I guess it’s a genetic thing but, no matter how hard I’ve tried, I’ve always found it impossible to find Liverpool goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek the remotest bit sexy. No doubt he will be relieved.
He’s a fine goalkeeper of course but the fact that he’s male and named after knitwear conspire to rule him out.
But it appears that Jerzy is becoming something of a sensation in the chic nightclubs of Florence and Rome (probably not in Milan) and is set to be a sexy smash at Italy’s beach resorts this summer.
The reason? His rather bizarre goal line routine during Liverpool’s successful penalty shoot-out in the Champions League final against Milan has become a dance-floor craze.
For those of us at an age when hip replacement is a more pressing issue than hip hop, this is an intriguing development and it might also give sports lawyers something else to get their teeth into.
This week The Times reported that ‘Doing the Dudek’ was where it’s at in Italy right now. The dance involves waving one’s arms up and down, stretching the arms and legs apart and then moving more of less every part of the anatomy in a direction it was not designed to move in while simultaneously swaying from the hips. Got it?
This was a tactic that worked brilliantly when it came to diverting Milan’s fearsome penalty takers from their task. It’s unlikely they could see the goal through the tears of laughter.
Certainly, to TV viewers, it looked as though Jerzy was having some sort of fit.
According to The Times, the dance was started by Inter Milan fans who did it to mock their rivals from AC Milan. Then it was picked up by a TV presenter who gave the nation instruction on Dudeking in her show.
“The numerous movements of his hips and tummy make this dance extremely seductive,” said the presenter, Adriana Volpe.
But not everybody feels the same way. One Roman clubber who clearly lacks a poetic soul put it this way: “You just have to hold out your arms and sway a bit.”
So where do the lawyers come in?
This week I attended a fascinating conference on Image Rights organised by the SENSE. Now I’m no lawyer but the implications are clear. Jerzy should be in the money.
These are his movement, it was his creation and the dance is called the Dudek. Surely he should at least be on a percentage of the entrance money at every club where the dance is performed, and license a range of instructional videos, leotards and associated merchandise.
As the dance is also being regarded as an aid to fitness, perhaps in Jerzy we’re seeing the emergence of the new Jane Fonda. So who was it that said all goalkeepers are crazy? Get on down and do the Dudek!
By the way, if you Dudek while sitting on a mate’s shoulders are you effectively performing the Dudoubledeker?
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The North West Counties League sits at the ninth level of the English Football pyramid.
Latest news on its website this week was the appointment of a new manager – Lee Sculpher – for Ramsbottom, and the announcement that Woodley Sports was to sell its goalposts (and nets) for £650. As they are said to be worth £1,600 this appears to be something of a bargain.
The biggest crowds last season were at Fleetwood Town who attracted some 4,500 fans through the turnstiles. But get this…that’s for the whole season, not one game. In fact, the average attendance at Fleetwood was 205, which was more than twice the number you’d regularly find watching home games at Abbey Hey.
In just about every way you look at it, it couldn’t be further from Old Trafford but this is the where a group of disgruntled Manchester United fans hope to be watching their football next season. Or at least that’s what they have announced.
On Tuesday the BBC reported that a group with the backing of at least 2,600 United Fans who have lost faith in the club and what it stands for following its acquisition by Malcolm Glazer, are following the lead of Wimbledon fans who set up a rival club when Wimbledon FC announced it was moving to Milton Keynes, some 90 miles away.
The United fans say their new team is to be called United Football Club of Manchester, which is fine as it goes. So far there has been no confirmation that an application has been received by the North West Counties League but we must assume they’re serious for the moment.
That people care about this breakaway is evidenced by a number of e-mails we’ve received since running the story on SportBusiness.com earlier this week. Most were anxious for information about the new team, others simply commented that the new team should be christened Newton Heath to reflect United’s own roots, while another wanted to know how he could go about setting up a fan club in the USA.
Numerically these e-mails represent more or less nothing. But the spirit in which they were written - in fact that they were written at all - underlines the current strength of feeling against Glazer and for any alternative that will raise two fingers in his direction.
So what are the prospects for a new United?
Look at the Wimbledon example and you might imagine the outlook would be bright. The new club, AFC Wimbledon, is attracting 3,000 fans per game as it shoots through the football pyramid like a rocket, heading in the direction of the Football League itself where, in roughly five years, they could meet their former selves, now trading as the MK Dons.
But the difference lies in the numbers, the very scale of the operation.
Wimbledon was always a tiny club. Its rise to the Premier League was a modern sporting miracle and its core fan base never really grew much above 7-8,000. Sure they played to full houses in the Premiership but that was because it was packed with neutrals eager for a footy fix and huge armies of away fans.
The reality is that if 3,000 people go to watch AFC Wimbledon it means they’re attracting roughly half of the old club’s fans.
If a new Manchester United was to succeed to the same extent, their games in the North West Counties League would be watched by an average of around 30,000. Which might just cause a few problems down Abbey Hey way.
The reality is that won’t happen and while Wimbledon’s breakaway achieved critical mass (against a far smaller base level) that’s going to be almost impossible to achieve for new United. And remember, for every United fan who jumps ship there are another half dozen in Banstead or Beijing just waiting to take their place.
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Just as FIFA’s Confederation’s Cup gets into full swing in Germany, the new season gets under way with the first games in UEFA’s Intertoto Cup tomorrow. That means we’ve had a close season break of less than a nanosecond.
Some people have issues with this. For the rest there’s the news that the 2005-06 season’s fixtures in the Football League are due to be published next Thursday. Can’t wait to find out when we go to Hull.
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Wimbledon starts on Monday and journalists everywhere will again find it impossible to write a sentence about the Championships without mentioning strawberries and cream. There…told you so!
