Twin Towers

Now that Ruud Van Nistlerooy has become the interim coach of Manchester United, following the sacking of fellow Dutchman Erik Ten Haag, Yours Truly has been reminded of a titbit about the great Dutch striker that he learned years ago.

Back in the nineties, Van Nistlerooy was one of the first-choice strikers for the Dutch national team. His partner in crime? It was usually Patrick Kluivert, whose failure to covert numerous golden opportunities was the main reason the Dutch were beaten by Brazil in the 1998 World Cup semi-final.

Yours Truly was a huge Dutch fan in those days thanks to the great memories of the best striker in his mind, Marco Van Basten.

Now back to Van Nistlerooy and Kluivert. You know what the odd thing about them is?

They were born on the same day, same month, same year.

Did you know that?

Men in Black

Yours Truly loved and still loves goalkeeper jerseys. When he was young, he would pester his parents into buying him goalkeeper jerseys, shorts and gloves, even though he could not dive or catch a ball properly (and not particularly tall to be of goalkeeper material either). One of his favourite pastimes in those days was to dive left and right, jump up and down in full goalkeeper gear on his parents’ bed while no one else was at home, imagining that he had just made some spectacular saves and was applauded by everyone in the stands.

Back in the 90s, Italian Serie A was the undisputed king and Yours Truly was deeply sucked into it. And he was particularly fond of all those goalkeepers clad in mostly black. Tall, lean and athletic, they were the coolest looking guys on earth for Yours Truly and they just looked amazing in those jerseys. There were many favourites for Yours Truly, not necessarily in terms of their goalkeeping ability, but how they looked in full gear, namely mostly black jerseys, black shorts, black socks and oversized white gloves:

Nello Cusin

Michelangelo Rampulla

Andrea Pazzagli

Fabrizio Ferron

Francesco Mancini

Marco Landucci

Sebastiano Rossi

Walter Zenga

Man, they looked like runway models on soccer pitches and Yours Truly spent many hours daydreaming of growing up to be as tall, lean and athletic as they were.

Sadly, that never materialised.

For goalkeepers clad in all black, Stefano Tacconi of Juventus also came to mind. However, Yours Truly was never a fan of Tacconi in terms of goalkeeping style, as his effective but sometimes awkward technique made it less-than-cool in Yours Truly's eyes.

Speaking of goalkeeper jerseys, Yours Truly always remember seeing a particular one on television once donned by goalkeepers like Giovanni Galli, Luca Marchegiani, Giovanni Cervone and Mario Ielpo in the early 90s’. On TV, it looked like either black or dark brown at the top, and teal/light green at the bottom. Yours Truly spent a long time looking for it online and surprisingly, it proved rather elusive. Then one morning recently, he finally stumbled onto it.

Mario Ielpo

(Photo credit: La Gazzetta dello Sport)

Giovanni Galli

(Photo credit: www.laststicker.com)

While it probably does not matter to anyone else, it means the world to Yours Truly.

And once again, Yours Truly has to thank the amazing internet for coming to the rescue.

Two is Better Than Three

Yours Truly grew up a huge fan of Formula 1 in the early eighties, and is still mesmerised by that fascinating 1982 season that he has told everyone he knows that if there is ONE Formula 1 season somebody has to catch up, 1982 has to be it.

But since then, Formula 1 has never been as fascinating as that single year. In recent years, he has found solace in Moto3, where every race features closely-fought battles among a dozen or so riders. Almost every Moto3 race features a race-winning overtake in the last few corners, and Yours Truly would scarcely leave his worn out sofa just to watch every single second of action.

This year, however, Moto3 is boring. The main culprit? Colombian David Alonso. In seven races so far, he has got four poles and five victories. Now, dominating Moto3 is not a bad thing, like what Pedro Acosta did in 2021 when he became an instant sensation. To Yours Truly, however, Alonso is so good that he is boring, just like Max Verstappen in Formula 1. He seldom makes any mistakes, and his CFMoto bike is ridiculously good and reliable. When he hits the front, you can say for sure that he will keep his lead until the end of the race.

What’s worse is the emergence of a so-called Big Four this year in Moto3: Alonso, Daniel Holgado, Collin Veijer and Ivan Ortola. At least two of them have appeared in every podium this year so far. And also gone are the days of different riders fighting for victory. In almost every race, these four would distance themselves from the rest of the field, and fight for the win in the end.

So Yours Truly has decided to watch something else for more excitement. Luckily for him, he does not have to look far as Moto2 has turned into a fascinating slugfest this year. The first seven races this year have been won by six riders, and the leader, Sergio Garcia, struggled mightily last season but has somehow turned the corner on a Boscoscuro bike. His team-mate, Ai Ogura, was once expected to move up to MotoGP but has also struggled in Moto2 in recent years. Somehow, he picked up a victory in Catalunya and is now third in the championship. And the most consistent rider, Joe Roberts, picked up his first win since 2022 last time out but only sits second in the standings.

How about the pre-season favourite, Fermin Aldeguer, another Boscoscuro rider who will move up to MotoGP next season? He did win in Jerez, but is only sixth in the standings after two DNFs in a row. His team-mate, Alonso Lopez, who unexpectedly was offered a ride in mid-2022 after the controversial Romano Fenati was ousted, led the championship early on but has fallen back to fourth. And sitting in fifth is the wildly inconsistent Manuel Gonzalez, who you have no idea how he will fare in a race.

And the rider in seventh, Aron Canet, finally won his first Moto2 race in Portimao earlier this year, but missed the race in Jerez due to injury. Despite that, he is just five points behind Aldeguer in the standings.

That is pure pandemonium.

So for now, Yours Truly will keep a close eye on Moto2 and see who will be crowned Champion come November. And he will not be surprised if someone other than those seven will end up on top.

Cowboys (Falling) Back

It is never good to let your enemies know what your weakness is.

And that holds true in every aspect in life, not just sports.

Somehow, Dallas Cowboys owner/GM/point-man Jerry Jones never learns his lesson.

Prior to last month’s NFL Draft, everyone, blind or not, could see that the Cowboys were badly in need of a couple of good running backs and were looking to pick a couple of them in the draft, probably in the fourth round. But they did not have a fourth-round pick thanks to the trade for backup quarterback Trey Lance. The result? Other teams that needed running backs drafted an astounding 12 (TWELVE!) of them between the Cowboys’ picks in Round 3 (#87) and 5 (#174). That had completely wiped out the Cowboys’ draft board and in the end, they did not draft any running back and only signed one rookie free agent.

While Jones would sign Ezekiel Elliott who returned to the Cowboys after being released last year, Zeke clearly was no longer the spectacular superstar he was when he was drafted fourth overall in 2016. To put it politely, he made “business decisions” every time he touched the ball and often goes down at the first contact, and seldom breaks tackles anymore.

The below-par running back room several years ago was exactly why the Cowboys drafted him fourth overall in 2016. And somehow, their running back room this year is just as bad.

But unlike 2016, they did not spend any draft pick to cover themselves this year.

Oops.

MotoGP is Ageless

Marc Marquez is back. Back to his very best.

Stuck on an under-performing Honda for the past couple of seasons, the eight-time World Champion joined Gresini Ducati this season. It did not take him long to secure his first podium, and he soon mastered his Ducati to be among the front runners in all four races so far. If not for a sudden gust of wind, he would have won the Sprint race last weekend in Jerez, the circuit where he badly broke his right arm in 2020. Undaunted, he put a show in the Grand Prix proper and literally traded tyre marks with reigning World Champion Francesco Bagnaia throughout the race. In the end, he came home a close second to Bagnaia, and now sits sixth in the World Championship. And it is now a matter of when, not if, the 31-year-old will win a race this season, something that was unfathomable in the past couple of seasons.

Meanwhile, still in MotoGP, rookie Pedro Acosta has been sensational, with three podiums out of the possible eight so far. In Jerez he had a very slow start and could only come up a lowly tenth, but that was just an aberration as he is now the highest-ranking KTM rider in the Championship, ranked even higher than the factory duo of Brad Binder and Jack Miller, and has 59 points more than his teammate Augusto Fernandez. Acosta has been a revelation since Moto3 just three years ago, when he won his first race in Doha while starting from the pit lane. Like Marquez, many expect him to win a race soon. Not turning 20 until later this month, he still has a shot of beating Marquez’s record as the youngest winner in the premier class.

NahSCAR?

Supercars Championship is something Yours Truly has been somewhat following for a while. Off the top of his head, he can name several top drivers like Craig Lowndes, Jamie Whincup, Cameron Waters, etc.

And of course, Shane van Gisbergen of New Zealand.

In fact, van Gisbergen has been dominating so much like Max Verstappen in Formula 1 that he is probably the only Supercars driver that Yours Truly can pick out from a Police lineup, if there is one.

(Speaking of Verstappen, he and van Gisbergen both drive a car with Red Bull livery and, of course, they both have Dutch heritage.)

Then, Trackhouse Racing in the USA came calling as part of their effort to put international drivers behind the wheel in selected NASCAR races, in particular street and road races. Van Gisbergen took up the offer, and entered the race in Chicago.

The Grant Park 220 to be exact, held in the Chicago Street Course last weekend. Van Gisbergen impressed right away in testing and qualifying, and started the race third on the grid.

He ran in the top ten all day, and challenged leader Justin Haley for the lead late in the race. Van Gisbergen was in such a good form that he overtook Haley not once but twice for the lead, after his first overtaking maneuvre was judged to have taken place just after a yellow flag was shown. He became the first driver to win a NASCAR race on his debut in 60 years, since the legendary Johnny Rutherford’s victory in the qualifying heat race for the Daytona 500 in 1963.

Meanwhile, the top three drivers in the standings before the race, Martin Truex Jr., William Byron and Ross Chastain, finished 32nd, 13th and 22nd respectively.

Now spare a thought for the regular NASCAR drivers, who risk their lives every week trying to outrace and outscore each other in one of the tightest motor-racing series in the world.

Imagine you are one of them, having spent your whole life honing your skills, trying to move up the ladder and beat the other 30-plus drivers every single week. Then someone from literally the other side of the world, whom you will probably never see again for the rest of your life, comes and beats you up the only time he races you.

Duh.

Joey Logano, himself a two-time NASCAR champion who finished 8th in the race, said simply, “He made us look like a bunch of fools. A foreigner came in and kicked our butt today”. (Courtesy of Brett Winningham @NASCAR_BRETT)

And he surely did.

Yours Truly, the (Former) Cable Guy

The end of the pay Cable TV service reminds me of the time when Yours Truly worked for them.

Yours Truly's first summer job was with Cable TV.

That was during the Olympic Games in Atlanta, where another college student and Yours Truly were hired to assist in the “live” broadcast of the Games on Channel 06 or 07 in those days. A red-eye shift for Yours Truly, starting from 12 midnight to 6 in the morning.

Due to contractual reasons, Cable TV was not allowed to broadcast the Games live in full. 30% of an event was the most we could broadcast live. Usually we didn’t care about that requirement as we didn’t plan to broadcast anything live, as our main goal was to provide regular verbal updates, without footage, on some of the more popular events every 30 minutes, hosted by an athlete-turned-commentator who used to play goalkeeper for the Hong Kong national soccer team.

But that requirement became a major issue when we decided to broadcast the men’s 100 metre race live.

Not every part of a race is created equal, and the most exciting part, of course, is the finale. That is why our plan was to broadcast the final 30 metres or so of the race. And what about the first 70 metres or so? Our plan was to pretend that we had overrun the commercials, but somehow managed to catch the last part of the race, just as we returned from the break.

We had the commercials lined up, and the host fully ready to start commentating at a certain time and hour. The schedule was announced months in advance and we could plan around it. Say, the race was scheduled to start at 4:00, and we were ready to end our commercials and start our “live” broadcast at about 4:02.

But we forgot about the jump starts, a pesky and annoying thing that had disrupted our plans. While the experienced Olympic runners were rarely unnerved by them, our host, this time a former track and field coach, was left completely stranded as he had to start rambling while staring at our cameras when we returned from the commercials, and we could not put the live broadcast on screen yet. Thankfully, he didn’t have to ramble for too long as the race finally started shortly afterwards, and Yours Truly remembers that our live broadcast began around midway through the race, despite the 30% requirement.

As for the most important question? Who won that damn race?

No one really knows. In fact, no one really cares, after all these years.

It was just another day in the office.