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World Cup 2010 – team of the tournament

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Although this world cup has overall been a bit average with plenty of boring games but some excellent games and good goals. A lot of the big players didn’t perform. Maybe it was the ball, tired after a long season, too much pressure??? The list of players who didn’t perform well and left earlier than expected are:

  • Kaka
  • Ronaldo
  • Drogba
  • Rooney
  • Van Persie
  • Torres
  • Messi (ish. He did play well in many games but didnt score)

The team of the tournament for me is:

Casillas; Ramos, Lucio, Puyol, Contreao, Schweinsteiger, Xavi, Sneijder, Ozil, Forlan, Villa

Honorable mentions to: Maicon (did he mean that goal??), Lahm, Pique, Sanchez, Villa, Eduardo, Ozil, Klose, Robben, Iniesta (tough to leave him out but other players better and points taken off for his diving), Muller (tough to leave him out too especially since hes top scorer). Also the Uruguay team who did very well considering their population is about 3million. (Properly several others I forgot).

Personally I agree with the people who voted for the Golden Ball (best player) as Forlan. He seems to be the only one who knew how to kick the Jubalani football.

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British Grand Prix / World Cup Final

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Sunday was a great day for sport with the British Grand Prix and the World Cup Final.

British Grand Prix

First I will talk about the Grand Prix. It was a great grand prix with lots of overtaking, the new section seems to have create more “action”. It always helps when there is a safety car I think. I think it helped the race when Vettel had the problems and it forced him to make his way from last place all the way up to 7th. Just showed what performance the Red Bull had. However, what it also showed was that although Vettel a lot of the cars quite easily, once he got up to Sutil he struggled.

Problems

The race weekend didnt start very good for McLaren who had a new upgrade to car which didnt work. Hamilton did really well to qualify 4th but Button was in 14th. They decided to take off the upgrade for the race as it ruined the balance of the car. The other main talking point was Red Bull. They really should be miles ahead in the championship but always seem to have problems/issues. This weekend was about the front wing. They had a new wing which was on Webber’s car. However, Vettel damaged his in practice and Red Bull decided to take the wing off Webber’s car and put it on Vettels. Webber of course wasnt pleased. Christian Horner said it was a Championship decision as Vettel had more points – ages to go in season and only 10 points between them before this weekend. He also said the different wings made very little difference (then will bother changing!?!).  When Webber won at the end he said “not bad for a no.2 driver”. Horner said something like “now you can smile”. Red Bull have the best car but seem to have so many internal issues. I am not sure if its even Christian Horner who made the decisions this week – I think it was the one of the “big bosses” e.g. Helmut Marko.

BBC

It was another great race weekend for the BBC whos F1 coverage continues to show how crap ITV’s was. Of course its now helped for ITV that they have adverts but BBC has a lot longer to show the race and the pre and post race stuff. They manage to talk to great guests including this weekend Sir Stirling Moss. The online stuff is excellent too and of course its good to have the iPlayer when you miss things. I think the F1 Forum after the race on the red button is BRILLIANT. They get to talk more about the race, drivers and whats happens. They always get to talk to the drivers straight after the race and get their thoughts. This week it was great to see Rubens and Jenson in the interview together! :) Another excellent thing this week was the pub quiz. Nice bit from Jenson when trying to give a clue to Lewis to guess Alonso in the “name guessing game”. He said something like “you dont get on and he can’t pass safety cars” LOL. Bring on the Germany GP!

World Cup Final

So it was the world cup final also on Sunday. A couple friends popped round and we had a few beers, pizza and nachos which was all very nice.

This world cup has been an odd one. It started slow with not many goals and poor matches. (I have already blogged about this). The final itself was pretty poor especially the first half. It wasnt helped that Netherland’s gameplay seemed to just to foul Spain. Lots of fouls and just breaking up play. The worst culprits being Van Bommel and De Jong. The worst (although not 100% intentional) was a “karate kick” by De Jong on Alonso into the chest. There was a record number of cards with I think 14 yellow cards and a red. Howard Webb had a tough game – overall did well for a tough match but made a couple bad decisions. Most notably the corner near the end which he gave as a goal kick. The other was what seemed like a foul on Elia which led up to the goal – although Netherland had 2 (ish) chances to get rid of ball.

The game went into extra time and in a way I was hoping for penalties for some excitement. However, I didnt want Netherlands to win because of the way the played.

Spain over-rated??

Thats not to say Spain play the most exciting football. When Torres plays well and they have Silva on the wing its more exciting but they just pass the ball to death. A stat which proves it that they are the lowest scoring World Cup winner with just 8 goals. I think all but 3 goals was scored by Villa. Everyone seems to salivate over Spain and they are a very good time but just that exciting. Also, another bad thing about Spain is (like many other teams) the amount they dive and playact. They have so many great players and don’t need to do it. Iniesta dives about and when Heitinga got his 2nd card, I don’t think Iniesta was pulled back much at all.

Anyway…. thats the world cup over. The premier league starts in about a month so looking forward to that.

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Disgusted at footballers salaries

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

It makes me angry when I think how much footballers earn. I try not to think about how they earn more in a week than I make in a few years! I know its not their fault they are paid that much but its their fault that (the majority) are lazy and arrogant.

What makes it even worst is when someone whos just “decent” gets CRAZY money. The latest is new Manchester City signing Yaya Toure. He signed for City for £24m. He has a 5 year deal worth £55.6m!!! He will get £185,000-a-week to start with but it will rise to £221,000-a-week from next April when the government’s new 50% tax rise comes into force.  The previous highest was Robinho who is/was on £160,000-a-week. This is just all insane!!

(After tax thats still £5.75million a year!)

(I suppose you need to pay a lot of money to get someone to play for City!)

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Cashley Cole once again acts like an idiot

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Ashley Cole may be an excellent football but hes an absolute idiot. As it has been revealed recently, he has had a few affairs and this led to Cherly Cole divorcing him.

One other thing many football fans will remember is years ago he reveals in his autobiography that he almost crashed his car because he was only being offer £55,000 a week by Arsenal.

Today is was revealed that he “hates England and the f****** people”. He announced this on his Blackberry and his status. He can pi*s off then and get lost!! This news broke after photos showed him (and Ledley King) joking and laughing as they returned to England. A day after being embarassingly knocked out of the World Cup, you would think you wouldnt be laughing and joking about like that. I dont expect them not to smile and get on with their live but it seems odd to seem so happy just as they land back in England.

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Disappointments in the World Cup (so far). Who/whats impressed?

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Big players not “turned up”

It seems this World Cup, many of the big players have not “turned up” and performed as we may have expected. Of course there is still a good few number of matches to go so this could change.

  • Cristiano Ronaldo has scored just 1 goal and that was a bit lucky. Some excellent strikes but didn’t really ignite the tournament. Portugal are out now after losing to Spain so thats his chance of making a big impression over.
  • Torres – not done much. Been subbed on couple occasions. Must not be fit
  • Rooney – already talked about him on previous post and how something just wasn’t right – mentally?? not fit??
  • Drogba – properly harsh to include him on list since he was injured
  • Messi – OK, properly unfair to put Messi here. He has been brilliant. Done everything apart from score a goal.
  • Kaka – until the last game he was only on the edge of the game but the match versus Chile he showed what he can do and hopefully he gets better for next game

However, David Villa certainly has turned up and is in the running to be player of the tournament. I have said it before but Barcelona could well have a bargain even at €40 million.

Disappointments

  • France – a complete shambles on and off the pitch. Anelka sent home, players not turning up for training, staff quitting. What more could you expect from a team “managed” by the nutter Raymond Domenech. (To make things worse, when he lost he refused to change other managers hand??). Finished bottom of group.
  • Italy – drawing against New Zealand. Terrible defending. Finished bottom of group.
  • England – dont need to say more….
  • Only 1 African team getting into knockout stages. Disappointment for Africa. Would have been great for World Cup if at least another team other than Ghana got through
  • The vuvuzela going on and on and on – I think we got used to it and TV companies did too managing to filter it out. I think people are starting to actually play it better so its not the constant drone.
  • Standard of refereeing – see my other post
  • Quality of early matches – the first load of matches were generally very dull. Teams were too cautious just making sure they didnt lose. It properly wasnt helped that some of the teams were not that good.
  • The jubalani ball - maybe its not Adidas’ fault and they didn’t test at altitude but in the early stages shots were flying all over the place. Without playing with the football myself I can’t say really how different it is but there must be something that in the early games the shooting was terrible and freekicks all seemingly going over.
  • The World Cup coverage in the UK – overall the BBC has been a country mile better than ITV. ITV’s biggest mistake was cutting to adverts by accident in the middle of a game on its HD channel. It happened during the England v USA game and actually at the same time as Gerrard’s goal! The pundits for the ITV have been poor with Edgar Davids being a bit rubbish, Craig Burley not that good either. Not a fan of Chris Coleman either. However, the BBC isnt perfect with Mick McCarthy avoid talking out of his backside. Adebayor was OK – he seemed to know his stuff but his accent is very strong so its sometimes hard to understand. However, he gets extra points for one of the moments of the World Cup when his mobile went off while he was talking to Gary Linekar live on TV.

Impressed

There have been a few “unknown” players who have impressed me. These are the players who aren’t one of the “big names”. (Properly forgot a few)

  • I think Sanchez (Chile) looked really good. The whole Chile team were generally impressive.
  • As we saw when England played Mexico, they are a very good team who keep the ball well. I was most impressed with Salcido and Dos Santos
  • Portugal left back Coentrao
  • Germany’s Ozil
  • Honda (Japan).
  • The North Korea team impress in particular in game versus Brazil. Really like there striker (Jong Tae-Se) whos apparently called the “People’s Rooney”. He plays in Japan and drives a silver Hummer. Worked really hard as lone striker, some good skills and one of the things you will remember about this World Cup is him crying during national anthem. It just showed how much it meant to him to play for North Korea.
  • Impressed with the freekicks of Japan and the Asian teams as a whole for working hard as a team.
  • As much as the commentary/pundits for the BBC/ITV have been rubbish, the BBC setup with Gary Linekar, Alan Hansen and Lee Dixon. (Maybe not so much for Alan Shearer – hes “alright”). Special guests like Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson have been good. I was pleasantly surprised by Clarence Seedorf. Never really heard him talk before but he was great – talked a lot of sense. Colin Murray has done a great job for the MOTD highlights.

Going back to the actual players. Some other “big names” who have done well are Messi, Forlan, Higuain, Ramo, Maicon, Eduardo (Portugal), Lucio.

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