I Wish I Was A Geordie - The Blog of Newcastle United in the US

Newcastle's International Break Fiasco Continues

Was there a more fitting image for Newcastle fans' feelings about international breaks than a headbanded Cheick Tioté, along with Papiss Cissé and Demba Ba, getting shepherded off the pitch by riot police in Dakar? For the third time since mid-August, key players have been forced to fly off to far-flung locales to join up with their national teams. All we can do in the meantime is twiddle our thumbs and hope no one turns up injured. (An unsuccessful endeavor in the case of Fabricio Coloccini and Tim Krul.) 

As we have seen with Coloccini and Krul, callups to the national team present a conundrum for supporters. Should we be happy to see players given the chance to represent their countries? Or rejoice when, like Hatem Ben Arfa, they are left to train in relative safety for a couple weeks? And why does the season need to continually come to a screeching halt so often? Newcastle's play this season has been disjointed enough.

Last week's Football Weekly Extra podcast mentioned one possible solution: European leagues should take an extended midseason break, with all international matches scheduled during this one window or during the summer. The rest of the year is for players to be with their clubs. Though all plans have potential drawbacks, this one seems reasonable enough to start with.

The split season already has a precedent in Europe - both Germany and Russia use such a model, as well as many of the Scandanavian countries. If FIFA were to roughly follow the calendar of the Africa Cup of Nations, and schedule an international break in mid-January, many cherished English traditions such as Boxing Day matches could be preserved. 

Of course, the specter of injuries will always be present. Newcastle fans should know this better than anyone, after watching Michael Owen essentially end his career as a quality player at the 2006 World Cup. But having one extended international break would avoid the situation the club has faced with Coloccini this season, where he gets injured with Argentina, only to heal up, return to the national team, and come back injured once again. 

Perhaps such a break would even allow club managers to more closely monitor the progress of their players, as Alan Pardew has urged. Instead of shipping players off for a week and crossing his fingers, Pardew could actually spend a month-long hiatus in the season traveling to training camps and watching how Newcastle's players are practicing.

The current situation, where national teams poach players the week before the season starts and twice in the two months after, is simply unsustainable. Frankly, it has ruined the start of Newcastle's Premier League and Europa League campaigns as much as anything else. Hopefully other managers will join Pardew in calling for a more reasonable balance between clubs and national teams in seasons to come.

Counterpoint: The Collateral Damage Of 'Sports Direct'

Picture this: You're an American sports fan looking for a new pastime, or a purer and more continuous action rush than baseball or the NFL provide, or simply something to watch besides cartoons and infomercials on weekend mornings. You discover English Premier League telecasts on your satellite TV menu and you start to get hooked. The sport has decided advantages over its US counterparts. The pace of play, at this high level, is breathless and unrelenting. The game doesn't stop for an extended advertising break every ten minutes. It's over in a mind-bendingly concentrated two hours, leaving you wanting more. And the atmosphere surrounding the games - the flags, the scarves, the covered-stand stadiums, the singing and chanting - are like no sports experience you've ever imagined.

So you start to cast about for "your" team. Problem is, you're not English, so you don't have a natural tie to any of these teams or cities. And beyond the matches themselves there's not much to distinguish the clubs within the bounds of your 36-inch-diagonal screen and its speakers. What you're sure you don't want is something slick and glitzy and capitalistic. You get enough of that in America.

Hmm, Newcastle United. That sounds sort of old-worldy. The bar down the street has that beer. Black and white: classic. Holy $#!+%, listen to those fans! This is passion. This is tradition. This is England. This is what I want.

Then halftime arrives and the camera outside the stadium shoots you this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buzzkill. Boring, sterile, corporate - the dictionary opposite of everything you were just imagining.

The sports fan above was me. But the camera shot I got at the critical moment was something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Historic, traditional, even religious. And here I am, these couple of short years later, blogging to you.

If you don't think stuff like this matters, you don't understand the power of branding, which happens to be something I teach at a US university. Branding can seem superficial at first glance. But many successful companies pour thousands of hours and millions of dollars at formulating just the right name and symbol, and for good reason. The human brain makes decisions about preference and loyalty on a surprisingly rapid and subconscious level. When I introduce the concept of branding to my students, I talk about a psychological study that concluded it takes 20 minutes of interaction for humans to gather most of the information they need to decide on a marriage partner, and the critical factors can be as simple as glances or nods. If it takes 20 minutes to fall in love with a human, imagine how fast it can happen with a soccer team.

Yesterday my superb co-blogger Matt wrote a post downplaying the significance of the Sports Direct Arena mini-era at Newcastle United, reasoning that the reality of the club and stadium and players and fans is what matters, not the naming, and everyone still called it St. James' Park anyway. Problem is, the reality - especially for global fans - comes mostly after the decision to support a club has been made. And that decision, for those outside Newcastle especially, is made mainly in contact with media that are obligated to the official branding. So I respectfully disagree with Matt on this one. I also think his view is characteristic of someone who grew up in a place - Miami - without deep roots of sports tradition and with lots of other things to do besides sit in an arena and scream, in contrast to my upbringing in Wisconsin where half the year is devoted to sports and drinking because you basically can't go outside without 60,000 other people around to warm you. Our state's major stadiums still carry their uncommercial historic names, with the exception of Miller Park, which can hardly be called an obtrusive sponsorship for a baseball team known as the Milwaukee Brewers.

Sports Direct and its five-minute-design logo are fine branding for an online discounter that wants to send the message "we're fast and cheap." It's pathetic branding for a soccer team or stadium. While any naming rights deal must balance aesthetics with profit, the calculation must take into account the potential long-term effect of the brand mismatch on customer growth and loyalty. There's little doubt in my mind that just as the club began to get serious about globalizing its audience, "Sports Direct Arena," in a league populated by Old Traffords and White Hart Lanes and Stamford Bridges, cost Newcastle United some number of fans, especially from afar. I'm glad one of them wasn't me.

The Irrelevant Legacy Of Sports Direct Arena

What's in a name? Newcastle supporters horrified at the decision to brand St. James' Park as the Sports Direct Arena, now celebrating the removal of the tacky moniker, would say quite a bit. As the great Wonga debate continues, there appears to be universal agreement that the St. James' restoration is a move the club and its new corporate partner got right. 

I won't pretend to argue that bringing back St. James' Park is a bad thing. But on the whole, did the name change to Sports Direct Arena actually mean anything at all?

As I joked on Twitter this week, all of the fans continued to call the ground St. James' Park, as did many journalists and commentators. In a symbol of the narrow line he always has to tread between supporters and management, Alan Pardew usually refused to refer to his home stadium by any name at all. 

To me, the protests which greeted the arrival of Sports Direct Arena missed the point, and the outcry over Wonga feels similarly short-sighted. We're not cheering for Wonga, Virgin, Northern Rock, or any other company that plasters itself over the black and white stripes of the shirt - it's the badge and the club that stir our passions. In the same vein, whatever official name hangs on the stadium gate, it will always be St. James' Park to the fans, the grand stage where memories are born.

I was surprised to hear my co-blogger Bob say in this week's podcast that the ill-fated Sports Direct Arena name would have affected his decision to choose Newcastle, had he not already fallen in love with the club. It's obviously difficult to retrace your steps and imagine doing things differently, especially given how much Newcastle United has meant to me the past five years. But I truly think that whatever the name of the stadium, hearing the fans in full throat would have still turned my heart - and his as well - toward Tyneside in the end. A silly name doesn't diminish the magic of the place itself.

Mike Ashley certainly courts controversy with many decisions he makes about the club. And when first hearing the name Sports Direct Arena, or picturing a Wonga-emblazoned shirt, it is easy to briefly lose sight of what really matters. That's the club, the stadium, the players, and the memories you have made with them - things so precious that they will never be erased by corporate sponsorship.

Wonga And The Limits Of Non-Geordie Understanding

Newcastle United's new Wonga sponsorship and the polarization surrounding it have been a cultural lesson for we non-Geordies who support the club from afar.

It's unlikely a sponsorship like this would've caused a similar stir in America. Naming rights aren't popular here. But the objections are often superficial, more aesthetic than moral, with a resigned business-is-business shrug. Even as cyclist Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his Tour de France titles and been accused of being at the center of an international doping ring, what controversy there's been over the sponsorship of Sporting Kansas City's jewel-box stadium by Armstrong's LIVESTRONG foundation was quickly dispatched by the club.

Not surprisingly, American commentators in the NUFC Twittersphere have seemed largely unbothered by the "legal loan shark" affliation. I am too, personally. If we're going to get into the business of policing the morals of shirt sponsors, hardly a big and successful business on earth is likely to be pure enough - certainly not Northern Rock, for example, as the Independent cogently pointed out yesterday.

But the Independent is not in Newcastle, and I'm not a Geordie. There's something in the tenor of local reaction to the Wonga sponsorship that makes me suspect it's problematic for a substantial segment of Newcastle fans in a personal, visceral way someone like me who's never so much as set foot on Tyneside can understand. Perhaps the economic downturn has hit the North East of England in a way that makes the people of the region especially vulnerable to and resentful of this particular type of business. That's a guess but it seems to fit what I'm reading. It would also befit a deal made on behalf of Geordies by management from outside the region.

Whatever the reason, I'm feeling like this is an issue that goes beyond the limits of my non-Geordie understanding. Therefore, even though this sponsorship hardly moves my own moral compass one degree, I intend to give my troubled sisters and brothers in Newcastle football spirit the benefit of the doubt and stand with them on this one. The same is true for Newcastle's Muslim fans and players who may object, even though I'm not Muslim and not sure how Virgin Money is OK under their law if Wonga isn't. The bottom line is, it doesn't have the power to affect me like Toon supporters who are Geordie or Muslim or both. You won't see me in a Wonga-emblazoned shirt unless and until they convince me it's OK.

On The Air: What's Wonga With Newcastle?

By popular (?) request we're now aiming to podcast weekly, and in this week's interest-raising installment, the three blogmeisters examine the insides and outsides of the new Wonga sponsorship, the left sides and right sides of Fergie and Santon (or as he's known on Fox in America, "Stanton"), a champagne result (if not performance) against Bordeaux, and five-sixths of a champagne performance (if not result) against Manchester United. Plus: Is Matt Feltz's Perchinho potion strong enough to revive even Xisco? Click below to listen, or visit our iTunes page to download the show into your very own device for posterity.

 

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When Will Pardew Switch Tactics?

It's a script we've all read multiple times this season. For the first 15 minutes of yesterday's match, it looked like Newcastle had only 8 players on the pitch, given how one-sided the pressure was in the opposition's favor. After Man U scored twice from corners, Alan Pardew belatedly switched formations, and the team came to life. As much as we've praised the manager for his success in a difficult situation, the continued sluggish starts - aided by poor tactical decisions - are the product of his mistakes. Will he correct them soon enough to turn the season around?

Pardew generally opts to match the opponent's formation. In other words, he's more likely to play some variation of 4-4-2 if the opposing manager will do the same. This is understandable, because in a 2-on-2 battle in the center of midfield, Cheick Tioté and Yohan Cabaye will likely outclass their counterparts.

The only problem? Sir Alex Ferguson didn't cooperate yesterday, opting for a wingerless shape that's pretty similar to what we've recommended for Newcastle this season. Packing the midfield with Wayne Rooney, Michael Carrick, Tom Cleverley, and Shinji Kagawa left Tioté and Cabaye doubled up, contributing to Man U's early dominance. Moving Jonás Gutiérrez inside helped even the numbers, allowing Newcastle to take off.

Unlike Newcastle's starting 11, which is flexible enough to use the same players in a variety of formations, it was pretty easy to look at the visitors' lineup and see what the idea was. Pardew should have recognized this and made the change prior to kickoff, rather than waiting for the inevitable bloodbath.

The other decision of note was starting Shane Ferguson at left back and putting Davide Santon on his natural right foot. It's a choice we (along with many other supporters) have urged Pardew to make in the past, especially given Ferguson's recent play.

While the attacking presence of Rafael limited Ferguson's ability to surge forward, Santon had plenty of time and space, especially toward the end of the first half. His teammates recognized this, as Santon tied Jonás atop Newcastle's possession ranks, with 77 touches each. As is often the case with Santon, he looked quick and comfortable on the ball, but without any impact (0 chances created; 0/4 crossing). Neither Santon nor Ferguson was a liability, and Pardew should give the pair another chance in their natural positions, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

The presence of Ferguson in the lineup indicates another strategic decision that may not suit Newcastle's players - an emphasis on crossing. Excluding set plays, Newcastle poured in 32 crosses yesterday. While 7 of those found the head of a teammate, it obviously didn't lead to any goals. That's because Papiss Cissé and (especially) Demba Ba aren't really that type of striker. Both are capable of scoring from the air, but are more likely to make something happen with the ball at their feet. Using width and crossing, rather than the natural incisiveness of players like Cabaye and Hatem Ben Arfa, is likely a losing strategy going forward.

Given Pardew's much-publicized use of statistics, none of what I've pointed out should be a mystery to him. For the club's sake, he needs to follow what the figures tell him, starting at the Stadium of Light in two weeks.

Win Over Bordeaux Was Vintage Newcastle

The start of Newcastle's season has left fans waiting for something more.  A new defender in the transfer window, the end of international breaks, key players to return from injury, a more fluid approach to the game - anything to get excited about.  Maybe a visit from Bordeaux was all the club needed to return champagne football to St. James' Park.

Alan Pardew has frequently expressed an understanding of the team's static, dour start to the season, even if he hasn't been able to translate that understanding to the players during the match. It was even enough to elicit a few groans when the manager's eight-year contract extension was announced.  Fans feared that patternless, blunt-edged attacking play would become the norm until 2020.

But in watching the team shift between 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 on Thursday, with Yohan Cabaye and Vurnon Anita making cameo appearances inside the penalty area, there were certainly hints of the style and flair this set of players is capable of. Most impressively, Newcastle's outburst came without the involvement of Demba Ba and Hatem Ben Arfa, the club's only two attacking outlets to this point in the season.

Cabaye's 40-49 (82%) passing performance was the worst among Newcastle's defense and midfield, according to WhoScored.com, which is a pretty good indication of how effective Thursday's squad was on that front. And of course, his pinpoint diagonal pass to Gabriel Obertan set up Shola Ameobi's opening tap-in. The back four, even with noted long-ball merchants Danny Simpson and Mike Williamson involved, misfired on only 10 of 176 passes attempted against Bordeaux. Promising stuff, to say the least.

But all of that good feeling will evaporate if Newcastle again looks flat against Manchester United tomorrow. While this is the kind of match fans typically treat as a bonus, it's one that Newcastle can win, and maybe even needs to win to stay near the European places in the league table. If Cabaye and Cheick Tioté are themselves again, they can dominate a suspect Man U midfield. Two victories going into the international break would be exactly what we've all been waiting for.

On The Air: Newcastle Hands It Over

On the latest radio-like outpourings of the best - OK, the only - Newcastle United web site run entirely by suspect Americans, the Bloggers Three welcome special guest Phil Lavanco (@de_facto_phil) to rap about Ba handing over a draw, Newcastle handing over a contract, and no one handing over a defender. Plus a peek into the delightful, twisted soul of Toon Army NYC. Click below to listen, or visit our iTunes page to download and enjoy at your own pace - feel free to rate and comment.

 

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