Q2. Why should being in the top 100K matter?
A2. Well, for starters, you would be in the top 96 percentile in the world in something related to football. In many parts of the world, that’s a major gloat. Plus, this game has sprung many forums, which you could be part of (with a top 100K rank, you wouldn’t be very respected though. There are guys who make it to the top 1K every year). It takes luck and skill.

Q3. 100K. Should be rather easy, non?
A3. Not really. The first year that I played this game, I stood at about 275K. And I do follow the game.

Q4. I’m somewhat interested. How do we register? Where’s the website?
A4. http://fantasy.premierleague.com

Q5. Lots of pages and lots of information there. Explain to me in brief bullet points, pretty please?
A5. You manage your own Fantasy team selected from the players in the Barclays Premier League. Pick your squad. With a budget of £100 million, choose a squad of 15 players made up of:
2 Goalkeepers
5 Defenders
5 Midfielders
3 Forwards
No more than 3 players can be selected from a single team.
Scoring – The players in your squad score points based on how they perform in Premier League matches.
Substitutions – You can make one substitution every week for free. Every further sub will take 4 points away from your overall points. There’s a season-long wildcard, which you can use any time within the season and change your full team, and another wildcard in January.

Q6. Wow, nice. How much do I pay to play this game?
A6. Fantasy Premier League is FREE to play. FREE! FREE! FREE!!!

Q7. Is there a prize?
Yeah, but it’s meager. Ignore the prize money aspect. You can make money in other ways.

Q8. This is getting interesting. I can make money? How?
A8. There are leagues that can be joined. Get 10 friends of yours, create a league, and beat them in this game, so that they can never say they know more football than you. Ask each one to shell out 10 bucks, and if you win, you can get 100 quid at the end of it all. Or lose your 10. How does that sound?

Q9. Good. Very good. I will win of course, and I will get not 10, but 30 people to join my league. Anybody can start a league?
A9. Yes. And don’t get too cocky. There are a lot of forums which dole out free advise. And you will anyway choose Carroll. And Chamakh. And Torres. And Vidic will get sent off. And so will Balotelli.

Q10. I like Balotelli.
A10. So do I. But if he sees a red card, it’s -3 points. And if he is rotated by Mancini, one of your reserve players will come in for the Gameweek.

Q11. Ouch. But anyways, I’m game. This is fun alright. How can I increase the fun?
A11. Join a forum. FantasyFootballScout and FISO are two of the most famous. I am at FISO. There are a lot of nice folks there, if you are thick-skinned enough to get past the first few days’ heckling.

Q12. Oh these nerds heckle too, eh?
A12. Yes, and they can get rather nasty. I was not heckled much, though. That’s because I lurked and shut up till I could understand the nuances of the forum.

Q13. I like fantasyfootballscout. It’s nice and colourful. In the comments, why do the guys put up names of 15 players, and say RMT?
A13. What could it be? Take a guess.

Q14. Eh…. RMT. Rub my t.. uh, no. Run me through? Riches, Money, Treasures? What the hell? I am bad at this… oh wait. Rank. My. Team. Rate My Team. Right?
A14. Right. Rate my team.

Q15. Okay then that’s what I need to do. Get a team, ask people to rate it, and do as I am told. All set?
A15. Sure. Just that you cannot blame them when Rooney goes on his ten-game slumps. You pays the money, you makes the decision.

Q16. Uh. Ok. You still say I should take your advice. Why? Are you any good.
A16. I am an okay player, you can choose not to take my advise. Two seasons ago, I just missed the top 1K, and was 6th in India. I am generally within the top 20K.

Q17. So you are kinda ok at this. Not too good though.
A17. Yes, kinda ok and not too good. My advice, and your football knowledge, should have a very good chance to get you to the top 100K. Not this season of course, it’s almost a quarter completed. But next season, if you start from the first Gameweek. You can join in this season to get a hang of things though. For any better than 100K, you join a forum. They are helpful.

Q18. Yes, that I have. Football knowledge, that is. Okay, let’s start.
A18. Okay. You registered? Looked around? You are set now? Okay, let’s go… wait for my next post.

You hear about the plastic fans from Shanghai, from Singapore and Bangalore. You know about the Premier League clubs selling scarves and jerseys in Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan; and making shedloads of money out of it. You see Blackburn being owned by Indians, and QPR by a Singaporean. You toe the official line of feeling miserable that the soul of your club is lost; and that your football league is now cargo to be peddled across TV screens in Asia. And possibly, secretly, you also are happy for the money the the premier league generates out of it, and that it can attract top talent across the globe, talent which pre-EPL (and EPL is the term here, not the Premier League), would have been travelling to Italy or Spain or France.

How did it happen, this Asian miracle? Ladies and Gentlemen, I point you to the one person who’s probably had more of a hand than anyone else in making it possible. John Dykes, formerly of Essex, now of Singapore. Clear, precise, with a thorough understanding of the game and a knack for making the nuances of the game easy for the viewers, he is quite brilliant. And is a very big reason for so many people in Asia to get interested in football in the first place. And the team he has assembled is just as excellent, with Steve McMahon (who seems perennially on the verge of violent explosion after a poor Liverpool performance), Gerry Armstrong (why isn’t he seen more often?), Shebby Singh (who seems to have got better and better in front of our eyes), Jason Dasey, Paul Masefield and my favourite, Jamie Reeves. But this is not as much the quality of the commentary as much as the cultural revolution that Dykes and his band of merry men have brought about. Asia’s never been really big on football earlier, and the test was manifold – they had to get people to the TV screens by explaining the game to the first-times, keep it interesting and fun for the regular but not passionate follower so that they stay on, and yet keep it intelligent enough for the discerning or the passionate. Looking back, I think they (with Dykes as the main man), did very well indeed.

We, in this part of South-East Asia, adore your football, your clubs, your players, your managers, your grounds, your gossip and your tabloids. But in the studios, we’d rather have our own. Step forward John Dykes. Thank you for giving us the EPL.

PS: Yes, you are allowed to call us plastic, but then love has many shades, doesn’t it? Not every love story has to be Romeo and Juliet. Our love for the club we support probably isn’t exactly the Geordie boy’s and girl’s love for Newcastle, but it’s still love.

So Mediawatch, you do realise that it just might be possible that when Drogba’s agent says that “Once you are well into your thirties you have to go to a club where you can be certain you’ll be able to pay your bills”, the bills might include the money he foots for all those charities. And when you say “Turn the central heating down, Didier”, it comes across as – support one less charity, and go play for Milan? On a week of looking at things in perspective (RIP Speedy, godbless and thank you), there’s a startling lack of perspective right there on Mediawatch.

Here’s something for the ad-hominem: I am not from Africa. I am an Arsenal fan. Ergo – I severely dislike Drogba the player. But hey, credit where it’s due. He’s one of the good apples. Haven’t really heard stories of Drogba’s womanizing, his bling-bling, his pink car or his drunken disorderlyness either.

Standard 4-4-2: Pepe Reina; Bacary Sagna, Jamie Carragher, Ledley King, Stuart Pearce; David Ginola, Javier Mascherano, Cesc Fabregas, Gareth Bale; Gianfranco Zola, Robbie Fowler

Honorable mentions: Shay Given, John-Arne Riise, Thomas Vermaelen, Gareth Southgate, Martin Laursen, Tino Asprilla, Les Ferdinand, Jimmy-Floyd, Fernando Torres, Ashley Young, Steve McManaman.

Not including folks who had won the old first division, and Gascoigne and Waddle and the other pre-premierleague stars, or Gullit and Shevchenko or Hierro or Klinsmann who were really all-time greats but were far from their peak when they came to the premier league. Neither including Mancity’s new recruits.

Can you imagine that? Just have a look at the last three names ! For the matter, e ven a second France team will be quite handy, with Lama; Clichy, Distin, Blanc, Lassana Diarra (has played in RB, and will be better than Chimbonda); Petit, Flamini, Nasri, Malouda; Anelka, Saha.

The Dutch should be quite handy too: Van Der Sar; Van Bronckhorst; Zenden; Stam; Heitinga; Robben, Overmars, Davids, Gullit; Bergkamp, van Nistelrooy…. And that’s leaving behind Van Persie, Hasselbaink, De Jong etc. Even Kuyt.

Jaxx {[()]} B

“We should also take a minute to savour Mr Smith’s words ‘He is, perhaps, the only true global icon plying his trade in the Premier League’ and offer the words ‘Wayne’ and ‘Rooney’.”

Well, let me be a bit of an iconoclast here – great player that he is, the two words ‘Wayne’ and “Rooney’ do not make a global icon. A global icon is not necessarily (one of) the best footballers in the world. David Beckham was probably never among the top three players in Man United leave alone the world, but was he, for a long time, the face of the Premier league to the greater world? Oh yes he was. Cantona was a global icon. Henry was a global icon. Zidane was a global icon. Cristiano Ronaldo is currently the biggest footballing global icon. Messi and Kaka are global icons. And before you say that probably one has to be reasonably okay looking to be a global icon, Ronaldinho, and before him bucktooth Ronaldo, with faces that could sink a thousand ships, were global icons too. However, Rooney is not. British icon he may well be, footballing world icon he is not.

The Premier League is a huge global brand, especially because of its reach, it reaches the non-footballing superpower countries and regions (Africa, Arabic Asia, the Cricketing subcontinent, South east Asia, for example) in a way in which no other football league manages. Only the world cup compares with the Premier League in reach. And I have a bit of a vantage point here, as I am currently in India, and have a fair idea about the football following culture in South east Asia and Arabic Asia, and a little about the South Americas. Rooney is not the face of the premier league to the greater world, Torres is. Even Gerrard and Lampard are bigger global brands than Rooney. If anything, Sir Ferguson is a bigger brand than Rooney to the greater world. Arsenal is similarly icon-malnourished. A match between Arsenal and Man United is always advertised as the clash of Arsene and Sir.

And the shirt sales numbers are misleading. Man United is the most supported club in Asia by a distance (Liverpool comes second). I believe in the rest of the world it is fairly evenly distributed. So how is Torres’s shirt selling the most? It is because the casual not-virulently-supporting-a-club Premier League fan (yes, those exist) will buy the shirt of the biggest icon, and that is Torres. As for Rooney’s shirt sales being the third or fourth highest, that number is misleading too. This club has had global super-icon after super-icon. This club has had Cantona, then Beckham, then Cristiano Ronaldo. This club is the most supported in the shirt-buying world (that mostly excludes Spain and Germany and Italy too. They buy their own clubs’ shirts). The United fans are still there, remember? So whose shirt can they buy? The best player of their club, of course. And that’s Rooney.

Jaxx [{( If Rooney goes to Real Madrid, he will be out of the top 10 in shirt sales )]} B

Barcelona
Ajax Amsterdam
Englishman in New York red bulls
Streets of Philadelphia union
Hamburg song
LA Galaxy/ woman
Rapid Vienna

Ouch!

Jaxx ({[]}) B

Is it because the quiz itself was not too good (lots of mug questions, as we call them; Multiple choices – the bane of serious quizzers.. which I once was, and still do love the art and science of quizzing; and the choices being no-brainers at times, and absolute weird ones at other times), that it does not stay in the mind for long if compared to the University Challenge quiz, which was really an amazing, amazing event… still vivid in the mind after all the years.

Probably it was soon after the UC’03 that I lost that urge for quizzing. I remained interested for a while more, but the passion for the sport of quizzing was pretty much gone post that. I still quiz, very occasionally. But quizzing does not play much of a part in my life anymore.

So yes. Semi-retired quizzer. That’s me.

Like! Major like!

I am not much of an American sport follower, but oh my blessed Asansol, is Rollie Fingers for real? Magnifico!

Need to do one for Non-american sport. Probably Valderrama will still qualify, for good ol’ Italia ’90′s sake. On the pipeline…