Laurence McKenna, co-host of the EPL Talk and World Cup Buzz Podcasts, recently had a golden opportunity to sit down with one of the most remarkable English football writers and authors, Barney Ronay of The Guardian and When Saturday Comes.

In this second part of the interview series (part one is included below), Ronay shares his opinion regarding several fascinating topics including:

• How he assesses Fabio Capello as a manager,
• How England measures up to the rest of the world,
• His fondest memories of previous World Cup tournaments,
• What we will remember the 2010 World Cup for,
• What sets the World Cup apart from other sporting tournaments,
• Who will win the 2010 World Cup in South Africa,
• And much more.

Note that the video interview was conducted before the World Cup kicked off, so his thoughts on Capello (which may still be justified depending on what happens during the rest of this tournament) were shared before the England versus USA game.

Ronay is the author of the book entitled The Manager, which examines the role of football managers throughout the history of Association Football and how the role has changed over time. The book was voted as the Best New Football Book of the 2009-10 season in the EPL Awards as chosen by readers of EPL Talk.

And, as promised, here is the first part of the two-part Barney Ronay interview series:

Barney Ronay is one of many guests who have been interviewed by EPL Talk. Other guests have included Ray Hudson, Patrick Barclay and Phil Schoen. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to subscribe to EPL Talk’s YouTube Channel so you’re notified as soon as new videos are released from EPL Talk.

Barney Ronay, author and football writer for The Guardian, sat down with Laurence McKenna of EPL Talk recently for a one-on-one interview from the Guardian studos in London. Ronay discusses several topics including his favorite football manager, his favorite football writer, how he got into football journalism, what he did before he became a writer at The Guardian and much more.

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to subscribe to EPL Talk’s YouTube Channel. During the past, we’ve released video interviews with Patrick Barclay, Millwall Football Club, Ray Hudson, Phil Schoen and others. Plus we’ve published video previews and videos, too.

Watch for part two of the interview with Barney Ronay coming within the next couple of weeks where Ronay dives into the topic of the World Cup.

If you want to get Barney Ronay’s thoughts on today’s Champions League Final between Inter Milan and Bayern Munich, watch this short trailer which was created and produced by the video design team of Laurence McKenna and Max Bell.

The entire interview with Barney Ronay, which was filmed inside The Guardian’s offices, will be released soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this trailer.

If you’d like to watch the above video in HD, visit the Barney Ronay interview on YouTube. Or be sure to subscribe to the EPL Talk channel on YouTube to get an alert when each new video is added as well as to search through the library of 35 similar videos and interviews.

Many of us will wake up on Monday morning feeling slightly depressed that the 2009-10 Premier League season is over. All that’ll remain from the English football season will be the FA Cup Final, Europa League Final and playoff matches in the Football League. Not to diminish those exciting events, but many of us will be keeping one eye on the upcoming World Cup which will be just 32 days away.

I’m particularly excited about the 2010 World Cup because of the advancements in technology. This will be the first World Cup in HD. It’ll be the first Twitter World Cup. And technically the first Facebook World Cup. And, don’t forget, it’ll be the first World Cup for Apple iPhone users. The amount of information at our finger tips will be awesome and overwhelming at the same time. It’s going to be the most plugged-in World Cup in the history of the sport. A large part of that is because of the Internet.

It seems bizarre to think that it was only four years ago that the 2006 tournament was the first real time that the Internet embraced the World Cup. In 2002, the web was still reeling from the post dot-com bubble disaster. Plus the time difference between Asia and North America was horrible. We were lucky enough to watch the games in the middle of the night, let alone switch on the computer to follow the news. Four years prior to that, in 1998, the Internet was still so new that America Online (AOL) as well as Compuserve and other ISPs were our destinations. And any information we could glean about the World Cup was a precious commodity.

Thinking back, the 2006 World Cup was a trendsetter for a few different reasons. It was the birth of The Guardian’s daily The World Cup Show podcast starring James Richardson. The show would later morph into Football Weekly, one of the best soccer podcasts in the business. It was also a summer when I would argue that football blogs were born, or became massively popular. The two shining examples at the time were the BBC’s World Cup 2006 Blog and FoxSoccer.com‘s brilliant blog posts from their team who were on the ground in Germany. Fox’s bloggers extraordinaire that summer included Jamie Trecker, Nick Webster, Oliver Hinz and, back in North America, Bobby McMahon.

Other than those two blogs, The Guardian podcast and Phil McThomas’s trusty Soccer Shout podcast, and BBC’s Sport section, that was pretty much the lion share of sites I visited that glorious summer. Contrast that with this summer and the sheer quantity and quality of sites, blogs, iPhone apps, Facebook, Twitter and TV coverage, and you can quickly see how 2010 will be the biggest World Cup ever because people will be more connected. It’ll be everywhere.

But just as many of you have begun to make your plans regarding where and how you’ll watch the World Cup (if you haven’t, don’t worry — our sister site WorldCupBuzz.com will be providing plenty of helpful articles to guide you through the tournament), have you thought about what online destinations will you be visiting this summer to find the news, stories and analysis that you’ll crave? If you were a soccer fan during the 2006 World Cup, will the sites you visit this summer be different than four years ago or will you go back to those classics? Do you envision yourself consuming more of your World Cup news and content via mobile phone this summer?

Please share your valuable insight with me and the readers of EPL Talk in the comments section below. And feel free to share your memories of following previous World Cups online and what the experience was like. We’ve certainly come a long way.

For those who haven’t heard, starting this May-June, readers of The Times and The Sunday Times online will be forced to pay a fee or subscription in order to read news from one of Britain’s biggest and most trusted news sources. Some 20 million monthly readers of the two sites will be effected by a change that analysts say will cause “almost all” of the online readers to look elsewhere for their daily dose.

Both sites, currently under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch’s News International, will soon have a £1 per day or £2 per week fee to access articles. Also launching this June is a new site called Times+ which will feature exclusive events, offers and extras and will cost £50 per year as a stand alone subscription.

The new roll out of both sites aren’t short of bells and whistles to tempt long time readers into taking the plunge and subscribing for the once free content. I was recently able to preview the revised sites, and it’s safe to say they definitely have an elegant, glossy design. This risky crossover surely has undergone countless hours of research, design and testing to assure the switch goes off without a snag. It’s safe to say that if there were massive problems, the already weary paying customer may be scared off for good.

One of the major selling points I’ve been able to discern from the new sites are the interactive features that are sure to be unique and informative. To name a few:

• Exclusive photo gallery and online video
• Daily live Q & A – quiz your favorite journalists
• Interactive graphics and more

Still though, are rivals the Guardian and the Telegraph chomping at the bit as one of their competitors enters into the forest of the unknown? In short, Yes. Both are sticking by their tried and true format of free online articles and news. The Daily Mail Online will also stick with their format of free articles saying, “A pay-wall MIGHT make a little money — we will make a lot.” So who will pay for news?

What Does This Mean for Readers of EPL Talk?

The answer to that question of course depends on how much you frequent the site itself for news and articles. Obviously, most readers of this site will peruse the articles from the football section of the Times Online which feature some of the best writers in the UK including, but not limited to Patrick Barclay, Oliver Kay, Gabriele Marcotti and more.

Will You Pay?

James Harding, editor of the Times, recently stated that the paper is “going to lose a lot of passing traffic”, yet also added that the pay basis was “less of a risk than just throwing away our journalism and giving it away for free”. Regardless of your opinion, Harding’s comments were definitely of an interesting perspective from a man who realizes the risk of the new format. But “throwing away our journalism” may be a step too far.

I can’t see myself paying for content when I can get similar and equally as good writing and reporting from other UK based sites. And what’s to become of the highly popular TheGame Podcast? Will the Times attempt to charge for the weekly show that features Nick Szczepanik and Marcotti? This and other variables, such as the impending success or failure of the change over to a paid format are still widely unknown.

I believe that if a paid format is to truly work, what’s being paid for must offer something that one couldn’t simply find elsewhere. In an age where not only every news outlet has a website, but also a mobile app, the market for instant and free information is so saturated it makes a paid format almost laughable.

What’s to become of the new Murdoch method of setting up a paywall for The Times? Will other news sources soon follow Murdoch’s lead? Will such a risky business model thrive or fail in these still volatile economic times?

We’ll all know in a few short months, but until we do, enjoy your free articles on The Times while you can.

I recently got the opportunity to sit down with Rob Smyth over electronic mail and ask him a few questions about how he got his start, what he’s currently up to, and even get his pick on next summer’s World Cup. Many of you will know Mr. Smyth from his appearances on the Guardian Podcast and his writing on the Guardian website. He’s also contributed recently to the Guardian’s daily email, the Fiver.

Q. How did you become a writer? – More specifically, where did you study writing/journalism and for how long?

A. By chance. I didn’t study journalism because I couldn’t get on any courses: I did Criminology as an undergraduate and Film Studies as a postgrad. I’ve used approximately 0.00 per cent of both courses in my career. But somewhere in between I did work experience at a cricket magazine, and it mushroomed from there. In the absence of any discernible talent, I had luck on my side.

Q. Which other Football writers inspire you, or, are there any you look up to?

A. The old dons, Hugh McIlvanney of the Sunday Times and David Lacey of the Guardian, are still peerless I would say. McIlvanney’s rhythm is a thing of beauty, and I’m not sure I’ve ever read a better judge of football than Lacey. We frequently go through the Guardian archive when researching stuff like The Joy of Six, and the consistency of Lacey’s work is mind-blowing. Of the next generations, Scott Murray is the funniest, most interesting and most original. Richard Kurt, who writes about Manchester United, is extremely good too: he was doing 21st-century football writing in the mid-1990′s.

Q. Which team and or teams do you support? Talk a little about your very first experience at a football match – who played and where? The outcome? Any special memories from that day?

A.I’m a Manchester United fan, for which I obviously get all sorts of abuse. I have extremely fond memories of my first United game: it cost £2.50 to get in, we hammered the champions Arsenal 4-1 on the first day of the 1989-90 season, and it looked like the start of a glorious era involving Michael Knighton, Neil Webb and others. It didn’t quite work out like that.

Q. Describe the differences of writing for the Guardian and that of your experiences writing for other publications.

A. The main difference, I suppose, is that you put a different head on for each publication – you have a sense of your target audience, and what you can and can’t write, and adjust accordingly. That applies within the Guardian too: the tone when you are writing for the paper is completely different from when you are writing for the web.

Q. Describe some recent experiences meeting deadlines for the Fiver and the insanity of the supposedly slow IT Department. (Are they anything like any of the characters on the TV show The IT Crowd?)

A. I tend not to deal with that side of things any more, as I just write now, and we are plonked a special writer’s desk, well away from the Important Stuff. The Fiver is, sadly, a lot more punctual than it used to be. A few years ago, when the whole operation was less professional, there was an endearingly shambolic air to it all – the wrong Fiver would be sent out some days, and so on. I’ve never met anyone from IT, although I’ve smelt them in the lifts. Not that I’m saying the IT department and the famous “technical problems” are a euphemism for us being useless/incompetent/lazy. I’m not saying that at all.

Q. As a successful writer, what books are on your list of ”must read football books”?

A. I am a poor reader as I have the concentration span of a four-year-old, so there will be many great football books that I just haven’t got round to reading. But here are some that I would strongly recommend: Brilliant Orange, Only A Game?, Fever Pitch, The Red Army Years, Day of the Match, Inverting The Pyramid, All Played Out, The Damned United, Provided You Don’t Kiss Me and On Penalties. Then there are autobiographies and biographies by or of Roy Keane, Stan Collymore, Tony Cascarino, Garrincha, Diego Maradona and Eric Cantona.

Q. On your Guardian profile page, it states you have a healthy relationship with two people, one of which is Gerd Muller. What is it about the prolific German striker you admire so much? Name two or three players you hold in high regard in today’s game.

A. Muller was the most supernatural player I’ve ever seen, which is why I find him so fascinating. His awareness was not of this world: both in his ability to score some of the ugliest goals you’ve ever seen, just screwing it apologetically into the corner, and also in the way he rolled defenders as if he had eyes in the back of his head. He was totally unique, and effortlessly cool. My favourite current players are Andres Iniesta, the heir to Zinedine Zidane, Andriy Arshavin and Patrice Evra.

Q. As a writer myself, I know it can sometimes be difficult to find inspiration for a particular article or piece. Do you have any tips on how to continually publish relevant thoughts, opinions and ideas on football without becoming stale?

A. Not really, as regular readers of my work would testify. I think the most important thing is to try to detach yourself from the prevailing discourse, because original thought is increasingly rare in all walks of life, not just football writing. This doesn’t mean being contrary for the sake of it; just knowing your own mind and sticking to it.

Q. Do you have any current plans to write a book? If yes, on what topic?

A. I’m currently working on a cricket book, called ‘The Spirit of Cricket’, which will be published by Elliott & Thompson next year. In terms of football, I’m very keen to write a book on the Denmark side of the 80s, the subject of a recent Forgotten Story on the Guardian site, and hope to begin that in the new year. I have a mildly dangerous obsession with that side, for no particular reason.

Q. Got any hilarious stories on happenings around the Guardian office that include members of the Guardian podcast?

A. Hilarious is probably pushing it, but it can be great fun in the office. Honest. Most of the amusing incidents happen during the live coverage, when there’s more scope for a farce: TV coverage going down, computers crashing, some poor hapless MBMer trying to cover a game involving Poland without a teamsheet.

Q. As far as the current EPL season is concerned, who’s your pick to win the league and three teams to go down?

A. Chelsea look the likeliest champions, although we said that at the same stage last year. I would make United second favourites, and then Arsenal. Wolves and Hull will go down; if I had to pick a third team at this stage, I’d say Bolton, but I change my mind on that every week.

Q. Will a team break the traditional Big 4 this year? If yes, who?

A. Manchester City are the only team that could. I think they have a real chance, because they have no European commitments and can add quality to their squad in January.

Q. Lastly, who wins the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa next year?

A. Spain or Brazil. I think they are a long way ahead of the field. England have an outside chance, purely because of Fabio Capello. If I had to pick, I’d go with Spain. They are pure class, and they got their shock defeat out the way in the Confederations Cup.

My thanks to Rob Smyth for his time. Rob will be taking a short break from freelance writing at the Guardian in order to finish his cricket book, he hopes to return sometime after the first of the year.

For the first 60 minutes at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, the game looked remarkably familiar. Chelsea were passing the ball beautifully around the pitch. Wonderful movement off the ball. Using incredible amounts of imagination and creativity. Yet they couldn’t seem to score that crucial second goal.

Sound familiar?

Chelsea were Arsenal. Luiz Felipe Scolari’s side were a joy to watch, but they wasted chance after chance and failed to put the game out of Arsenal’s reach. Instead it was Arsenal, who played very much unlike the Arsenal we know and admire, that were the most decisive when they took the few chances they received to record an incredible 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge.

After Johan Djourou’s own goal gifted Chelsea their goal in the first half, it was up to Robin van Persie to capitalize on two gilt-edge chances to win the match for the Gunners. The second was a beautiful twist and turn to kick the ball past the reach of Petr Cech, but van Persie’s first goal was mired in controversy.

My first reaction was that van Persie was completely offside, but TWI co-commentator Robbie Earle was quick to call the goal a correct decision after he noticed that the ball deflected off Ashley Cole into van Persie’s path. After rewinding the play in the game several times, I could see how Earle’s reading of the game was spot on.

Here’s how the rest of the media summed up the controversial incident:

“He looked well offside when he drilled home the equaliser after 59 minutes” — Phil McNulty, BBC Sport.

“As the Brazilian slipped the ball through, Van Persie was clearly offside. Mike Dean waved play on, mysteriously, allowing the Dutchman to beat Cech with a strong right-footed finish.” — Henry Winter, The Telegraph, and

“The first of Robin van Persie’s goals, should have been ruled offside.” — Kevin McCarra, The Guardian.

So, who was correct? Should the goal have stood and did Robbie Earle make the right call that everyone else missed? I’m siding with Earle on this one, but post your feedback below by clicking the comments link.

The biggest news of the past 24 hours is that Manchester United has reportedly tabled an official £20 million bid for Tottenham striker Dimitar Berbatov. Problem is there’s no evidence of an actual bid being made and all we have to go on is a quote from his agent in The Sun newspaper. What is the “money quote” from the agent that “confirms” that the “bid” has happened?

“I cannot make any comment until there is official confirmation from Tottenham or United.”

While the story may be true, it could also be the agent trying to start a price war to raise Berbatov’s price.

What makes the whole affair ludicrous is now the other British tabloids are picking up on the story and regurgitating the news, and all they have to go on is an article from The Sun. Meanwhile, The Daily Mail even had the cheek to call the story an exclusive.

Here’s a breakdown of how the story broke and how the other news organizations rewrote The Sun‘s material without one of them crediting The Sun:

Headline: United’s £20m Berbatov Bid
Newspaper: The Sun
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 8:53pm ET
Number of attributed sources: One
Source: Emil Dantchev, Berbatov’s agent
Number of direct quotes: One (from agent)
Quote from agent: “I cannot make any comment until there is official confirmation from Tottenham or United.”
Article length: 266 words

Headline: Ferguson Turns His Attention To Berbatov
Newspaper: The Independent
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 9:03pm ET
Source: “There are reports” (i.e. The Sun)
Number of direct quotes: Zero
Article length: 965 words (although only 121 words are about the Berba “bid”)

Headline: United Bid For Berbatov
Newspaper: The Guardian
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 10pm ET
Source: “According to reports” (i.e. The Sun)
Number of direct quotes: Zero
Article length: 135 words

Headline: Exclusive: Get Berbatov: Fergie Puts 20m On Table For Spurs Ace
Newspaper: The Daily Mail
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Friday, 11:17pm ET
Source: None mentioned in reference to “bid”
Number of direct quotes: Zero
Article length: 628 words (with only 454 about the Berba “bid”)

At 2:48am ET on Saturday, BBC Sport mentioned 20 words about the story and appropriately placed it in their Saturday Gossip Column

Headline: Spurs Striker Dimitar Berbatov Subject Of Bid From Manchester United
Newspaper: The Daily Telegraph
Day/time article appeared in RSS feed: Saturday, 4:06am ET
Source: “According to reports” (i.e. The Sun)
Number of direct quotes: One (the same quote from The Sun)
Article length: 317 words

To me, this is all about selling newspapers. All of these tabloid and broadsheet newspapers want the eyeballs on their website so they can sell more advertising space. And those print newspapers who were able to squeeze the news into their fish wrappers last night will sell more copies today with the headline about Berbatov. As of press time, the only respectable English newspaper that hasn’t written about the story is The Times. That either may be by choice, if they determine the story is to be utter tosh, or they may be trying to write their own version of the story with new facts and quotes. Then again, they may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

And all of this comes from one news story in The Sun which features plenty of hearsay and one innocuous quote.

The British press are quick to criticize football clubs and stars, but isn’t it time that they raise their journalistic standards and refrain from lazy journalism?