The ineptitude has begun

Just. Where. Do. You. Begin? That title is correct. Not only did 10,000 more people than can fit inside the aquatic centre apply for tickets to watch synchronised swimming at the 2012 London Olympics, but they actually got allocated tickets, only for the organising London Olympic tickets distribution monkeys to telephone the poor unfortunates to inform them that inepts had been running the ticket allocation machine and that there weren’t any tickets after all. Welcome to part 1 of what will surely be a very expensive experiment into Olympic organisation ineptitude.

The London Olympic ticket distribution system is one of two things, depending on who you believe. Either it is a fluid, mathmatically perfect, exceptionally accurate, 7th wonder of the ticket allocation world, or, it is a big fat pile of biased, coporate mollycoddling crap. If you believe the 50% of the fee paying public who will be lucky enough to sit behind a pillar and watch the blind-folded syncronised dog sledge events, then its the later. If you believe the pampered corporate 75% who will be watching the good events and didnt even need to join the lucky dip for tickets, then its the former. Join an orderly queue.

For those who don’t know how the Olympic ticket allocation system works, Harvard business school is running a 4-year course on theoretical mathematics. Essentially what you have to do is – over the course of 2 gauntlet running draws – is put in an “order” for a sum total of tickets – the higher the bid, the higher the mathematical chances of getting a ticket – and then wait to see what you get. As you have to put in an “order” for an amount which could be anywhere between 10 and a billion pounds, you run the risk of getting all of your tickets granted, and thus having to pay out thousands, or none. Or, synchronised swimming. But at least you can be part of the biggest sporting event to hit London since.. well… ever. Or can you? No you cant. Because in an exceptional piece of ineptitude which is already being covered up with “ah, but you will now get a ticket for another event” excuses, the ticket allocation system can’t even count.

10,000 extra tickets available for this

According to a spokesman in conversation with the BBC

“As a result of finalising the seating configurations in our venues and reconciling the millions of Olympic and Paralympic ticket orders against the seating plans for around 1,000 sporting sessions, we have discovered an error in seats available in four synchronised swimming sessions…. In December we contacted around 3,000 customers who had applied for tickets in the four sessions during the second round sales process. We are exchanging their synchronised swimming tickets for tickets in other sports that they originally applied for.”

So 10,000 too many tickets were sold. Why?  ”a human data error”. Thats good old-fashioned ineptitude to thee and me.

Tickets? what tickets?

Is this game responisble for American Footballers losing their edge?

At any one moment 3 million players are locked down and playing Call of Duty 3 online. In its first week of release in early November the game shifted over 775 million dollars worth of cyber war joy, enough to make small countries, let alone the latest cinema blockbusters, weep jealous, covetous tears of saline envy into their morning cereal bowls. Modern Warfare: the game, is as monetarily successful as Modern Warfare: the reality.

The hours of lost revenue that this one game must be costing doesn’t bear thinking about; the minds of children’s this game must be warping, unknown; the cost to society; considerable. The average Call of Duty player logs over 170 hours a year, and that is small fry compared to some. But it is a damn-sight more fun than Facebook, so its not all Doom™ and gloom.

So powerful is the call for Call of Duty that University of Louisville Coach Charlie Strong has blamed the game itself for his football team being crap. Now you may think that a computer game couldn’t possibly be responsible for university men clad in over-sized ponchos failing to live up to their preconceived notions of excellence, but you would be wrong.

“That new, what do they call it, Call to Duty? Yeah, they got called to duty…… But, these are young people and that’s what we’re dealing with. Guys who, all of a sudden there’s something new and they want to try it and it just engulfs them.”

As ludicrous as it sounds, the coach could obviously be hitting on something he has no idea about, squarely in the heart. Professional athletes need a few things to keep at their peak levels, both in terms of mental and physical fitness. If these athletes are not sleeping and not training but are instead sitting in the dark twiddling their buttons and shooting German, Afghan and Iraqi soldiers for 16 hours per day, something is going to give. Sacrificing sleep for X-box is going to have a direct result on performance. Really it actually goes without saying.

Yesterday Owen Hargreaves, of all things a Canadian footballer, was the most beloved man in Premiership football. Agreed, that is not much of a claim to fame bearing in mind that most Premiership footballers garner about as much love as infected asbestos splinters under the fingernails, but he was. Today, after 63 minute of game time for the latest money spending megaliths on the footballing stage – Manchester City – his star is falling.

Speaking to UK newspapers after the Carling Cup defeat of Birmingham (in which Hargreaves scored, marking a memorable comeback after just 6 minutes of football in 3 years) Hargreaves blamed painkilling injections he received whilst with Manchester United for his prolonged period of tendonitis and zero football.

“I received some injections but my tendon was never the same. After the injections, I tried to get back on my feet and they said my tendon was good, but it felt like I was made out of glass. That obviously had a huge impact. With my tendon injury, I’ve had to be a guinea pig for a lot of these treatments. It’s difficult.”

That the player, who cost Manchester United the best part of a million pounds per game after his mega-money move from Bayern Munich, would say such a thing is a parting blow for the fans on the red side of Manchester, who, in huge majorities, didn’t voice contempt for his move to the enemy the other side of the city. Indeed, many of them wished him luck and sent nothing but good will: something that has never happened before and will most likely never happen again.

Owen Hargreaves blames Manchester United for his injury woes

Take the blame would like to offer its condolences for the red half of Manchester. You know he’s going to score against you.

This bunch of zillionaires cant even beat Levante. Who are Levante? Exactly.

Not a bear trap. Not a mouse trap. Hell, he didn’t even blame a trap door. Jose Mourinho blamed a verbal trap for his Galatico megolith getting unstuck against tiny, minnow, microscopic, amoeba sized tadpole of a club Levante at the weekend. Real Madrid went down 1-0, losing their first game of the season and opening a blame game. Just why would such a unstoppable force of unimaginable riches come to a very quick and grinding halt against a such seemingly easy team?

The blame needs to be assigned to Real Madrid midfielder Sami Khedira who managed to get himself sent off, even after the team had studied similar games and installed jedi-mind tricks to not rise to the baiting of other players. In a news conference after the game, the Special one had some very insightful blames.

“The blame in my opinion lies with one of my players who was lured into a trap. They (the players) have to have enough intelligence to avoid situations like that and have a sense of whether the referee will allow it or not.”

The incident that Mourinho is referring to happened just before half time when Khedira, already nursing a yellow card, reacted like a cricket to a slight breeze – that is, completely over the top -  and pushed the Levante captain, Sergio Ballesteros, to the ground. It is unclear what Sergio said to the Real Madrid Galitico but was probably something along the lines of “youre a **** ****** ****** ******* **** **** ***** *****”.

The defeat leaves real Madrid 3 points lower down the league than they would be, had they won.

Craig Levein and the Scotland football team have laid the blame squarely at the feet of the referee for their 2-2 draw in their European qualifier against the Czech Republic. An infuriated Levein had to watch on from the sidelines as the visiting Czechs were awarded a last minute penalty for what, to most eyes, was a big fat dollop of nothing. The referre saw something that nobody else did, had an attack of whistle epilepsy, blew up for a penalty, which, to use football terminology, was buried in the back of the net deeper than your Great-great grandmother. Speaking (carefully) to the BBC after the game, Manager Craig Levein had this to say.

“I’ve got to be careful what I say. What I can say is that we lost the game not through anything we did wrong. I lay the blame on the referee’s shoulders. Two huge mistakes. Berra gets brought down and is booked for diving.”

Scotish Manager Craig Levein squeezes the puny head of the referee in his fist

The result leaves Scotland in a world of European football pain and facing a Summer of  listening to the aggravating, bothersome and vexatious nation south of the border as they battle fruitlessly to quarter final embarrassment.

European qualification comes automatically to the first team in each of the 9 groups fighting for a place in the finals in Ukraine/Poland next summer. The teams which struggle and fluke their way to second place then go into a mini knockout tournament where they have one more chance to cock things up or get on the plane.

The result in Scotland at the weekend sees the Scots 5 points behind the Czech Republic, thus languishing in third place and far from a qualification place. Had they held on at 2-1 then second place would have been a real possibility. Now it is a fantasy. At this juncture we should point out that World and European champions and current best team in the world by around 17 aeons are currently sitting pretty at the top of Scotland’s group with the best part of 254 points. That would be Spain to you and me. So La Furia Roja are taking first place. It’s a dog fight for second and Scotland have just taken a huge mauling.

So where do we fit in? “The referees a wanker”. So the song goes. But this is by-the-by, because wankers or not, one thing they dont ever do is accept liability after the event. Just ask Alex Fergueson, Arsene Wenger, José or any other football manager. From the top to the Sunday league bottom, the referee is to blame and they never take it. Take The Blame™ would like to apologise for all the Scotland fans whose 2012 looks a little bleaker thanks to the ludicruos decision of a man who really doesnt care about you or your team. We would also like to take the blame for a penalty that was never a penalty.

To make you feel slightly less wounded, you will always have Archie Gemill against Holland.

Before we begin, spot quiz. Do you know which football team Diego Amando Maradona, World Cup winner, Golden Ball winner, Golden boot winner, UEFA cup winner, Italian cup winner, Spanish cup winner, Spanish league cup winner, double Italian championship winner, 5-time South American player of the year currently manages? Any guesses? Well let us tell you. It’s Al Wasl. You know who they are? Al Wasl?  Because we at Take The Blame™ sure has hell don’t. It’s like Pele playing for Scunthorpe.

Spot the difference.

After being, arguably, the best football player to ever grace Terra firma, things took a turn for the worse for Señor Maradona. It must be difficult to acclimatise to life without the beautiful game when you are the most gifted and beautiful player of it, but some people adapt better than others. But we will come to that. First lets fast forward to the present day and the 2011 Copa America and Argentina’s calamitous early quarter final loss, on penalties, to Uruguay. Because there is a blame game afoot. And we like the Blame.

The blame is simple enough but might need a splash of history for the uninitiated out there. Until Argentina’s early, catastrophic knockout at the 2010 World Cup, Maradona was the coach. He resigned. Now, as yet again, Argentina crash out early, he is pointing the finger squarely at coach Batista and head of the AFA, Julio Grondona.

In regard to Batista, whom Maradona played along side during the 1986 World Cup, he said that,

“If I had only beaten Costa Rica, I would have gone of my own accord“. And if Batista didn’t like the media pressure that goes hand-in-hand with job, he should “cross the border to Uruguay where nobody would recognise him.”

However, Maradona kept his choicest words for continual headache, AFA president Julio Grondona, whom Maradona had continued run-ins with during his tenure as coach.

“What is happening right now is not the fault of the players. Julio Grondona is doing just what he likes“.

**********

So there you go. But before we leave, no story about Maradona would be complete without the barren years. The nutty, crazy, gun-toting, drug-taking, wildchild megalomaniac years. The years that famously ended with a blown up, over weight Maradona taking pop shots at journalists with an air rifle from behind the gates of his mafia mansion. Stories of hookers and cocaine and stomach stapling are too good to be untrue and too surreal to be ignored. A stomach stapled fat man who used to be the greatest football player in the world shooting people. It is a tale so priceless, so ludicrous, that the only possible outcome would be the anti-villian leading the national side in a World Cup.  A failed hero becomes monster becomes hero.

The Argentinians love hm because he bought them the world. The world love him because he is a raving lunatic. Lets hope he brings a story to the Gulf  state of the UAE, where, for 3.5 million euros and a private jet to do with what he pleases, the next chapter in the Diego Amando Maradona story will be told. Lets pray for madness.

Are you feeling lucky punk? Maradona takes target practice at the local journalists.

They are a passionate lot those ice-hockey fans. Normally the preserve of football fans, Tuesday saw violence and rioting descend on the otherwise, peaceful, tranquil, sedate Vancouver Bay area and it was all down to an ice-hockey game. Not any ice-hockey game admittedly, but an ice-hockey game nonetheless. The final of The Stanley Cup – the Champions League of ice-hockey you could say – saw the pre-tournament favourites, the Vancouver Canucks, getting an absolute wooping by the Boston Bruins. The final game of a 7-game series saw the Canucks going down 4-0 to the Bruins. Let the chaos commence.

Following the puck in ice-hockey is becoming more and more difficult

An angry mob that the Italian Ultras would have been proud of soon formed in downtown Vancouver after the end of the game. The first target were some unruly cars that were obviously sporting Boston shirts. They were turned upside down. Next were some shop windows. They took a beating. As the mob gathered momentum and the evenings ice hockey became a distant memory of calm, the sickness spread and the Vancouver riot police entered the game. And its not the first time.

Proof that mob mentality can take hold of even the skinniest, wimpiest looking kid in all of Vancouver.

In 1994 a similar thing happened when, well, a similar thing happened. The Canucks lost the Stanley Cup final and there were some bad losers in town. The outcome of that loss was a city wide riot that left the residents of Vancouver embarrassed, ashamed and the laughing stock of the NHL league; that such a thing should happen again in exactly the same manner is a lasting scar on a city that prides itself on Canadian Mountie goodness. Whether the Canuck fans were solely to blame is unlikely as local anarchists were widely reported to be rubbing their hands with glee when the first goal was scored in the final game of seven.

Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson described the scenes as “embarrassing and shameful” and went on to add that “the vast majority of people who were downtown were there to enjoy the game in a peaceful and respectful manner. It is unfortunate that a small number of people intent on criminal activity have turned pockets of the downtown into areas involving destruction of property and confrontations with police.”

Same time next year? Its a possibility. If the Canucks get to the final and pull their usual bottling job, then a repeat is probably on the cards. With the best regular season record, the best players in the league, Stanley cup favourites and a goal keeper on a 64-million dollar contract, the signs are not good for the cars and shop windows of downtown Vancouver.

This is the world cup and one supposes, what all the fuss is about.

Whether you think football is Gods gift to mankind or as interesting as a visit to a Ukrainian dentist, one thing is clear, football and footballers are a hotbed of ineptitude, both on and off the field. For the time being we are sticking to the pitch and what should be the easiest task there is for a professional footballer; kick. The penalty kick. Just kick it. Just kick the ball, preferably in a straight line, into the goal. It’s not rocket science, it’s your job. A footballer who can’t kick is like a politician who can’t talk or a french waiter who can’t be a miserable, impolite bastard; pointless and probably playing for Birmingham City.

So when entering the modern day arena of sport, expect inept things. The modern day colosseum (this is such crap. Why do football commentators compare football to ancient gladiatorial contests? There is no comparison. One involved being killed or killing someone or something in a hugely barbaric and violent way, probably involved dismemberment, beheading, flailing and resulted in gallons of blood, pain and suffering. The other is 22 men falling over, crying, insulting the referee, play-acting, diving and sometimes trying to kick a ball.) regularly lives up to its billing.

Take the blame™ has compiled some of the most tragically bad kicks the game has ever seen. In doing so we haven’t simply gone for Sunday league, hungover amateurs who spend most of the game fighting; no, we have chosen the crème de la crème too. In fact, we go all the way to the top for starters. To the world cup final of 1994.

Brazil went on to win the World Cup.

Enter stage right, Roberto Baggio. Having scored 5 goals, literally dragging Italy to the World Cup final, and with an injury to boot, The Pony-Tailed Assassin was on the verge of an Italian knighthood and ownership of the country. Had Italy won the world cup in 1994 it would have been on his shoulders. He could have walked into the presidential office and assumed power of the state. But sadly for him his penalty practice had obviously involved watching Diana Ross in the opening ceremony, for when the closing, final act came about; when it was time to kiss the girl in front of a setting sun on a Caribbean beach as the end credits roll, he fluffed his lines. Jimmy Stewart became Vin Diesel, and Italy lost the world cup. For a footballer there is obviously nothing better than winning the world cup and nothing worse than cocking it up.

So Roberto Baggio is here because of the magnitude of the error. At least he kicked the ball. At least the ball left the ground. At least he used his foot in a pendulum motion to levitate the ball off the ground. That the ball soared over the cross bar is by the by when you consider our next two inept candidates for the position of most inept footballer ever. From the World Cup final of 1994 we descend like a sinking ship to the 1991 HFS Northern Premier League Division One Cup Final of 1991. The gulf in class and the gulf in ineptitude is there for all to see. Enter Peter Devine playing for the mighty Lancaster against the equally mighty Whitby Bay.

As you can see, kicking was a touch out of his range of movements. He set his sights too high and failed miserably. He should have stuck to standing. But again there is hope. This is funny but also a little sad. You can see the momentum carry him to the ground, you hope he can stay on his feet, because we have all been there, but every time you watch it there is the same sad result. There is also the quality of the video and some early 1990s nostalgia creeps in. We don’t really blame Peter Devine for his ineptitude because we know we could probably go to the pub for a pint and laugh together at the comedy value of the moment. The next contestant receives no such pity, no such forgiveness. Mainly as it is so arrogant in its ineptitude; and the one thing which is worse than ineptitude is ineptitude brought about by arrogance. Enter Robert Pires. Even the name conjures up arrogant images.

Peter Devine kicked the ball. He fell over in the process, but there is no denying the ball moved. Not very far, but it moved. Kicking, in the loosest sense of the word, was achieved. The Arrogant Arsenal team of 2009 in a game against Manchester City produced the following crime against all that is sacred in football. Can you imagine Brian Cloughs reaction if it had been under his watch? “Just kick the fucking ball you arrogant, self-indulgent fucking ponsy premadoners.” Or something along these lines would have been his – and rightly so – reaction.

In South America if you miss a penalty you could very well end up dead. Which is why the next video makes sense. We can’t understand the commentary but we think it revolves around a possible betting and gambling scam involving Colombian and Mexican drug cartels and the possible cutting off of hands if the penalty is scored. Possibly.

Fact. Austria is a landlocked country. The nearest thing they have that in anyway resembles an ocean is an intricate system of meandering mountain streams that dissect this lush, mountainous and dry, European country.

Austria. Not famous for swimmers and not designed for swimming.

Question. If you have no beaches, no coastline and, well, see above, why learn to swim? The great swimming nations of the Earth? Australia, Great Britain, The United States of America, France. Island nations or countries which have so much water that if you want to escape the place, you have to swim. And swim well. It is why there are no great swimmers from Luxembourg, Mali, Malawi, Paraguay, Nepal, Niger or Switzerland. There is no history of and there has never been any need to learn how to goddamn swim. If you wanted to get out of Tajikistan 50,000 years ago then you walked. So it comes of somewhat of a surprise that Austria not only has an Olympic swimming team but that it is also operational and, one supposes, setting its sights on London and the Summer Olympics of 2012.

before swimming hats, psychotic glares were the order of the day.

What isn’t surprising is that ineptitude is rife. And this time funny. 19 year old Jakub Marly, Olympic hopeful and member of the Austrian Olympic swimming team can dig. He can dig like a JCB on growth hormones. This is known because on Monday during a training and holiday trip to Florida (We at Take The Blame assume this is because, Oh, you know, they don’t have any water in Austria) he dug a 2-metre square hold on the beach. Why? Who fucking knows why. To show off his digging skills? If, as expected the Austrian team don’t upstage the pool in London, maybe he was auditioning for a career in excavation.

So, he spent hours and hours digging until he had a hole Stephen Hawking would have been proud of. Then jumped in it. The whole thing collapsed, burying poor Jakub Marly – Shit, It’s all fun and games until someone buries themselves in sand on a beach in Florida. The alarm was raised by other members of the swimming team and soon a team of 70 firefighters were on the scene to dig the helpless swimmer out. Also on the scene were a few hundred spectators. Probably the largest crowd the Austrian swimming team has ever encountered.

Being serious, Jakub Marly had a narrow escape. His ineptitude nearly cost him more than a little embarrassment. It nearly cost him his life. Next time you go to the beach, don’t dig a hole deep enough to bury a giraffe and then jump in it.

The Austrian Swimming team is heading back to land locked Austria where the hills, not the lakes and rivers and seas, are alive to the sound of music.

Our ethos is simple, we are here to take the blame. Apparently we live in a blame culture; and in a blame culture there needs to be someone who you can turn to when there is nobody else who will shoulder your blame. Whatever the reason, whatever the occasion, we are there for you. From the simple and the transparent – be it stubbing your toe or spilling your tea; waking up late for work or missing the bus – to the arduous, perplexing, intricate and convoluted – your dog died; you hate your boss; the IOC decided to oust you from your abode and build an Olympic sized Ice-rink in your back garden and erect an athletes village in your once pristine street-market turning a once thriving local community into a dull and bland advert for a hotch-potch amalgamation of too much glass, no class and student residents. We are there. Blame us.

Politics, science, philosophy, food, revolution, environment, education, celebrity, television, crime, animals, history, love, money, relationships, family, sport, technology, travel, war, weather, health, business, birthdays, parties, celebrations, drugs, employment, nature………….and breathe…………..cybercrime, nuclear energy, credit cards, pornography, computer games, graffitti, hollywood. Kitchen sink. There is blame.

If you have anything you want us to take the blame for. Tell us. Let us know. Post a link. Send a letter. And we will publish an apology, allowing you to sleep soundly, safe in the knowledge that the blame rests with us. Go on, don’t be shy.

Lets be honest. American football is an anomaly. So is Christine Aguilera. So many things are wrong with this combination of characters that apologising for all of them would be more difficult than explaining the rules of American football to an, as yet to be discovered, Amazonian tribe and then, having explained the rules to their blank, non-comprending faces, getting them to sit down on Superbowl Sunday and enjoy the spectacle.  All four, advert filled, hours of it. So that’s not why we are here today.

That over 100 million people tuned into watch The Green Bay Wolverine Dragon Cubs overrun the Pittsburgh Killer Penguins by 7 thousand points to 4 thousand five hundred and sixty eight is cause enough for concern. Didn’t it begin at 1am? Shouldn’t these people have been sleeping? And whats with tipping orange Gatorade over peoples heads? It’s not funny and seems to be the only actual point of the whole shebang they have going on over there.

If you didn’t know, part of the Superbowl megaadvertisingextravganza is the half time show, where like it or not, some band you hate plays some songs you hate even more whilst gyrating about on a specially designed stage made to look like a pair of sunglasses. Our fault. Sorry. Even worse than this is the annual singing of the national anthem before touchdown at the start of the first quarter eighth 10 minutes.

Now you would have thought that singing your own national anthem wouldn’t be too much of a challenge to a singer. Well, it would appear that the pressure of doing it in front of 7 billion screaming fans got the better of dear Miss Aguilera and she forgot the lines. She didn’t forget the lines when she sang the same national anthem one year earlier during the NBA American basketball finals where she did it twice no-less. So why this time? Well, according to the statement released by her publicist it was because she “got so lost in the moment of the song that I lost my place. I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem still came through.” That is not an apology, it is an excuse. We at Taketheblame would like to do what couldn’t be done and apologise.