“After winning just one of their first four games of the season, Massimiliano Allegri’s Milan side have won eight of the subsequent nine and now finds themselves top of Serie A by three points. What has changed? Here are five reasons Milan have turned their season around.” (ESPN)
“Many questions were raised when Jay Bothroyd received a call up to England’s National team for the friendly against France. Isn’t there someone else playing in the Premier League that would be more worthy of a call-up? Is a player playing in the second tier good enough for an International team as highly ranked as England? There are many blogs that have gone into the positives and negatives of Bothroyd’s call up, that is not the question I wanted to look at. Fabio Capello has himself questioned the number of English players playing at the highest level, limiting the pool of players he can pick his squad from. Does Capello have a point? If not who are the strikers playing in the Premier League that Capello could call on and are other countries suffering the same fate?” (gib football show)
“The big guns moved into position in Week 14, with no less than five teams leap-frogging former leaders Brest, while Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon closed to within two points of top spot. Brest were beaten 2-1 at Rennes in the Brittany derby thanks to goals of real quality from Jires Kembo Ekoko and Jérôme Leroy, and it is difficult to envisage Alex Dupont’s men making a renewed assault on the upper echelons of the table now that their momentum has been checked.” (Football Further)
El Salvador defeats Honduras in Mexico City, 1969.
“Take yourself back to 1969. Richard Nixon is the new President of the United States, John Lennon is spending an increasing amount of time in bed, Thunderclap Newman are top of the charts and, in a far-flung corner of Central America, El Salvador and Honduras do battle in what has come to be known as the ‘Soccer War’. The cultural, political and historical narrative that lay behind the fleeting conflict was complex, but both countries had been locked into a series of economic and social disputes along their shared border for the best part of three decades.” (Equaliser Football)
“Tim Stannard (AKA The Spanish Thing) answers all your questions ahead of Monday’s El Clasico. So are Barca a one-man team? Will they still buy Cesc Fabregas? And who wants Llorente?” (Football 365)
“Liverpool’s future is a subject that has dominated debate over the course of two, traumatic years. Yet while optimism about the seasons to come has been restored now that New England Sports Ventures have replaced Tom Hicks and George Gillett as the owners, Jose Reina’s appraisal of events at Anfield included a few words of warning about the club’s prospects in the short term.” (ESPN)
Scissors Kick 