http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article3386580.ece
From The Times
February 18, 2008
Arsenal rout was punishment for taking liberties with game
There's defeat, and it happens, and it's part of the routine of an athlete's life. It's something you learn about, something you establish a way of dealing with. Methods include hard analysis, self-deception, mighty resolution, finding a scapegoat, hating the manager, sulking, kicking the cat: chacun à son goût.
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Nabokov: great writer, useless as a goalkeeper
The thrilling stuff in The Times last week about the unburnt manuscript of Vladimir Nabokov has a particular resonance for all members of the goalkeeping union. Here is Nabokov on keeping goal for his college at Cambridge: “As with folded arms I leant back against the left goalpost, I enjoyed the luxury of closing my eyes, and thus I would listen to my heart knocking and feel the blind drizzle on my face and hear, in the distance, the broken sounds of the game, and think of myself as of a fabulous exotic being in an English footballer's disguise, composing my verse in a tongue nobody understood about a remote country nobody knew. Small wonder I was not very popular with my team-mates.”