Thursday, September 27, 2012

Utter, Complete, Humiliating Defeat



About the only lasting phrase we'll all repeat about this referee debacle is this: ".... and the real refs were back to work in 3 days."

This will go down as one of the most spectacular sports business defeats ever, something akin to the military blunder of Napoleon's decision to invade Russia.
Napoleon entered Moscow to find that it had been abandoned by the Russians. Those that remained were starving and had begun looting food. There were no officials to offer the surrender of the city and no food to feed the massive army. Soon the French army began looting for themselves and somewhere in this chaos a fire was started. The fire destroyed four fifths of the city of Moscow and left Napoleon and his army with no shelter, food or plunder. Napoleon had not even received a formal victory and, being a pompous little man, this annoyed the hell out of him. 
With no supplies and the heater in his 2CV still not fixed, Napoleon was forced to withdraw from Russia. Of his 600,000 strong ‘Grand Army’, only about 40,000 limped back into France to quell a revolt that had taken place in his absence. The Nepalese, Austrian and Prussian armies all ran off home swearing that they thought it was a bad idea from the start. This defeat sent a message across Europe Napoleon was not invincible, and with his army now crippled from frostbite he was open to attack.

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