“The 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa is almost upon us and millions around the world will be tuned in with all eyes on this year’s favourites, Spain. They have been regularly touted as potential champions for many years now, and rightly so with the talent they have at their disposal. But somehow it always seems to end in disappointment.” (Just Football)
“So with the World Cup coming up, many of you will be looking for a team to follow either as a second team when your team inevitably gets knocked out in the Quarter Finals on Penalties (perhaps that one is just me) or because your team didn’t make it to South Africa. Either way, at some point you are going to need someone to follow. Often this is irrational and you just like a team. Sometimes you need a reason, sometimes you just inexplicably hate someone, or maybe they have a player you like from the club you follow.” (World Cup Blog)
“If recent World Cup history teaches us anything, it’s that pre-tournament form is a fickle indicator of how sides will fare at the sport’s showpiece event. Favourites typically stumble at early hurdles (France and Argentina in 2002, Brazil in 2006) and the teams that make it to the final – as Italy and France demonstrated in 2006 – are often simply those that come into form at the right time.” (Football Further)
Emmanuel Adebayor
“How easy it is to forget that athletes at their peak are, by the very nature of their tasks, young but expected to be wise in their event, world-traveled but isolated and vulnerable. This week, Emmanuel Adebayor, the goal scorer for Manchester City, gave up the captaincy and, he said, the calling to ever play again for his country, Togo. He is 26 and a millionaire, and he said he just cannot get out of his head the day in January when Angolan separatists fired on the Togo team bus, killing three people in it.” (NYT)
“Even a work stoppage can’t stop Lionel Messi. Strike action had threatened to halt the world’s top striker, but the Barcelona forward is now free to continue his tear through the record books this weekend after Spain’s football players’ union, the AFE, called off a walkout over unpaid wages that would have prevented matches in the country’s top four leagues.” (WSJ)
“Nothing in football is so traduced as the offside law. Most seem to regard it as a piece of killjoy legislation, designed almost to prevent football producing too many goals and being too much fun, while for the punditocracy it has become the universal scapegoat, the thing that “nobody understands”. Just because Garth Crooks doesn’t get something, though, doesn’t make it a bad thing. The modern offside law may be the best thing that’s ever happened to football, and it is almost certainly the reason Barcelona have been so successful with a fleet of players whose obvious asset is their technique rather than their physique.” (Guardian)
“Laura Wagner, a UNC Anthropology graduate student who was in Haiti during the earthquake (and wrote a searing account of her experience at Salon.com), has recently returned to continue her research there. On Saturday, she took this photograph in Port-au-Prince, in the neighborhood of Delmas 32. The chalk board in front of this damaged building — you can see a broken gate inside the building, and the tarp is a necessary addition now that the rainy season has begun — invited fans to come watch the Real-Barca game, something that is of course not to be missed under any circumstances.” (Soccer Politics)
“As the 32 national team managers evaluate players consider injuries and plot strategy ahead of the 2010 World Cup, millions of soccer fans around the world are completing their own plans for the qaudrennial tournament. Most will watch on TV (some in 3-D). Still, organizers expect as many as 450,000 fans to travel to South Africa and join almost a million vuvuzelas-blowing local fans attending the tournament.” (NYT)
“After twenty trips down memory lane, this series has finally come to an end. Below are the twenty sides chosen, in descending order, to represent the 2000s in tactical terms. Choosing the sides was a difficult task. The intention was not to choose the twenty ‘best’ sides, but to choose twenty sides who were somehow interesting tactically, or those who made a significant impact upon the game.” (Zonal Marking)
“The headline was as alarmist as it was partisan. ‘The government,’ declared Spain’s best-selling newspaper, ‘is trying to kill Spanish football.’ It was November 2009 and the Socialist party prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, announced an end to ‘the Beckham Law’. The sports daily Marca, part of the right-leaning El Mundo group, was furious. Presidents of the country’s biggest clubs threatened to lead a strike. At the Spanish League they were talking as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse had reared into view.” (Guardian)
“Wall charts are a World Cup tradition. I’ve had one either pinned, Blu-Tacked or taped to a wall (and one time attached to a fridge with magnets) for every tournament I can remember. They’re useful for two things…” (World Cup Blog)
“For many people, major sports tournaments are the only occasion that national anthems are heard. These peculiar tunes have become a genre of their own, transcending the mere hymns that many of them were in first place, and they range from the gloriously uplifting to mournful dirges. The selection of words has, in many countries, brought about national debate that has been all-encompassing. In the case of Spain, it was decided that it would probably be for the best just to not bother having any for the sake of national unity.” (twohundredpercent)
The Hell, Coppo di Marcovaldo
“It has become a sign of spring: as swallows crowd the sky over Madrid, Real is eliminated at the knock-out stage of the European Champions League. Yet again, the richest club in the world has spent obscene amounts of money with the sole intention of winning the most important club competition in the world, but on March 10, they were knocked out from the last 16 for the sixth year in a row (in 2003, they were eliminated from the last eight).” (The New Republic)
“Spain’s last game before they name their final squad in June could be summed up in a single word. The same word that could also be used to sum up their qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup. The same word could be used again for their Euro 2008 campaign.” (World Soccer)
“It’s elementary sports psychology: To produce their best in the biggest moments, athletes are advised to recall peak performances from the past. But as Bordeaux prepares to face Olympiakos for a place in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals tonight, Laurent Blanc, coach of the French club that’s been the surprise of this year’s tournament, will focus his team’s attention not on the six European matches it’s won this season, but the only one it didn’t.” (WSJ)
Mid-Week Review Show: EPL Talk Podcast
“Looking back on the mid-week action for Premier League sides in Champions League, Europa, and within the Premiership, analysts Laurence McKenna and Kartik Krishnaiyer join host Richard Farley on this version of the EPL Talk podcast.” (EPL Talk)
Match Of The Midweek: Chelsea 0-1 Internazionale
“How would you feel if you were Roman Abramovich after this evening’s Champions League match between Chelsea and Inter? When he disposed of Jose Mourinho just over three years ago, it was reportedly a show of player power the likes of which the English game had seldom seen before.” (twohundredpercent)
Different Routes Yield Same Result
“One of the joys of sports is that they confound just about any theory that attempts to explain them. When Real Madrid was eliminated from the Champions League last week, and Manchester United produced one of the biggest victories in its history, it was reasonable to conclude that stability counted for something.” (NYT)
Italian press celebrate Inter’s victory over Chelsea
“Having held a grim-faced silenzio stampa (press silence) for the past week, Jose Mourinho’s relationship with the Italian media had reached a new low on the eve of Inter’s Champions League return leg against Chelsea. A touchline ban, a pitiful display against Catania and ongoing grief with Mario Balotelli had formed a simmering backdrop to the game, with the Nerazzurri lumbered with the added burden of being Italy’s sole survivors in the competition.” (WSC)
Chelsea vs. Inter Milan
(footytube)
“There is a phenomenon in Spain, one that is on the lips of commentators of the Primera División all over the world, one that tinges any match involving Spain’s two biggest teams, Real Madrid and Barcelona: villarato. When I hear the word uttered on GolTv, on ESPN, even on the Fox Sport family of networks, it quickly becomes clear that the depth of this conspiracy is not that evident to those whispering its sinister name.” (Soccer Politics)
“It’s been a week of bizarre contrasts in preparing for World Cup commentaries without forgetting the pressing need to keep on top of the Premier league scene. Michael Owen’s latest injury nightmare took me back to a hot evening in St Etienne 12 years ago. England’s penalty shoot-out defeat by Argentina remains one of the most dramatic games I have ever covered. Owen’s scintillating goal had the tournament gasping in awe – he had the world at his feet.” (BBC)
Scissors Kick 