge.

Grays Athletic FC terminated Ashley Sestanovich’s contract before his conviction for conspiracy to rob.

Grays have been given 14 days by the FA to pay Sestanovich £14,000 for the five months up to his conviction.

He was jailed for eight years. Two other men were jailed for life for shooting a man dead during the raid.

Sestanovich is arguing that he should have been paid up until the time of his conviction, as the club shouldn’t — legally couldn’t — have terminated his contract until then. If he’d been found not guilty then maybe he’d have a point.

But given that he was on remand for five months, had the club simply suspended him without pay on the entirely reasonable grounds that he was unavailable to play, and then fired him after the verdict, the situation would be exactly the same as what it in fact is.

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We’re not creative enough; we’re not positive enough.

‘Nuff said.

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Blimey. You go away for two weeks and the internet gets shat on (one more time).

To recap for anyone (else) who has been living under a rock: Uzbek billionaire and owner of a fat slice of the Arsenal pie Alisher Usmanov announces that he wants to increase his stake to 25%. Craig Murray, the UK’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan — who knows a thing or two about Usmanov — suggests on his blog that he’s a horrific, violent criminal. Usmanov takes exception to this, and has his lawyers Shillings send various threatening letters to Murray’s web host, Fasthosts, who duly pull down Murray’s site, Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads site, which had repeated Murray’s allegations, and caused collateral damage to others sub-letting server space, notably Boris Johnson.

The blogosphere, unprecedentedly united, rightly agreed that this wasn’t on.

Probably nobody is entirely shocked at the actions of Usmanov or of Schillings. It is, after all, a fairly natural thing for both the oligarch and a firm of libel lawyers to do. Fasthosts on the other hand have capitulated far too easily — and yet who can blame them when the mainstream media act in exactly the same way?

The current Private Eye — a periodical all too familiar with libel writs — has two stories on Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz. Two months ago Cambridge University Press pulped the book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, which repeats claims by the US treasury that his charity funded terrorism. Mahfouz insists this is a defamatory statement on the grounds that he wasn’t involved in running the charity.

The Eye reports that over the summer the Spectator was to run a piece about Mahfouz by Brendan O’Neill, which

‘…listed all the pulped titles and concluded that this Saudi billionaire is “almost single-handedly determining what we Brits may read and hear about contemporary terrorism”. One thing Brits may not read, alas, is O’Neill’s piece: it too was spiked at the last moment!’

And that two weeks ago Nick Cohen wrote his Observer column about Mahfouz, only to have it spiked after “a fit of legal collywobbles”.

It’s an editor’s job to report on people like Mahfouz — or like Usmanov. If they’re not defending their right to publish journalism in the public interest, it’s too much to expect Fasthosts to do so. (Though given the nature of the allegations it’s not a massive conceptual leap to imagine that the Observer and Spectator were more concerned about getting Jihaded in the face than being sued.)

The judges aren’t helping either. The other story in the Eye tells how Mahfouz has brought a defamation claim against Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld over her book Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How To Stop It. Now, in British libel law, to bring an action in the UK there has to be a publication in the UK (this unfortunately includes websites hosted on US servers but viewable here). Funding Evil was published by an American house, with no British edition or promotion in this country, yet Mr Justice Eady ruled that the matter can be dealt with in London’s courts because 23 people imported the book via Amazon, and, because Ehrenfeld refused to acknowledge UK jurisdiction, then ruled in favour of Mahfouz by default. (It’s a shame that Ehrenfeld is trying to get this dealt with in an American court: on appeal in the UK it seems likely either that she’d get the case thrown out or probably win.)

The other questionable case law is one which is directly relevant to this business with Usmanov. Godfrey v Demon, in which it was established that web hosts are liable for defamatory material on their servers, is detailed by the Ministry of Truth. This is now used as a basis for most libel claims on the internet, even though it’s a very specific type of case and entirely different circumstances to Murray and Usmanov.

The defamatory material was an anonymous comment on a discussion board. The claimant had little choice but to go to Demon, as he couldn’t possibly have approached the individual responsible for the post directly. In this instance — and, arguably, where a blogger is using a service such as Wordpress, Typepad or Blogger — the ISP can reasonably be described as the “publisher”. But this manifestly isn’t the case with Murray, or with most bloggers (myself included), running a site that they are almost exclusively responsible for and in their own name — if not directly then easily available by sticking the domain name in WhoIs. In cases such as this, web hosts play a role more like that fulfilled by printers in traditional media, and while printers can be sued (along with the writer, editor, publisher, distributor and distributor’s cat) they almost never are. Ideally in such instances — where a writer is running his own site under his own name — the web hosts would be immune.

Among the other issues is that Schillings were simply using the threat of legal action to shut down debate without ever intending to use it. Many other bloggers pointed out that exactly the same allegations were made in Murray’s book, Murder in Samarkand, and its publishers have gone curiously unchallenged. And then:

Laura Tyler, of Schillings, said they did not intend to sue Murray directly because they did not want to give him a platform to express his views.

This is tantamount to admitting that they don’t really intend to sue anyone about Murray’s allegations at all, given that any attempt to prove them true would necessarily involve Murray testifying. By using threats in the way that they have, they’re forcing non-publication where a court wouldn’t — rulings against “prior restraint” mean that judges are extremely unlikely to grant an injunction preventing publication of defamatory material. (Interestingly, had it ever gone to court Murray might not have been ordered to take down his posts entirely either. After Loutchansky v Times Newspapers in 2001, newspapers were advised to attach a notice to potentially defamatory archive material on the internet, warning against treating it as the truth.) It might be an idea to prevent law firms contacting publishers, writers etc directly, making them go through a court instead, so that if they threaten to sue they have to go through with it — preventing the likes of Usmanov and Schillings using their power and money to scare people into not publishing.

The final major difference between blogs and the traditional media — largely even online — is that it’s the simplest thing in the world to make a correction to a defamatory blog post: via the comments. Since any false statements are so easily remedied, there may be a case for having material published on blogs dealt with as slander rather than libel. Libel suits automatically assume damage to the reputation of the claimant, whereas slander isn’t actionable per se and damage to reputation must be proven. (Hence we have a thoroughly stupid discord between published and spoken defamatory statements even in private communications. If I say to you in person that, for example, George Bush had sex with a goat, he would have to prove damage to his reputation. If I write it to you in a letter — or an email — damage is assumed.) Given the ease with which corrections can be made, it seems entirely reasonable that someone who feels he has been defamed should only be able to bring an action if he can show that he’s suffered damage to his reputation.

Probably unlike many of the other bloggers who have written about this, and certainly unlike Dr Ehrenfeld, I reckon English libel law — in print – strikes a good balance between press freedom and protection of reputation. Via the Reynolds Public Interest Defence, provided that the press practice practice “responsible journalism” and the story is the public interest, a newspaper will win a libel case even if the allegations prove to be untrue. Last year’s Jameel v Wall Street Journal (another Saudi accused of funding terrorism) case in the House of Lords liberalised this even further, so newspapers aren’t hamstrung by libel laws and can make honest mistakes without fear of being sued.

But on the net they’re a complete mess, a mass of made-up-on-the-spot rulings and bad case law, and need reforming badly. (Boris? Private Members’ Bill?) That’s likely to be at best a long time coming, and would be relying on others rather than helping ourselves. Perhaps the best thing that bloggers could do is institute some sort of Libel Insurance.

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Football Focus yesterday unwittingly provided further evidence that England boss Steve McClaren at best talks all kinds of nonsense and at worst just hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing.

In their interview, Ray Stubbs inevitably got round to the question of David Beckham, asking: “Will the MLS keep him sharp enough to play in Euro 2008 qualifiers?”

McClaren’s answer: “We’re hoping so. He’s hoping so. As long as he’s fit, as long as he’s got the motivation, eveybody knows what David Beckham can do. And the proof will be when he comes, when he trains, when he plays. I think we’ll see then that we’re still getting the same kind of performances that we got against Brazil.”¹

But the MLS is such a drastically lower standard of football that he clearly isn’t going to be stretched or have to push himself week-in, week-out, and can’t possibly be as sharp as if he were playing in the Premier League or in Spain. It’s exactly the same logic that prevents the England coaching staff from looking twice at players from the Championship. McClaren frankly seems to be making it up as he goes along.

1 A succesful test of my underused shorthand, I feel.

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The Match of the Day theme tune heralded a new football season last night — finally. I’ve been waiting to hear that music signal the end of a long, boring, football-less¹ summer for months. That and the theme from Local Hero, played at Spennymoor Town FC.

Football in the dizzy heights of the Arngrove Northern League Division One is never going to be the most thrilling of sporting occasions, and the middle 80 minutes of yesterday’s game were pretty dire. But the team won (despite some questionable officiating) — but it’ll do precious little good if the club gets evicted from the ground.

The Town Council wants a whole season’s rent for the ground (at £300 per month²) in advance — money that the club simply doesn’t have. Perhaps if the clubhouse wasn’t still a pile of rubble after the fire nearly four years ago, pint-and-pie sales would quickly make it. But they can’t knock the remains down and rebuild it, because there’s newts living in it.

The club doesn’t have a happy history with authority. In its pre-2005 incarnation as Spennymoor United, they were forced to withdraw from the (much higher) Unibond League after being repeatedly fined for failing to fulfill fixtures. The money problems had led to being unable to pay some players, who obviously then refused to play. But the club couldn’t take on any more — even fat fans who would play for free and take a hammering just to avoid the fines — because the transfer deadline had passed. The transfer window was ostensibly designed originally to harmonise the international transfer market. Footballing authorities often display even less common sense than political ones.

_ _ _
1 The Copa America doesn’t count.
2 The cricket club’s rent is inexplicably £29 per year.

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