Tuesday Backpasses: Oh, you like captions?

Captions are fantastic. Stupid agents are not. I hope Ballack doesn’t agree with his agent or our love affair might be strained if not over.

Is it Butt? It’s Jorg Butt isn’t it?

@EF It almost has to be, doesn’t it?

That Grauniad Ballack story is comedy gold:

Asked about the sexuality of one of the newer players, Becker, who is a lawyer by profession, referred to him as being “half gay”. . . .
Osang went on to say that Becker put the new adroit, lighter and elegant style of play that has become a trademark of trainer Joachim Löw’s players down to their homosexuality, in contrast to the typically more aggressive and offensive German style of past years, but suggested they played too delicately to assure themselves a place in the final.

So Becker clearly doesn’t like the gays. His argument seems to be that the team played the way they did because there is a “gay-ness” about the national team now. If gay-bashing is the goal, I see a problem with Becker’s argument: the team played really well and better than expected. Sure he was trying to say they missed the final because they are gay or whatever, but I see his argument working more like this: “Do you want your team to be fun to watch, dangerous on the counter-attack and generally successful? Just add gays!”