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Farwell Team GB, Premier League Come Back ASAP

As I’m always keen to learn as evidenced by my qualifications which included LEED AP, FICE, MIStruct E, BSc (Honours I), FASCE, PE and CEng, I took to heart the rather limited (but adjective consistent) response to my proposal that live Sport of any kind is preferable to watching on TV the half empty stadiums holding sports that I have no interest in for 4 years in the Olympic Games.

In order to test my theory, I watched the game I love – football – and recorded it sitting for 6 hours studying Brazil vs Honduras and then Team GB vs South Korea.

As I previously referred to Tom Cleverley as competent, and Danny Sturridge as selfish (he was voted THE most selfish Premier League player by Sirius Soccer by the way) I decided to get the player-cam on them and then watched them alone for 120 minutes each. That’s 10 hours of study, I made notes throughout about pass completion, was it a class piece of skill, did it lead to anything etc, etc.

So now I return to you feeling a lot more educated, in response the allegation that my 49 years watching almost every Manchester United game first live and now on TV as I live in California, didn’t give me any right to criticize players or any representative UK team.

Now that introduction to my penance for my blog is out of the way, you may ask what did I learn?

Firstly I learned that Sport on TV is no match for live sport, sorry but it was 10 hours of chore. I kept thinking of the grass that needed cutting, the washing I needed to sort out and if Lucas Moura could deliver in the Premier league.

Between games they showed fencing, so I watched a sport that compares unfavourably to the other form of fencing as a spectator sport, and I now know for sure that I won’t watch it again for 4 years. It was Épée by the way and I now know the scoring system, for the Three Musketeers, which is in itself very confusing as title as I thought a musket is a gun that needs reloading after each shot and they fight with swords, presumably because they don’t have time to reload but I digress.

Anyway, I proved to myself that I really don’t care about most Olympic Sports.

Finally I assessed Ryan Giggs for 30 mins, and Cleverley and Sturridge,

Giggs was poor, looked like he was carrying his hamstring and so his passing was awful, and general play was poor. But he is old and at the end of a glittering career in which he was great, then several years of average and latterly great again. So i may have been harsh in saying he was there for the beach volleyball girls, which was a joke but which seems to offend some of you sensitive souls so ….sorry.

Cleverley was competent. Short passes good. Long passes poor. First touch erratic, shooting rare but poor. I suggested he was like Michael Carrick but I’m wrong, Carrick is far better at this point but only because he can pass long and accurate. Cleverley can’t, it’s more of a hopeful punt.

Sturridge was selfish, and frankly missed the penalty to lose the game and it summed up his day.

Brazil were also worse than Honduras and the Referee was terrible, he ruined what might have been a great game, he was German and a stickler. Shame on him.

All in all I feel pretty much the same about the Olympics, I don’t care about Team GB who were not very good to be honest and I really do miss the Premier League.

This is my last piece on this subject as all I want from the Olympics is that its economic outcome doesn’t drive the UK into a deeper recession.

You have to smile don’t you?

By Steve Burrows CBE @ifollowsteve

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