UEFA Champions League Oct 3 wrap

Apart from Liverpool's lackluster match against Marseille, the rest of the fixtures for groups A,B,C and D played out as follows...

Real Madrid and Lazio battled their way to equal points and a 2-2 draw. A brace from Van Nistelrooy took the prolific striker to 56 champions league goals but Pandev had a brace of his own for Madrid. The defensive ability of the great club was brought into question yet again as they were left exposed on various occasions. They were lucky to take any points away from this trip to Italy.

AC Milan traveled to meet Celtic in Glasgow and weren't up to the task of defeating the "hoops" at home. The club with few wins in serie A of late can't even turn to their usually good performances in Europe at the moment as Celtic took all points with a 2-1 win. McManus headed in from a corner to make the score 1-0 and Milan leveled after Kaka' put away a penalty awarded for a foul on Ambrosini. Celtic made it 2-1 at the death after another Dida blunder that allowed the Aussie striker, McDonald, to slot away the rebound.

Olympiacos beat Werder Bremen, 3-1 after an amazing second-half come back to leave the German hosts with a sour taste in their mouths. Almeida was able to put away at least one of his many chances during the night to put Bremen in the lead, 1-0 but it wasn't to last as Olympiacos came back to put 3 goals away in the second half. An amazing second goal from Patsatzoglu found the back of the net with a little help from a deflection.

Schalke defeated Rosenburg 2-0 with goals from Jones and Kuranyi making a successful roadtrip. Shakhtar were also able to upset their hosts, beating Benfica 1-0 in Lisbon. Continuing the tradition of wins on the road, this time it was Benfica's league rivals, Porto, that were able to take 3 points from Besiktas in Turkey. The brilliant Quaresma waited until the 92nd minute to put the only goal of the match away.

Finally it was Chelsea that were also able to defeat their Spanish hosts proving that they're not in crisis just yet after Mourinho's departure. But it was David Villa that opened the scoring for the home side with a bit of luck allowing the ball to fall in a good position for him. Drogba combined well with Malouda, allowing the later to play the ball across the 6-yard line for Joe Cole to tap in and level the scores. Finally Drogba calmly placed a shot towards the far post and allowed Chelsea to go home 2-1 winners over Valencia.


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Highlights from Champions League 18-19th Sept 2007

Here are the highlights for the Tuesday (18th) matches.



and here are the highlights for the Wednesday (19th)

Quaresma

I still find it hard to believe that Ricardo Quaresma isn't playing for one of the big clubs in Europe (not to say Porto isn't a good club but it isn't thought of as a Madrid or Liverpool or Milan, etc.). I guess he did have a good chance to really take the world by storm when he was younger and Barcelona purchased him but he never really made an impact there. Maybe it was too much expectation, maybe the style of play was difficult to adapt to, Maybe Rijkard and him had some real issues or perhaps any number of the common reasons that players can struggle when changing clubs and leagues.

It's not that he's that old (24) but it does seem like he's been around a while now. Recently he's regained the form that attracted such interest in the first place. He is a powerful, fast winger with incredible technique and vision and in my opinion, very much the same player as Christiano Ronaldo. Both share almost all the same qualities and with these wingers on the Portuguese national squad, any defence would be nervous. Portugal just needs a striker that can keep up with these guys! Interestingly they both used to play at Sporting Lisbon at the same time for a brief period.

I can't quite understand why the last couple of transfer seasons haven't attracted a great number of suitors... Perhaps Porto have him on quite a contract or he is happy to remain there for now. There have been rumors that his personality is hard to deal with but this is the case for many players and he seems to be doing just fine at Porto. I read that Chelsea tried to sign him with little luck but also that Inter are after him as Figo's successor... I sure hope so! Anyways, check out the clip, he's definitely one of my fav players.

Recoba seals it for Inter, against Milan!

An unlikely heroe of late sealed a 1-0 victory for Inter Milan against arch rivals AC Milan in the final of the TIM cup (A small preseason tournament). See the goal below, pure Recoba of old, so good to see again.

I've always admired Recoba, he's been at Inter for such a long time, it's always been said that he could('ve) been the worlds best. What happened to all that immense potential? I guess some of it was realised from time to time but he has always been plagued with injuries. It's pretty tragic and I know what it's like to have long term niggling injuries that don't seem to go away.

It seems like he'll move away from Inter finally which is probably a good choice for him as he's now on the wrong side of 30 and probably doesn't have much playing time left. He finds world-class competition for a starting spot with Ibrahimovic, Crespo, Adriano, Cruz and now Suazo.

Check out below why he was always highly rated and the moments that etched him into the hearts of many an Inter fan...

PS: The music is pretty dodgy but you forget about it pretty quick after seeing that lethal left foot!

2007 - Sept - 15; Update: Recoba is now on loan to Torino. Good luck El Chino! He has been at Inter since 1997, made 261 appearances and scored 72 goals.

Ronaldo R9 - The original and the best

Okay, first off, I've got nothing against Christiano Ronaldo (I'm half-Portuguese, half-Brazilian so I have loyalties in both camps :) but I got into football during R9's time, when he was unquestionably the best player in the world. He inspired me to start playing soccer (I started quite late) and really got my interested in the world game.

Christiano has got so much going for him, his pace, technique, strength and height. The only thing is the ugly side of his game, that is, the diving, etc. (which he seems to be cutting down on thankfully). But while he was still in primary school, Ronaldo Luis Nazário de Lima was already making a name for himself.

He began his professional career with Cruzeiro as soon as he was old enough to sign up. He didn't last long there before he was snapped up to play at PSV Eindhoven in Holland where he scored 55 goals in 57 appearances, a truly phenomenal statistic a testament to his alias "O Phenomeno". A good striker is one with about 1 goal per 2 games so 1:1 is amazing!

Barca could smell his pure talent and snapped him up for the 96-97 season where he maintained his amazing strike rate with 47 goals in 49 appearances! Moratti was soon pulling money out of his pockets to bring him to Inter where he spent about 5 years before going to Real Madrid where his talent was mostly wasted (at the very least, badly managed). Many Inter fans are sour about how he left the club but to me the problem was Hector Cuper, the worst Inter coach ever. He left him on the bench for the last game of the season which they lost and handed the Scudetto over Juve (I think it was Juve).

Around 1999-2000 he had an injury to his right knee that was almost career ending. He injured it, did rehab for about 3 months before re-injuring it badly almost straight away in his first game back. A dark period indeed for soccer and Inter! Luckily he came back and proved everyone wrong with an amazing performance in the 2002 world cup (after almost two years out!). In WC2006 he became the highest scorer in all the world cups, I sure hope they consider him for WC2010!

He turns 30 in a month (Sept 18th) and so is starting to approach his last remaining years in the game. Personally I feel he still has plenty to give and I think he will make his mark at AC Milan. Even though they are my bitter rivals as an Inter supporter, I do hope he gets the chance to win a champions league medal as it's probably the only thing he hasn't won yet!!!

See below the magic that was/is Ronaldo...



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First post

So this is obviously my first post for this soccer blog. I guess I hope to bring you the latest soccer news and add some insightful comments based on my opinions about what's going on in the football world at the moment. I'm probably going to post my favorite youtube clips with commentary cause they're a lot of good ones out there to watch!

Anyways, I hope you find this blog interesting and informative, it's sure to grow as I'll try to post as often as I can!