Team manager Bert van Marwijk confirmed he uses a shadow list for potential Oranje players at last Friday's press conference in Zeist. The coach refused to publish the list, though. "It wouldn't do anyone any good to publish that list. It's not a fixed list either, so then I'd have Click to continue reading...

I'm getting incredibly tired of reading articles and having to sift through the enormous anti-Italian sentiment to find actual content. This happens all the time on British websites, and the latest culprit is WhoAteAllthePies.

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For the friendly matches against Chile (Köln) and the Ivory Coast (Gelsenkirchen) Löw has nominated the England prospect Aaron Hunt, the mercurial Thomas Müller, the Bundesliga topscorer Stefan Kießling, and of course the ever present Thomas Hitzlsperger. Overall this is a good selection, but one wonders why a player like Click to continue reading...

So what does it take to be nominated to play for the German national team? Well you have to be a German citizen of course and identify strongly with Germany for sure, but are there secrets to being consistently nominated or to get that crucial first nomination? Recently Aaron Hunt, Click to continue reading...

[caption id="attachment_400" align="alignleft" width="288""][/caption] For the friendly matches against Chile (Köln) and the Ivory Coast (Gelsenkirchen) Löw has nominated the England prospect Aaron Hunt, the mercurial Thomas Müller, the Bundesliga topscorer Stefan Kießling, and of course the ever present Thomas Hitzlsperger. Click to continue reading...

I don't think we'll win the Champions League this season. I'm sorry to break the news to you. But we're not doing too shabby in the Europa League and you have to start somewhere... Dembele tries... AZ Alkmaar is a club and a team in trouble. Replacing Van Gaal by Ronald Koeman Click to continue reading...

The season is almost two months old and PSV and Twente are above Ajax in the tables. At the same time, Ajax hasn't impressed in Europe yet. That's too bad. But nothing more than that. Ajax might not play sensational against clubs like RKC or NAC, but there is almost no Click to continue reading...

For years all we've been hearing about is how great the English and Spanish clubs are, about how much better they are than our "aging" Italian clubs. Based on recent CL performances, that looks to be out the window.

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1. If you take up too many projects, you can't watch CL games :-(. Or post enough articles on the blog. I missed a lot of action. Didn't see anything of the CL yesterday... 2. If you can sign Van der Vaart because Xabi Alonso leaves, you should! (Mr Benitez!!) Liverpool looks frail. Click to continue reading...

Hello all Russia fans. Sorry about not getting back to you sooner with a post. I will sum up the recent events and share my views and opinions in one entry. As all of you know Russia lost to Germany in Moscow and then drew with Azerbaijan in Baku to Click to continue reading...

Franz Smuda called up his first ever squad as the coach of the Polish national team. There were a few surprises such as the absence of Shakhtar's Mariusz Lewandowski and the inclusion of the long time no seen Kamil Kosowski or less than impressive Janusz Gancarczyk. Smuda claims that the door is not closed for anybody and that no player is guaranteed future call ups.

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Since we are down to the final 2 months of the decade, I'll be doing some review posts looking back on what has been in Azzurri football since 2000, including all major tournaments, events, and of course the players of the decade.

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Former Ajax player Jan Molby scored a tremendous goal in 1985 for Liverpool against Manchester United in the Milk Cup. However, due to a tv strike that goal was never aired. The goal went into football lore as the most beautiful goal most people missed. The rush of the overweight Click to continue reading...

Well, I commented on the biggest upset of this weekend already... Feyenoord losing away to Ajax, 5-1. That hurts. Every Feyenoord fans secretly thanks the referee for that debatable red card for Babovic, so they can now claim that maybe maybe maybe with eleven, Feyenoord would have had a chance. Click to continue reading...

Watching Juve-Napoli yesterday, I noticed something. If this is 4 out of our back 5 for South Africa, we're going to be in some trouble. Canna struggled hugely with pacey guys like Hamsik and even GC looked a bit off his game. Grosso is still great going forward but defensively Click to continue reading...