Podcast 43: A Quick Look Back at 2008-2009

The final podcast of the 2008-2009 season. Damon and Damian take a look back at the good, the bad and the ugly moments of another great footballing year. The next languagecaster.com season starts in August 2009 and it should be a great one with the World Cup in 2010. Subscribe to our Newsletter in the sidebar to keep up with what's happening. Transcript Damian's Good Well, it was good for German side Wolfsburg who won their first ever Bundesliga title, while in Brazil, it was great for Sao Paolo who in February retained the Brazilian league title but the big news there was that soon afterwards it was announced that former Brazil number 9 Ronaldo would be joining Corinthians after another long injury lay-off and he has proved to be a huge success - we may even see him in his fourth World Cup next year. Great comeback for him but for my best of the season, I am going for one of Ronaldo's former clubs, Barcelona who have just completed an amazing season by winning the 'triplete', the treble of the King's Cup, the League title and the club's third Champions League crown. Not bad for a team that has been described as having a shaky keeper, a weak defence, a midfield that is not physically imposing enough and a forward line that has two players with no hunger for the game or the club, as well as a striker that cannot score goals with his head or against English teams. We wondered in week 13 if this side could emulate the Cruyff Dream Team of the early 1990s. Well, they have more than done so. Barca we salute you. Damian's Bad Well, it was pretty bad for football in the north-east of England as Middlesbrough and more surprisingly, Newcastle were both relegated to the second tier of English football. Newcastle saw three or four (we are not sure) different managers during the season and this win at all costs scenario represents my worst of the season: a real sense of short-termism. In week 27 we featured the managerial merry-go-round which saw West Ham, Tottenham, Sunderland, Portsmouth, Blackburn and Chelsea all lose managers in England, while high-profile managers such as Klinnsmann at Bayern, Schuster at Real Madrid and Claudio Ranieri at Juventus all being given their marching orders. Damian's Ugly Didier Drogba's post-match rant at the Norwegian referee in the Champions League was ugly - though let's be frank, it was also pretty funny. On a more serious note there continues to be lots of fan trouble in Argentina but perhaps the worst of the season for me is the continuation of racism in the game. Despite groups such as Kick it Out in the UK - which we featured in week 12 Inter's striker (and Italian national) Balotelli, Portsmouth's Sol Campbell and Emile Heskey all suffered - among many others - racist chants and aggression. Ignorance is still rife in the game. Ugly indeed. Vocabulary retained: kept, held on to injury lay-off: a long period out of the game with injury a shaky keeper: a weak goalkeeper, a keeper that makes mistakes imposing: strong, dominating, threatening emulate: copy, imitate act in a similar way (often because of respect) short-termism: planning only for a short time in the future, not making long term lans, often panicking (to be given) marching orders: to be sacked, to be fired, to lose your job rant: complain loudly, shout,talk wildly with no control rife: common