Long-term goals.
August 2, 2007 4:06 PM   Subscribe

 
1. Post your grandson's mad football skills on YouTube
2. Get him recruited by Manchester United
3. PROFIT!!!
posted by ZachsMind at 4:22 PM on August 2, 2007


I'm surprised they signed him because being a standout at that age counts for very little.
posted by fire&wings at 4:24 PM on August 2, 2007


Might want to read the article:

The club has downplayed such hype, pointing out that it recruits about 40 players of Davis' age every year, and that Davis' status with the club will be subject to the same annual review as any other youth player.

Apparently this isn't exactly unusual. The only thing that was different about it was rather than seeing him play in person, they watched him on YouTube and decided he was worth looking into.
posted by mstefan at 4:32 PM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]


I had a similar experience with posting my mad haftarah chanting skillz on JewTube. Hello, khazzanuth!
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:39 PM on August 2, 2007 [3 favorites]


I'm surprised they signed him because being a standout at that age counts for very little.

Well, it means potential; and see what mstefan said. And even as a PR move it'd make sense. But I'm gonna gripe about something else:

"The club brought in Rhain Davis after his grandfather sent a DVD to United youth staff showing the boy playing for an under-10 team in Brisbane, Australia."

So it's not the YouTube that got the kid picked up, it was a DVD mailed in. Which takes a lot of the zap out of the story—it doesn't sound like some Man. U. recruiter was surfing YT for World's Greatest Injuries and stumbled across the video or anything. So that great big pile of views is either incidental to or possibly (timeline help, anyone?) a result of the recruitment news.

But that wouldn't make as good of a lede. From this, I conclude that gnfti works for Rupert Murdoch. I've got you now, you yellow Dutch newsy.
posted by cortex at 4:41 PM on August 2, 2007


I had a similar experience with posting my mad haftarah chanting skillz on JewTube.

Video or it didn't happen.
posted by felix betachat at 4:43 PM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]


Another great young player: Jean Carlos Chera from Brazil. Warning: crappy music.
posted by redteam at 4:45 PM on August 2, 2007


I feel bad about wishing ill upon a little boy, but once you align yourself with Man U then all bets are off. The devil also wears red. Coincidence? I think not.
posted by friendlyjuan at 4:47 PM on August 2, 2007 [2 favorites]


Has anybody noticed that Freddy Adu turned out to be a pretty good young player?
posted by toma at 4:49 PM on August 2, 2007


From this, I conclude that gnfti works for Rupert Murdoch.

Huh? Don't we all?

Seriously though, I saw a news source say it was YT -> contract. Maybe the YouTube clip wasn't the direct cause for the signing, but at least it did precede it. Else I will eat my hat.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 4:50 PM on August 2, 2007


My baby takes the morning train, He works from nine till five and then, He takes another home again, To find me... watching the Manchester United football team, eh? The best freakin' team in all the land, woohoo!
posted by quin at 4:57 PM on August 2, 2007 [2 favorites]


He's no Cody Paul.
posted by william_boot at 5:18 PM on August 2, 2007 [1 favorite]


The sad fact is, most of us here will never be as good at anything as this kid is right now.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:23 PM on August 2, 2007


Hat-eating is on the line? Right, then: the YouTube video was posted July 19th, 2007. Yet this article reads as such:

Rhain, who holds a British passport, moved to Cheshire, near the youth academy at United's Carrington training base, with his father, Mark, last month.
...
He told the Courier Mail last month he had enjoyed meeting a lot of Manchester United stars, like Rooney.


But, okay, all that says is "last month", which could be any time in July; if it was after the 19th that they moved, the hat is safe.

But then there's this, damningly enough:

Three weeks ago news of Rhain's talent began to bubble over in Australia when his move to England was covered in a front page story in Brisbane's Courier Mail.

Three weeks. That's mid-July. It's still not iron-clad, though—it's not completely clear whether they might have moved first and then submitted and youtubed. Except then there's this...

"It's unusual for a kid that lives on the other side of the world to be invited to play for us," a United source told The Sun.

...which suggests he was still in Australia when he got the invite. More than three weeks ago, then? Ah, but I'm reading too far into it; as seen here,

The Premier League champions claim they only invited Davis for a trial in Manchester after learning that the family had already relocated from Brisbane to Cheshire.

Blast. Contradicts that theory. But then this contradicts that:

It is easy to see why United invited Davis to move 11,000 miles from Brisbane to Manchester after they were sent the DVD of him in action by his Cheshire-based grandfather.

So, man. Hell if I know. I was hoping to be able to conclude with "I hope they have ketchup in the Netherlands", but I don't have the open-and-shut case I wanted. Especially confusing to me is the disparity between this much-referenced factoid:

The video was put on the site by his English based grandfather and shows the future star dazzling his opponents on the field.

and the age of 28 listed in the profile of the poster of the video you linked. Is this not the original, or is gramps faking his demos, or using someone else's account, or what?

All else aside, this version is wonderfully brief; and the usage in this headline must be at odds with US idiom—"starlet" for "young star" rather than "female star"? Huh.

Also, you know I love you, man.
posted by cortex at 5:29 PM on August 2, 2007


Cortex? Your attempts to Jim Rockford the origins of a youtube video are making my head hurt.
posted by miss lynnster at 5:36 PM on August 2, 2007


Uh-oh.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:39 PM on August 2, 2007


The truly impressive thing about that video is not his dribbling but rather, that he took several tackles and didn't cry or fake an injury.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:51 PM on August 2, 2007


Jacquilynne, he hasn't gotten to that level of training yet.

I was impressed that he actually passes the ball once in a while. When I played at that age the 'star players' tended to ball hog.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:59 PM on August 2, 2007


So BrotherCaine, you're saying that he's not ManU material?
posted by ooga_booga at 6:09 PM on August 2, 2007


He's no Cody Paul.

See, those are football skills. Soccer is what you guys are thinking of.
posted by KingoftheWhales at 6:35 PM on August 2, 2007


I heartily applaud the use of the term 'football' in this post instead of 'soccer'.
posted by jouke at 6:47 PM on August 2, 2007


So we can expect him and his alien wife in the U.S. in 2032? People will still be saying soccer is about to catch on here.
posted by Frank Grimes at 7:16 PM on August 2, 2007


The only problem with the Cody Paul video is I had to turn mute on. The futbol one, though. Oh man, I'm ManU for life now!
posted by jmd82 at 7:42 PM on August 2, 2007


C'mon, Davis is good because he plays against children. Children, people!!!
posted by dov3 at 8:05 PM on August 2, 2007


Rhain Davis' playing is awesome, a football prodigy! wow. His feet dance, amazing agility and timing. At 9 years old. I love football and wish him the best on his athletic journey.

Like any child prodigy, his talent needs developing over time. Can't help wondering what Zidane was like at 9.
posted by nickyskye at 9:09 PM on August 2, 2007


Can't help wondering what Zidane was like at 9.

We'll never know. YouTube has policies about videos showing children getting cracked in the head by errant head-butts.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:32 PM on August 2, 2007


Hey, don't you diss Zidane. Them's fighting words. That nipple twister bastard Materazzi deserved a head butt, which was not at all Zidane's style.

But Zidane could dance around the ball, a Nijinski on the pitch, exquisite to watch. and this 9 year old little rascal looks like he has that twinkle toes gift.
posted by nickyskye at 10:44 PM on August 2, 2007


You've got to feel sorry for the other kids on his team. They never get a kick of the ball!
posted by MrMustard at 12:47 AM on August 3, 2007


Right, then: the YouTube video was posted July 19th, 2007

Perhaps this particular copy of it, but I clearly recall showing this kid's video to a coworker months ago. Might even have nabbed the link here for all I remember. But this is definitely older than a month.
posted by splice at 2:31 AM on August 3, 2007


You know what they put on hats in Holland instead of ketchup? Mayonnaise. We fucking drown 'em in that shit.
posted by Psychnic at 3:24 AM on August 3, 2007


I heartily applaud the use of the term 'football' in this post instead of 'soccer'.

I suggest you look up the origins of the terms. What you are celebrating is a bizarre deterioration of specificity in English. Football refers to many different sports including rugby. Soccer, a short form for association football, is a specific term referring to the set of rules that comprise what you call "football".

The North Americans get this one right even though they don't really love the game and you are heartily applauding the lazy use of a less accurate term.

Curiously, North Americans also commit a similar form of laziness with their own inaccurately named football so perhaps it is just that dominant sport gets the generic term.

It seems a poor choice for pedantic nose rubbing since in some strange way both sides are right and wrong and everyone comes out of the exchange a little smaller.
posted by srboisvert at 4:26 AM on August 3, 2007 [1 favorite]


Heh, srboisvert, thank you for reacting to my taunt.

bizarre deterioration of specificity in English.
Actually people tend to use the general, short term for the thing that's most common percentage wise. So worldwide that's association football. It would be bizarre if the minority, the US with its American Football, would claim the generic term.
posted by jouke at 5:12 AM on August 3, 2007


Actually people tend to use the general, short term for the thing that's most common percentage wise. So worldwide that's association football. It would be bizarre if the minority, the US with its American Football, would claim the generic term.

Except that for speakers of American English, American Football is the dominant game so it makes complete sence for them to use it as the generic term. Americans who have live abroad tend to say "American Football," when talking in an international group. The English never extend this courtesy the other way.
posted by afu at 6:08 AM on August 3, 2007 [1 favorite]


Perhaps this particular copy of it, but I clearly recall showing this kid's video to a coworker months ago. Might even have nabbed the link here for all I remember. But this is definitely older than a month.

Ah, that's the piece of the puzzle that struck me as likely missing. I didn't find any evidence of the original in-toto on a glance around, but that'd explain the odd 28-year-old grandfather issue, too. (Though that leaves open the question of whether any previous version got that hundreds-of-thousands traffic that this got, and if not whether any version but this can reasonably described as "THE youtube video" for the purposes of the [increasingly lazy-seeming] reportage discussed above.)
posted by cortex at 6:29 AM on August 3, 2007


They don't need new players, they need a new fucking theme song. Good christ that song was annoying.
posted by dobbs at 6:42 AM on August 3, 2007


srboisvert: The North Americans get this one right even though they don't really love the game and you are heartily applauding the lazy use of a less accurate term.

Woah. I follow your reasoning, and you are right in the sense that Americans (not necessarily North Americans - the Canucks are a different cup of maple syrup altogether) "got 'aluminum' right", historically or eytmologically speaking.

But in claiming this I feel you're falling prey to a very basic fallacy: that the development of dialects somehow has a "goal", or anything to "get right". "Hammock" derives from Sp. "hamaca" which can ultimately be traced back to a Taino (indigenous Carribean) word. Then some Dutch sailors got wind of the concept, noted that the word kind of sounded like "hangmat", concluded that "well if that ain't a mat for hanging in I will eat my hat" and now "hangmat" is the standard Dutch word for "hammock". Now, did they "get this right" or "wrong"?

Almost by definition, there cannot be any "a bizarre deterioration of specificity" - if you ask an Englishman about football, he will not interrupt you to inquire whether you meant rugby or soccer. (Americans might, depending on context. I know that when *I* talk about football to Americans they will usually not for a second suspect I mean American football.)

There is nothing to get right. There's just a bunch of monkeys using a bunch of words.

And while I'm on the descriptivism soapbox, by the same reasoning I feel jouke's applause is (at best) irrelevant: of course I would say "football" - that's what it *is* to me. But I have no qualms with people calling it soccer - not if that's what they usually call it, anyway. Not to mention that this is ultimately an American website.

And don't give me that "Yanks couldn't score a penalty kick if the goalie has gone to the pub" nonsense - Australians call it soccer, and they're pretty good at it. Even the English will, if it saves billboard real estate.

As a sign of gratitude for letting me air my grievances, I give srboisvert and jouke this duet to perform together.

Back on track:

cortex: And if not whether any version but this can reasonably described as "THE youtube video" for the purposes of the [increasingly lazy-seeming] reportage discussed above.

Yeah, that's the crux of the matter alright. I believe it exists or existed, but I also think your doubts are valid, and I may have been too hasty in posting this. FWIW, I just submitted the story to Snopes.

I still consider my hat reassuringly inedible.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:11 AM on August 3, 2007


Aw heck, man, I don't think you were wrong to post it. I just think you might be wrong. Hugs!
posted by cortex at 8:14 AM on August 3, 2007


I never suspected you thought I was wrong to post it. Chocolate rainbows!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:15 AM on August 3, 2007


I really like your music! Dancing unicorns!
posted by cortex at 8:16 AM on August 3, 2007


Well if you do then why don't we finish what we started? Slowchat zinger!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:21 AM on August 3, 2007


Take it to Metatalk, lady!
posted by cortex at 8:30 AM on August 3, 2007


Alright alright I apologise. Here, let me make it up to you:


Free sugartits for everyone!
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:42 AM on August 3, 2007


gnfti, that's a lot of words for what was basically a good natured joke aimed at US centrism. Of course there's no right and wrong in the subject matter. Don't take it so seriously.
posted by jouke at 8:42 AM on August 3, 2007


CCC-Combobreaker.

Wait, what?

It wasn't really your words I take issue with, jouke. But the "this word is better than another word" thing really gets me riled up, and I don't mind being slightly thorough (or verbose) in my attempts to debunk it.

(When I'm at work and the phone ain't ringin'.)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:47 AM on August 3, 2007


I will have none of this potato-potato business. Aardappel it is.
posted by jouke at 8:51 AM on August 3, 2007


Earth apples are fine and dandy, but who on earth says poh-TAH-toe?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:13 AM on August 3, 2007


You know, like Tater Tots, which is just a cute shortening of Tater poTAToes.
posted by cortex at 9:17 AM on August 3, 2007


Oh, Tater Potatoes! We eat those all the time down at the department of redundancy department. Except we call 'em Tatre Potatoues, natch.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:23 AM on August 3, 2007


And with mayo, no doubt.
posted by cortex at 9:25 AM on August 3, 2007


Actually, you won't believe our mayo. It's nothing like Hellman's. Then again, considering your "lack of appreciation" for olives...

You don't happen to like aioli, do you?

(BTW I've never eaten Tater Tots. Everytime someone asks "hey do they have X in Y" it's hard not to roll your eyes at their ignorance - or, if it was meant ironically, at the tiredness of the joke, but Tater Tots? Nuh-uh. I don't even think they're legal to sell or own when not on American soil.)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:43 AM on August 3, 2007


Reminds me of Mr. Show Recruiters.
posted by password at 10:13 AM on August 3, 2007


I'd like this a lot better if I didn't think all those headers end up damaging their brains-- and minds.
posted by jamjam at 12:43 PM on August 3, 2007


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