Posts Tagged ‘Football’

Football Season is Back – Euro 2008

// June 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Sports

 

Let IPL go to grave. Its football time again in this world….. The Euro 2008.  Four years back one underdog team shocked the whole world in Portugal to win the Euro Cup. It was the golden year for Greece, which was not even in the bookies list stunned the whole world by winning the cup ( I dunno why till now hollywood didn’t make it a script..may be its coming). Portugal had the best chance of winning it last time, being at home and in the finals…oooo that was costly miss last time….

euro2008logo

This time the biggest surprise is NO England (that means we can’t see some drama). It actually made England throw out Sven Goran Erikkson from the coaching job. Anyways i expect even more drama with some wonderful teams in the fray. We can see a attacking Italy ( the world champions who were considered to be more counter attacking team), a France without Zidane , always unlucky Netherlands (let the luck change for them), Portugal with charismatic Ronaldo (My favorite), last edition champions Greece ( should we expect another surprise this year too), ever resilient Croatia, another unlucky but heavily talented Spain, Fiery Czechs and the Germans (My personal hate)…And some more talented teams….

 

I think it would be easy for Portugal and Germany to move on to the next round because of their groups, to some extent for the Spaniards. But there is a mother ‘group of death’ with France, Italy, Dutch and the Romanians. I will be happy if Romanians some how make through because they are also one of my personal favorites ( Can we see another Hagi, wow what a player he was). This group of death going to be the talking point of this tournament. 

Another wonderful thing this time is that its going to be telecasted by ESPN-STAR, their world cup coverage was awesome and i hope they do even better job this time ( Ten Sports with 2002 world-cup was awful).

Let the best team win…

PS: i hope to give a a review for each day in my blog, lets see whether i can do it. 

Check out the schedule here…

http://www.euro2008.uefa.com/tournament/matches/index.html

 

The Four Magic Legs that will Rule Football in the Future

// March 31st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Sports

I have always claimed that i am a Football fanatic and a blog post on football is long pending from my side. I think i should end it…

 

I have not see Pele playing and i have seen only footage which are occasionally shown in sports channels. I have seen Maradona playing, the first world cup i watched was Italia ‘90 and the crying face of Maradona, when he was sent out in the final still etched in my memory. I always rated him as the best because he single handedly won a world cup for Argentina. When Pele played, the support players were as good as Pele, but for Maradona it was not the case…

 

As far as other players i have not seen some greats like Eric Cantona, George Best playing. I went in to football fanatacism during the days of Romario, Bebeto, Hagi, Cannigia, Schillaci, Lothar Mathews, Oliver Kahn, Zidane, Ronaldo( Brazil), Ronaldinho, Raul and Beckham… Although all these people are contemporary greats, i didn’t follow them as i followed Maradona. 

 

After a very long time four magic legs have impressed me so much that i wanted to see them again and again and again….

One is Cristiano Ronaldo and another Lionel Messi…

Lionel Messi is a Argentinean international and Barcelona striker. Ronaldo is a portugal international and Manchester United player… The former is just 20 and the later is 23, uff both are younger than me and already a sensation all over the world. There are lot of resemblances between the two. Both are fast, highly skilled and can play with both the legs… The reason being they are so great is the speed with which they operate, they move in lightening speed and Ronaldo’s shots are called “ Ronaldo Rockets”

 

There are two instances that will prove why they are brilliant, in the last match of Manchester United with Aston Villa, Ronaldo made a small flick with his back leg to score the first goal. It was just brilliant and out of the world

 

Check it out…

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKnDF33GrFY]

 

 

And Lionel Messi against Getafe FC, did a remake of Maradona’s Goal of the Century ( against England in Mexico ‘86- Not the “Hand of God”)… What else you can say other than accepting Maradona’s statement that Messi is the successor for him…

 

Watch it

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrao0ROwpAM&feature=related]

 

 

 

and the debate which is going to plague in the future. Lionel Messi or Ronaldo ? Who will be the greatest?

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jESVYB8znQ] 

 

 

I think it will be Lionel Messi, because of the team he is playing with.