Année : 2020

Notes/Domino Tech Volt

VOLT – finding the current, harnessing the flow

by Christophe Jost0 comments

Untold Notes

VOLT Getting the flow

VOLT – finding the current, harnessing the flow

After a couple of weeks working daily a few hours with Domino VOLT, I must say that it is exceeding my expectations. As things stand, I can now see that Domino VOLT will enable us to do what we were envisioning and probably quite some more. The fact that it can integrate seamlessly into a webpage makes it the perfect companion tool to Domino Designer development. We can finally create hybrid apps without a fuss, quickly yet safely and need not another team of specialists to do it.

From the Notes developper perspective, Domino VOLT represents a challenge. Those who have xPages experience will have something of a headstart. But programming with Domino VOLT needs rethinking, or rather looking at the problem and the development from another angle. But once you’ve understood that, you can start producing simple applications in hours not days or weeks.

I decided to stay at a basic level and test features and functions one after the other. No big ambition, just building an app. No time spent on looks. There are people with far better artistic competences then me ;=)

After having created a table for a keyword, which was populated by just creating each, I then moved on to a table of information to import.

You have 2 choices :

– you import, VOLT creates a page and you then edit that page the way you want.

– you create a page,set-up the fields, then import your spreadsheet. In this scenario, you need to put as header the variable name you have used in each field.

I’ve subsequently been able to manipulate the data via agents in the Notes Database.

Adding fields is posisble, but, at least this is what I’ve seen, you need to follow the sequence:

– create the field in the VOLT page

– publish

– then you can run an agent to populate the fields

You can create Notes view and forms to see, sift through the data from the Notes client, no problem.

Changing stages can be done from the Notes client as well.

The power of VOLT becomes apparent when one starts using tables, sections, and workflows.

At this point the sky is the limit – if you know how to integrate that into Notes.

To me, if you stay on VOLT, you can develop simple applications quickly and replace the Excel quagmire that so many businesses face. It is not the tool I would use for large data manipulation however. Simple tasks can be solved without having to live within the confines of a file on a PC, a USB stick, in a Whatsapp feed and the limits of A1:C3 types of addresses.

Excel – or any other spreadsheet is a software that was developped for the PC as in Personal Computer in the late seventies. It’s nothing else but a rehash from Visicalc. Nothing as invented there. Just an idea, a concept made more industrial.

VOLT is something completely different and so much more sustainable. It was conceived as network ready, workflow ready, import ready export ready.

I can see so many use cases with our customers where the move from a spreadsheet to VOLT will have a significant impact.

As for more complex applications, I’d want the integration with Notes more advanced, but from what I understand this is an ongoing process.

And I can imagine the VOLT team will add that big-data capabilities to VOLT.

This will make the pair Notes-VOLT one heck of a platform.

Sametime Tech

What you ought to aware about Skype/Microsoft Teams

by Christophe Jost0 comments

Untold Notes

Privacy and Skype/Microsoft teams…what you should be aware of

I just read an interesting piece in the german press. Basically, the privacy/data protection officer of Berlin city advised schools, businesses and the city’s administration against using many public video-conferencing systems.
It based its decision on recent technical findings what were published in the german press and on analyzing the GDPR situation.
And Microsoft is now flexing its legal muscle. This story will unfold in the coming weeks, months, years I guess.
But what it is all about ? Among all the issues, I am looking at one in particular.

Microsofot’s privacy statement, it is considered by the Stiftung Warentest who compared 20 videoconferencing systems recently, I am quoting :

« The texts (…) show no serious concern with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). « 

Datenschutz bei Microsoft Teams?

Now, one could say that this is just paperwork…but there is much more.

Microsoft is sending User IDs to the Adobe Experience Cloud, Marketo (an Adobe subsidiary), Google Ads and Scorecardresearch.
The data streams look like remarketing tags.
Naturally, cookies are used as well as other means to identify.

Now this means that when a web-conference is started, all members are identified, their web profiles are updated if their devices or identities are known.
Google reserves the right to use that data for other advertising clients.

This ought to get everyone thinking about using such software and is an argument for using Sametime whose functioning is based – and has always been – on confidentiality and security

Corruption FIFA International Legal

Another huge football scandal – and why the mass media in England won’t cover it

by Tony Attwood0 comments

Another huge football scandal – and why the mass media in England won’t cover it

Yesterday we reported on the Mail’s story Why the Mail’s “Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong” is arrant nonsense.

Now one argument that could be made for running that piece in the Mail was that there is no real football news around, so the paper has to make something up.  But one look at the European press shows this is not true.

And it is not just that there is a story – it is an absolute whopper.  So big that the question yet again arises, why is the media in the UK not touching this story which is erupting on an almost daily basis?

But you will have probably guessed what the story is: it is a story of wholesale Fifa corruption, and as we know, the UK media are very reluctant to talk about this.  Largely I suspect, at the behest of the FA who want to spend millions of pounds more of taxpayers money on another bid for England to host the world cup.  What the FA don’t want, and what they have persuaded the media not to provide, is any reminder that Fifa is corrupt, and that last time the FA bid for the WC it got two votes.

Infantino goes to Suriname

So here is the latest Fifa story: In April 2017, Gianni Infantino went to visit Suriname, the smallest country in South America.  He talked to the head of state, shook some hands, went to see the football ground.

Infantino accompanied by his usual entourage including his chief assistant Mattias Grafström, made his standard speech “Suriname needs a new stadium” but then, instead of talking up their first-class seats on the scheduled flights already booked, the party hired a private jet to fly to Switzerland.

On 11 April 2017 assistant Grafström reports to Tomaz Vessel, (who is head of Fifa’s Audit & Compliance Committee), that the KLM airline the party had booked into for the return to Switzerland was canceled “for technical reasons.”  He explained, “In order to meet the President’s appointments today in Suriname and tomorrow in Europe, we considered all the alternatives, but there is no alternative but to charter an airplane.”

Compliance man Vesel replied 43 minutes later. “Thank you for the information about flight details and the situation. The situation seems to me difficult and clearly requires immediate action.”   So that is the all-clear.  But for forms sake he adds,  “Be so good as to give me (in the near future) precise information about your already agreed appointments in the region and back tomorrow in Europe.”

Only with good reason

According to the rules of Fifa put in place after the last round of scandals and backhanders, the FIFA President must not, without good reason, engage in additional expenditure (especially of hundreds of thousands or more dollars) at the expense of Fifa (and thus at the expense of the global football community) without this being subject to scrutiny.  Vesel is the key man here.   He is formally independent.  His job to look closely at events and check on anyone who is running up bills of more than a million dollars in expenses within a four-year period.

But Vesel, without seeing the list of appointments, and on the say-so of Infantino, agrees to the private jet. Fifa compliance officer Ed Hanover also gets a copy of the details, sees Vesel has said “ok” and the all-clear is given.

However then it goes quiet. Fifa declines to give any further information or answer any questions, such as the exact cost of the private flight back to Switzerland.

Six days later, on April 18, Grafström reports to Vesel and Hanover with the requested details …. He lists seven scheduled events for the stop in Suriname, even including the “light dinner with the Minister of Sport, Defense and Finance”.

OK, if that has to be, it has to be, but much more to the point, what was the urgent date the following day, on April 12th, that justified this expensive return flight?    That event that made it impossible to wait for the postponed KLM flight?

Grafström writes: “The planned meetings on April 12 in Geneva were as follows: 2:00 pm meeting with the Uefa president in Nyon, followed by another meeting in Geneva.”

A meeting with the Uefa president – ok, pretty important. .Vesel was obviously convinced. “The flight took place in accordance with the rules and regulations of FIFA,” says the report. The rules allow special travel arrangements for important business appointments.

The appointment that never was

The only problem is: there was never an appointment for the day with the Uefa president. The alleged meeting did not take place and could not have taken place. The important appointment was an invention. A fantasy.  A make-believe.  A load of old codswallop (to use the grand old English phrase).  A fabrication.  One gigantic lie.

Uefa President Aleksander Ceferin was in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, on 12 April, four and a half hours flight from Nyon. This is revealed not by a bunch of undercover operators following a complex paper trail, but by the lavishly illustrated websites of Uefa and the Armenian Association. In Yerevan, Ceferin met with the head of state, laying the foundation stone for the new football academy, meeting the spiritual leader, visiting a brandy distillery (nice work if you can get it) and Echmiadzin Cathedral, one of the oldest in the world.  And we all know such state occasions are organised months in advance.

But, If there was no meeting in Nyon – what was the motive behind the fifa boss’ private jet trip? Did he just want to go home quickly?   Was Infantino’s mistress getting lonely (we make no allegation on this, it is given just by way of example of unacceptable reasons for private jet hire at football’s expense).   Was there anything else that would have been an acceptable reason for approval of a private jet from South America to Switzerland?

FIFA is silent on all these questions. Fifa does not and cannot deny the events took place and now simply insists that the trip was in line with the rules.

So why don’t we get this story in England?  Apart from pointing at criminal misuse of Fifa funds which we as taxpayers pay since we fund the FA, it also reveals the complete and utter arrogance of Infantino – a man already under scrutiny for many other alleged offenses.  The answer Infantino gave could have been seen to be a lie within minutes of anyone checking the schedule, but he appears that he was so utterly and completely arrogant that he said it anyway.

It is after all exactly the sort of story that you would expect the Sun, Mail, Express and the other tabloids to revel in just because it is scandal.  You would expect the Guardian to take it up because it reveals corruption.

And it is a piece of evidence that could lead to another explosion in Fifa.   For remember also that the Swiss state prosecutor (involved because of course Fifa is based in Switzerland) is now going on trial because he has had a number of secret meetings with Infantino (something completely against the rules of his office).

Silly little dolts

Plus after the English newspapers made themselves look like silly little dolts for having ignored the news that the Swiss had changed their laws and so were going to allow the US law enforcers into the Fifa meeting to arrest large numbers of Fifa officials (a story that Untold Arsenal ran and they didn’t), you might think that the media in England could have learned its lesson.

But no.  No news on Fifa.  No news on football corruption until it hits every media outlet in the world – and even then try and hide it under news about a decline in the number of starlings this year.

And why?  My guess, as I say above, is because the FA have asked the media not to touch these stories, so as not to harm their throwing another fortune donated by the tax payer in the UK, at a bid to host the world cup.

But there is more of course.  For meanwhile the Swiss federal prosecutor – the top legal man in Switzerland –  Michael Lauber, stumbled across a series of mysterious secret meetings to which he was lured by Infantino. On Wednesday, the parliamentary judicial commission in Bern decided to impeach the federal prosecutor; A criminal complaint has also been filed against the FIFA boss, which is currently being examined by the Bern judiciary. And now add to this, the Suriname lie.

And none of this is being reported in England.

Funny ol’ game.

And just for old times sake, our story from 22 January 2015 that the UK media ignored.

Switzerland take a greater interest in Fifa – at last

Tech Volt

Domino VOLT, trying to turn my light ON…. !

by Christophe Jost1 comments

After having tested, tried, read, watched all I could do, find about Domino VOLT, I was starting to feel frustrated.
I’m more a hands-on guide then a reader of instruction manuals. I prefer to reverse-engineer and learn from the example.

Today I realised that these last days I was kind of stuck, and I was convinced I was stuck the same way then when starting to use Notes 2 almost 30 years ago.

I was missing something. Or I was looking at Volt from the wrong angle.
30 years ago, my programming was done in an advanced Basic (Memsoft), with multikey files.
So the coding was sequential.

Starting to develop with Notes, I hit a plateau as I was just not getting the views, forms, etc.
One day, a colleague (thank you Patrick Günter) was able to shine a different light on Notes and that was it.
I had understood and was able so start serious developement.
Today I finally understood I was looking at Volt with my Notes radar and was not using the right wavelenght…
I think I can explain the major difference this way.

In Volt, you have forms and views. And in the application to develop, you may

– open a view
– compose a document

basically that’s it

If you compose a document, and save it, you get a blank screen. You actually don’t see the result in a view like in Notes.

To see that you have to program it. It is not there out of the box.

While you are developping you don’t see any view. You create forms and for each form, there will be a corresponding view to browse through the data, page by page.

From that view you can edit or create new records

Because I had not dataset available in Excel, this part was not visible to me, which explains my unease these days
Now once I had imported a simple table and then deployed my test database, I found out that from the application manager, the ‘Show data’ option opened something akin to the view manager in a notes database, and that the ‘Launch’ option enabled me to create a record – one menu option for each existing form, akin to the Create menu in a notes database.

Now, coming from Notes, the web environment is not at the center of our preocupations. In VOLT it is.

So for each form, you get an http://…. link that enables inputing the form, in fullscreen mode or inside an iframe (= compose a document).

You get a link to show the data (= open a view). Another link enables you to shwo graphs about the data.

And you get this for each form in the application.

Armed with this, you can integrate that data into whichever website you are working on to give it data handling capabilities.

Lego pieces if you prefer.

To me this is the xPages we ought to have had back in 2010. But then again, it was another decade, and now we are in our new time-space and not the old one.

Now, the other issue I had was that as I had create a form before importing data from a spreadsheet, once I wanted to do it, it did not work.
VOLT cannot match the columns to existing fields just like that. So what you have to do is input on the first line of each column the variable name of each field.

Makes sense, but when you’ve tested creating apps by importing spreadsheets and letting VOLT create the forms, it needs to be said.

And these imports onto an existing dataset or for the first time are possible from the ‘Show data’ function where for each form there is a tab in which the view is shown and from which you may import.

Well, as my grandfather used to say : if you explain things to me for a long time, I understand quickly….

Guess that now my VOLT light is turned ON !

Economy National PL

Premier League casino – who will pay for the losses

by Christophe Jost0 comments

An interesting comment from Mike T. this morning on Macquarie, the australian bank who financed PL clubs growth got me thinking about the economics of the PL.

Their chances (and those of the other lenders against upcoming revenue) to recover their money seems slim. And now even the governement says the games should be broadcast to all, which will dent the whole revenue model more.
Now broadcasters seem to be arguing that because games don’t ake place at set times days and times, they need not pay.
o they may move any game around whenever they wish, yet force majeure does not apply to them.
Just think about the underlying logic. All fans are starved for games. They won’t be able to go see the games. Do you expect they’ll tune in or not ?
So maybe advertising revenue may end up higher as more spectators are expected, so broadcasters may get some of their revenue after all ?
I can bet you the restart of the Bundesliga will be an event as watched as the kickoff to a World Cup.

So I guess they are just looking for a way out of paying. One wonders how come all the MBA’s and high priced lawyers of the Premier League, the richest in the world, did not include some force majeure clause….but this is another story. My opinion is that the Premier League is riddled with incompetence, within and around it : all of football in England is a play ground of incompetent people.

To me, some of these clubs or their owners have wanted to play poker or roulette. Or probably most of them
Some came to the table with a cartload of money and with wealth that guarantees they won’d have to leave the PL asino anytime soon.
Others wanted to join the club at all costs and set up a venture to do just that. Suffice to look at the owners of PL and Championship clubs to see that.
And most bet way above their means. So, now they’ll have to leave the table. And the clubs will tumble into lower leagues or go bankrupt.
I have no problem with a viable (and correctly run) company getting governement help. But these casino players, well, the taxpaying citizen does not have to be asked to finance their seat at the table.
Some billionnaire does not have the means or does not want to keep on spending on his club ? Tough luck them. He sells it, or goes bankrupt and faces all consequences.
And if the finances were not well managed, too much risk taken, well the guys who signed need to pay for their errors as any small business owner has to do.Laws ought to apply to all.
And the last time I checked, the Premier League is in no way systemic, is it ?

Sure, the players, employees will have a problem. But this happens when any company goes bankrupt and we don’t see much of a report in the press about them, do we ?
Personnaly, I’d be more worried about the staff, their wages are ‘normal’, they have the most to lose. Players ? Well, they took on the career, they chose the clubs they play for, they earned generally way more money then any of us, so in no way are they worse off.
In the end, it ought to be a survival of the fittest situation

And if the PL ends up with 10 teams ? Well they’ll play each other 4 times in a season and over the ensuing years, some Championship teams may come up based on finances and results. Would broadcasters be against showing Liverpool- United 4 times a year ? I don’t believe so.

As for broadcasters losses, well, tough luck guys. You are the ones who accepted to pay more, who took risks, who have the university degrees present on the management floor of your corporate buildings, who hire the expensive lawyers and consultants. Sue them and leave us alone. Why should we care at all, after all the examples of you not respecting the fan in the stadium and the paying subscriber ?

In a time when a recession is starting that looks like it will hurt many, when the health system of the country is in dire straits, any idea of the governement coming out to save casino players sounds obscene to me. Privatising profit and mutualising losses accross the country is not acceptable. Banks did get away with it, arguing they were ‘systemic relevant’. I can’t think how the Premier League or the FA would be classified in the systemic relevant category.

One solution out of this mess may be to transfer all clubs who go bust into some ‘Bad club fund’.
Said fund would pay the ‘little people’ owed by the club and look for buyers.
Anyone wanting to ‘buy’ the club would have, in return for use of the ground, the brand, the name, etc. to repay the fund for a number of years, covering what was owed and interest.
Who knows, maybe the clubs’ own fans may be interested in crowdsourcing a restart-
This way, there is no need to come up with hundreds of millions in one shot, but with a plan that makes sense, a competent management team and a vision.
The funds that would be invested would be vetted so as to avoid mafia or autocratic like takeovers.

But then again, such a scenario would need a will to solve the problem and competent people preparing for it and actually running it. Which I don’t think the PL nor the FA has shown as having available.

Just an idea, but why would it not be possible to apply to football recipes that worked for another casino like industry : the banking system ?

However, at some point, survival of the fittest still must apply, and frankly, I do hope it will.

Tech Volt

Switching Domino Volt ON

by Christophe Jost0 comments

VoltTrace

Switching Domino Volt ON

Coming out of Engage 2020 in Arnheim, I was all excited at the thought of getting started with Domino Volt. Yet the virus disruption we are under just wreaked havoc into all my plans. And when I wanted to get going, I discovered that the beta download was not possible anymore and the normal download not possible yet…. tough luck…yet so frustrating as the confinment was giving me at least 3 hours of extra time per day – no metro, bus, train, plane, car to take anymore.

So I contacted Begoña Sanchez, the HCL Client Advocate Manager and she got the issue solved in a few days with the help of her colleagues. I must say I had written off the possibility as large companies with their procedures often have no way to handle an outlier who was not even able to manage the March 31st deadline… And, again, HCL surprised me and the outlier I am was offered a no-fuss practical solution. Many thanks and bravo.

So, as I am often working off-line, I installed a V11 Domino server on my Thinkpad T590 with 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD, which is to say a nice workhorse. I then proceeded to install Domino Volt. Some configuration stuff later, I was in Volt working on my first application.

Except I could not save anything….so I started searching, told myself I ought have installed an https connexion on my server, did it, no change.

Anyways at some point logic thinking came back, I de-installed all and started from scratch. With a slight change…. going through the install procedure that came with the file step by step. 10 minutes later all was working.

Which just shows that we till can be arrogant and stupid enough after more then 30 years and not read the install instructions fully. And that the install documents HCL produced are detailed enough – and correct – to enable someone like me to et the job done….. let’s say it is a read-pushbutton installation…. ;=)

Working on my first application, I went back to the handbook I got at Engage 2020 and quickly got my first prototype up and running. I still like the concept, the product, the potential, the promise. So I’ll keep going with it and keep posting about it.

One thing I found out today – and search a solution for now – is an unpractical way it works. I found out that unless you do not save the application regularly, you risk overstepping the time-out if you answer a phone or read an email and it takes longer : you get locked out. And after re-logging in, all your work is lost since the last save. Now that is bad news. I mean, sure, I am used to saving, but then, sometimes stuff happens and your fingers are not on the keyboard and your concentration somewhere else. That something like that can happen ought to be avoided on Volt side. I’d expect at least an autosave or a parameter disabling a timeout.

So for now I’ll keep trying stuff out and will report at a later time on what I discover.

Tech Volt

High Energy with Domino Volt

by Christophe Jost0 comments

HCL - Domino Volt

High Energy with Domino Volt

After having been able to attend an training session on Domino Volt at Engage 2020, I was really looking forward to get started with it and see how it would fit into the HCL Domino/Notes strategy.

Today’s webinar, I must say, pleasently surprised me. Not that I was expecting a deception, but HCL is steady on course and keeping on doing what they promise : listen to partners and customers, respect their deadlines and give us products that can energize our businesses.

Lets see these 3 points

Listening

At the on hands training seminar (and later during beta), many suggestions were made. Marty Lechleider, the Domino Volt product manager was there, showing us how it works, listening to ideas, discussing use cases.

By the way, which other large software publisher enables you to have a product manager actually teach you the product ? And spend quality time to actually have a real dialogue ?

I keep being impressed how the HCL developpers are available to all of us, really ‘recording’ what we discuss and how often I find those ideas, remarks, criticisms having had an impact in the product

Deadlines

After more then a decade of traversing a desert in terms of product evolution, it needs adapting (and requires investment in time…) to get regular new versions, to follow-up on betas.

However, that is a change I am more then happy to adapt to !

Energizing our business

How Domino Volt will impact our business is still something I am not completely sure of. However, its ease of use, the total integration within the Domino/Notes structure and the totally reasonable cost mean we have new options available.

These new options mean we will be able to offer more services at a better price and be able to compete better.

And, if you look back, this is the first ‘new’ product in the Domino/Notes offering since what ? xPages more then a decade ago ?

We can start presenting a new alternative to google forms and Microsoft forms which to me seem to do some stuff Domino Volt does, but the way I see it, Domino Volt goes much further.

Again, integration, security and hybrid data model single it out.

We can now tell a story about a new product, not face questions about how old Domino/Notes is perceived to be.

As for our business and how Domino Volt will impact it ? Here are my thoughts

Registration forms for our customers’ websites.

Seing how easy it is to get a Volt form ready and how comfortable it is to get the data straight into a Notes database, I can predict that we’ll be replacing all registration forms for our customers on their websites with a Volt registration form.

No more transfers from WordPress or whatever other CMS they are using. At worst an ifram opening the form, and the issue is settled.

Agents on the domino server will route whatever process/communications need be. We can have full integration without the complex overhead of xPages.

Add-ons

Domino Volt will enable us to develop some addons based on customer ideas without them becoming too expensive for the customer. Quite often these small addons translate in big savings, but development costs can quickly rise.

With Domino Volt, we can keep that in check, make our maintenance easier and the customers happy

Extranet functions

There again, getting extranet functions online for a customer will be much easier and affordable, even if these functions are specific.

Such features are often deemed to complex and expensive by SMBs, and with Domino Volt I believe we’ll be able to convince many more to go ahead and reap the benefits of better productivity and easier backoffice administration.

On-boarding new developpers

Domino Volt’s modern interface and concept will make it very easy to get new developpers to work in Domino/Notes. The steep learning curve has just got flatter and it opens the way to important savings when getting new personnel up and running on Domino/Notes.

I’ll leave it at that. I’m looking forward to start developping production applications with Domino Volt and integrate them into our own eco-system.

I am sure that there are many more ways Domino/Volt can impact our business…I’ll be happy to read your thoughts and get new ideas. Just feel free to comment !

Take care all of you and stay safe

Arsenal Gunners Non classé Opinion

This is the end, my Arsenal friend, this is the end

by Christophe Jost0 comments

The fallout of the pandemic is far from clear, we have no idea how bad it will be, yet there are some things that will change forever. Like there was a before and after 9/11, or a before and after Bosman. Football will never be the same.

Untold appears to be the only media outlet in the UK actually thinking about football.  Thinking is free – so we can do that, access to Untold is free.   No subscriptions or anything like that.  Thinking means not parroting other people’s comments, not day-dreaming, not taking your readers for idiots.

And so we have started to think about what the world of football is going to look like, as our articles from the past few weeks have shown.

Now, as you are aware after reading our reports, every European league is handling the crisis differently. And if we are to believe what is published about the PL, well it just seems like the PL is doing the opposite of everyone else: the PL is not handling it at all.

Which when you consider the utter magnitude of competence in management the PL and the FA are supposed to have, is not surprising. Maybe someone told them that doing nothing was less dangerous than even thinking about doing something?

Then again, that someone would have been right when one considers the strings of repeated successes the management of the biggest football league in the world and its Football Association has scored since it started. If you are not aware of them, here is a short list:

  • Failed World Cup bid which cost a fortune to put in and got two votes
  • Charity Shield, shut down because it broke basic UK charity law
  • Child abuse scandals across multiple clubs, still mostly unresolved
  • PGMOL: utterly secret, utterly different from the rest of Europe
  • Wembley Stadium, over budget
  • Manager who lasted one match before promising to fake sheikhs to break the law

Shall we stop here? And on the player side, their union is very efficient in paying its manager royally, which I guess from his point of view makes a lot of sense. As for competence, well, how long has this crisis been going on and what have we heard from the players’ union? My advice to every player: run from it and get together with your teammates to negotiate.

Now, when you prepare yourself for a new home, a new job, a new life, you try to imagine all elements of it.  You plan. You get ready.

So, let us look at the different elements of the landscape that may appear before us in a few months.

Money

Football for the past few decades has been burning its basic fuel without end. Living from hand to mouth (except Bayern Munich and Arsenal during the Wenger years and maybe a few other rare clubs). Like a coke addict waiting for the next snort. The merry-go-round organised around two transfer windows animated and organised by agents interested in taking money from each side and from multiplying transactions, as the rest watch like rabbits, doing what rabbits do.

The bubble appeared in full daylight when it became clear that some clubs were actually borrowing on future revenue. Untold wrote about it, commented it; a lone voice in the desert.

Money comes from several sources, primarily… matchday revenue, licencing, player transactions and finally TV revenue. Over the years, TV revenue has grown so wildly out of proportion that most of the 20 PL clubs appear in the list of 40 richest clubs in the world.

That relatively easy money has perverted the whole economics of football in Europe. A few clubs in each league, always present in the CL, earn 30 or 40 millions more than other clubs in their national league, year after year. This widens the gap inexorably to a point where in most European leagues, the championship has turned into a competition between two or maybe three clubs.  In August 2018 Untold predicted who would win the League in six different countries at the end of that season, and got every one of them right.  Not because we were clever but because it was so blindingly obvious.

Basically, one can compare TV money to matchday revenue. Broadcasters are selling season tickets for games and are earning some money from advertising. Virtual stadia, this is what it is.

Not only has football become dependent on TV money, TV has become dependent on football. In Germany, if Sky were to not get the next TV contract, there is talk the company might even collapse, as the subscriber loss would be so massive. So some TV broadcasters are totally dependent on games being available in their drive to get subscribers.

Gambling

Betting is a big financier of football. So much that clubs belong to betting companies, stadia have their names, and shirts carry their logos. My bet? Betting is done. The industry is dying and no one will come to its aid. At some point it will revive because people love to bet…but for now, unless they take bets on which clubs go bust first, or which player goes back to college first to learn a new trade, they have no ‘material’ anymore.

Which in turn means the PL loses, just from this industry, hundreds of millions in revenue streams across the PL and Championship.

Players

Interestingly, in Europe, there is no professional player association that really wields influence as is the case in US sports. Or in tennis. In the US, the NFL owners have to renegotiate the base conditions with the players’ union and sometimes strikes do happen.  Same thing in basketball, baseball or ice hockey. In this most capitalist of countries, unions are an important element, and, as a consequence, player revenue and protection are optimised.

In Europe, it is each player for himself. Can’t say I’ve read much about their activities and victories for the players they represent. Which, I think, is just fine for the owners and clubs. Better to have the players as individuals then as a group backed by a powerful union. Interestingly, in this continent where social advances started, the players are in a rat race. Just the opposite situation from that in America.

Some players are helping actively, but what do we know? The press does not do its job and reports on just a few individuals, whereas I am sure there are many more players adopting a humane vision. Or I ought to say I hope….

Broadcasters

The broadcasters used to be TV stations. Then came satellite/cable TV providers, and finally streaming services.

Each new actor brought more money to the table because their capacity to reach spectators was bigger than the predecessor.

So audiences widened, revenue skyrocketed and along with it, everything else went up: player salaries, agent commissions, marketing revenue, ticket prices, number of games, squad sizes, betting activity.

Broadcasters find themselves in the situation of a restaurant that has already sold out its next 365 evenings, and whose dining hall has just been condemned as unfit for purpose by health authorities. No meals to serve, a full staff to pay and customers wanting a refund.

And I am not even starting to talk about Bein. These guys are in deep trouble, even if they have deep oil wells.  But their oil has just dipped so much that in the course of three months, it has lost two-thirds of its value (from above $60/barrel to barely above $20 a barrel).

Bein pretty much took over every sport available on all continents to feed it’s satellite channels. It sure has movies etc, but sports is their calling card. And now they’ve got no content anymore, or to be precise, they are losing content on a daily basis, from east to west as the pandemic closes down one country after the other.

Sure, they have deep pockets. As have Emirates… but how deep… ?

Fans

I am making a distinction here: fans are those coming to the game for the love of the game and the passion of the club. Not spectators coming to see a show.

Fans were the first spectators. And with each new broadcasting evolution, they become a smaller proportion of spectators and of revenue. And in the end, many feel they are just being robbed of their time, money and intelligence.

Organisations in England

There was a time when sports bodies were something one could look to. Just read the piece on the participation of the UK at the Moscow games that was on the Guadian the other day.

Yet, with the staggering amounts of money football was starting to generate, football organisations became a sort of laundromat for ambition, greed and corruption. As in all things human, the more money, the more greed, hubris and self-serving. The consequence is always a loss of competence, with incompetence encroaching all levels of an organisation. Just to make the point, even Germany has had its share of that, with the attribution of the WC 2006 being played out in front of the courts because of corruption.

Yet, clearly, England, the FA and the PL in that regard, are probably world leaders not at corruption but at incompetence. So incompetent they are not even corrupt. Just to make the point, I’ll repeat the shortlist: failed World Cup bid, Charity Shield, England managers, kids abuse, PGMOL, Wembley stadium, the one game manager….

These bodies however are negotiating with broadcasters for huge amounts of money. Sure they represent the clubs or federations, but then, when all the world wants to see games, it ain’t complicated to sell. Now that the money-flow has stopped, it is going to be a totally different story.

Press

That which calls itself the press is basically the same body that reports on royals (and sometimes on politics), using the same tactics, the same manipulative methods and showing no respect for its readers.

Reading them, one wonders how come scandals were unearthed in England these past 25 years. The sheer lack of curiosity, of critical sense, of actual fact-based reporting is AWOL.  Where are the investigative pieces of journalism about football? Mainstream is fantasy reporting. These writer ought not to have a press card but a fantasy press card.

Can you imagine that there has been NO story on how players in the PL are dealing with the pandemic? I mean with some interviews across the teams and the country, with an interview of the player union boss? I mean, the PLAYERS, you know, those guys running after what is called a football on a grass surface…. Nothing serious.

Clubs and their social anchoring

Just reading what Spurs are doing makes one sick. Just get the taxpayer to pay the salaries of ground zero victims – the employees. Or when Liverpool pretty much did the same and had the utter nerve to say they were sending the stewards to help stores for free.

Compared to the response of many clubs in Germany, Italy, Spain, this is just ridiculous. On the other hand it just shows the incredible disconnect between the clubs and their environment. Some smaller clubs are doing something. The big ones are just coronawashing their ridiculous gestures.

The thing is, fans are not stupid and see the damage to their city, to their local businesses. Will they have any reason to support any bailout or plea for help?

UEFA and FIFA

Both these organisations are in deep deep trouble. The gravy train has just stopped and will not resume its course. Their independence, bought by money, has disappeared and governments will not behave according to their priorities.

Their survival may not be at stake, they’ll still be useful in the future, but their revenue stream has stopped, their usefulness in the crisis is nil, and, worst of all, as an ‘actor’ helping societies they have failed miserably and are useless.

Their power lies with the national federations and these are now fighting for their own survival so not much of a collaborative effort possible there.

Add to that, in FIFA’s case, that money was the way to make sure things went according to plan. And money has just run out. And that corruption perverted the whole system. At some points even the lawyers protecting them will stop doing it for lack of money.

Covid 19

And this bug has to be mentioned. We know so little of it. One positive thing, it seems not to evolve very much if I believe reports. So that stability will make it easier to get a vaccine developed. But until then, it is a threat to health systems, it can spread like the plague and most probably will stay around for a while.

And this disruption in sports leads to total annihilation. Even if all PL players, coaches, medics, and other supporting staff were healthy on day 1 of its start, if just one person in a few thousand tests positive, that team, the last team they played in the past 2 weeks, and the teams they themselves played…well I’ll stop there. It is at present from a epidemics point of view impossible to predict that playing even behind closed doors, even if all players were to live apart from the world along with supporting staff.

Unless all players are shipped to Antarctica and stay there to play indoors for the whole of next season, there will be no next season… or we find a vaccine.

Untold Arsenal

For more then a decade, Untold has been talking of all the subjects that the ‘Kommentariat’ are considering as off-side. And has repeatedly predicted events before the public or even actors were aware of them (FIFA arrests in Switzerland to state just one). It has invented vocabulary and concepts that ended up being adopted (yet without any credits…) by the so called press: rotational fouling, reffymandering, to name but two.

For weeks now, we have kept on giving you a perspective no other football outlet has given. But then, it is the thing we love to do. And it is for free.

On the horizon, seen from the beach, there is this tsunami wave that is approaching. It is the result of an eruption. The first fallout saw all games cancelled, stadia closed and football brought to a standstill. Seismometers are registering tremors, a storm is brewing and invaders are at the door. This is pretty much what is hitting the world of football now. Remember Pompeï ?

Now, you may say we are being pessimistic, we are painting the devil on the wall or are scaring the living daylights out of our readers… well the fact is that any politician who belittled this pandemic has blood on his hand. That has gone from bad to worse. That pretty much half of humanity is on some form of lockdown and that it will even get worse.

These are facts we can read all over the world. Not some kind of politico thriller written by Steven King.

Yet somehow, we hope that someday soon, we’ll be watching the opening game of the next season, will be cheering for our team, will want to share the moment with kids, friends, fathers.

Nature is showing us fascinating examples of resilience. We humans have resilience as well. Inventions will come, methods will be devised. Efforts will be done together or not. But we believe that this pandemic will come to pass and our world will enter an new age.

It will be up to each of us to make sure this new age is better than the one which we see dying in front of our eyes.

We hope that in terms of football, of reporting, you will have a better understanding of what has been going on all these years and will want to be better informed. And that you won’t accept to be taken for idiots anymore.

Those were the days my friend…we thought they’d never end…

Legal National PL Reffymandering

Why do Liverpool keep getting the same referees?

by Andrew Crawshaw0 comments

Why do Liverpool keep getting the same referees?

You will be aware that Untold has held strong views about the PGMO, how they keep appointing the same referees over and over again and how they continually fail to have sufficient referees for the PL.

So far this season the PGMO have utilised all the 17 referees on their ‘Select list’ and, in addition, four more have done one game each.  Of those on the Select list eight have done 20 games or more whilst three have done fewer than 10 games.  It looks to me like there are only eight referees really trusted.  If the other nine are allowed to do games for some teams why not all of them?

But either they are competent or not, and surely all of the teams in the PL deserve an equal standard of refereeing.  I am sick to death of seeing Atkinson, Dean, Kavanagh, Tierney and Attwell.  I wouldn’t mind too much if I felt they were all 100% competent but they all show that they are at best erratic and at worst downright strange in their decision making.

It’s not only Arsenal that is affected by repeat refereeing though.

The runaway leaders Liverpool have only seen 11 referees.  Anthony Taylor has done most matches with  (plus another 2 as Video Referee).  To date no other club has had a referee six times.  Paul Tierney has been involved the most (9 matches) if we include his appearances as fourth official as well as Video referee – he has been involved in 30% of the Liverpool games.  Oliver, Taylor and Moss have also been involved in over a quarter of their games with six, Marriner and Pawson have been involved in over a fifth of Liverpool’s games.

Liverpool As Referee As 4th Official As Video ref Total Involvement Involvement % of games played
Michael Oliver 6 0 2 8 27.6%
Anthony Taylor 4 3 1 8 27.6%
Paul Tierney 2 1 6 9 31.0%
Craig Pawson 1 1 4 6 20.7%
Martin Atkinson 3 0 1 4 13.8%
Chris Kavanagh 3 0 1 4 13.8%
Jon Moss 3 4 1 8 27.6%
Andre Marriner 3 1 3 7 24.1%

Sheffield United have had the joint most referees with 16, they also have the fewest serial visitors with two, but even with them things are odd.  They have had both David Coote (total 11 matches in the PL) and Simon Hooper (9 matches) on four occasions – 40% of the total games the two of them have been in charge of.

As we keep saying the numbers don’t give a lot of confidence that match fixing in the PL can’t occur.  The practices in place don’t appear to be sufficient to preclude the possibility of outside influences affecting results.

Here are the total matches allocated to each of the PL referees this season:

 

Games including matchweek 29

(7-9/03/20)
Martin Atkinson 25
Anthony Taylor 23
Michael Oliver 23
Mike Dean 22
Paul Tierney 20
Kevin Friend 20
Chris Kavanagh 20
Jonathan Moss 20
Andre Marriner 17
Craig Pawson 15
Graham Scott 15
Stuart Attwell 15
Lee Mason 13
David Coote 11
Simon Hooper 9
Peter Bankes 7
Andy Madley 9
Oliver Langford 1
Robert Jones 1
Darren England 1
Tim Robinson 1

The next question to ask is “is this situation common across the other European Leagues? »  With a little digging and using data readily available on the internet here are comparable figures for total games across the other 4 major European leagues:-

Germany – Bundesliga

Referees Total games (to 23/2/20)
Dr. Felix Brych 12
Tobias Stieler 12
Markus Schmidt 11
Felix Zwayer 11
Daniel Siebert 11
Marco Fritz 11
Manuel Gräfe 10
Deniz Aytekin 10
Bastian Dankert 10
Harm Osmers 10
Sascha Stegemann 10
Christian Dingert 9
Frank Willenborg 9
Benjamin Cortus 9
Sven Jablonski 9
Patrick Ittrich 8
Daniel Schlager 8
Martin Petersen 7
Guido Winkmann 6
Dr. Robert Kampka 6
Robert Hartmann 6
Robert Schröder 6
Sören Storks 5
Tobias Welz 4
Bibiana Steinhaus 4

So in a smaller league, we have 25 referees used, one female (Bibiana Steinhaus), none more than 12 times and none  fewer than four.

Spain – La Liga

Referees Total games (to 23/2/20)
Antonio Miguel Matéu Lahoz 14
Estrada Fernández 14
Mario Melero López 14
Jesús Gil Manzano 14
Adrián Cordero Vega 14
Guillermo Cuadra Fernández 14
Javier Alberola Rojas 14
Juan Martínez Munuera 13
Medié Jiménez 13
César Soto Grado 13
José María Sánchez Martínez 13
Valentin Pizarro Gomez 13
Pablo González Fuertes 13
José Luis Munuera Montero 13
Carlos Del Cerro Grande 12
Eduardo Prieto Iglesias 12
González González 11
Santiago Jaime Latre 11
De Burgos Bengoetxea 11
Andrés Hernández 7
Alejandro Hernández 6

21 referees, all engaged in between 14 and 6 matches

Italy – Serie A

Referee Total games (to 23/2/20)
Maurizio Mariani 14
Rosario Abisso 13
Federico La Penna 13
Davide Massa 13
Marco Di Bello 12
Daniele Doveri 12
Daniele Orsato 12
Gianluca Rocchi 12
Gianpaolo Calvarese 11
Daniele Chiffi 11
Piero Giacomelli 11
Marco Guida 11
Fabio Maresca 11
Fabrizio Pasqua 11
Marco Piccinini 11
Michael Fabbri 10
Antonio Giua 10
Massimiliano Irrati 10
Luca Pairetto 10
Paolo Valeri 10
Gianluca Manganiello 9
Eugenio Abbattista 2
Juan Luca Sacchi 2
Manuel Volpi 2
Gianluca Aureliano 1
Giovanni Ayroldi 1
Francesco Fourneau 1
Livio Marinelli 1
Alessandro Prontera 1
Riccardo Ros 1
Simone Sozza 1

21 referees with between 14 and 9 matches with a further10 used for either 1 or 2 matches each

Finally France – Ligue 1

Name Matches to date
Antony Gautier 16
Hakim Ben El Hadj 15
Ruddy Buquet 15
Willy Delajod 15
Johan Hamel 14
Frank Schneider 14
Jérôme Brisard 13
Amaury Delerue 13
Mikael Lesage 13
François Letexier 13
Karim Abed 12
Florent Batta 12
Thomas Leonard 12
Jérémy Stinat 12
Clément Turpin 12
Eric Wattellier 12
Benoît Bastien 11
Jérémie Pignard 11
Olivier Thual 11
Stéphanie Frappart 10
Benoît Millot 9
Jérôme Miguelgorry 4
Alain Bieri 1

23 Referees in total, one female (Stéphanie Frappart) and Alain Bieri is Swiss not French.  With he and Migulgorry excepted all between 16 and 9 games.

So we can clearly see that the UK pattern of refereeing is out of kilter with all of the other major leagues in Europe.  Our busiest referee has done 25 matches as against 16 in France, 14 in Spain and Italy and 12 in Germany.

All of the other leagues have more referees and the individual workload is far more evenly spread between them than is the case in England.

The more one looks at the data the odder it appears.