The Life and Times of Arnout Mertens. IUE 1-1 Crystal Piazza

Tuesday 23rd October, 2007. Scorer: Jaime

[This post breaks the rules about swearing several times. If they want to take the link down they can]

Nobody knows how long Arnout Mertens has been in Florence for. Some people say he came as one of the angeli del fango to save Florence's artwork after the flood of '66. Others say he was one of the occupying German soldiers in the mid-forties, and was in fact responsible for not blowing up the Ponte Vecchio, and because of this the partisans let him off and pretended he was Belgian instead of German. Some say he came to do a PhD several decades ago and, long after everyone had forgotten about him, he produced a manuscript and, with all the embarassment of not knowing who he was, the jury awarded him a doctorate of history, even though close examination of the work revealed it to be a strange, somewhat paranoid work of science fiction. I mean, the last one is obviously false, as if it were true, why would he still be here? In any case, he is such a VIP player that he sends minor players like Irial Glynn to get his boots from his house before the game. (Irial told me about the Nazi memorabilia at your place Arnout, so I guess that clears up which of the competing stories is true).

Last night we saw a dark, twisted side of Arnout that none of us knew existed. It took the biggest bunch of wining, cheating, pussyole fuckers to bring it out of him, accompanied by spells of absolutely calamity on our part and absolute insanity on the part of the ref. Arnout, in short, is one of the cool-headed members of the EUI team. Or so we thought. Last night, while all the defenders around him were collectively losing their heads in defence, he was dealing with his inner deamons, brought out by the concerted attempts of their number 9 (I have his name if anyone wants it), to seriously injure Arnout while the ref wasn't looking. Arnout kept remarkably cool in the circumstances, but the cat is out of the bag now. First bookings are a step on the way to genuine manhood. Knocking that fucker out would have been another. Oh well, probably best you didn't.

Oh, we also drew 1-1 last night, which I am trying to avoid talking about as it is one of those that sticks in your throat, and pops into my head every five minutes making me want to smash things. There was something of last season's performances about last night. Domination, control, unfairly disallowed goal, ten minutes of absolute insanity in defence, hatfuls of missed open goals, unbelievably hateful opposition, stupid mistakes, terrible, terrible reffing (although often in our favour), and two points dropped when we had enough chances to win by six or seven,

Mate came in at right back, and David BS at number 10. Sebastian came back into the middle of the park. Anyone who read any match report from last season knows the script now: we dominate, very compact, good passing, use width well, look dangerous and in control. Sebastian scores perfectly good goal, which is scandalously disallowed for offside, when he came from behind the ball after a header down from my freekick from the left. Similar position five minutes later, Irial heads but for once doesn't score.

Crystal Piazza begin to reveal themselves as cheating pussies, whining bastards, and into cynical off-the-ball violence. After having nothing to do for 25 minutes, and still with nothing much to worry about, our defence suffers from collective insanity, and literally gifts Crystal Piazza three open goals - failing to clear, leaving men unmarked between two centrebacks, neither of whom are marking anyone, trying to pass the ball around our our penalty area. They hit the post, and we clear off the line. It is coming.

If you fail, for no reason, to get the ball out of your own half for ten minutes, you will let in a goal. We have only ourselves to blame. We lowered ourselves to their very low level. Ref gives them nonsense freekick on the edge of the box. Mistake 1. They take it quickly, ref doesn't let them for some reason. Mistake 2. They spack out. Fair enough. They take freekick. Irial is pushed and kicked by one of their right in front of the ref, No foul. Mistake 3. The ball eventually drops in our box, they square it across goal and tap in. We should be 3-0 up, but are 1-0 down. What we deserve. We create two more great, great chances before half time but snatch at them both.

Angry teamtalk. Right-footed Jaime comes onto the left, and nate onto the right, in an attempt to make the midfield more compact. They are quickly followed by Norberto for David, and Dave H for Sebastian. We dominate territorially, and swarm all over them. We miss hatfulls of chances, but eventually score through Jaime after the ball was put across the face of goal, a couple of minutes after he had hit the bar. Miguel comes on down the right, and Nate switches to right back. They kick, head butt and elbow off the ball. Even Dave M gets pissed off. We try to be above it, but it is tough, as they are also pussies who squeal and roll around every time we go near them, and bully the ref incessantly. Ah the ref, who's signature is like a five year old child's handwriting, with back-to-front bs and ds and everything. What a fucking moron. He actually saved us twice in the second half, by not giving a penalty against us (handball, Miguel), and unbelievably, not giving them a freekick in our box after Igor picked up a Nate backpass throw-in. Nate, Igor, William the ref: idiots. A few more missed chances for good measure. Full time. Two points dropped, but, the way things went last night we could easily have lost.

Training tomorrow: on the agenda: clearing the ball, finishing.