#really showing his quality with these UCL performances

[friedrice15]

[mariogoetze]

blog/important update

hey lads, with the most recent absence due to covid-19 i had a lot of time to think especially in general and about my future. in that time i also thought about tumblr and blogging and after being here for almost a decade i decided now would be the right time for some major changes. you can read them right below, thank you!

i’ve been on tumblr for a long time almost a decade if you’d like to say. i’ve had the pleasure to meet a lot of nice people, sure some encounters were here and there not nice, but most of them were very good and helped me to develop on this site. honestly back then when i joined this site i really didn’t know how it worked i used 3 different tags for the same person and i wrote in my posts 2 languages going a few sentences first with german and then switching to english afterwards. luckily i’ve met a lot of great people who’ve helped me to develop on this site and helped me to grow not only as a blogger but also as a person, which i’m really grateful for. even tho this site is a hellsite i still learned a lot of things which i was unaware of before and there were also things which i managed to develop which i’m proud of. at this moment i’d like to thank all of those who’ve helped me in the beginning and those through and through my road bc they made my journey on here really amazing filled with lots of joy and also lovely moments as well, so i’m really grateful. i’ve really experienced all kind of things here the world cup 2014 was probably one of the best ones but also emotional matches were the fandom stuck together and sometimes some wins were amazing to celebrate and there were even some defeats which made the fandom closer and let’s not start with all those memes and shit posts which made the interacting really delightful.

with more time on being here and with more inspiration and motivation i received i edited through the years and it was really great. from shitposting, to making memes and to edit pictures and to create gif it was really a hell of a blast! back then when i first joined this site i thought i’d never be able to make gifs and some years later i developed which was really a special moment for me. people telling me they enjoy my edits made me really happy and all the amount of support i received meant really a lot to me. so if you’re reading this and you’ve supported me and my work then let me tell you: thank you. it really warms my heart and i appreciate it.

but to speak now about the major changes on my blog and the update itself, let me start with saying that there are 4 major reasons why the changes will happen. let’s start of with..

1. schedule - my schedule after summer will change which means that i’ll have to work quite a lot and that won’t change anytime soon. as an editor it takes quite a lot to make actually edits (depending on what you edit and how much) and i don’t think that once i come home at 6 pm that i would like to make edits for an hour or so, if you get me? i would rather relax, listening to music, perhaps go to the gym or do something else. with my new upcoming schedule in the near future it will make it hard for me to be posting much at all as i don’t really have the time for it anymore. i dealt before quite well as i had a good balance with my studying, i will continue my studying in the future but for now i will switch to my education and hopefully in the future i will finish what i started and become a teacher.

2. fandom - interacting is one of the key things on tumblr. sure you can just make your posts and go by it i mean in the end tumblr is there to space out, i’ve been enjoying my freedom and to be able to post whatever i want whenever i want and just letting my creativity full out it was really great but nowadays i feel like more and more people are dying out on tumblr, sure they are for example nice and funny people in the bvb fandom and i do enjoy them very much but i still feel like compared to 5 years ago there is a major difference. a lot of my friends have left the fandom, those were people who inspired me to post and in general to be an active part of this fandom, sure they are still great people (shootout to all my mutuals) in it which like i said above really enjoy but i still feel like we got a lot smaller and it’s kinda less fun? i mean it’s still rolling and going but with a lot less fire than it used to be.. at this point i would like to say that i’m not trying to ruin anyone’s fun i mean if you’re still enjoying what you do then that is wonderful and please keep it up. for me the fire just got smaller and the desire has shrunken tbh. i think it’s logical tho i mean when people leave you enjoyed interacting with and also the the dynamic of the fandom changes and the club also with coaches and players it does make sense. those who are currently there are doing a good job and they kept me motivated till my last breath to keep me going so i would like to thank all my mutuals for being lovely human beings. i feel like in general you need to take more care at what you write, post and say, i mean if you for example were not happy with a certain player’s performance or in general if something bothers you, you need to watch out because there could always be someone who could hate on you for doing so and that kinda sucks.

3. favre - if you follow me for a longer period of time you will know that i was never really found of him. i don’t hate him but i do dislike him for many reasons. i personally don’t see us winning a trophy with him as he’s lacking of the mentality of some other great coaches who have won some trophies recently and in the past. for me he just doesn’t fit into the system of bvb as he gives me this ‘chicken’ scared kind of vibe. the tactic changes to play with like 3/5 defenders is something i find also quite questionable that we are not able to play with just 4 defenders and also let’s not talk about that time our players were lacking off motivation. sure it’s not all the coach who is to blame but for me he’s the major reason for a lot of questionable things, decisions and results which happened in the past. now that favre said a few days ago that he wants to continue to work with bvb and zorc said that they don’t look out for a new coach i think that totally ruins it for me.

4. favorite player - now it’s official (not like that it wasn’t obvious before) but yes mario will leave bvb. obviously my heart will always beat black and yellow, but i’m really disappointed in the way how mario is leaving. after he came back and fought of his disease he has always given his all for this club. in his playertribute he wrote how after he came back he understood more the club and how the fans feel and i totally dig that as whenever he played he always showed heart and wanted to win, especially last season when he was one of the best if not the best player who alongside other players like jadon almost made it possible to capture the bundesliga title. after that amazing 2nd leg of the bundesliga what happened afterwards? he got treated like shit. benched all over and never gotten a chance to play. after 6 games of being benched and a 1+ minute sub in the ucl at the 91′ minute he played vs bremen and guess what? he scored, he provided 3 goal chances, his pass accuracy was very high and he became man of the match. favre said he played very well and what then? he got benched again. i really hate how bvb is treating him almost like as if he was just air you know and i don’t think he deserves that, i mean he has given his all whenever he got the chance to play but to treat him like this is is just very unfair. he showed that he still has qualities and can actually play well and help the offensive but not on favre’s watch.

so now with mario leaving i don’t think i will do much edits as i used to because in general it hurts me really that he is leaving i grew up with him being in bvb as a 17 yo boy who just came from the youth. now he is rotten on the bench and gets treated like shit and his last match? well i don’t know if he will even play by the amount of time favre is benching him. but one thing is to say: once he’s gone he will find a new club and finally play again and find his happiness and that makes very happy.

but back to my blog now: one of the main reasons why i joined this site is because of mario götze, my fav club and of course the love for football, to express my feelings in a different way as you know such as edits or text posts and so on. now that mario is leaving i don’t think i will be really motivated to make edits and since my schedule and tumblr itself is changed/is changing i decided it would be the right time to take a step down.

so no i’m not leaving tumblr - i just change my blogging style and activity. i will definitely make less edits, i will probably reblog much more, i will still try do to make posts here and there (if my schedule and mood allows it and is good) but i don’t think i will be any longer the blogger i used to be for a long time on this site as i think with mario leaving bvb and also with now almost a decade of difference of tumblr and all the changes with happened on this site, the fandom itself and people leaving i think it’s fitting to make this step. i joined this site when mario left bvb and now that mario is leaving again i think my active-phase of being a football-editor is coming to an end. 

i will still be around like i said, just in a different way and style. i’ve made some great friends on here and there also a lot of nice people who i still need to get to know better and to which i look forward to! i really appreciated all the support i’ve received through out my journey and i just wanted to thank you it really always meant a lot to me! my journey is now ending now and i’ve really appreciated being able to express all my creativity and feelings for such a long time with your support you’ve always encouraged me to do even more and to feel good at what i’m doing so thank you! i look forward to my new chapter as now blogging will be different to what i’m used to but regardless i look forward to it.

i’m not ded i’m just taking a step back and i’m in the second seat row now. thank you 💛

[walkonwalkonwithhopeinyourheart]

[OC] A quick scouting report on our new signing - Takumi Minamino via /r/LiverpoolFC

[OC] A quick scouting report on our new signing - Takumi Minamino

I want to preface by saying that it took me some time to actually find time to write this quick scouting report lol but to also watch several matches because I wanted to put something out that is accurate. Its actually really hard to find videos and statistics of Minamino's because the Austrian Bundesliga actually don't even track advanced stats aside from goals and assists. Of course I'm not an expert or anything so take everything with a grain of salt.

Positional Fit

I guess we should start with just exactly how he will fit with our team. I've seen a quite few questions asking about exactly what position he will play etc.

This season so far, Salzburg has lined up in a 4-4-2 diamond, flat 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, and a 5-3-2. And in each of these lineups, Minamino has lined up as a RM/RW, CM and a traditional number 10 who plays right underneath the striker.

Minamino's versatility is a big plus because looking at the system we play in, he's able to slot in a variety of positions. In our bread and butter, 4-3-3, he can slot in as a CM or in the wing positions. When we switch to a 4-2-3-1 at times during a match, he can slot in as the CAM or RM. In a 4-4-2, he fits perfectly as a RM/RW.

I would like to point out that although technically he never played as a LM/LW, imo I think this is a position he is able to play as well. Salzburg never used him in that position because of Szobalszlai who is a strictly LM so it forced Mina to play more in the centre or right. However, during matches you will see that Minamino really can roam anywhere in Salzburg's system and can do the same for us.

Obviously no one really expects him to be a starter for us and I'm sure thats something he considered and is okay with too. With the sheer amount of matches we're playing this season, combined with our ambitions to win everyone of them - there will be plenty of matches in which he comes on a substitutue and matches where he can start.

Can he play as a false nine?

This is a common question and notion that I see often in this sub, and imo I'm not sure whether he can or cannot. On one hand, he has certain qualities that can help him excel in that role (which I will mention a little later) but I also feel like the false nine role is such a unique position that you cant just put a good midfielder in and expect him to excel. Bobby's hold up play, underrated strength and absurd IQ is really hard to replicate. But I'm not here to act like Ik everything so thats something we'll have to see in the season but I do have my reservations.

Strengths

Home vs Liverpool

Away vs Genk

Away vs Napoli

These are just the three last UCL games he's played in and his respective heatmaps for each. If a player is going to excel on this team, before any technical ability, before any skills or goals; the work-rate, the engine must be there and Minamino has it.

He is quite literally all over the pitch and watching him on film, he runs around like an animal pressing and harrying players. He averages 2.5 interceptions per 90 for Salzburg and tt helps that Salzburg is a team that emphasizes a lot of high pressure and quick counter-attack play which Minamino has been excelling in.

On a technical level, he really is exceptional. His touch, passing, and shooting is incredibly sharp and crisp. What I love about him the most is how tidy in possession he is,he has incredibly quick feet and reflexes, almost like the ball is glued to him. Here's a couple of more to enjoy.

Sure, he's skilled and has tekkers but what makes a skilled player an actually good player is vision and IQ. The ability to see space and openings just a half second before the defense can react and it's one of Minamino's biggest strengths. With the quality of forwards we have, its going to be a joy to watch passes like these Man there's so many more but you guys can look at it yourself on Youtube or something. I must say his half-turns are fucking orgasmic. Reminds me so much of Lallana's half turns, I swear they look identical when performing them.

Minamino's quick touches, great link-up play and clever one-two passing along with his ability to put in an accurate cross now and then is extremely valuable in games when we have to break down a Burnley, for example.

And although I hate using assists and goals as a measure of goal output, its worth mentioning that he has scored or assisted a goal every 115 minutes for Salzburg. What that does show me is how intelligent and involved he is in a team's scoring output.

What is often underlooked is how intelligent his runs are and how underrated his off the ball movement is. Now these runs don't always lead to a goal or assist, they seldom do but it puts the defense in a difficult position and opens up spaces for the likes of Haaland and Hwang Salah and Mane.

Weaknesses

It was quite hard to pinpoint any specific weaknesses in his game to be honest, From watching a lot of Asian football, what I notice in Asian footballers is when it comes to the technical aspect of the game, they're very exceptional.

Of course, you have to question if he can handle the transition to the PL. Playing in a much more physical league with less time on the ball and pose some problems for the 5'8, slight build Minamino. But we've seen similar players with that size excel.

Verdict

7.5 million for a player of his quality is more than a steal. Considering he came at that price and the quality that he will bring to our squad is truly amazing. He will bring the necessary depth to a team that will be hounded with fixtures and more than that he brings quality depth.

I think he'll be a great rotational piece and might even play a bigger role in seasons to come if Lallana/Shaqiri depart the club. As a fan I'm super excited because he's a joy to watch but I'm sure Minamino himself is very excited. Klopp can take his game to the next level as evident by similar players to Minamino such as Kagawa and Lallana.

TL;DR: Minamino good.

Submitted December 13, 2019 at 05:25AM by deadassynwa via reddit https://ift.tt/34mf6Fr

[mundialboost]

Ajax 2-3 Tottenham: The Night All Football Logic Went Out the Window

Ajax 2-3 Tottenham is part of 90min's 20 Greatest Matches of the Decade series. Follow the rest of the series over the course of the next week.

​So...where to start? Maybe a bit of context? Yeah, I think we'd all appreciate it. Anything involving Tottenham usually needs to be explained at length. As a football club, they don't make any sense.

Ajax had emerged as one of the best teams in Europe during the 2018/19 season, providing some entertaining displays in the Eredivisie, which they would eventually win, and showed they weren't in the Champions League to make up the numbers with a few classic encounters with Bayern Munich in the group stage.

They stunned Real Madrid in the last 16, winning 5-3 on aggregate following a smashing 4-1 triumph at the Bernabeu, before producing a smash and grab performance Juventus would be proud of in the quarter finals against...Juventus.

Tottenham, by quite a stark contrast, performed weirdly in 2018/19. After a strong first half of the campaign, the wheels quickly fell off domestically, the squad was crippled by injuries and looked knackered. 

So when the two teams were paired up in the Champions League semi finals, the Dutch side were favourites. And the gap in quality was clear for all to see in the first leg in north London.

Ajax's midfield three of Frenkie de Jong, Lasse Schone and Donny van de Beek made their Tottenham counterparts - Victor Wanyama, Dele Alli and Christian Eriksen - look like amateurs in what was a horrifically lopsided opening 35 minutes, the visitors scoring a crucial away goal when Van de Beek was given the freedom of Enfield to fire past Hugo Lloris.

Spurs eventually began to assert themselves with the introduction of Moussa Sissoko, but they couldn't bring themselves level and knew only a win in Amsterdam would do.

As you can probably remember, things didn't start off too well for Spurs.

Matthijs de Ligt, Ajax's man-child captain, charged away from Kieran Trippier, who was inexplicably marking the home side's biggest aerial threat, to rise higher than Dele Alli and glance his header into the far corner, past Lloris.

Barely five minutes in, and it seems like it's game over already.

Tottenham start to show their teeth a little more, Son Heung-min - so often their hero during the UCL campaign - getting in down the left before sending a shot from an acute angle against the post. Half chances that need to go in for Spurs aren't going in.

35 minutes in, Hakim Ziyech walks on to a Dusan Tadic lay-off and smacks a shot past Lloris in glorious fashion.

That truly is game over. 

There's no conceivable version of events after that goal that could allow Tottenham to progress ahead of their Dutch opponents. Frankly, it would be undeserved.

But the 2018/19 Champions League wasn't particularly sober. As Tottenham fans can attest to, most of their results looked like they had been plucked out of the air by some wino sat outside a Spoons at three in the morning.

A 1-1 draw at Camp Nou while relying on Inter to slip up against PSV Eindhoven? Weird.

Thumping Borussia Dortmund 3-0 at Wembley before sealing a 4-0 aggregate victory in Germany? Odd.

Reaching the semi finals after all kinds of drama at the Etihad? Freaky.

So perhaps we shouldn't have been so surprised at what unfolded in the second half at the Johan Cruyff Arena.

In the midst of the ridiculousness of the drama, people forget how good the goals Tottenham scored on that fateful night really were.

The comeback started with, of all people, Danny Rose in the 55th minute.

The left back hilariously mugged off De Ligt with a cheeky nutmeg, before sending a long ball out down the middle of the pitch, where Lucas Moura had drifted in from the right to prod on to Dele Alli. The midfielder, probably knowing he couldn't beat the retreating De Jong for pure pace, looked to chop infield, where his touch fell perfectly for the onrushing Moura.

He skips past challenges from Schone and De Jong, sending his shot past Andre Onana's outstretched left hand.

That's one back. Two more to go.

Just four minutes pass before Spurs are in again.

Rose fires a pass into Son on the edge of the box, with Kieran Trippier in acres of space down the right. Son finds him and the defender's cross is perfect for Fernando Llorente. But, in typical Fernando Llorente fashion, the Spaniard has his would-be-tap-in incredibly saved by Onana.

Again, it seemed like a do or die moment. It needed to go in for there to be any chance of Tottenham progressing.

But, barely seconds later, Ajax's wobbled rearguard decided to give Spurs one helluva juicy present.

Onana dives to gather the ball from Llorente's shot, only for Schone to intervene. The ball squirms free, and what Lucas Moura produces under extreme pressure is somewhat extraordinary.

The former Paris Saint-Germain attacker keeps the ball so close to his feet during the ensuing chaos in the penalty box, as if it were tied to a piece of string, wriggling away from challenges before shooting through De Jong's legs and past a despairing De Ligt on the line.

Two back. Tottenham level on the night, behind on aggregate, yet knowing another goal could send them to the final. 

For the first time in the tie, there's some genuine belief from Spurs fans that their side could actually do the unthinkable, just a day after ​Liverpool produced one of the most iconic Champions League comebacks, coming from three goals down in the first leg to beat ​Barcelona 4-0 at Anfield.

What follows is a bit weird. Understatement, yes, but still accurate.

In the 79th minute, the ball falls for Ziyech on the edge of Tottenham's box, he takes a touch to steady himself before firing towards goal.

Off the post.

About seven minutes later, a Spurs corner is flicked on by Llorente, and falls for Jan Vertonghen. Inside the six yard box. Being the cultured centre back that he is, one suspects that he could take a touch before hammering past Onana. But he doesn't. Instead, he tries to concentrate as much energy into his neck as possible, heading the ball towards goal.

The bar not so much rattles, but shakes quietly, before his follow up is cleared off the line.

That's it. The 'sink to the floor in a sticky pub, holding your head in your hands' moment. A better chance to write a piece in your club's football history will not come again. It's done.

But even in that moment, you could be nothing but proud, as a fan of Tottenham. They were done and dusted in the group stage. They had seen off a Bundesliga title challenger with ridiculous ease in the last 16. They came back to life again and again at the Etihad in the quarter finals. The group had given everything in pursuit of one goal, and the final chapter in Tottenham's Champions League campaign of 2018/19 seemed to have been written.

And yet, they came...again. But not without a scare down the other end, mind you.

Daley Sinkgraven broke away down the right, teeing up Ziyech, who danced away from Toby Alderweireld before hammering a shot at Lloris, who beats it away before Tadic curls high and wide.

The 95th minute.

Son goes back to Sissoko.

The ball is hoofed up field.

Llorente, grappling with De Ligt, flicks into Alli.

He prods it round the corner to Moura.

Snap-shot.

Goal. 

Manager Mauricio Pochettino charges on to the pitch, embraced by Victor Wanyama, Eric Dier, Ben Davies and Jesus Perez. The boss collapses to the floor, in tears, holding his head.

Ajax players are crumpled and left inconsolable, knowing they had a foot in the Champions League final and, in the nicest possible way, blew it.

Play restarts, and eventually Sissoko makes his way to a corner flag.

The full-time whistle. Harry Kane's charged on to the pitch. No one can make head or toe of what's just happened.

Lucas Moura, now a Tottenham icon, can't contain his emotion, and neither can Pochettino. A first ever ​Champions League final for ​Tottenham, and probably their last for a long, long time, judging by how things are going at present.

9 May 2019. Better than 24 February 2008. And it's not even close.

For more from Jude Summerfield, follow him on Twitter!

Manchester City 3-2 QPR: You'll Never See Anything Like This Ever Again

Bayern Munich 2-1 Borussia Dortmund: A Night of History, Heynckes & Robben Making Wembley His Home

Barcelona 6-1 PSG: Remembering That Mad Midweek Miracle at Camp Nou

Scotland 3-3 Argentina: High VARma in Paris as World Cup Underdogs Knock Each Other Out

Roma 3-0 Barcelona: The Night Roma Rose From Their Ruins

France 4-3 Argentina: The Day France Emerged as World Champions-Elect

Liverpool 4-3 Borussia Dortmund: European Nights at Anfield Don't Get Much Better Than This

Napoli 2-4 Lazio: The 90 Minute Champions League Shootout That Had it All

Barcelona 3-1 Manchester United: Pep's Ride, Fergie's Hiding & Football's Impossible Standard

Wales 3-1 Belgium: The Night a Small Nation Created Their Biggest Moment

Watford 3-1 Leicester City: From Dejection to Delirium in 18 Extraordinary Seconds

Chelsea 2-2 Tottenham: The Battle of the Bridge Which Gave Leicester the Premier League Title

England 1-1 Colombia (4-3 Pens): When the Three Lions Made a Divided Country Believe

Porto 2-1 Benfica: When the Primeira Liga Was Decided With One Game to Spare

Liverpool 0-2 Chelsea: The Slip Heard Around the World 

​Inter 3-1 Barcelona: 'Gabbia', Wesley Sneijder's Masterclass and Jose Mourinho's Finest Hour

VER MÁS

Esta es una noticia y/o articulo editado por Mundial Boost publicada el November 19, 2019 at 10:27AM. Si desea conocer más información o complementar esta noticia, te invitamos a pulsar el botón de arriba: VER MÁS que te llevara a la versión completa de la misma.

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[smartsheffield]

Notes from Meetup #8: It’s not about the Tech!

Well this has taken quite a while to write up!

Partly it’s taken this long because life kept getting in the way, and partly because we had all kinds of trouble getting the videos down from Matt’s iCloud in one piece. A couple of the files were too big, and apparently corrupted in several places - in the end we had to set up another camera in front of my monitor, record the videos streaming to it, and then re-edit the new video to remove all the pauses and glitches.

This took some time.

As a result, Nigel Slack’s and RIck Robinson’s talks are pretty poor quality - they haven’t been completely lost though! Steve Turner’s, Kurtis Wright’s and Matt’s SmartSheffield News are at the usual level of smart phone fidelity, luckily.

All this has held up the write ups of the other events we’ve held since February as well - but now the video issue is resolved and things are calming down a little bit for Summer, these should follow very soon as well.

Anyway, back to the programme.

The February event took place on Monday the 12th February, and was themed “It's Not About the Tech!” with talks that attempt to show the wider rationales, impacts and considerations of introducing urban technologies. The evening kicked off with...

Nigel Slack on being an Active Citizen

Nigel Slack is a self-described Active Citizen, which he characterises as  “a campaigner, an advocate, someone who challenges the status quo - someone working to make the city a better place”. In this talk he explains the different aspects to his practice, and the ways in which he tries to make public decision-making more transparent and accessible to the general public.

Nigel talks about his work with other local and regional civil society organisations such as Sheffield for Democracy, the Electoral Reform Society at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield City Partnership, engagement with Citizens Assemblies, and the concept of Administrative Evil which was his topic at the recent Festival of Debate.

He also presents the "Talking Sheffield" show on Sheffield Live, the city's community TV and media platform, and runs a blog called The Public Interest, where he posts regularly about issues affecting the citizens of Sheffield.

On the subject of digital technology, Nigel says that one of his major concerns is centred around the idea that it “promotes a perfect way of doing things. That you’re not doing it right. Yet. Unless you’ve got the piece of tech that shows you how to do it”, and that it has a tendency to feed our individual neuroses.

He also discusses the two areas in which change in cities is most needed: infrastructure and governance, and how he engages with those agendas to affect change.

Nigel relies on donations from citizens to fund his work, which represents an interesting paradigm in the way citizens engage in local affairs, in parallel to the local press and other sources of information.

In the 2015 SmartSheffield report, under the Leadership theme,  we wrote about the need to ‘Harness Movements’. We said:

“With so much of the population now networked together, and talking to each other about things that affect them in their environment (both the good and the bad), the ability to listen to people's concerns; recognise where there are motivated groups; provide insight, information and tools to enable them; and connect them with other city actors who can help them make a positive difference, are crucial leadership skills that should be fostered.”

Active citizens like Nigel may be able to provide the critical insight that enables this to happen in ways that are effective.

Rick Robinson on Urban Challenges and Opportunities

Rick is Digital Property and Cities Leader at Arup, and here provides an overview of the most significant challenges facing cities across the world, including low productivity, an ageing population, the squeeze on local authority budgets,  worsening health outcomes, and food sustainability.

Rick’s practice focuses on the “creation of positive outcomes through the intersection of individual behaviour, place and technology”, and he looks at the problems caused by previous generations of technology (e.g. the automobile and concrete) and urban policy (e.g. national transport infrastructure to connect the UK’s city centres) and the negative effects this had on land value, livability and deprivation (see Lichfield, 2015, and UCL, 2014).

How can we avoid such consequences in the next generation of technological change? Rick points to one overarching challenge, and three huge opportunities:

The huge challenge is displacement. Nobody yet know how disruptive the change is going to be over the next 50 years, as at least half the tasks that are currently performed by humans are performed by machine. Will our societies be able to adapt sufficiently to perform the higher level tasks that will escape automation? Will a majority be unable to find work and reliant on benefits or a universal basic income? Will the vast majority of the world's wealth be concentrated among a few global platforms? These are the questions that really define our time.

There are also significant opportunities, though:

We’ve never before had so much data so readily available to make use of, to predict, to analyse to innovate with and convert into value, and it’s never been easier or cheaper to start a new business and be productive.

So the three opportunities are that digital technology is able to provide (open) data, (open) innovation and (individual) empowerment.

Not all models are equally beneficial though. For instance the platform businesses that have scaled up rapidly in recent years have produced inequalities, whereby those providing labour (e.g. Deliveroo riders) are relatively disadvantaged, while those providing assets (e.g. AirBnB hosts) are relatively advantaged - in other worlds the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer (see McAfee & Brynjolfsson, 2014 and JP Morgan Chase, 2016).

The key will be to find and promote arrangements that provide new efficiencies but also have predominantly positive externalities.

And there are huge opportunities to apply technology to make work an order of magnitude more efficient than it is currently.

Steve Turner on Bridging the Gap between City Challenges and Digital Solutions

Steve Turner is Digital Cities Lead at Arup, and here he dissects the gap between the realities of municipal leadership and local authority service provision, and the potential that digital technology presents. In 2017 Arup published a Global Review of Smart Cities, in which they showed the key purposes for which cities employ digital technology are to improve outcomes and efficiencies; to accelerate economic growth and to increase citizen engagement.

In practice, though, there is generally a yawning gap between the challenges that local authorities, and service users face and the technology and design firms who could develop suitable solutions to these issues.

There are lots of solutions looking for problems, and lots of vendors trying to sell things, but local authorities often don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to appreciate what is available in the marketplace, let alone assess a broad set of solutions. Even in the flagship Smart Cities, there is frequently no great legacy after the public money runs out.

There are examples of good applications of urban technology, such as Christchurch’s Digital Masterplanning, the DOLL Living Lab in Denmark, air quality improvements in Lille, savings from digital transformation in Camden, and elsewhere.

But the gulf between problem and solution still remains in most places.

Arup’s approach to this problem is to develop innovation engagement initiatives, in which they  work with city leaders to understand the local challenges starting with the city strategy or city plan. They then unpick the key challenges by interviewing service managers and users, and engage with the tech sector to scope out those challenges. Often this process identifies 20 or 30 challenges initially, and then reduces these down to just three or four.

These challenges then feed a programme whereby tech SMEs are shortlisted and then work alongside the local authority for roughly six months to prototype and trial solutions, before, hopefully, scaling up. This gives the local authority and tech firms the opportunity to work together and come to understand the opportunities.

Kurtis Wright on Open Banking and LociPay

Kurtis spoke to us roughly a year ago about his project to create a local digital currency called My Sheffield Pound, and he now returns to explain how this concept has evolved into a new fintech startup called LociPay, which is taking advantage of a profound shift in the European regulatory landscape for banking.

A new law - the PSD2 (Payment Service Directive 2) - came into force in January this year, which amongst other things requires the 9 main UK banks to publish open APIs so that 3rd parties can access bank accounts and services.

2 kinds of new services will make use of these new capabilities:

Account Information Service Providers (AISPs), that poll, aggregate and visualise financial information.

Payment Initiation Service Provider (PISPs), which essentially act as a new merchant gateway with direct access to the customer’s bank account, and don’t need to go via Visa or Mastercard or any other interface.

This is the route that Loci Pay is taking, in order to provide a new mobile payment mechanism for local transactions, independent retailers and SMEs, and provide them with a far cheaper transaction costs. In addition, it acts as a bank account to consumers which has no fees, via a partner challenger bank.

Kurtis believes that by providing a niche payment service, consumer can also use the brand awareness to know they are making locally economically supportive purchasing decisions, no matter where they are in the country. I.e. if the venue accepts LociPay, you can be sure that their revenue is not being routed offshore.

And then in future his plan is to encourage positive budgeting and savings behaviour via additional AISP services.

SmartSheffield News

Matt took over news duties this month, and covered the following:

SCR Digital Action Plan (still not publically released)

Sheffield Digital Skills Action Plan

IoT Tribe North in Barnsley

Kollider

Urban Flows Observatory - new sensor van

Things Network Sheffield - new gateways with WANdisco

Public WiFi

Sheffield Transport Vision

Sheffield Box - welcomes new arrivals to Sheffield

SCC/Veolia/Magtech Electric Refuse Vehicle Trial

Ofo Bikes

[nofomoartworld]

Vegetable smuggling, grimmy goods and other retail sabotages. An interview with Louise Ashcroft

In January 2017, artist Louise Ashcroft invited herself to be an artist in residency at Westfield Shopping Centre. That’s the mega mall in Stratford, East London. Its retail area is as big as 30 football pitches (says wikipedia), it has famous chains of fast fashion & fast food, screens budget-bloated blockbusters, rents kiddy cars and boasts some seriously boring ‘public’ artworks. Because there’s nothing remotely boring, mass manufactured nor glittery about her work (and also because she is quietly plotting the demise of capitalism), Ashcroft spent her time there undercover, pretending she was only looking for a bit of shopping fun.

The artist will present the result of her stealth research this week at arebyte in Hackney Wick, a five-minute walk from Westfield. Some of the works she developed at the shopping mall include a transposition of words from slogan fashion T-shirts on traditional narrow boat signs, offers to exchange ‘happy’ meals toys with more ‘soulful’ artist-designed toys, seditious retail therapy sessions, bookable tours of Westfield where she will guide participants through playful (pseudo)psychoanalytical activities, ‘mallopoly’ cards that invite shoppers to use the mall and its contents as a material, etc. Oh! and, since the Westfield area is the home of grime she also compiled words from Argos shopping catalogues into a cut-up text and grime artist Maxsta recorded it as a track.

This is not Ashcroft’s first incursion into the magical world of retail poisoning. She regularly smuggles unfamiliar-looking African vegetables into supermarkets and then throws the store in disarray when she attempts to buy them (Vegetable, 2003-17.) Two years ago, she spent time on another unsanctioned residency at Stratford Centre, a 1970s shopping precinct right in front of the flashy Westfield mall. She analyzed the centre’s marketing philosophy of “taking something negative about yourself and owning it” in the first hilarious TEDx talk i’ve ever seen:

Louise Ashcroft, Shopping and subversion at TEDxHackneyWomen

Ashcroft‘s solo show I’d Rather Be Shopping opens this Friday at Arebyte gallery as part of the gallery’s 2017 programme, Control. I asked her to take us through her research inside the best air-conditioned workshop an artist could hope for:

Louise Ashcroft, Stratford Works Trailer

Hi Louise! You had a residency at the Stratford center a couple of years ago. If i understood correctly, you simply invited yourself. It wasn’t an official one. Did the same happen this time in Westfield Center?

Yes, I invited myself to hang around the Stratford centre for some weeks. I’d noticed that it’s a space of resistance- people who can’t or don’t want to opt into the big capitalism of the Westfield mall hang out here, sell things, buy things; and the conventions of modern marketing are repeatedly broken.

It offers an alternative version of capitalism in which street traders, local characters and loiterers coexist with chain stores in a way that Westfield wouldn’t allow. The Stratford Centre is anarchic compared with Westfield – it shows its imperfections, has nothing to hide, whereas its megamall neighbour tightly controls the shopper’s experience so that we only see a partial view of the system and its wider social impact.

Westfield also has peculiar marketing strategies, but their bizarre qualities come from their efforts to conceal darker truths. For example, the biodiversity themed playground, the empty bee nesting boxes fitted into benches in the outdoor ‘street’ area, the plague of slogans featured on all the fashion at the moment- much of which features activist style slogans like ‘we are the future’ or ‘more bikes less cars’ or ‘feminist’. Despite the fact that these items themselves are the causes of ecological issues and problematic body politics. Other fashion slogans are more pessimistic, as though referring resignedly to the impending planetary destruction that consumerism has brought about: ‘I sold my soul’, ‘the end is nigh’, ‘nothing changes’. etc. Some of the t-shirts voice the angry isolation of a relationships based on likes and swipes: ‘whatever I’ll just date myself’, ‘like is the new love’, ‘why you so obsessed with me?’ I’m quite fixated on the t-shirts, they’re like our cultural stream of consciousness. Many express a sort of depressed helplessness: ‘too lazy to be crazy’, or ‘stay in bed’; whilst many celebrate neoliberal ambition and endless self-improvement: ‘no days off’, ‘run’, ‘I want it all’.

I found it hilarious that all the designers seemed to have taken a holiday and set up some sort of algorithm that prints hashtag phrases onto the cheapest plain t-shirts and sells them like hot cakes. It’s like wearable social media, a walking Facebook wall. I figured that these phrases were the key to the subconscious of society at this point in time, and I wanted to analyse this types of phrases that were being selected.

There so much more though. The Mallopoly game I’ve made (which will be given away free to all visitors to the show and people in Westfield) is a self-led series of activities to carry out in the centre, using the products and architecture as materials/props for challenges which each relate to an aspect of the shopping centre’s socio economic DNA. I think encouraging people to behave in different ways there is better than describing what I think is going on. I hope it’s not too didactic, as the tasks all relate to problems like seed rights, pollution, plastic and commodities trading. The tasks are very playful but there’s something quite futile about them too, in the face of these big issues. I want to simultaneously make the players feel liberated from the hegemony of the space but also powerless because the rebellious tasks (mainly involving role play, mime, sensory experiments, disguise, drawing, sound) are all quite benign and impotent really. A lot of my work is hedonistic yet melancholy, maybe that’s what Westfield is like too.

Mallopoly card

Mallopoly card

Also i was wondering how you behaved during this residency. Did you pretend to be a shopper like anyone else? Did your activities stand out in any way?

I had to pretend I was a shopper so I didn’t get in trouble, particularly when filming or watching people. YouTube vloggers have been banned from Westfield because many were playing pranks. There are a lot of security guards and I was stopped several times and asked if I needed help (or basically asked why I was behaving differently by loitering or photographing). I often get mistaken for staff in some shops, particularly sports shops, if I was wearing casual clothing. I’d originally hoped to find ways of working in the shops as part of the residency but it was difficult to even have conversations with shop assistants – it’s very much about efficiency in a modern shopping centre (not like the social space shops were when I was growing up in the north of England – my mum would spend hours chatting to shop assistants).

Louise Ashcroft, Unicorns of Westfield, 2017

Like many shopping centres, Westfield Stratford is a very loud place, especially visually. A fairly short amount of time in a shopping mall leaves me quite depressed. Since you spent so much time there, i was wondering if the experience affected your senses and mental well-being in any way?

I felt really lonely there. I remember once eating a packed lunch in the food court and really wanting to start a conversation with an old lady who also looked lonely but there was something about the place that made me nervous to do that – I felt like I’d come across as suspicious (I should have just gone for it). I listened to a lot of teenage conversations in the food hall- chat about social media interrupted by bleeps of social media. It’s definitely a social space if you’re with your group but it’s not the kind of place where people chat to passersby like they do in the Stratford centre. I talked to a middle aged woman for a while, because she was doing market research and I thought I could turn it into a more interesting conversation, but she had targets to meet and was really just interested in following the script that was popping up on her iPad questionnaire. I suppose people expect that if you try to talk to them in this space then you’re motivated by a financial transaction in some way. The first couple of months I found it really hard to be there, but now I feel I could do with much more time. I think the ‘retail therapy’ and performances I’m doing with individuals and groups of audiences will be the point when all of the research comes together in a way that feels really dynamic and impactful.

I’m a believer in the power of confusion, and when a group behaves unusually it provokes those involved and their witnesses to question what’s going on, and to question the whole environment they might have taken for granted.

I’m interested in the research you did with UCL students at The Institute for Global Prosperity to develop a “Deviant Planning Committee”. Are you going to publish online the inventory of deviations you compiled with them? Can you give us examples of some of these deviations?

Having spent so long in the mall, I invited these students, who were from various disciplines (mostly non arts subjects) and were on a summer school, to take my place for a day and hunt for opportunities for deviation within the Olympic park. They weren’t focusing so much on the shopping centre, rather its wider context. Many of the students found it very difficult, and a lot of what came back was ideas for business opportunities or ways of making the place more pleasant. Some of the responses were more critical though, and asked questions, for example about the value of the natural resources such as water and land, about the ways the security staff operate and how they might be used differently, or the names of the streets, or how busy the body is encouraged to be in this space of consuming and exerting energy.

There is a lot of humour in your work. Far more than in capitalism, the theme you’re exploring in many of your works. How do these two relate? How can humour be a useful instrument in subverting capitalism?

I get the same dopamine hit from the punchline of a joke as I do when a concept clicks into place in a conceptual artwork or theoretical text. Comedy is philosophy at its most efficient, with all the excess cut off. Jokes often happen when contrasting ideas come together and connect as part of the same thought, creating a chemical reaction which shifts their original status. If applied to our surroundings I think this is a powerful recipe for challenging the status quo, so I collage together what’s around me to make comic situations which unfold in public. Subverting ordinary situations is inherently funny- it’s what clowns have done for centuries, often literally reversing ordinary behaviour. Humour lets the viewer in because it’s pleasurable to laugh and because it shows that the artist is aware she is not special (a lot of art puts itself on a pedestal and I think this alienates people). It’s my failure to overthrow capitalism and the absurdity of my attempts to do so that make it funny.

There is also a level of naivety which helps me to get away with public actions in the first place. Beauty or technical excellence traditionally provide entry points for the viewer’s contemplation, but these are often focusing on impressing the viewer. My work is ordinary, it’s made with low value materials, it doesn’t require expertise, it often goes wrong and yet it reports back on these inadequacies with glee, a bit like how the Stratford Centre owns its weaknesses.

During these shopping mall residencies you’ve learnt a lot about marketing. I’m wondering if you’re not tempted to apply any of that in your art practice. Not so much in terms of content but as an instrument to advance your career, sell your work, turn you into a formidably marketable artist?

Marketable work tends to be work that has been completed and that it is possible to collect. I wrote a dissertation on wildness and ways of resisting being captured by the market. I only enjoy making work if I feel like it’s somehow transgressive, when it starts to feel like ‘work work’ I’m not interested any more. Wildness is an important part of the DNA of my practice. It’s what allows me to retain exteriority to the systems I analyse. Outsider status is fundamental to that. Even if I’m making objects they are always part of performative gestures and it’s not about finished objects but the effect they have in the moment. The traditionally painted signs featuring t-shirt slogans which I’m making for this show will all be given to the local boating community after the show. In an ideal world I’d have just painted directly into their boats. I love the idea of switching the fashion slogans and boat names.

You worked with grime artist Maxsta on a record inspired by your work at Westfield. How did the collaboration come about and what made you chose the Argos catalogue as a source for the lyrics? Is there a video of the track?

A lot of the pieces I’ve made for this show are collage-like, in that they take aspects of contrasting cultures and combine them. Like jokes do. I found out that this area is the home of grime music and i became interested in the anger in this working class genre and the way it rejects the blingy consumerism of commercial rap. Of all the catalogues in the mall, the Argos catalogue was most bountiful with evocative words I could cherry pick and bring together to make abstract lyrics. I approached a local grime station Don City Radio and they recommended someone but he didn’t get around to it and I couldn’t get through to him on the phone so I did some research and found a more experimental rapper then sent him a twitter message. He got the track to me within a couple of days and it is fantastic. He’s up for working on more collaborative stuff because the way I bring words together seems to work well with his phenomenal vocal abilities. It’s an exercise in appropriation really, but everyone’s appropriating everyone else, speaking through one another’s voices (the Argos copywriters, me, Maxsta). For me, the track reveals that what shops are really selling you are words and images – the materiality of most of the products is often generic (cotton, wheat, plastic, wood, metal…). The society of the spectacle and all that. Me and Maxsta are a pair of spectacles! Words are so rich and yet they’re all free and you can make them anywhere, anytime- that’s liberating. I’m a big believer in the power of parody, and mimicry, like the woman I heard on the radio yesterday doing Shakespeare in an Eastenders accent. By shifting the voice of something you reveal it for what it is.

What will the retail therapy sessions with Louise Ashcroft be like?

The retail therapy sessions will involve me and strangers (1-3 per session) completing a series of tasks in different shops and talking about the products we encounter, as devices for understanding our own lives and futures. We will begin with some exercises from Mallopoly the Westfield themed card game I’ve made which involves challenges like finding a product from as many countries as possible, making a noise track on our phones, dressing up as 18th century farmers in the fitting rooms, miming a coffee break, applying botanical classifications to the architectural decorations. All kinds of experiments, each of which relates to a problem with capitalism such as seed patents, waste or inequality.

Louise Ashcroft, Bread Suit, 2010

The bio on your website starts with the words “Recognising the power of small acts of resistance”. What can these small acts achieve?

Maybe just to remind us all to question everything and to see past the surface of things, deconstruct our presumptions about the world around us and reconstruct it more knowingly and more actively. An accumulation of small actions is the only way to change the world without becoming a replacement dictator. That’s why I hope my work isn’t preachy or didactic, I think empathising with one another’s weaknesses (mine especially) is crucial to making change happen.

And on top of your bio text, there’s “Nobody likes an activist.” But i feel that everyone wants to be an activist these days. Or at least pose as one. What’s not to like in an activist?

Once my dad said this so I wrote it down. I think he meant that people think activists believe that they’re better than everyone else. I wanted to remind myself that it’s ok not to be liked and that activism isn’t easy, even when it’s this small. If you’re going against the flow then that saps your energy, so reminding myself if that helps me keep going. I’m naturally stubborn and contrary, so the idea of going against the flow appeals. It’s not just for the sake of it either- as artists we have the duty to voice ignored, invisible or repressed truths. Our senses are heightened, we’ve trained for this – like sniffer dogs it’s our job to alert people to unnoticed things and then let them respond to that however they feel.

Thanks Louise!

Louise Ashcroft solo show I’d Rather Be Shopping opens at Arebyte gallery in Hackney Wick on 25th August 2017.

from We Make Money Not Art http://ift.tt/2ir1SV2 via IFTTT

[19spains]

The faces of Spanish football: Carlos Aranda - Two UCL titles, eight La Liga clubs, and unemployment

On November 5, 2016, a player who hadn't played for over a year joined his hometown club - a Tercera outfit called El Palo. Obviously, this was an ordinary signing.

But the player El Palo signed was no ordinary player.

The fight isn't on the pitch.

Carlos Aranda is known for his work ethic and his sheer determination. But that fight, that desire, that temperamental figure on the pitch is a result of the saddening circumstances off it.

Carlos was born in Málaga, Andalusia. His father abandoned him when he was little, and at the age of nine, his mother - a drug addict - died of cancer. Raised by his grandparents, his training at local club El Palo was overshadowed by the training of an early adulthood - he would fish octopuses to sell to restaurants in Málaga.

It was Vicente del Bosque who discovered the young forward at El Palo, and took him to Madrid - but he didn't fit in. The glamour didn't suit him, and he even tried fleeing the club - Real Madrid had to assign him a private tutor. "Mischievous", Vicente called him, many years later.

Somehow, despite all the odds, he graduated but never played in La Liga; however, he played a small part in two UEFA Champions League-winning squads, appearing against Molde FK (1999-00) and FC Lokomotiv Moscow (2001-02).

It was the time of the Galácticos, and Carlos was a casualty.

In January 2002, Aranda moved to Numancia, being instrumental in helping the Soria-based club retain its second division status - barely. This prompted a move at the end of the season to La Liga outfit Villarreal on a five-year deal but, as opportunities were scarce, he returned to Numancia in the Segunda in January 2003.

His first shot at top flight football had ended badly, but another six fruitful months at Numancia - helping them, once again, retain their Segunda status - earned him his second shot at top flight football. This time, it was newly promoted and Castilla-La Mancha based side Albacete who took the punt - and boy, did it pay off. Despite playing just over 1600 minutes, he scored eight goals - more than anyone else in the team. But more than the goals, it was his all round performances and his fighting spirit that won the affection of El Queso Mecánico, and a move to Sevilla in 2004.

Unfortunately, while he did score in his UEFA Cup debut, a 2–0 home win over Alemannia Aachen, he largely played second fiddle to Júlio Baptista. Furthermore, the following season he was forced out - for the second time from a big club - due to the arrivals of Luís Fabiano, Frédéric Kanouté and Javier Saviola. Sevilla sent him back to now-Segunda outfit Albacete on loan for the 2005-06 season, which finished with an accusation of unprofessional behavior by the club. He responded claiming he had been forced to appear at a press conference to show repentance for his actions.

The journeyman, once again looking for a club, ended up at Segunda outfit Real Murcia. The club was looking to return to its rightful place in La Liga - and Carlos Aranda's 1304 minutes spread over the 2006-07 season yielded a surprising 11 goals - second-best in the squad behind Iván Alonso - and a promotion. And once again, a wave of success was followed by an unassuming season - this time with "newly created" Segunda outfit Granada 74 which ended in relegation.

This time, however, there was no team to take a shot at him.

No team wanted him. No professional team, that is - many teams in the Segunda B were happy to have him train with them. For the first few months of the 2008-09 season, he was training with Catalan Segunda B outfit CF Gavà, desperately hoping that a club would give him one final shot to prove himself in professional football.

It was almost poetic, almost perfect, that the club that gave him his first opportunity gave him another one. In December 2008 Numancia signed him again, hoping that his time there would be "third time lucky".

This time, Carlos Aranda made sure there would be no dispute of his quality, scoring regularly and proving his mettle as a top tier striker. And while Numancia were relegated, this time every top tier club was somehow linked to him. It was Osasuna who won the bidding war, offering 1.2 million euros as well as Kike Sola on a year-long loan deal.

Unfortunately, this time the struggle was different - injuries kept him out for large stretches of what some would assume are the "prime" years of a striker's career, and in his second season Kike Sola returned and took his place as Carlos took his place on the physio table.

From then on, the story, like his career, undergoes a slow decline. In the summer of 2011 he signed for Levante but six months later joined Real Zaragoza, and a year after that joined Granada - all in La Liga - never really settling at any club.

He went on to play for Las Palmas and Numancia in the Segunda, but was released by the latter club in February 2015.

Over a year of unemployment later, Carlos Aranda is back where he started.

His local team, El Palo.

The unfortunate part of his story is this - history will remember him by a statistic. He is the player to have played for the most La Liga teams - the number being eight, nine if you count Real Madrid*. What that statistic shows is a journeyman - but it doesn't capture his story.

It doesn't capture the fact that many clubs tossed him aside. It doesn't capture his rise to the top despite the incredible hardships of his childhood. It doesn't capture the the impossible odds of being spotted by Vicente del Bosque in the small barrio of El Palo.

And it doesn't capture his work ethic, his determination, and his desire on the pitch.

*he didn't play in La Liga for Real Madrid, which is why counting it might be misleading. Nevertheless, he holds the record.

[junker-town]

Bayern Munich vs. Real Madrid: Final score 1-2, Cristiano Ronaldo scores brace in Champions League

Going a man down against Cristiano Ronaldo was too much for Bayern Munich to withstand.

Things started with Bayern Munich dominating affairs against Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarterfinal tie, but a red card for Javi Martinez and a second-half brace for Cristiano Ronaldo meant that Bayern fans went home disappointed after a 2-1 loss.

This match delivered on every bit of its promise as a high-level, technical game. Real Madrid and Bayern Munich put on a clinic of just how well two top-level teams can play, constantly countering each other with tactical shifts and surprising passing sequences. But for much of the match, it felt like Bayern held something of an edge, and they turned that edge into reality just 25 minutes in.

After an attacking sequence that saw Franck Ribery stonewalled by a quality headed clearance from Gareth Bale, the resulting corner saw Arturo Vidal working against Nacho in the penalty area. That’s a matchup that was only going to go one way, and it ended with Vidal unleashing an absolute cannon shot of a header past Keylor Navas and into the back of the net.

Bayern dominated most of the rest of the half, though Real Madrid did have a few moments of quality here and there. They nearly were staring down an unjust two-goal deficit, though, when the referees awarded Bayern with a penalty just before halftime for what was called as a handball on Dani Carvajal on a Ribery shot — but replays clearly showed that the ball came off Carvajal high on his shoulder, nowhere near where a handball can be called.

Fortunately for Real Madrid, Vidal skied the resulting shot from the spot badly, and then despite dealing with a pair of injured players slowing things down on the pitch in Gareth Bale and Casemiro, the Spaniards came out swinging in the second half and got a huge early goal from Cristiano Ronaldo to level the score despite much of the match feeling as if it was going Bayern’s way.

The momentum well and truly shifted in Real Madrid’s favor at the hour mark, though, with Javi Martinez making two rash and sloppy fouls a matter of minutes apart from each other to earn himself a pair of yellow cards and an early shower, putting his team down a man at a crucial and unfortunate time. Bayern actually responded well to the setback with their tactical shifts, but the extra space and freedom Real got as a result of going up a man definitely changed the flow of the game.

It actually looked for a time that Bayern were going to hold out and keep the score at 1-1 heading into the second leg, but Cristiano Ronaldo popped up again to tap the ball in past Manuel Neuer just moments after the big German goalkeeper had made yet another huge save. That goal was Ronaldo’s 100th in all European competitions, and more importantly it gave Real Madrid an important 2-1 lead to take into the second leg of this Champions League quarterfinal tie.

It’s a disappointing result for Bayern after their early dominance — though not as bad as the 3-1 it could have been had Toni Kroos stayed onside in a called-off goal in stoppage time — but they’re still very much in this tie. They have the ability to get the win at the Santiago Bernabeu, but they cannot afford to have the kinds of lapses in concentration that cost them this game.

Bayern Munich: Manuel Neuer; Philipp Lahm, Javi Martinez (red 61’), Jerome Boateng, David Alaba; Xabi Alonso (Juan Bernat 63’), Arturo Vidal, Thiago Alcantara; Arjen Robben, Thomas Muller (Kingsley Coman 81’), Franck Ribery (Douglas Costa 67’)

Goal: Vidal (25’)

Real Madrid: Keylor Navas; Dani Carvajal, Nacho, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo; Luka Modric (Mateo Kovacic (90’+1), Casemiro, Toni Kroos; Gareth Bale (Marco Asensio 58’), Karim Benzema (James Rodriguez 83’), Cristiano Ronaldo

Goals: Ronaldo (47’, 77’)

Three things we learned

Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben still have it

They may be old, they may be slowing, and they may not be quite the players they were a few years ago, but Robben and Ribery can still get the job done. Started again together on short rest after having an impressive performance as a wing duo at the weekend, they put in an excellent shift again in a huge match, giving Real Madrid players fits all game long.

Their ability to create from out wide and routinely get past Real’s fullbacks gave their defense all kinds of problems throughout the match, and it opened up a lot of opportunities for Bayern to work with in attack, even without Robert Lewandowski available in this match. Their quality keeps helping propel Bayern to greater heights, and it’s a joy to keep watching “Robbery” do their thing at a high level.

Real Madrid need a new center back this summer

Now, a starting duo of Sergio Ramos and Raphael Varane is really good, and you could do a lot worse than to have Pepe be your primary backup. But each of those three players are prone to spending occasional time with the trainers during the season, and if Real Madrid run into a case like on Wednesday when two of them are hurt, they can only turn to — Nacho.

And Nacho isn’t good enough.

He showed it on Saturday against Atletico Madrid, and he proved it on Wednesday against Bayern Munich. When Nacho is on the pitch, he’s the weak link for Real Madrid in a way that they can’t afford to carry, because it puts just way too much pressure on the rest of the defense and even on the midfield to an extent. Then you look at how Arturo Vidal utterly dominated him on Bayern’s opening goal, and you just can’t help but feel that Real Madrid simply cannot allow their defensive depth to rely on him any longer.

Javi Martinez should probably remember that Cristiano Ronaldo is really, really good

There isn’t much to say about Ronaldo’s goal for Real Madrid from his perspective. It was a beautiful bit of footwork, a tidy finish, and an important moment — all pretty standard fare for Ronaldo’s goals, really. But there is one question lingering about that goal: what on earth was Javi Martinez thinking?

There he is! @Cristiano pops up for his record 96th career #UCL goal to get Real Madrid level. #FCBRMA https://t.co/vfUiJ2DYaY

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) April 12, 2017

Ronaldo checked his run in a way that’s actually pretty typical for him, then Martinez glances at him and just doesn’t respond to it. In fact, he keeps moving closer to goal. It’s like he thought “Nah, it’s just Cristiano Ronaldo, he’s not a threat with space right in front of goal.”

Little tip for you, Javi: Ronaldo is a threat in front of goal, and he just scored on you. Nice work. And getting sent off for two really bad tackles 13 minutes later isn’t going to make up for it.

[unfairweb]

Can agroecology feed the world and save the planet?

Henrietta Moore | Sunday 9 October 2016 09.00 BST

 Up to 50 million people across east and southern Africa are at risk of hunger. Photograph: Cheryl-Samantha Owen/NPL/Alamy

You wouldn’t necessarily know it, but right now Africa is facing a food crisis. With Brexit, global terror attacks, the war in Syria and the seemingly endless string of sporting fixtures vying for our collective attention in 2016 so far, the fact that up to 50 million people across east and Southern Africaare at risk of hunger seems to have largely escaped mention.

The continent has been wracked by drought following one of the strongest ever El Niños. And while a natural phenomenon is the immediate cause, however, Africa’s food security has been undermined over recent decades by the rise of monocropping – the planting of single-crop tracts across vast swathes of scarce arable land.

Starting in the 1960s, the “green revolution” saw industrial farming practices transplanted to poorer nations. In the second half of the 20th century, its success seemed unassailable: the global harvest of maize, wheat and rice trebled from 640 million tonnes in 1961 to almost 1.8 billion tonnes by 2000.

Africa, in particular, embraced new maize varieties with alacrity. Corn now covers up to 70% of some African nations’ farmland and accounts for about 50% of calories consumed by humans.

Read more Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet Jason Hickel

But the enormous cost to the land and people is now becoming clear. A recent report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summed up the problem bluntly, stating: “Past agricultural performance is not indicative of future returns”.

The meticulously-researched document concludes that the green revolution’s “quantum leap” in cereal production has come at the price of soil degradation, salinisation of irrigated areas, over-extraction of groundwater and the build-up of pest resistance. Add climate change into the mix and you have a recipe for disaster. While Africa’s population is set to double to 2.4 billion by 2050, the FAO warns that maize yields could fall by nearly 20% over that period.

The problem is affecting not just quantity, but quality. Lack of rotation and over-use of phosphates and nitrates has degraded the nutrient content of the soil, leaving 2 billion people globally suffering micronutrient malnutrition, many in sub-Saharan Africa.

In fact, soil degradation in Kenya, which I’ve been visiting regularly for more than 35 years, is so severe it’s estimated that the productivity of cropland in the country declined by 40% between 1981 and 2003 as the population doubled.

Productive agriculture isn’t just a nice thing to have. For economies such as Kenya’s, it’s the essential foundation for everything else, generating 30% of GDP and employing more than 60% of the workforce.

Productive agriculture isn’t just a nice thing to have. For economies such as Kenya’s, it’s an essential foundation

Kenya is determined to move its economy away from over-reliance on agriculture by transforming itself into a regional hi-tech hub (dubbed, somewhat inevitably, “Silicon Savannah”) with billion-dollar projects coming down the line. But the context is a country in which up to 4 million people still receive food aid annually.

But there is an alternative that more and more farmers are exploring. Agroecology – an approach which takes into account natural ecosystems and uses local knowledge to plant a diversity of crops that boost the sustainability of the farming system as a whole – is establishing itself in small pockets across Africa.

In east Africa, more than 96,000 farmers have adopted a “push-pull” system for dealing with problematic stemborer pests and striga weed. The system plants maize alongside fodders and wild grasses that “push” pests away, or “pull” them towards decoy plants. Their maize yields have increased from an average of 1 to 3.5 tonnes per hectare without the use of chemical insecticides and with minimal external inputs, according to an evaluation by the Oakland Institute.

Meanwhile, Kenyan farmers are showing how adaptation to climate change can benefit them and the wider economy. Numerous initiatives are encouraging a switch from single-crop maize to drought-resistant and nutritious sorghum and millet, intercropped with legumes. One such scheme in Wote, run by the Kenyan government and crop research body ICRISAT, has seen nearly 400 farmers switch, boosting yields and fetching a better price for their crops.

Read more As drought hits Ethiopia again, food aid risks breaking resilience Tate Munro and Lorenz Wild

Agroecology isn’t confined to Africa. In fact, there are examples from across the global south of farmers embracing new thinking to improve their yields and the sustainability of their communities. To cite just one example from Brazil, thousands of hill farmers using mulch to cover crops made up of legumes and grasses saw their maize yields jump from 3 to 5 tonnes per hectare without using chemical fertiliser.

The big question often asked is: can agroecological farming really feed the world, with the global population hurtling towards 9.6 billion by 2050? It’s clear that there’s increasing evidence it could.

A landmark 2001 study by Jules Pretty and Rachel Hine examined 208 projects from 52 countries and found yield increases of 50-100% for rain-fed crops like maize. The cases studied involved 9 million farmers on around 3% of all of the farmed land in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the increases were typically bigger at lower yields, indicating greater benefits for the poorest farmers.

To scale these advances even further, however, we need to radically rethink the economic and social mechanisms that keep farmers trapped on the treadmill of producing for international markets at the expense of themselves and their families. Junking the dogma of monocropping is a crucial part of this process.

Henrietta Moore is director of UCL Institute for Global Prosperity

Can Agroecology Feed the World and Save the Planet? Can agroecology feed the world and save the planet? Henrietta Moore | Sunday 9 October 2016 09.00 BST…