Archive for the ‘News’ Category

England have won their final friendly before the world cup starts on Saturday for England against the USA.

Todays game was against Platinum Stars who are a domestic team in the South African team, The game was won 3-0 to England with Defoe, Cole and Rooney getting on the score card. The game was not broadcast on TV but there was lots of online commentary, from all accounts it sounded like a boring game, BBC report that the best thing to come out of the game was no injuries for England.

Rooney scored in the game but also picked up a yellow card after a few run ins with a couple of defenders. It’s good to see Rooney fired up but as the commentary said, its only a friendly!

I think England really need to step up their game against the USA. Its been a long time since ive seen England play with conviction and really take hold of a game. The time for boring ‘job done’ games is over, next time i see England play i want to see them control from start to finish like our top domestic teams do. USA should be a walk in the park, if they are not convincing in their first game then they will struggle.

With every world cup comes the world cup wall chart! I’ve always had a bit of creased paper on the wall, usually the centre pull-out of a newspaper, when you write on it, it also writes on the wall behind it and you get a bollocking from your parents when you was a kid cause you have scrawled scores all over the wall that mean nothing when you take the paper down!!

Well its time to get on it again!! please find below a selection of wall charts you can browse, download and print at your convenience.

Mirror

BBC

World Cup Betting

Selecta Bet

Best World Cup Bets

The next one is not printable, It is an online calendar which is the best world cup calendar i have ever seen!!

Marca.com

And he’s back in the Game…..

Annoyingly, Drogba is today rejoining his Ivory Coast team mates in South Africa after a successful operation on his elbow. The Ivory Coast first game is on the 15th June against Portugal, Their not sure if Drogba will be fit for the opening game but he will now take part.

This is a boost for Ivory Coast and its a player they need, without Drogba i reckon they would have been bottom of their league cause i think Noth Korea would have nipped a win.

Source: Fifa

Yesterday Nigeria and North Korea had a pre season friendly. Nigeria won the game 3-1 but nobody is talking about that. The game was subject to a crush in the crowd were 16 people were hospitalised.

This has sparked fears that the same will happen during the world cup games. This could be different though as one of the teams was Nigeria. It was said that 10,000 tickets were sold outside the stadium but there were more fans that wanted to get in.

The stadium that was used is not a world cup stadium and Fifa were quick to distance themselfs from the incident which was caused by poor ticketing

Contrary to some media reports, FIFA had nothing to do with the ticketing of this game.

With 5 days to go, the last thing Fifa want is something like this happening, The game didn’t have correct ticket distribution, however if people will do this for Nigeria v North Korea, i would question what the crowds would be like for two large teams.

With every Ying there is a Yang! As news was coming through that our captain was out of the world cup, so was the news that Drogba was also out. Drogba plays for Ivory Coast who many thought would be a suprise team in the World Cup this year, Unfortunately, they seem to be a one man team as now those expectations have gone.

Drogba who finished the premiership as the top goal scorer hurt his elbow in a friendly warm up match against Japan. Drogba suffered a fractured elbow, which he revealed in a phone call to one of his team mates from the hospital.

This again is a massive blow for the Ivory Coast which still have good players but nothing like the calibre of Drogba. Bad news for him but good news for Brazil, North Korea and Portugal who are in the same group.

Source: Just Chelsea

The team had arrived, the team photo’s had been taken and the team was training for the first game of the tournament. England kick of their first game in 7 days.

Rio Ferdinand has torn a knee ligament in the last minute of his first training session after falling funny when going in for a challenge on Emile Hesky. Rio had been made England captain after John Terry had been shamed but yesterday his dreams were over. Rio will be gutted, he had got the armband and he was 7 days away from leading the country out in  south Africa.

Michael Dawson from Spurs has already flown to South Africa to train with the squad. Gerrard will now be the England captain.

This is all a massive blow for England, Rio is a rock in defence and his leadership and organisational skills are much needed in an England team that has still yet to show a convincing win.

Rio Ferdinand has come out and said he would have funded Scholes trip to South Africa this summer to get him to come out of retirement and play for England once again.

It has emerged that Capello tried to persuade Scholes to come out of retirement and serve his country for this summers World Cup. As you can tell by the squad list released, he said no!!

Scholes quit his England role in 2004 and back then it was seen as a massive blow to the team, Scholes has always played at the top of his game and he quit the England team all them years ago to give 100% to United, something ive never seen before.

Scholes has had a great year for united, but in typical scholes fashion, he has refused to play for his country this summer. He would have brought a lot to the team though i wouldn’t have expected him to play full games. Capello knows what he is doing and he may think that experience is crucial to help the younger England players.

Source: Sky

Fifa has brought a new ruling in before this years world cup that will stop penalty takers from stopping in their run up to the ball while they are taking a penalty.

Fifa have decided that stopping in your run up to fool the keeper is unsportsmanlike and i have to agree.

This new ruling wont really affect any of the England players as they generally take penalties properly. One player i can instantly think of is Ronaldo, he often gets whiplash when taking a penalty as he stops and starts in his run up.

I think this new ruling makes it fairer on goalkeepers as well. A lot of footballers take penalties with a lot of pace, when you are in charge of stopping that, you need to make your decision and move early.

I think its a good move by Fifa, what do you think?

***UPDATE***

It seems i have missed the point on this story, They haven’t banned people stopping in the run up, they have stopped people pausing when they are about to kick the ball.

After hailing this new rule as being great, i actually think its quite confusing, if a player tries to do it, its then down to the referee to decide weather he was in the middle of kicking the ball or not. If you ask me, its become another reason for players to surround the ref and moan about his decisions. Why cant they just implement cut and dry rules!

Source: BBC

If you need any more reason to think Lord Triesman was a knob, here it is.

Fifa are now investigating the comments Triesman made and have requested an official report from the FA. Fifa had this to say

A Fifa statement read: “Fifa can confirm that secretary general Jerome Valcke has requested its Ethics Committee to examine the alleged statements made by Lord Triesman in relation to the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

It is also Fifa rules that any bidding nations do not comment on each other. I personally cant see how the FA are going to get out of this, They have royally F***ed it up for all of us. I wouldn’t be surprised to see England expelled from the process, one, for commenting on other nations, and two, suggesting corruption in the process and the World Cup.

Source: BBC

A spokesman for the Iraq security services say they have detained ‘Abdullah Azam Saleh al-Qahtani’ who entered Iraq in 2004 and was suspected of terrorist acts in the capital.

He is said to have direct contact with Al Qaeda, and he was making plans for an attack on the world cup this summer.

With something as big as the world cup, im sure there is a lot going on in the background to stop this type of thing. Its not something i really want to think about but if this story is true then it can only be good to hear it has been stopped.

It was only earlier this year when the Togo players bus was shot upon in Angola killing some people. This made some people question the safety of the world cup being in South Africa.

Source: Fox News