Like Jogi Löw earlier this week with his 4-1-4-1 formation, I carried out a small experiment on the site. Some of you may have immediately noticed the difference, while others may still be scratching their heads wondering has happened – quite simply, I got a little bored of the site being completely Arial and decided on changing the style of the main content area to a serif type. The default is now the Georgia font, which most viewers should have already installed on their machines.
The purpose of this was not only to placate my boredom of course, but to make the main content area a little different and easier to read – at first I tried increasing the Arial font but it just looked too messy, and decided on Georgia which is both readable and actually looks nice when upped by a couple of points. It probably makes the articles look a little longer too, which can’t be a bad thing.
Kicker Online haven’t released their analysis of the Poland game yet, but when they do I will compare their ratings to those I gave the team immediately after the match. Rather than let things rest on the blog front until next month’s game against Turkey, I have outlined a series of potential items on the Nationalmannschaft including articles on past matches and players, and hope to put out at least one of these a week to keep the content fresh; this will be in addition to me continuing to update the content of the main site.
At the time of writing thus I just have one match to go on the “Das Duell” feature, which should be complete by sometime next week; the plan is then to try and flesh things out a bit across that entire section before doing the boring proof-reading bit. In the meantime I am trying to get hold of more comprehensive coverage of the 1975 Wembley friendly so I can expand a little bit more on the match report for that game.
When this is done the plan will then be to work on the individual tournament match reports, while at the same time writing up the “Key Players” section which will contain potted player biographies: I am still working on the basis for the content for this section, and am torn between concentrating on what was originally the target period (1984-Present) and going the whole hog and dating back to before my time. The advantage of the latter is that it provides a more comprehensive history, but the appeal of the most contemporary approach is that I can rely more on my own interpretation and anecdotes rather than third party sources given that I was actually around to see these players in action. Of course, there are negatives and positive with both approaches – while a 1984-Present approach will involve a little less work and less complication in determining who makes the list, it would also mean that a number of legends – Szepan, Walter, Rahn, Beckenbauer, Vogts to name but five – wouldn’t get their own article. (Though both Der Kaiser and Der Terrier do have their own pages in the Nationtrainers section).
I think it will all be a case of seeing how things go; the likelihood is that I will do the “easy” bit first and expand outwards. I am in fact planning to do this with the Nationaltrainers sub-section, with the single article on the first four coaches being divided into individual pieces.
Will I get the bulk of a manuscript ready by the big Euro 2012 kick-off in Poland and the Ukraine in June next year? Perhaps, if I apply some tight project management and keep my own enthusiasm in check. Of course, if a million pounds falls into my lap I will be more than happy taking temporary retirement and watch archived football matches on a full-time basis – how good would that be? I might even be so mad as to extend the match reports to some of the more obscure friendlies – I am sure there is somebody out there who might be interested in a blow-by-blow account of the friendly against Romania in Valetta in 1998. I would be!
While you are waiting for these changes to happen and for new articles to be added, you could perhaps have a go at the European Championship Quiz – a new feature I have added this month, and hopefully the first of many similar quizzes on the Nationalmannschaft. Just click the link and away you go.