Thierry sat down and answered some questions asked by a slightly scared looking TIME reporter, mostly simple stuff though he was asked about the now infamous handball vs Ireland that knocked them out of the 2010 World Cup. The Red Bulls star is a media pro, and always comes off a smooth operator.
UEFA Euro 2012 official logo No games in the European domestic leagues this weekend, as all the European players that have been selected for their national teams will be playing in the next set of qualifying matches for Euro 2012. Between today and Tuesday, we count a total of 46 games: 21 matches today (Friday Oct 8), 2 tomorrow (Saturday Oct 9), and 22 on Tuesday (Oct 12). In fact, Armenia and Slovakia have already kicked off in Yerevan Republican Stadium. The most interesting matches today look to be these three: Russia visiting Ireland; Turkey visiting Germany; and Portugal hosting Denmark. See below for a full list of fixtures, pulled from the UEFA.com site. As for viewing options, here in the US, there are a good number of games available online via ESPN3 (if you have access to that), and two fairly interesting matches on ESPN
John Lally's triumphant return to White Hart Lane. "Why are we watching this again?" was the perfectly valid question my wife posed to me half way through Four Days in October, ESPN's documentary about the Red Sox improbable come back in the 2004 ALCS. Why, indeed, would two big Yankees fans be watching this again? It was my fault. "It's the Tottenham fan in me that has to watch it" was my only defence. To me, it made sense. The fact that I'm a Yankees fan, who's not from New York, is something that always had bothered me to some degree. I felt akin to the legions of Manchester United fans there are across the globe, glory hunters attracted to the name and the success, but once you have your team, it's your team. I started following baseball with the 1996 World Series, so I didn't have a choice of
Quite a half-year's work for the Dutch holding midfielder. He's been dropped from his national team after his latest leg-breaker against Newcastle's Hatem Ben Arfa over the weekend, and who could forget his flying kick to Alonso in the World Cup final, or the way he broke US MNT player Stuart Holden's leg in a friendly in the lead up to the cup. You'd like to think he'd get his, but this sort of player never seems to be on the receiving end. Link to the Ben Arfa video here, and the other mentions embedded below.
We got some good feedback after posting to Facebook Pirlo's cracker v Parma from this past weekend. Here is the video clip of goal--plus three others that are early contenders for goal of the season: Also from last weekend, Brazilian Alex's unbelievable free kick, which put Chelsea up 2-0 over Arsenal: Here is Nani's spectacular individual effort vs --#2 in the following, to Tevez's similar strike against Chelsea, but I think Nani's is clearly the better goal: PL: Goals of the Week And finally, Berbatov's spectacular individual effort against Liverpool on Sept 18 (assisted by Nani, btw)--the 2nd goal of Berbatov's hat trick in Man U's 3-2 victory that day, #1 in the following: PL: Goals of the Week
Thanks to our very own Blues supporter Sumit Sasidharan for this surprisingly fair & balanced evaluation of Chelsea's latest victory, over London rivals Arsenal (with video highlights of the match embedded below Sumit's comments): No bogarting, it's puff puff pass, Jon. That was the best match all week. Tempo, width, muscle and touch on display--exciting. Drogba's touch seems better than ever. I was more surprised by Gunner lack of possession by their big men; Diaby and Song failed to exert the kind of muscle that could've been the edge. After reading the beebs' and guardian reports on the game and listening to Wenger, must've been a different game than I was watching. It really felt pretty even. Both sides had chances and possession seemed pretty even. A. Cole's goal should've made the margin 3 and Anelka's 4. Instead of the past two beatings, Arsenal seemed to
