clive

In a highly contested Football Book of the year award at the @sportsbookaward, #RiseoftheVillans got the Highly Commended distinction 😁 Happy days!!!! 📚 amazon.co.uk/Rise-Villans-I…

Futbol bazen insana oyundan daha fazlasını anlatıyor. Bu akşam Freiburg – Aston Villa arasında oynanan UEFA Avrupa Ligi finalini, bana göre dünyanın en güzel ilk üç stadı arasına rahatlıkla girecek bir atmosferde izlerken; bir şehrin terbiyesini, insanların birbirine tahammülünü, hatta hayata bakışını yeniden görme fırsatı buldum. Açıkçası aklımda kalan şey maçtan çok tribünler oldu. 40 bine yakın insanın girdiği bir stad. Final gecesi. Büyük organizasyon. Ama ne bir itiş kakış, ne gereksiz bir gerginlik, ne de o tuhaf telaş hissi vardı. İnsanlar belli ki maç izlemekten daha çok, güzel bir akşam yaşamaya gelmişlerdi. Futbolu hayatlarının merkezine koymadan, hayatın keyifli bir parçasına dönüştürmüşlerdi. Freiburg taraftarı ise gerçekten etkileyiciydi. Maç boyunca hiç susmadılar. Gol yediler ama içlerindeki öfkeyi tribüne kusmadılar; daha çok aidiyetlerinin sesini yükselttiler. Takımını sevmekle rakibine düşman olmayı aynı şey sanmayan bir futbol kültürü vardı stadyumda. Uzun zamandır tribünde bu kadar gerçek, bu kadar gösterişsiz ama güçlü bir enerji hissetmemiştim. Maç öncesindeki görüntü de ayrı bir hikayeydi. Koltuklara bırakılmış bayraklarla oluşan koreografi, stadın ortasına bir buçuk dakikada kurulan o dev resim, iki tarafın da maç başlamadan birbirini bastırmaya değil eğlenmeye çalışması, hepsi farklı bir hikayeyi anlatıyor gibiydi. Bir an durup düşündüm: Futbol aslında sahada oynanan oyundan ziyade bir tiyatro, bir festival, binlerce insanın birkaç saatliğine aynı hikayeye inanma hali gibiydi sanki. En çok da maç sonunda etkilendim. Takımı kazansa da kaybetse de insanlar gecenin tadını çıkarmaya devam ediyordu. Çünkü bazı hayatlarda futbol, insanın hayatından çalan bir spor branşı olmaktan öte; hayatına eşlik eden bir eğlence olmuş. Medeniyeti büyük laflarda aramaktansa, aynı anda binlerce insanın birbirinin keyfini bozmadan eğlenebilmesinde aramak daha doğru sanırım. Futbolun geleceği belki daha hızlı oyundan ziyade; insanların tribünde birbirine rağmen değil, birlikte eğlenmeyi yeniden öğrenmesinde…

Champo League! Now onto Wednesday!💜💜💜

Manager of the Season. Manage 15 games at a Manchester United that's spent another trillion ,come on in, your name's on the list. Manage 3 seasons at Villa, 3 semi finals, 1 final, 2 Champions League qualifications using half a dozen players who played in the Championship, you can't come in. A decision so laughable that when someday Unai is nominated, I hope he tells them to fuck off. A mockery of what achievement versus caretaking is.

There was a time when a European final belonged to the supporters who dragged their club there. Not anymore. When Aston Villa were handed roughly 11,000 tickets for a Europa League final in a 70,000-plus stadium, the number itself told the story. UEFA can package the event however it likes — “festival of football”, “European showpiece”, “global celebration” — but the modern European final is no longer built around supporters. It is built around clients. The supporters fund the journey. The corporates inherit the destination. Villa fans will have spent thousands following the club across Europe. Flights, hotels, time off work, loyalty schemes built over years. Yet when the final arrives, huge sections of the stadium are reserved for sponsors, hospitality guests, executives, delegates and “neutral” allocations that often end up on resale sites within hours. And supporters are expected to accept it. UEFA’s defence is familiar. Sponsors fund competitions. Broadcasters need space. Hospitality drives revenue. All true. But football crossed a line when the event surrounding the final became more important than the supporters inside it. The optics are awful because fans can see it themselves. A finalist gets 11,000 tickets while corporate packages costing thousands remain available. Genuine supporters scramble through ballots with lottery-like odds, while neutral areas fill with tourists taking photos during the warm-up. And UEFA wonders why resentment grows. Supporters are constantly called “the lifeblood of the game” until ticket allocations are discussed. Then they become an inconvenience to work around premium inventory. Football did not become Europe’s dominant sport because sponsors created atmosphere. The noise, colour and emotion UEFA sells globally every season is generated by match-going supporters — the same people increasingly pushed aside at the biggest games. The “neutral fan” concept is perhaps the biggest fiction of all. In theory it promotes access. In reality it fuels resale markets, inflated prices and thousands travelling ticketless out of desperation. UEFA could change it tomorrow. Finalists could receive 70 per cent of the stadium combined. Corporate sections could shrink. Hospitality would still exist. But that would mean sacrificing revenue. And modern football has shown repeatedly which side wins that argument. #AVFC #scfreiburg

Villans Only one Villa team have broken the glass ceiling in our European history, we know their names, immortal in the history of our great club. Many of us have tried and failed to to bring a magical European trophy back to Villa Park. I remember that night against Atletico Madrid, glorious failure on the night. I've never heard Villa Park so loud. The Holte lead the way, and young Villans in K3, K4, K5, you have the chance to do something special and louder. You can and you must. Make this grand old stadium stand for 90 minutes and never relent for one damn second. But the Holte End is one fourth of the jigsaw. Trinity. We need you. North. We need you. Witton (sorry Doug). We need you. Bayern Munich. Beaten. PSG. Beaten. Atletico Madrid. Beaten. Anderlecht. Beaten. Athletic Bilbao. Beaten. Barcelona. Beaten. Inter Milan. Beaten. Ajax. Beaten. Celtic. Beaten. A handful of clubs have those scalps. The special sauce in every win? You, Villans. YOU. Every one of those wins, the noise rivaled anywhere at any time. We face admirable foe and a special football club that I know very well. A club who believed in miracles and miracles came true for them. Our players need our voices, our songs, our heart and soul on Thursday. Every stand. Every Villan, old or young. Remember when you walked into Villa Park for the first time? The joy, the tears, the pride, holding the hand of your Mom or Dad or excitedly shephereded in by your big brother or sister or best mate? Let the memory of them be your guide tomorrow night. Sing for Spinksy, Birchy, Alan McInally, for Gary Shaw, for Brian Little, for Paul McGrath and for John McGinn. To the players and staff, we know how good you are, and we ALL want you to walk into the pantheon of greats that adorn our halls. As someone once said.. "The lows just make the highs higher. We are at the heart of English football, we have a majestic name, a decorated past, we serve as a shining light among our peers, we are Aston Villa ". I believe. We believe. Villa believes. UP THE FUCKING EUROPEAN VILLA!!!!

At some point, senior Premier League execs have to offer a proper explanation in public for their leniency towards Chelsea. They owe an explanation to fans of clubs punished more harshly. They owe an explanation to those clubs who did abide by the rules. They have to offer some explanation as to why PSR breaches are deemed far more serious than acts of "deception and concealment". Yes, these are the offences of a previous regime at Chelsea. But inconsistencies run through the PL's defence and their reputation is damaged. They can’t hide from a controversy of this magnitude.

lets play a game!!#pl and @FA_PGMOL only deemed one of these four challenges worthy of a penalty! can you guess which one?😁

Oliver George Watkins. Has took a lot of stick this season and for him, yes, it's an "average" return so far. But... If you have a goalscorer and hyper mobile and clever mover, you use them, and we aren't. Goalie driving straight balls down his throat 10 times a game does nothing for a striker's confidence. What can he do? Flick it on to nobody? Control it with his neck? At least drop it into his chest ( body mass) or into a channel to run onto. Secondly, his short ( 10-15 yard) runs are clever and dynamic, but last 15 mins he's making runs with creators on the pitch with nobody finding him. Eventually as a striker you stop making the runs, to be fair he hasn't. Hardest role in the sport is scoring goals and line leading. He can do it but right now he needs his goalie and forwards around him to help him a little. If Leeds can utilise Calvert Lewin properly, Villa can with Ollie. Rant over.

@AVFCSupport @AVFCSupport why can’t I see the option to download to my apple wallet?? But others can??

Once you have purchased a ticket, the match will appear in the "Tickets" section of the app. For security reasons, we will not distribute QR codes within the app until 3 hours before the game. If your ticket doesn’t just appear, simply log out and log back into the app. #AVFC

@OfficialHuey @VirginRadioUK Huey is great, the music is great. But the requests, omg, “tell so and so hello as we sit in the car together”…., tell her yourself

For my friends who haven't heard my new show yet, download the @VirginRadioUK app. That's it. The Huey Show- Saturday & Sunday 10am-2pm- You'll Like It- Tell Your Friends...

ELEVEN

@HLTCO 💯

I’m convinced that if Sky Sports News actually showed a desire to inform by providing proper reporting, genuine investigation and insightful guests who were afforded time to speak without being spoken over, they could, at the very least be a respected and profitable organisation in a social media driven world. Football fans don’t need to be spoken down to, we don’t need talking heads providing hot-takes and shouting down those who they don’t agree with. I for one would value guests who actually understand the clubs and leagues they’re discussing beyond the basic stereotypes; the market for content that isn’t a “Combined XI” or a polarising head to head shouting match that’s easily clippable may not be immediately evident but a long-term effort to go down that route would likely pay dividends eventually. You only need to look at @TifoFootball_ or @HITCSevens to know that the audience is there and can be supercharged quickly if it’s regular and well produced, given the brand recognition that Sky Sports News has by virtue of its long-term presence within the football landscape in this country. There are millions of football fans, the vast majority of whom aren’t idiots, we want to learn about the game; I used to have Sky Sports News on throughout the day as background noise, I can’t remember the last time I even thought to turn it on. Could I be persuaded to go back to that? Absolutely but the current stuff being served up on the there just feels like fast food for the football world and I think it’s a tremendous shame.

Aston Villa Football Club adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism on 2020, you're welcome to read its disclosure on the website. Contrary to 99% of journalists reporting on Villa last week who have routinely contravened it. Ironically. Aston Villa Football Club adheres to a zero tolerance policy on racism, again to be found on the website. You're most welcome.

@OfficialHuey Thank you

@figarosdad Bobafatt

@OfficialHuey Hi Huey. A block party mix that heavily features Sade? I can’t remember who it was hosting. Can you advise please. Good luck with the book

Like this tweet if you believe the Premier League is corrupt and PSR is ruining football ❤️

Emery is the voice of the none SKY 6.

What they won’t have shown on TV. Aston Villa and Newcastle fans unite against the Premier League. #AVFC #NUFC