The Indie-Pop band from Portland, Oregan USA has released their 4th studio album. “Music For Men” (Columbia/Sony, 2009) was co-produced by Rick Rubin, who has also produced the comebacks of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash as well as the Beastie Boys. Therefore success might be preprogrammed. What I reckon, the tattered music company is desperately looking for new faces and voices to get the business off the mod. Beth Ditto is one of those personalities, who may fit in that profile. Her appearance is just as massive as her voice is. You could think Gossip grew up in the middle of Europe like UK or Sweden because of the similar music style. That’s why they are more popular and successful in Europe, not in US, where the college punk is everywhere. The garage band is influenced by the post punk of the lesbian riots at the end of the 90′s. Unlikely, the 3 Americans were used to lead those riots. However, they achieved their mainstream break trough by the single “Standing In The Way Of Control“ (Kill Rock Stars, Lado 2005). Afterwards Beth Ditto used her new status to play and provoke with media. She strips on stages or is covered on magazines half naked. This extraordinary view you might get used to first due to her body index which is close to the one of Bud Spencer. If you analyse her music, though, the band is the best garage, indie-pop, post-punk band currently. “Heavy Cross” is incredible and already in my ears. A shame that the album is a bit too fancy and romantic and confirms the new status of the band, profit based pop music. Whatever, Beth Ditto works more and more on her approach to step on the Madonna level. She will do so with music like “Music For Men“.

Michael Joseph Jackson (* August 29th, 1958 in Gary, Indiana – † Juni 25th, 2009 in Los Angeles, California) was a US American singer, songwriter and entertainer. Commercially, he was one of the most successful musicians in history and sold approximatelly 750 million records. The Album Thriller produced in 1982 with more then 100 Million copies is listed as the best-selling studio album of all time. His influences on the music nowadays is immeasurable. I am honestly proud to have seen him live on his HiStory tour in Berlin 1996. For me he always was the coolest guy on stage. In his honour I want to provide you with his best songs fom my point of view, which have attended my life.

Between all the gossip, which was reported during the last days I want to quote one sentence by British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. He said to the being of Michael Jackson: “No one else felt so deep but no one else flew so high, though.”

Never forget!

1 – The Way You Make Me Feel – Bad 1987, Epic Records

2 – I Want You Back (Jackson 5) – The Jackson 5 1969, Motown

3 – Bad – Bad 1987, Epic Records

4 – Thriller – Thriller 1982, Epic Records

5 - Beat It – Thriller 1982, Epic Records

6 – Billy Jean – Thriller 1982, Epic Records

7 – Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough – Off the Wall 1979, Epic Records

8 – They Don’t Care About Us – HiStory 1995, Sony Records

9 – Black or White – Dangerous 1991, Epic Records

10 – Smooth Criminal – Bad 1987, Epic Records

Khedira, Boenisch, Höwedes, Aogo, Boateng, Neuer, Castro, Özil, Dejagah, Beck, Marin

Let’s have a look on the team, which played against Spain on last Sunday the 21st. The men from Schalke 04 Manuel Neuer and Bendedikt Höwedes have been the only players with German roots. Marko Marin was born in Bosnia, Andreas Beck in Russia and Sebastian Boenisch in Poland. Ashkan Dejagah has got Iranian parents was born in Teheran and grew up in Berlin, Wedding. Jerome Boateng grew up in Berlin, Wedding too. His father is Ghanaian and his mother German. Mesut Özil has got Turkish parents and grew up in Gelsenkirchen in one class with Neuer and Höwedes. Gonzalo Castro has got a Spanish mother and a German dad. Sami Khedira has got a Tunesian and Denis Aogo a Nigerian dad. Both of them never spend a visit in these countries.

According to be faced to all of the crises of our time like financial crisis, political election crisis, Iran crisis, Quelle crisis or Michael Jackson crisis, I decided to write about something funny regarding football. I collected on line a couple of quotes, which intelligent football players have provided over the years. Some of them reinforce football stereotypes like being talented in the feet and empty in the head. However, some of them were honestly meant. In fact they make you definitely laugh. Enjoy …

‘I couldn’t settle in Italy – it was like living in a foreign country.’ – Ian Rush

‘I definitely want Brooklyn to be christened, but I don’t know into what religion yet.’ – David Beckham

‘We lost because we didn’t win.’ – Ronaldo

‘I’d like to play for an Italian club, like Barcelona.’ – Mark Draper

‘My parents have been there for me, ever since I was about 7.’ – David Beckham

‘It’s headed away by John Clark, using his head.’ – Derek Rae, Commentator

‘Nottingham Forest have now lost six matches without winning.’ – David Coleman, Commentator

‘We do not need an alienist. What we need is a victory.’ – Alexander Frei

‘I’ve spent a lot of money on booze, birds and cars – the rest I just squandered!’ – Georg Best

‘I give only one word: Thank you!’ – Hort Hrubesch

‘Milan or Madrid – at least Italy!’ – Andy Möller

‘War and Oliver Kahn.’ – Mehmet Scholl’s fears.

‘I hope, we have a little bit lucky.’ – Lothar Matthäus needs more English lessons

‘If we’ll win every match of the season, we could be the champion.’ – Nils Ode Kamphuis

‘Regarding my hair style I am a realist.’ – Rudi Völler

‘Netzer’s comments are like his hair cut – boring.’ – Stefan Effenberg

‘If you wanna celebrate I big party at Wembley, do not invite the Germans.’ - Alan Shearer

‘If I could walk on water the detractors would claim “look, he can not swim.”‘ - Berti Vogts

‘The Croatians are supposed to kick everything what is not moving. If so, our players should not be afraid.’- Berti Vogts

‘The Swedish are no Dutch. You could see that.’ – Franz Beckenbauer

‘We do not bury one’s sand in the head.’ – Lothar Matthäus

‘He is working the entire day. We may call that alcoholic, I think.’ – Rudi Völler

‘I’ve been so happy as the manager told me: “Get undressed and let’s go!”‘ – Thomas Doll

‘Some times you lose and some times the others win.’ – Otto Rehagel

sources:

http://www.fun-ohne-ende.de/lustige_sprueche/lustige_sprueche_anzeigen_17_1.html

http://aveit1.netfirms.com/funny_player_quotes.htm

Believing reports of the Spanish newspaper Marca (which is sympathetic to Real Madrid FC) Christiano Ronaldo signed up a 6-years contract including astonishing conditions at Real Madrid FC. He is supposed to earn 13 Million Euro a year, after taxes of course! The recent best paid football player was the Swedish Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Inter Mailand with assumed 12 Million Euro, after taxes.

13.000.000 Euro …

1.083.333, 33 Euro a month

252.777, 78 Euro a week

36.111,11 Euro a day

1.504,63 Euro an hour

25,08 Euro a minute

0,42 Euro a second !!!

That means, Christiano Ronaldo earns …

0,36 Euro per heartbeat (70 beats a minute – average of an adult)

1,25 Euro per blink of an eye (20 blinks a minute – average)

1,57 Euro per breath (16 breaths of an 20-30 years old guy – average)

18.055,56 Euro per shower (2 times a day)

12.037,04 Euro per meal (3 meals a day)

9.027,78 Euro per trainings session (6 hours football based training a day)

180.555,56 Euro per match (assuming 6 matches per month – average excluding bonuses)

With 13.000.000 Euro you could pay …

817 VW Golf 6 (assuming 1 VW Golf 6 = 15.900 Euro)

52.699 semester at HWR Berlin (due to 246,68 Euro study fee)

2.000.000 box office admissions (assuming 6,50 Euro for a single student ticket)

1.733.333 home matches of 1.FC Union Berlin (assuming 7,50 Euro for a single student ticket)

43.333 months rent-free (assuming 1 rent = 300 Euro)

520.000 weeks basic food shopping for free (assuming 25 Euro per week)

1.000.000 boxes of Beck’s beer (assuming 1 box = 13 Euro; excluding box deposit)

260.000 nights out (assuming 1 night out = 50 Euro)

52 detached houses (assuming 1 detached house = 250.000 Euro)

2.367.941 Bic Mac Maxi Menus at McDonalds (assuming 1 Bic Mac Maxi Menu = 5,49 Euro)

26.052 holiday flights to Fuerteventura (assuming 1 holiday flights a 7 days = 499 Euro)

146.892 months free ride for Berlin ABC (assuming month ticket BVG Berlin ABC = 88,50 Euro)

2.063.492 free rides from my hometown Gransee to Berlin (assuming 1 ticket = 6,30 Euro)

…..

Expansive joy: Christiano Ronaldo

Real Madrid offered 94 Million Euro for the Portuguese football player Christiano Ronaldo. What an amount for one single human being! Imagine, what can you get for this amount instead?! You may could lose the overview by all the crises, currently. Financial Crisis, Car Producer Crisis, Climate Crisis, Swine Flue Crisis, Middle East Crisis or SPD Crisis are not yet solved. You could say the whole world is a single Crisis. Except a Spanish building contractor named Florentino Perez, who faced all the crises with enthusiastic spending capital. Florentino Perez is the new chairman at honourable football club Real Madrid. He won the election because he was the sole candidate. Sharp tongues assuming he bought his own chair, but that is only a rumour and always appears at those situations. Mr Perez already has been chairman at Real Madrid FC during 2000 and 2006. He was the inventor of the Galacticos consisting of stars like Beckham, Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos etc. At this time he already spent awesome amounts for stars of the scene. You could say he gives a sh*t on crises! As he did on last Wednesday as he provided 75 Million Pounds from his wallet to Manchester United to activate the honestly not untalented football player Cristiano Ronaldo out of his existing contract at Old Trafford. Although he payed 65 Million Euro for the Brazilian football player Kaka, besides best player in the world a year earlier the CR. The good old neo-economist John Maynard Keynes would probably jump into the Thames for joy, because of these high investments at these bad times. The thing is, though. Could 4 legs be valuable 159 Million Euro?! Some Examples: The Bundesliga Team VFL Wolfsburg just became German Champion with a player budget of 55 Million Euro. Mathematicaly seen you might take 0.58 Christian Ronaldos to win the German Bundesliga by one single player! What else can you do with such an amount of money? I do pay study fees to be able to study at the HWR in Berlin. With 94 Million Euro I could study almost 39.0042 semesters at HWR. Or I could prepay my rent and could live almost 313.751 months for free. You could do honestly solve a lot of problems with such an amount. For Example, our government just need to raise 16.898 Cristiano Ronaldos and sell them to Florentino Perez to be completely debtless. So easy! But investing it in one single human being, who runs, tackles, shoot goals, passes, dives, is talented on the pitch as well as in the nightclub?! C’mon!!!

Celebrating the deal in Hollywood

A Farewell present for "The Right One"

Additionally to the pictures I have took and already posted 2 weeks ago I uploaded a video clip from our impressions at Stamford Bridge, home pitch of Chelsea FC. The video clip was made right after the match against Blackburn Rovers. Although Chelsea finished the season on the 3rd position, they are not delighted by this result due to the huge financial investments and ambitions they started with. Luiz Felipe Scolari, who needed to clear the chair at the club in February 2009 after only 6 months in charge. However, they qualified for Champions League next year, but must play extra round before. The interim solution has been the head coach of Russian National Squad, Guus Hiddink. To be honest, my impression was that the Chelsea supporters felt in love with the successful dutch manager. Although they knew he signed up for a loan until the end of the season. The good connections to Chelsea chairman Roman Abramowitsch, who signed the dutch globetrotter for Russian National Manager were not enough to convince Guus Hiddink neither did the appeal by the supporters of the club. Besides, 2 weeks after our incredible stay Chelsea has won the FA Cup, the oldest national football cup in the world. So Guus Hiddink did not leave West London empty-handed.

5 – Bosse – Liebe ist Leise

4 – Poni Hoax – Pretty Tall Girls

3 – Peaches – Talk to Me

2 – La Roux – In For The Kill (Skream’s Lets Get Ravey Remix)

1 – Djali Zwan – The Number Of The Beast (Spun OST)

Well .. Did you like these tracks, too? Which one of these songs do you like most?

There is Roman Abramowitsch, somewhere.

Due to my parents anniversary and my dad’s 50th birthday me and my family had been to London for a couple of days. You must know my family is a weird family. In a positive way of course. We are all football maniacs. I have never seen a family who is deeper into football accept us. My dad is the chairman of our home town football club Häsener SV. My Mom is treasurer at the club. Both of them are running the business mostly alone you can say. Although they are doing it nonsalaried. Yes, it is voluntary! Unbelievable! They invest every day almost 2 hours for the business of the football club. Honestly! They are the soul of the club and every single club member appreciates the work what they are doing day in day out. Therefore my brother and me thought let’s give them a present which they won’t forget for a while. You have to say my brother plays as well as I do in the first team of the football club! He plays center back and I play center mid. Further I am the captain of the team. Isn’t it a great family?! We are together every weekend; on the pitch! Anyway, back to the amazing present we have thought of. You must know I have been 10 months in Bournemouth, South East England last year and met a couple of new and great friends. I am still in touch with most of them. But one of them I am still really close to. We are calling every once a while. He is English and arranged 4 tickets for the Barclays Premier League. I told him I don’t care which match we will see if it’s at least Premier League. Yeah, the probably best football league in the world. At least the league where the most money is spend and nearly every match is sold out. Although the best players of the world were playing there. He did managed it to get tickets for the last home match of Chelsea FC. The club of the Russian oligarch Roman Abramowitsch, who almost lost 70 % of his fortune due to the financial crisis. What a shame! Anyway, we are going to see a live match at the home country of football. We were looking forward like we never did it before.

We went to London from Leipzig because it was much cheaper. We arrived well in London Stansted and caught the bus to London city. “London be aware, the Ruch’s are coming!” might be a great slogan on a banner in front of the bus! We arrived at night and at first checked in the hotel. Afterwards we had a walk along the Thames! Bloody stunning view at London lights … Besides we needed to chill out the jet lag a bit and how can you do that best in Great Britain?! Yes, go into a pub a have a wonderful pint! We did so but we did not remembered one thing. The British curfew! Man, who invented that, please?! Imagine: Berlin, Saturday night 1 pm, city, every single bar is closed. There are definitely going to be more then 2 riots. However, the continental family was exhausted by the journey and we went to bed. On Sunday we went at first to Hype Park to relax and afterwards we met Tom my mate from Bournemouth. We had a chat about previous times as usual, but I was really happy and delighted to see Tom, his wife Jaana and his lad Sam again. The kick off was at 4 pm so there was still time for a quick pint as usual on the island. Besides my dad and my brother had the pleasure to try glorious fish & chips. And they did loved it! I love it, too. We are one family obviously.

At 3 pm we arrived at Stamford Bridge, the home stadium of Chelsea FC. At the same weekend Manchester United FC just won the Championship and there was actually no point which the team had to motivate about. There were already qualified for the Champions League next season and they focused on FA Cup final against FC Everton. Nevertheless, we are going to see a Premier League match. For a football maniac family like us a day dream. The pitch was quite small but the grandstand of the stadium, which is located in the middle of a living area between Chelsea and Fulham, was stunning. A pretty tiny stadium where almost 40.000 people could fit in. This day it was sold out, obviously. And from the first minute on everyone of us had goose flesh. The singing from the grandstand, the near to the pitch and the world class players and the atmosphere at all were amazing. What I did not like was that whole England especially in the stadium is full of rules: no alcohol, no smoking, no standing, no walking during the match and so on. Further I did not like compared to the atmosphere in German stadiums that the supporters only weart the shirts. No flags, no scarves, no supporting acts and no spontanious songs. They sung the 3 songs as they probably used to sing every weekend. Anyway, they match finished 2-0 chelsea. Florent Malouda scored first half directly in front of us and Nicolas Anelka scored second half. Chelsea determined most of the match due to the extraordinary physical abilities. After the match we had the honour that the players had shown their appreciation to the supporters because of end of the season. So they walked around the pitch and handshaked a bit and gave away their clothes. A shame for us East German fellows had been that Michael Ballack was not in the team that day. Why not? He stayed at home because of a flue. Damn british weather! Finally we shot a lot of pictures, went to the pub for a final pint and just felt to bed after this lovely day. Thanks Tom! The next day we did some sightseeing. All the big and popular places we wanted to see. So how do we see them all? Take a typical vehicle of London. Go by bus. We did so and went to Tower, Tower Bridge, Swiss RE, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Parlament, London Eye, Thames, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park Corner, Beatles Museum, National Gallery and finally Oxford Street.

Stamford Bridge

The Team

Ashley Cole gives away his shoes

It has been 4 awesome days for us. We definitely enjoyed it a lot. Our wallet surely did not. But it was holiday time. A wonderful present and tour for a family consisting of football maniacs!

source: tagesspiegel.de 01/2008

Every single self-appointed football sports media just threws out one possible, maybe, surely happening football player transfer assumption after the other, recently. Unbelievable, but nothing new especially at this time of the season. The season is nearly over and the contracts of the players are going to end up.

Christiano Ronaldo from Manchester United to Real Madrid for 60 Million €. Frank Ribery from FC Bayern Munich to Manchester United for 70 Million € or Frank Ribery from FC Bayern Munich to FC Barcelona for 20 Million € incl. Alexander Hleb. Diego from SV Werder Bremen to FC Bayern Munich for 18 Million €. Louis von Gaal from AZ Alkmaar to FC Bayern Munich for the Head Coach position. David Beckham from AC Milan to Tottenham Hotspur for who knows how much €. Let’s spin the wheel right further. Let’s assume some transfers …

Jürgen Klinsmann, former FC Bayern Munich Head Coach may go in the village to TSG 1899 Hoffenheim headed by Mr SAP, Dietmar Hopp. In case Ralf Rangnick, current Head Coach at the village club continues complaining about the shuted off supply of the chairman’s valet. How do you call this attitude after half a year on top of a midd-class european league? Oh yeah, megalomaniac. Incidentally being maniac, where are all those offers around 170.000.000 € for 1 single human in shape of a football player? It might be one year ago as Real Madrid provided almost 170.000.000 € for Christiano Ronaldo. Besides Real Madrid FC has got almost 480.000.000 € debts and would never get a license to play at ther German Bundesliga due to black accounts, manipulation on the top (previous club president Ramon Calderon might have manipulated the elections last year to be elected again) and they are supposed to have probably thousands of credits and loans. Only by their name, which is full of tradition and history they might get every loan they need? In fact of transfers big chairmans of supporting companies and sponsors advertises with big transfer deals they are going to pay out of their own valet, just to get an influentual postion within the club.

Nowadays the clubs do not threw around with maniac offers due to financial crisis, thank God! Today a Christiano Ronaldo is only 70.000.000 € worth. In fact he is 100.000.000 € less worth. A huge lost in value, isn’t it? But it doesn’t matter in a world of football, which is ruled by money and assumptions.

The example VFL Wolfsburg, a football club from the drawing-board of VW shows how the business football works nowadays. The combination of a football scientist, named Felix Magath Head Coach and Sports Manager, who has got all abilities to manage by himself and a team which changed within 2 years completely is the simple story of success, apparantly. VFL Wolfsburg can be the German Champion 2009. Although Mr Magath might have thought: Well, success is not everything, money is even better! Now he signed up for Schalke 04. A club full of emotions and actually in the middle of a crisis. Good luck Mr Money .. sorry .. Mr Magath!

Finally, I have got the impression that “Money Rules The Ball”! A shame if you think about which function the biggest and most influental sport football has got for the society. It’s like “Same Sh*t Different Day”! What do you think?

related sports media:

Sky Sports Football News, BBC Sports Football, Spox.com, Sport1.de, Bild, Kicker, 11Freunde