Category: Footy
I hinted at this before, but now I can confirm that I will be traveling to South Africa for the World Cup. Will be watching both semi finals in Durban and Cape town, along with the final in Jo’berg. Really psyched. Should be epic. Will post some pics and stuff when am back. Cheers.
This was posted on Goal.com (Engineered by Castrol Football), pretty much the script of World Cup 2010. Obviously its a World Cup so there will be one or two surprises. Also if you notice they have predicted Germany and Italy to be knocked out in the Quarter finals. Well all I will say is that is unlikely, Italy and Germany are the two most experienced teams when it comes to progressing to the final stages of a big tournament along with Brazil. So one of them should make it further, I am thinking Germany to beat Argentina but its too unpredictable after the Round of 16.
World Cup in 5 days!! Couldn’t be more excited about it! If you aren’t on the same page as I am, then get the fuck out! Anyways if you want get in to the World Cup groove and want all the basic info, team news, schedules, etc. I will put everything relevant in this post. The opening match is on 11th June with hosts South Africa facing Mexico.
Firstly, the schedule: For the match schedule, I didn’t just get you any schedule but it is the best I could find anywhere. Here is the link and if you want to download one for your desktop wallpaper click here.
Here the basic groups:
Players to watch in every group are:
Group A: Ribery (France), Group B: Messi (Argentina), Group C: Rooney (England), Group D: Krasic (Serbia), Group E: Sneijder & Robben (who is an injury doubt) (Both from Netherlands), Group F: De Rossi (Italy), Group G: Ronaldo (Portugal) & Drogba (who is also an injury doubt) (Ivory Coast), Group H: Xavi (Spain)
For me the favorites on paper are Spain with an astounding 96% win rate under Vincent Del Bosque. But its a World Cup and on paper means nothing, and the best example of that is Italy winning it in 2006. How you managed to qualify for the World Cup is irrelevant, you could win all your matches and qualify for the World Cup like Spain and still go on to win it or barely manage to qualify like Argentina and still go on to win it. Argentina has a lot of players who have had a brilliant season for their respective clubs like Tevez, Higuain, Milito, Di Maria, Pastore and obviously Messi. Their Achilles heal will be their manager Maradona or he will be their genius, there is a thin line between madness and genius. So far he has been a mad man but can he be the genius is yet to be seen. I flinched twice when I saw he left out Zanetti and Cambiasso out of his squad but lets not judge him just yet. I am not even going to talk about England, all I will say is, “GO ROONEY!!!” For me the dark horses are the Dutch, with Van Persie, Sniejder, Van Bommel, Van Der Vaart and obviously they need a fit Robben. But they can really go far in this tournament. I would love it if Van Der Saar can return from retirement in goal, that would strengthen them a lot, but its obviously too late for wishful thinking now. How did I write a paragraph on the World Cup and not yet mention Brazil, you cannot rule out Brazil out of any World Cup. But this is a very different Brazil, under Dunga they are more a workman-like and effective team, reminiscent to the team Dunga captained to glory in 1994.
And finally if you in to fantasy FIFA have an official one going on looks interesting and a bit different from the usual ones so read the rules. CLICK.
Also I have a huge personal news regarding the World Cup, but that’s not till the later stages so see you then. Leaving you with a great World Cup advert by Nike. Watch it in HD.
This is a great song by K’naan, also the official them song for CocaCola’s FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa advertising campaign:
Well that was a painful sequence of events. From the moment Bayern scored their winning goal in Munich and the camera immediately panned back to Rooney limping off, a bucket load of bad luck has afflicted us and our season has seemingly imploded. The ‘offside’ goal from Drogba, the gift of a goal to Bayern when we were flying at 3-0, changing the whole dynamic of the game, and the disastrous sending off have all conspired to twist the knife in ever deeper. Then, away from our matches, there was Arsenal’s last gasp winner, just when we were thinking that at least they we’re out of the title race, whilst we’ve even had Liverpool lording it up following their win against Benfica, taunting us with ‘that’s how you do it’, despite them being demoted to a competition for losers – the fact that they’re still in with a chance of winning a European trophy, regardless of its dubious value, seems grossly unfair. Oh, and City even managed a 6-1 away win, and are now looking favourites to claim 4th place, which would make them genuine threat having achieved Champions League status. The gods have certainly been against us!
Wednesday night was a shock to the system – it was felt by everyone associated with United, be it management, players or fans. This wasn’t just a defeat, something far deeper occurred. Going out to Bayern is no disgrace, and we all knew we were up against it following the loss in the first leg, but the manner in which it happened is something which really cut to the core, in a similar way to how it felt in 1992 when we fell apart in the home straight and Leeds pipped us to a championship that had eluded us for a quarter of a century, or 1995 when we failed to get the final day win at West Ham that would have seen us retain our title. When we lost in the final to Barcelona last year, at least we knew that we’d been beaten by a great team – the disappointment was more to do with the fact we’d failed to turn up, and had given a poor account of ourselves. Like Wednesday, the other examples hurt so much because we know that we should have emerged triumphant, but didn’t – this is why it was such a shock for us all.
It’s at this type of moment that a team learns the most about itself, and can hopefully take onboard these brutal lessons and grow. If they’re made of the stuff I hope they are, Wednesday night will galvanise these players, bring them closer together in adversity, and have a positive impact long term. We could still rally to win the league, which would be an incredible achievement in this rollercoaster season of downs and ups, but even if we fall short this term, the experience will serve us well in the future.
Time to brush off the bad luck and stop feeling sorry for ourselves, you make your own as they say, so we have to hand it to Bayern for their unwavering determination throughout both legs of the tie, even when it looked like they might be chasing a lost cause – a never say die trait that has been associated with our team throughout the years. They made their own luck, whilst our nervousness contributed to our own downfall, and hopefully our players will have learnt a valuable lesson from their example.
If we can fight in a similar way during our 5 remaining matches we may still conclude the season on a real high, and the nightmare of the past few games will have all been worthwhile. And then the World Cup.
If I were you I would avoid the last post. This is just going to be a picture and video post cause apparently words don’t really work for me.
For years they have been getting the better of us in Europe, finally got revenge, and it was pretty sweet. To be fair, they played well attack wise but they couldn’t finish their chance, we showed them how its done. A pretty neat trick from Scholes (ya, he meant that!) and two great headers from the man of the hour, Roonay!
Had an awesome train ride the other day, coming back from OT after the Hull game, and United fans sang the Torres chant throughout, and Sheffield United fans (who were coming back after the FA Cup tie against Bolton) joined in. First listen to the Liverpool version of the same song for torres.
Then see my video…
That was a champions performance. Vintage United. Literally ripped Arsenal a new arsehole. Nani, what happened to him? Rumor has it SAF got him a brain transplant, we all new he had similar skill as Ronaldo but now he has his intelligence as well. Fabregas was kept absolutely quiet. Where was he in the second half? And Rooney, is there a more in form striker in Europe at the moment! Different class. Great week for United. two 3-1 victories over Man City and Arsenal in a space of four days. Lets hope Arsenal manage to get something out of the game against Chelsea next sunday.
