Three stadiums and hanging out at Fritz Walter's house - my pre 2006 World Cup tour in Germany

Germany 2005 revisited: Ten years ago this month I started working as a journalist at The Evening Star in Ipswich. One of the perks of that job along with free newspapers and a generous vending machine that often gave away free Mars bars was the press trips.
For those that don’t know a press trip, often known as ‘jollies’ within the trade is a short vacation provided by a PR company who want to plug a tourist attraction. Normally theses are part of the advertising the destination will do and they work out a whole lot cheaper than paying for a straightforward advert in a paper.
They often dazzle the reporter with great food and drink and leave them with a head-spinning experience that will result in a stream of high praise and flattery. I had some great trips – to Florida, to an £800 a night stately home in Leicestershire, but the perhaps the best was exactly half way through my Star career – in October 2005 in Germany.
Billed as a ‘football and wine’ trip I was lucky enough to join three other reporters from England to go over to Germany ahead of the 2006 World Cup. It was a simple itinerary – three stadiums, three cities, loads of wine and vineyards and a chance to snoop around Fritz Walter’s house.
First of the stadiums I got the chance to look around was the Gottleib Daimler Stadion, the impressive home of Vfb Stuttgart.
This lovely old ground hasn’t changed much for years and is a great old fashioned European ground. Shaped like a bowl with a running track around the outside, it instantly became one of my favourite European grounds – especially when I was fortunate enough to tread on a few blades of the hallowed turf and roll a ball into the goal.
There was plenty of work going on in terms of putting in new seats for the start of the World Cup and a tour inside the stadium gave an interesting insight into the life of a footballer.
The changing rooms were huge featuring a massive communal bath, and cute little tactics board. Walking down the tunnel and onto the pitch was great and I’ve to say Stuttgart is a lovely city.
A couple of days later after some top food and wine we pitched up in Kaiserslautern, a compact little town dominated by the memory of Fritz Walter.
Walter was the German star of the 1954 World Cup winning team – the first time West Germany lifted the Jules Rimet trophy and he’s certainly the most famous person to hail from Kaiserslautern.
Walter gives his name to the great stadium which is tucked away in beautiful woodland surroundings.
Again the stadium was having a pre-World Cup makeover and new seats were being added. Inside the Fritz-Walter Stadion we were allowed to walk on the pitch and it was great to do this as I’ve not seen many stadiums from the point of view of the centre circle.
As the sun was setting in Kaiserslautern we had a really memorable trip to Fritz Walter’s former home in the city which is now a museum full of memorabilia from his glittering playing career.
It’s amazing – it literally is just a normal home, albeit at the end of a road and is open all year round.
A German flag and picture of Walter in action during the 1954 World Cup is outside the house and once inside it’s a massive cavern of memorabilia – you name it, it’s here.
Behind glass doors are loads of trophies and awards, many of them are pottery or plaques – there are even commemorative bells. Walter certainly managed to attract a lot of honours during his career.
A plate depicting the victorious 1954 World Cup side sits pride of place in one cabinet, and there are Olympic medals, a replica of the Jules Rimet trophy, autographs from players such as Pele, a picture of Walter and German team mates giving the Nazi salute before a game, certificates, photos and newspaper clippings.
The following day we ventured towards Frankfurt and had a look around the fabulous Commerzbank Arena.
England were due to play Paraguay in their World Cup opener in this ground so it had extra interest and there was an international table football championship going on when we were there.
We had a look around the executive boxes and behind the scenes areas and we weren’t the only ones playing the tourist game - none other than the Afghanistan national football team were also there looking around which was a tad strange to say the least.
The ground is the home of Eintracht Frankfurt and inside the ground is a huge canopy that covers the playing area as well as an American ice-hockey screen that has four sides giving everyone a view of replays and scores etc.
Three grounds in a little over three days was great. The weather was stunning and the only regret was that there was no live football to watch.
But returning to Stuttgart, Kaiserslautern and Frankfurt remain high on the agenda of things of places to go and watch a game.

Super Brian still playing at 51

American football is a tough sport known for its big hits and frequent injuries. Nick Richards meets Suffolk’s own Brian Jelley who tells how and why he’s still playing the game at the age of 51.

FOR the third summer in a row the big sports story in America was whether veteran quarterback Brett Favre would continue playing.
Favre, probably America’s third most famous man in his forties behind Barack Obama and Tom Cruise, retired from American football’s National Football League in 2008, but has now reversed that decision three times to keep on playing.
The 41-year-old attracts plenty of attention from the NFL media circus, mostly due to his age and incredible record of starting every game since September 1992. Once again his detractors believe his delayed decision to play another year was all an act.
“I think he enjoys the publicity that he gets,” says Brian Jelley, who is a decade older than Favre and still playing the game at 51. “It’s almost becoming an American institution, the will-he, won’t-he play at the start of the next season.”
Brian, who lives in Elmswell, has played for five sides in Britain since taking up the sport as he turned 30 and, like the amazing Favre, just keeps going despite enduring similar questions about just when he’s going to pack up the physically demanding sport.
“I’d love to retire,” he says with a smile.
“I’ve said next season will be my last, but my wife Emma is taking that with a pinch of salt because I’ll get to the end of the season and I’ll think I can still perform. The yardstick I’ve always given myself is if I’m standing on the sideline for most of the game and not participating as a player then I will call it a day.”
Brian plays in the centre of the offensive line for the Cambridgeshire Cats. His job is essentially to protect the quarterback and during the game he can expect to come face to face with the beefiest defenders on the opposing team.
Standing at 6ft 2ins and topping the scales at 20 stone makes Brian the ideal figure to take part in the rough and tumble sport but, despite his imposing frame, he’s used to taking a battering during and after games of gridiron.
“At my age it does take longer to heal when you get injuries and that’s something I’m aware of too. It’s usually the Tuesday when I get up and find my legs aren’t working after a game on the Sunday. “During a game there are points when you feel pain, like in any physical sport, the game has the ethos of hurting and being injured. If you’re injured you come off, if you’re hurting a bit, you carry on and play.”
Recent studies in America have equated the ‘hits’ or collisions in the sport to be around 100gs, the equivalent of driving a car into a wall at 25mph without a seatbelt on, but for anyone who plays American football, that adds to the appeal.
“I expect it to be painful. You’re trying to inflict as much pain on somebody else really as they’re trying to inflict on you. You expect that you’re going to get some problems.
“I’ve not really had any bad injuries although I did break both bones in my forearm in 1993 during a game for Cambridge. I tackled the running back and held him up and didn’t drag him to the ground. My colleagues came into the pile to hit us down and somebody’s helmet went straight in the side of my left arm. The outside bone was shattered in three parts. I had both sides plated.”
Serious injuries in the sport are thankfully rare and kept to a minimum due to a ruling that makes on-site medical care mandatory. Brian, who works for Hewlett Packard as a business developer, says this is an essential if costly aspect of the sport.
“There is a requirement that you have to have proper medical cover which the home team pays for. Without it the officials won’t start the game. It costs £250 per game to have an ambulance at the ground which is the biggest expense to putting a game on.
“At our standard I think that’s enough cover. If you look at senior rugby games they’ll have a doctor there as well but then that’s really for the blood injuries. In American football it’s more bone breaks and knee injuries. But all sports have an element of risk – you can break your leg playing football or break your nose trying to catch a cricket ball.”
Avoiding serious injury is one key reason that has enabled Brian to keep playing into his fifties, the other is a tough regime leading up to a match.
“From Thursday night onwards I won’t drink any alcohol,” says Brian in serious tone.
“That can be tough if you’ve got something on. I might occasionally have a glass of wine if we’re at a party or I’m going for a meal, but I never drink to excess. In American football, when you’re getting blows to the head, you cannot do it.
“Because we play in the summer it’s hot and when you’ve got a 40lb kit on, it’s heavy and hot and you sweat a lot.
“I start hydrating on the Friday, drinking five to six pints of water a day which again isn’t easy. By lunchtime I should have had another couple of pints, and then again in the afternoon and again at night.
“You feel fresher and you’re able to last longer if you do that. I’ll have an energy drink before the game and one at half-time and on a Saturday night I’ll have some pasta, followed by porridge or scrambled egg on the Sunday morning. They’re all slow release foods. I’ll have a couple of bananas before a game too.”
Brian’s Cambridgeshire Cats play ten games on Sunday afternoons in the regular season which runs from April to August in a division with the Ipswich Cardinals and teams from Peterborough, Colchester and two from Kent which makes for plenty of local rivalry.
“Peterborough are the main rivals but we always enjoy the games against Ipswich. I wouldn’t say Cambridge and Ipswich are big rivals, but the Cardinals are a very nice club. They’re run well, have an excellent head coach and they’re a hard team, the hardest we played this year in the regular season.
“They’re fair and clean and it’s a very good set-up there at Northgate and they’ve got a good future. They ran us very close this year even though we beat them twice. Both times they could have gone either way. They give you more bruises than any other team – but in a fair way.”
The Ipswich Cardinals and Cambridge Cats do share one key factor with other teams in East Anglia – they both tap into the plentiful supply of talent from the USAF airbases at Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Alconbury.
“The big difference with us and the Americans in the team is their skills. Typically they’ve played at a higher level and because they’re in the military they have a level of fitness – they’re not allowed to get fat!
“In the UK you can only play five American nationals in your squad so the emphasis is very much on UK players. Some of them have to travel far from their bases to get games with some teams. Typically a team will have around ten Americans on their books, but only five can be named in each game.
“The one problem is they don’t stay for long. Our best running back for example is being transferred to Spain for two years, so losing him is a massive blow.”
It was on a Saturday in Suffolk in the late 1980s that lead Brian to get into playing the game after he mistakenly thought he saw US servicemen training in Newmarket.
“I first started playing for Newmarket Hornets, who played at Newmarket Town football ground. I loved watching the game and got to understand a few of the rules. I moved to Newmarket for work in the late 1980s from Rushden in Northamptonshire
“I was travelling to Newmarket one Saturday afternoon in 1989 and saw a number of guys on The Severals doing some training in full kit. I thought they must be from one of the airbases and later a neighbour who fell out with the rugby club in Newmarket was advised to try out for the team and we got talking about the team and he asked me if I fancied going.
“So I went along, got given some old pads and helmet, got told to stand still while someone hit me and that was it!”Brian played on for Newmarket for a couple of seasons before they followed the path of many teams of that era and folded. Some of the players went on to form the Cambridgeshire Cats.
Brian left the Cats in 2005 and played for teams in Peterborough and Bedfordshire and bizarrely, had a season with the Newquay-based Cornish Sharks in 2007.
“The team from Cornwall wanted some help and experience so myself and a couple of other players went down to help! We had five home games and five away games – the nearest of which was in Reading so I spent the whole summer travelling to Cornwall, Bristol and Wales!
“The irony was that after the season was over we played Norwich Devils in the play-offs in Norwich.
All the players had to come up here and realised how far we had to travel. We ended up putting up about ten players in the house, in tents in the garden and on the living room floor.”
Brian shares his detached Elmswell home with wife Emma, 41, who also helps out with marketing and fundraising for the Cats and their children Laura 18, William 16, and Megan 14.
“My daughter Laura has grown up with me playing American football and comes to watch. They’re interested in it as they’ve got no choice really. William played for the youth team but he’s moved on to Welbeck Military College in Leicestershire so he’ll be playing more rugby than anything else in the future.
“Emma’s role at the club is to generate money and look after the publicity. The club is run on a tight budget and we’re always looking for sponsorship.”
The support of his family has been key in a 20-year career in the game that has peaked on a couple of occasions when he played games in Las Vegas in 2006 and in Miami this year at semi-pro level for a select minor league all stars side.
Brian will take part in his third game in the US in Dallas early next year – and he’ll have turned 52 by then.

* Article appeared in November 2010 edition of EADT Suffolk magazine

Below par City labour to key win

Well that was a hard earned three points if ever there was one! While I applaud Norwich City’s 1-0 win over Middlesbrough this afternoon, I’ve got to say that it worries me that a team as poor as today’s visitors were effectively still in the game until the last minute.
On Tuesday City took the lead against Crystal Palace a couple of minutes before half-time and then wilted after the break. Today, City finally took one of several chances to open the scoring in the 44th minute – and then did exactly the same thing – they wilted.
After handing Crystal Palace their first away goals and first three points on the road this season on Tuesday, a better side than Middlesbrough would have sniffed out at least a point at Carrow Road today.
Thankfully though, Middlesbrough where really, really poor and no ambition about them at all – yet the fact is, City switched off after the break yet again.
Twitter king Stephen Fry was introduced to the crowd before the game and he along with every City fan would have been surprised to see the big changes in midfield.
Paul Lambert mixed up the men across the middle, resting Wes Hoolahan and Korey Smith from the midfield and giving starts to David Fox and Anthony McNamee.
Elliot Ward was thankfully back in the centre of defence and both he and Leon Barnett easily had the measure of Leroy Lita and Kris Boyd.
Boyd, in particular, was very disappointing – and to think I wrote in my betting column at the start of the season that he was the man likely to lead Boro back up to the Premier League.
That looks like being a million miles away now and under the temporary stewardship of Steve Agnew, Boro have plenty of immediate problems to address.
For City though, our spine is really solid with Ward and Barnett a couple of rocks, John Ruddy doing little wrong between the sticks and Grant Holt his usual battering ram.
Simeon Jackson’s pace was really noticeable today and against powerful centre halves like David Wheater who lack a bit of pace, he really does shine.
In midfield, though, City are a mixed bag. McNamee was given the man of the match award and caused plenty of blood-twisting in those Boro defenders’ legs, but Fox is certainly nowhere near as combative as Korey Smith.
Simon Lappin continues to look solid on the left and I don’t know how Glenn Roeder or Bryan Gunn ever overlooked him, but Andrew Crofts often looks like he’s working all on his own in midfield.
I really rate Crofts – the best player in a City shirt by miles this season, I don’t know what we’d do without him. When I think of the volatile indiscipline of Darel Russell, the limited talent of Mark Fotheringham or the ineffectiveness of Matty Pattison, all of whom have graced the Carrow Road midfield in the last three years, Crofts is in a different world and I for one am so thankful he’s there in midfield pulling the strings
Crofts is the best City midfielder since Sammy Clingan and that’s saying something. I rated Sammy for the way he took City games by the scruff of the neck and I rate Crofts for the same reason.
He should have opened the scoring a few minutes before Jackson’s goal, but hit the inside of the post. I saw the replay of Jackson’s goal at half-time and I’m still convinced he was offside.
All in all though, today was a much needed win after the collapse against Palace. We’ve won four and lost three at home, kept three clean sheet in the last four games against three teams who were pre-season favourites for the title, yet still I’m convinced we’re punching above our weight.
October ends with a tough trip to Cardiff and November just looks gruesome however you look at it. City could get 15 points from games against Burnley, Millwall, Reading, Leeds and Ipswich.
Or they could get 0.
I guess that what makes following this team so unpredictable.

Operation Edgar is an out and out success

There aren’t many footballers I would wait around for in the driving rain for half an hour to get their autograph.
And there are even fewer in the Championship.
Apart from perhaps Craig Bellamy, the only other person I would get soaking wet trainers and soggy jeans for is one Edgar Steven Davids.
Davids was at Carrow Road tonight with his pay-as-you-play club Crystal Palace, surely his final stopping off point on a glittering career.
For a player that has played for an amazing array of teams – the biggest three clubs in Italy, Barcelona, Ajax and Tottenham, his arrival in Norwich was understated to say the least.
He didn’t play against Millwall last weekend and as his name was read out in the starting line up, there was hardly a whiff on anticipation about seeing one of the greatest players on the world stage for the last 20 years.
Although there was with Gordon and me.
Ten years ago this December we both saw Davids play for the first time – back then he was at his real peak. He was 27 and starring in midfield for Juventus along with Zinedine Zidane. We were at the San Siro to see Inter play Juventus and after a slight mix up with our seats we emerged into the smoke-filled cauldron with a couple of minutes on the clock.
The first thing I saw was Davids and Zidane in the all grey Juve kit running the midfield show. Zidane scored a cracker within a few seconds, the game finished 2-2 and Davids was awesome.
The day after that game Gordon and me had a tour of the San Siro. I’d just started a job as a trainee reporter and perched in the Press Box for a photo while on the tour. I imagined I’d be back in a few years covering big Champions League games, and possibly watching Edgar on a regular basis.
That never really happened, but I always maintained soft spot for the man nicknamed Pitbull.
He couldn’t really go wrong being a Dutchman, but to then join Inter and return to Ajax; well that ticks some serious boxes for me.
There can’t be many players that are so recognisable on the world stage as Edgar and for me it was just as big a deal as having Zidane or Ronaldo (the fat one with buck teeth) at Carrow Road – it doesn’t happen every week, put it that way.
Davids took to the field and played in left midfield right in front of me. He made for compelling viewing and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He didn’t touch the ball for the first few minutes, but when he chased the ball and turned towards the crowd, his unique look was picked up by a few casual Canary fans.
“Eeeezz got glathuth orn,” said one chap behind me, who’d clearly never seen Juventus, Inter, AC Milan or Holland play.
Davids was involved quite a lot in the first half, playing plenty of smart, neat passes without getting overly involved. A couple of times he was beaten by Russell Martin and Korey Smith, but you could tell he is still a class act.
City took the lead just before the break with a Grant Holt strike in a pretty uneventful first half. As the teams came out for the second half, Palace had only ten men. Davids was last out, scurrying down the tunnel just before kick off.
I’m not sure if he was injured or feeling unwell, but within five minutes of the restart, he was taken off and sat in the dugout for the rest of the game.
From that point on thoughts turned to the Ajax shirt I had stuffed in my coat pocket and getting it signed after the game. To my right, Gordon was sitting in the lower Barclay with the Juventus shirt he’d appropriately picked up on that same weekend we both saw Davids first play.
Norwich switched off in the second half, as Palace took a 2-1 lead with two scrappy goals that should have been prevented.
The rain started to howl down towards the end, and I didn’t really care that Norwich lost 2-1, I just cared about getting up close and personal with Edgar.
As I walked around the back of the Jarrold Stand, past the Barclay to meet up with Gordon, thoughts back to the last time I’d got an autograph outside Carrow Road. I was ten and Edgar was 12.
Just goes to show it’s not every day you feel compelled to ask a footballer for their autograph – and something I could only do now to a player that’s older than me.
I don’t think it feels right going up to the likes of Chris Martin or Korey Smith and requesting their signature – I’d feel like a right weirdo!
But at the age of 35, there aren’t many players left that are older than me still playing. I remember a time around 1993 when I first saw Bruce Dyer play for Watford and realising that he was actually younger than me. Now virtually every professional footballer is older than me – but at least Edgar is still that touch older!
Waiting for Edgar to come out was great. The Palace coach rolled up at about 10pm and we stood with a dozen or so others, mainly Eagles fans, waiting for the players. I leant against the bus with my Sharpie marker poised – I could have left some mean graffiti on the headlights while I waited!
And then he emerged.
Wheeling out a small suitcase he was courteous signing autographs and having his picture taken. Gordon got his Juve shirt signed, but as a steward was blocking my access, Edgar went over to four fans on the other side of a small yellow barrier.
Fearing he was getting on the coach, I squeezed my Ajax shirt under around the steward and Edgar paused and scribbled his signature next to the Ajax badge. It wasn’t the clearest of autographs but it meant a big deal to me.
He then got on the coach and smiled.
If he never comes back to Norwich again, it gives me a warm glow that the last person he had contact with outside the bus was a thirtysomething who really should have known better.

England kids shine at Carrow Road

Well done Norwich!
That was the verdict tonight after the England Under-21 international against Romania in which Stuart Pearce’s side gained a 2-1 semi-final first leg win to qualify for next year’s European Championships.
I’ll be honest and say I’m not the biggest England fan there is, especially the bunch of talentless monkeys that recorded such an epic fail in South Africa a few months ago.
I’ve only ever seen two full England internationals and this did have the feeling of one. By that I mean there were loads of kids around and loads of Londoners.
It definitely didn’t feel like a Norwich game – not only was there hardly a City shirt on view, but the crowd didn’t get behind the home side in the same way they do The Canaries. What noise there was came from air horns carried by the type of children that should have probably been in bed.
Two kids near me aged about eight took great pride in blasting a horn in my ear for most of the game to which their pre-pubescent cohorts answered ‘England.’
Give me grown up swearing any day.
As for the game itself, it was excellent to have a look at Jack Wilshire. The Arsenal wunderkind is in both the Under-21 squad and the full squad for next Tuesday’s clash with Montenegro.
Wilshire and Sunderland’s Jordan Henderson ran the midfield with Danny Rose and Tom Cleverley on the flanks, Fabrice Muamba playing a holding role in front of the back four and Danny Welbeck up front on his own.
At the back, Blackburn’s Phil Jones partnered Chris Smalling with Ryan Bertrand and Michael Mancienne the full backs and Frankie Fielding in goal.
Not much happened in the first half, Romania hit the post and should have taken the lead a minute before the break.
The second half was a different story and England relied on corners to get the job done. A Cleverley corner early in the second half was cleared only as far as Henderson who volleyed a superb opener.
That goal changed the game remarkably from the cat and mouse scrappy first half to an open second half.
England could have gone 2-0 up minutes later, but when Romania pulled a goal back, Stuart Pearce became more visible on the touchlines.
Rose impressed down the left, but England needed something extra – that came in the form of Aston Villa’s Marc Albrighton.
Albrighton changed the game remarkably down the right with his pace, but the key was his corner with 20 minutes to go that was bundled home by Smalling.
Of all the England players, Smalling, Cleverly and the sub Albrighton impressed. Wilshire is obviously a massive talent despite his diminutive size. I just hope he plays at Carrow Road again one day.

New PES2011 is video game heaven

The biggest day in this Sports Junkie’s gaming calendar is here today – with the launch of PES2011. It’s 13 years since at the ripe old age of 22, I realised I needed to have a PlayStation in my life and popped down to what was then called Electronics Boutique in Hounslow to buy a brand new PlayStation with a copy of International Superstar Soccer.
Konami’s ISS series evolved into ISS Pro, and ISS Pro Evolution and now we know the game they call Winning Eleven in Japan as Pro Evolution Soccer. PES to some, Pro Evo to most others.
Pro Evo is the connoisseurs’ choice – the elderly brother to the whistles and bells FIFA series from EA Sports which used to be crap, is now a bit better, but still nothing like playing Pro Evo.
The last couple of Pro Evo games have been pretty duff, and as Fifa has improved, many have said it’s the defining football gaming experience on today’s consoles.
Fifa to me is all that’s bad about modern football.

The design of the game is great, but it really is for a younger generation who think it’s what playing football is all about. Scrub away the shiny veneer of the game and the playability factor is feeble. Pro Evo is the opposite.

Perhaps some may say it’s not the prettiest to look at, but in terms of true gameplay, it is unrivalled.
My pal Tony, who doesn’t buy football games, and myself played demos of both the new FIFA and Pro Evo games a fortnight ago. Even he agreed. “FIFA’s just so boring,” he said.
So what’s the new Pro Evo like?

Well after popping down to my local Tesco to pick up my copy and realising they didn’t actually have it on their shelves (that just wouldn’t have happened to FIFA which was launched last week in a blaze of hype), I had to go to on the ball ASDA who sold me a copy of the new game for £32.97.
Only Manchester United and Tottenham have the official licences in the Premier League with the rest of the 18 teams given names such as West Midlands Village and North East London Whites.

Detractors often laugh at this. Those who love Pro Evo know the names can be changed.
So I settled down for a clash between Manchester United and Tottenham and what a treat.

The old Pro Evo magic is back. It actually does feel a little more like Fifa in terms of gameplay and the menus. The match action itself is solid with the default camera angle similar to the broadcast camera in Fifa.
The camera angle does look a little like watching highlights from a Portsmouth home game to start with, but within a few seconds it gloriously elevates itself to a traditional overhead view.
Nothing is majorly different in terms of gameplay, it’s still solid and reliable and best of all and unlike Fifa, you actually have some confidence the buttons you press will relate to something on the screen.
As ever with these games, they take a bit of time to get used to and I played out a hard-fought 1-0 Spurs win with Jermain Defoe getting the only goal - that's him knocking it in on the picture on the right. The more you play the game you notice new things – there’s a lot more on pitch sounds. Take a corner and you’ll hear the defenders yell “concentrate”.

Players do tire easily and more realistically than Fifa and that means that adding three new players in the last few minutes really does have a benefit. The game also opens up more towards the end, again true to real life.
One real highlight of the game is the in game menu. Substitutions and tactics are well handled in a simple Game Plan option which allows you to make changes and tinker with positions with a drag and drop function. It makes a mockery of Fifa’s cluttered strategy boards.
All in all, it’s a great game and one that will see me through those cold winter nights.

The mouth-watering master league begs to be played and great to see teams like Bayern Munich and Valencia are back on the team list.
Right, time for some more football. Let’s see how Anderlecht get on against Saint Etienne...