But before we get into a French bashing campaign or a defence for Mr Henry from Uber-Loyal Gooners, it must be stated that the French have been on the receiving end of some controversial decisions themselves. And as for anyone who wishes to defend Monsieur Henry, there is evidence that this is not the first time the ex Arsenal forward has cheated the officials.

So we bring you…

Le Good, Le Bad and Le Ugly of French football

THE GOOD

EURO 2000 Final vs Italy

Euro 2004 Group game vs England

The French Resilience: As shown in the Euro 2000 final and Euro 2004 group tie with England, the French team of recent years have shown great resilience in coming back from behind to provide classic games in major tournaments.

THE BAD

Cheats: It is also unfortunate that the French national team has been linked with allegations of cheating in recent years and it may come as a surprise to some but Thierry Henry has been a serial offender over the last 3-4 years.

Exhibit A: World Cup 2006 R16 vs Spain

Exhibit B: World Cup 2006 QF vs Portugal

Exhibit C: World Cup 2010 Play off vs ROI

THE UGLY

The French national team have also been involved in some ugly encounters in yesteryears, with the Zinedine Zidane’s headbutting incident still fresh in our memory. Yet some of us are too young to have seen the German keeper Harald Schumacher’s assault on Patrick Battiston in the 1982 World Cup, which the French would argue to this day cost them World Cup glory.

Schumacher World Cup 1982

Zinedine Attacks: World Cup 2006

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The game hits the stores on the 30th october 2010, so ladies start looking for a hobby. Gents…click here for the demo.

The demo comes in two version:

Vanilla version
This is English language only, featuring English and Scottish leagues but no player photos or logos to reduce the size of the download.

• Minimal Assets
• English language only
• Quickstarts: England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

Strawberry version
This includes all player pictures and logos with quickstarts for the world’s biggest leagues, giving players a chance to try out their skills in leagues from multiple countries.

• Full Assets
• In-game languages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
• Quickstarts: England, Scotland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia

ENJOY!

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Sunderland’s unfortunate draw could have been the wake up call to the rest of the premier league needed to see that United are not anywhere near a championship winning form. Steve Bruce’s team showed that an ambitious 4-4-2 formation against the red devils is just what the doctor ordered a la Burnley, but once again the media frenzy has overshadowed the performance and I am pretty sure the next mid table club that faces United will resort to a negative 4-5-1 formation, leaving with nothing more than an increased deficit on their goal difference.

At some point over the last decade or so, every football manager to ever manage a premier league team other than United -obviously- has been on the receiving end of the wizardry tongue of Sir Alex Ferguson. But we would all be surprised and happy  to know that his success rate isn’t exactly on the 100% mark, and that there has been a few successes in recent past.

In order to pinpoint the few men that stood their ground against the Scotsman, I guess its fitting to first highlight those who fell on the wayside and hopefully we can begin separate the boys from the special ones.

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INDIRECT TACTICS

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Fergie has a wide range of psychological tactics in his arsenal, but possibly the most lethal of the lot is his ability to indirectly push the opposing manager into a press conference rant about everything under the sun, other than their own football team.

Year:1996
Victim: Kevin Keegan
Background: Alex Ferguson had previously suggested that premiership teams were playing ultra defensive against Man Utd, while taking it easy against Keegan’s Newcastle.

Year: 2009
Victim: Rafa Benitez
Background: Alex Ferguson made suggestions that Liverpool’s lead at the top of the table would not last or as the reporter put it they will ‘choke’.

The infamous ‘I will love it if we beat them’ and Senor Rafa’s ”FACTS” rants are perfect examples of how managers have failed in an attempt to redirect the pressure towards United. Instead they end up putting more pressure on their own players, who -I am sure you have guessed- do not have any prior experience of being in a championship race.

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HOW TO NOT FALL IN THE TRAP?

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Shut Up! Its that simple, unless you have a CV that boasts in and around 20% of what Alex Ferguson has achieved in English football, just zip it. Because this tactic is not entirely targeted at the manager but the inexperienced players in the opposition. The aim is to stimulate doubt in the player minds whether they are indeed good enough to win the title off United. Hence it reads ‘off United’, because even when United are playing badly Ferguson knows how to keep them in everyone’s minds as title favourites, by overlooking performances such as the Sunderland’. Being that post-January happens to be the period where players look to their managers for the vote of confidence, any manager that shows any signs of weakness in the press  is likely to be adding more fuel to the fire rather than defusing it.
This is why Sir Alex tends to only serve up this tactic to managers and teams who do not have any experience of winning an English title.

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WINNERS

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Kenny Daglish (1994-95): The then Blackburn Rovers manager already had two English league titles under his belt as player manager of Liverpool FC. So the Blackburn players knew they could look to King Kenny for the right vote of confidence. Plus Kenny was seen by many to be an honest bloke that never really got into war or words, instead had spokesmen like keeper Tim Flowers to answer Sir Alex’ attempt to question Blackburn’s bottle.

“Don’t talk to me about bottling it, cos that’s bottle out there. That’s quality players out there, giving their all … we’re gonna fight to the death, cos we’ve got bottle … all we can say is we’ll give exactly what we’ve given today, exactly what we’ve given all season, and that’s 100% bottle.” - Tim Flowers after making a string of super saves in a 1-0 win over Newcastle.

Arsene Wenger (1997-1998): Where Monsieur Wenger lacked on the CV, he made up for with a back four that boasted four players with two league titles under their belt. The likes of Steve Bould, Tony Adams, Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn were instrumental in the first title winning side of 1998. This later gave Wenger the platform along with players like Viera and Ray Parlour the experience required to overcome Fergies tactics. This could begin to explain why Arsenal have struggled to win the title since the exit of these experienced leaders.

Mourinho (2004-2005): Jose Mourinho came in with a CV that if compared to Ferguson’s -based on age- was far superior. At the age of 41, he had already beaten Sir Alex on the way to Champions league title. Morinho understood that the advantage Sir Alex Ferguson had over the other managers was his ability to control media through his mastering of press conferences. Therefore Jose was able to shut off Ferguson’s mind games with his first ever press conference, referring to himself as the special one, as if the Chelsea players needed any reminder that they had a winner in their camp.

NEXT WEEK ON THE FERGIE SERIES: HOW TO WIN THE BATTLE OVER THE REFEREES?

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This video was taken from ExtremeMedia’s vimeo account, spending 24 hours in the life of two grime DJs -Elijah and Skilliam-. Click here to download their latest mixtape and here to subscribe to their blog.

”Since we started this blog we have met, and had dialogue with loads of interesting creative people from all over the globe, and it is difficult to accommodate all of them in what we do. Trav, the editor of this video is an all round artist, from the abstract stuff he has done to the walls in my room, to this video, he is a really talented guy.” - Elijah  on the Butterz blog

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Honestly does this cover from ‘Chicken Coupe de Ville’ scream out ‘Classic album’ to you?  I thought so, its not quite your Beatles ‘Sgt Peppers..’, Nas ‘Illmatic’ Dizee’s ‘Boy in The Corner’ or Jay-Z ‘Blueprint’ cover, in fact along with the 1990’s No Limit and Cashmoney Record blinged out album covers, it demostrates the lack of any photoshop skills in the southern regions of America.

Looking at the albums below, I wish I could see the creative briefs for these covers, because something was definately lost in translation or a mixed up with a brief from another organisation.

SO LETS BEGIN. THIS COULD HAVE BEEN…

DARK AND LOVELY HAIR TEXTURISER COVER

ADVERT FOR THE WEST COAST GYNAECOLOGIST LTD

COVER FOR DISNEY’S LITTLE RED RIDING ‘IN’ THE HOOD

JOIN THE RAF ADVERTS

INSPIRATION TO BASHY’S ‘BISH, BASH, BOSH’ CLOTHING LINE

ROOF BUILDING INSURANCE ADVERT

MILFS ARE US

DEL BOYS MOTORS

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So join us on the journey from the imaginatively named unlicenced world beaters like Italy’s Raberta Beggio to modern day licence to thrill agents such as Cristiano Ronaldo.

1990: Italia 90 on SEGA

Many of us may have been too young to remember this game, but this title was the first of the football titles that tied itself up to a major tournament. No matter what your opinion is of this game, Italia 90 definately put the bird eyes view gaming on the map, and we applaud their attempt to make the ball look 3D by inflating its size when a long ball is played. NICE!

Ratings: 3.5/5

1992-1995: SNES Sensible Soccer

The forgotten son and probably the most popular football video game of the early 1990’s, the Sensible Soccer franchise was first released in 1992 through on AMIGA and PC gaming platform. Latter releases such as the popular title ”Sensible World Of Soccer European Championship Edition” (below) on the SNES plaform, put the franchise on the map.

Ratings: 4/5

1995-1997: International Superstar Soccer Deluxe

November 1995, saw the birth of a game which pushed the boundary so far that all major footballing game developers had to take note. This game was International Superstar Soccer Deluxe on the SNES. EA got alot of praise for the FIFA Soccer 94 game, which moved from the bird eyes view into the side view gaming, but it was Konami’s introduction on 360 degree control and all round gameplay that many of us fell in love with. And who can forget the scenario options, which allowed you to replay famous tence minutes of past football classic games like 10 men Brazil in the 1994 World Cup vs the USA, giving the player 2 minutes to take the Samba boys to glory. GENUIS!

Ratings: 5/5

1997-1998: FIFA 97-99/ ISS 98

The FIFA years cannot be disputed even by the biggest Pro Evo enthusiast. FIFA 97 was the first of footballing game platform which used the motion capture technology and even had the indoor option for the 5 a side lovers. FIFA 98: Road to the World Cup had improved AI and was the first series to feature a licenced soundtrack, Blur’s Song 2. But during that same period Konami released ISS Pro and ISS Pro 98 on the N64 and PS1 platform, which was called an instant classic by many for its realistic game play and difficulty in scoring. While on FIFA a good player could batter his mates 12-0, on ISS, you would struggle to get a 3-0 win over your 10 year old brother. The FIFA 99 game saw the indoor option get kicked off the series aswell as massive improvement in fluidicity and overall AI of the game.

FIFA Ratings: 4/5
ISS 98 ratings: 4.5/5

ISS 98

FIFA 97-99

2001-2007: Pro Evolution Soccer 1-7

2000 saw some poor titles from both Konami and EA, with FIFA 200 and ISS 64 not living up to their previous successes. Then in 2001 Konami decided to merge the Winning Eleven platform with the ISS franchise to bring to the market the Pro Evolution Soccer titles. The franchise controlled the football gaming market for an impressive 6 years and dubbed ‘the greatest football game’ for half a decade.

2008-2009: FIFA revival 08 and 09

Complacency is detrimental to sustaining success in any industry, and over the last two years Konami have shown a level of complacency that has enabled FIFA to overtake the crown, by improving its gameplay and AI once more.

After going through all these classic games, I guess the question is WHAT IS NEXT?

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FIFA 2010 Gameplay

FIFA 10 will be released on the 2nd October, and introduces 360-degree dribbling, as well as a few little bad boys. If any improvement is even made on the current title, then Konami will have a hard time trying to claim back the title of the ‘Best football game’ for another 12 months.

PES 2010

It comes as no surprise that Konami would also release a few trailers of their own on the net, so peep the game play for the new Pro evolution soccer 2010.

Pro evolution soccer 2010 is due to be released in the UK on the 23rd Oct 2009, a good three weeks after the FIFA title-as usual- hoping to get all the real football gamers to trade in their FIFA for the Konami franchise.

Verdict

To be honest there does not seem to be much difference in the Pro evo gameplay, with the sudden sharp turns still evident and the unrealistic crossing and finishing from the likes of Messi and Henry, who happen to always perform like Gods against men. Meanwhile the FIFA 10 gameplay seems smooth and EA seemed to have improved on the minor details such as players body movements.

From these Trailers it looks like another FIFA > Pro EVo for the third year running. But I will hold on until the actual games are out.

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I always find it funny that people claim that prostitution has been around since the beginning of time, as if this prehistoric reference all of a sudden offers the justification for the exploitation of females. But what seems to always get to me is the how Pimps are seen as the charismatic Casanovas, who so many men are envious of their natural skill to keep their woman in check, while the woman on the other hand gets the privilege of sharing a name with a gardening appliance.

The Popularisation of P.I.M.P in the 1970’s

The 1970s saw an influx of African-American movies, in response to the declining revenues in Hollywood. The new genre dubbed ‘Blaxploitatio’ is considered by many to be the turning point for Hollywood, as it was able to attract a previously uninterested black audience to the cinemas. But with this new found lane came some terrible and at time humorous representation of urban stereotypes, such as the Pimp culture. The average PIMP and Pusherman in Harlem were never as glamorous as they may have been presented in films like ‘Superfly in 1972′. This later translated into the music of that day, with artists like Curtis Mayfield glorifying such as a lifestyle in their music and it is pretty much becomes self explanatory why today’s hip hop artist who grew up listening to this music are now fascinated about being the ‘drug dealers’, ‘fly’ and ‘P.I.M.P

Many of you would be able to recognise the snippet on the video below between 0:58 to 1:17 from the Jay-Z intro entitled ‘Prelude’ on his Kingdom Come album.

Hip Hop artists carrying the torch

If ever there was a medium or genre that seems to happily embrace the pimpologic ideals of the 1970s movies, its Hip Hop music. Many blame hiphop for the mainstream crossover-or regular usage- of the term pimpin’ in TV shows such as MTV’s Pimp my ride. But I would have to say that it will not be fair to place the burden solely on hiphop’s back especially when the subtle aspects of pimping techniques were evident on our TV screen’s way before Don Majic Juan got his hands on his first Stacey Adams shoes.

STAR TREKS’ MR MACK DADDY

Look how Khan Noonien Singh of Star Trek demonstrates what many now consider to be the ‘Pimp’s hand’, the manipulative techniques which makes the female beg to their partner’s mercy, even though he is in the wrong. The scary thing is that this type of thing happens everyday, and for Star Trek -which is is bigger than any hiphop artist or album ever released- to be showing this in our living rooms, there seems to be something wrong with how we portray women in mainstream media.

It can happen to anybody..believe me

Remember Maia Campbell? No, well she played Tiffany Brown on ‘In the House’ with LL Cool J in the 90’s as well as appearances in ‘Moesha’ and ‘Sister Sister’.

Well here is a video of her in LA, with her Pimp, who I am sure you have noticed is not as Fly as Snoop Dogg or as well spoken as Mr Kahn and is actually nothing more than a low life spineless twat taking advantage of a woman in need of some serious help.

Conclusion.

Pimping ain’t easy, has to be the greatest urban myth if ever there was one. Any man -or woman- who makes money from the business of selling someone else’s body for sex, cannot even begin to comprehend or have the right to us to use the terms ‘aint easy..’ If anything pimping must be easier now than ever with female self esteem at an all time low. So maybe its time we started to make Pimping harder for these low lives, by portraying them for the clowns that they are and building the self esteem of the women in our society, with more videos of hardworking ordinary women then booty shaking video cameos and glossy magazines reports of Z-list celebrities new tummy tucks.

I am going to start by showing you a snippet of how these clowns SHOULD be portrayed…Peace!

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NIKE 180’s: Spring ‘10

Nike 180’s Barkley edition: Summer ‘09

Nike Air Hoop Structure: Spring ‘10

images from: Leaders

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Click the image below to download the mixtape.

Tracklists
Nasty Jack - One Spliff A Day
Footsie - 3 Plates
Wiley - I Was Like You
Silencer - Bonus Stage
D Double E - Bell Dem Slags
Rude Kid - Jack Daniels
Maniac - G.R.I.M.E
Skepta - Dark
Silencer - Dirtbag
Lil Nasty & Fumin - Dont Phone Me Freestyle
J@kes - Rock The Bells
Newham Generals - Mind Is A Gun
Maniac - Ugly
Joker - Purple City
Ghetts & Rapid - One Way Road
Swindle - Generations

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