I've seen this list posted on a few sites and still can't believe how unbelievably retarded it is. First of all, what is FourFourTwo's criteria? The opinion of Nike, Adidas, and FIFA? They certainly didn't take all-round play into account, because Kaka is a second rate defender at best. That's why they have Gattuso on Milan. There's no doubting the Brazilian's attacking skills, but he's utterly useless and a borderline burden on the other end.

While Nike brought out a "Best Team You've Never heard of" in the lead up to the Women's World Cup, in trying to espouse on the brilliance of the US National Womens' Soccer Team, some pub regulars in Birmingham had the opposite ideas. Being footballers who are generally crap, and turning out for their lowly Lynam [...]

Didn't post as much as usual this week as I was busy with other things. Anyhow, just in case you missed something, here's some of the highlights. Cheers and have a safe weekend.
Monday
Crooks, crooks everywhere
Tuesday
Just the sex facts, Leroy
Wednesday
Eddie Johnson is an idiot
Shady days at Old Trafford
Thursday
Old Trafford = McDonalds
Wayne Rooney is untouchable
A slap on the wrist for Ken Bates
Will the Seattle Sounders be the Jailblazers of the MLS?

Andrea Pirlo with a brilliant free kick.
Andrea Pirlo finds Inzaghi across the box and the Italian puts it away with flare.

Here are my top goals from yesterday's Champions League matches. Click the link to see the clip. Cheers.
Andrea Pirlo easily takes Man of the Match as he nets on a brilliant free kick and then sets up his poacher extraordinairre, Fillipo Inzaghi, as AC Milan beat Benfica at the San Siro, 2-1.
Christiano Lucarelli puts Shakhtar Donestk up 2-0 over visiting Celtic with this class header.

Things are very different these days for the Brazilian strikers on either side of Milan. Ronaldo, for his part, is both no longer fat (Who knew it was just a glandular problem?) and also desperately needed by his club. Adriano, meanwhile, remains both fat and an afterthought, though he may get to play this weekend, thanks only to the fact that choices one and two could be rested after a week of internationals.

In addition to the desperate, wishful writing by people other than me about Jose Mourinho himself making the move to Italy, the press (particularly in England) are full of stories right now strongly suggesting that The Special One's favorites will leave the club as soon as the winter transfer window opens, with Italy as a likely destination (allegedly).

- In a video entitled "Knights of Iraq: 6" by the Islamic Front of the Iraqi Resistance's (JAMI), a participant in the video is seen firing off rounds from a handgun wearing a Zidane shirt. So I guess these means terrorists also like soccer. Someone needs to find a video of a terrorist wearing an American football jersey or a baseball jersey quick, before the mindless masses actually begin to think that.

There's a long article in today's La Gazzetta (and of course it's not online) detailing the salaries of each team, from the high rollers like Kaka and Francesco Totti to the poverty-stricken trio on the bottom, Marco Mancosu, Jan Koprivac and Simone Iacoponi, all of whom make only €40,000/season.

Not surprisingly, Ricky Kaka tops the Table of Riches with an after-tax salary of €6 million, followed by The Great Totti who earns €5.

•Despite reportedly being outplayed for stretches by Albania, the Azzurrini pulled out a 1-0 away win today on a goal from Robert Acquafresca to remain top of their Euro 2009 qualifying group. Though they didn't play particularly well this week, the U-21s have taken all possible points from their first three matches, and coach Pierluigi Casiraghi can breathe easy for a while as everyone spends their time glaring in the general direction of Roberto Donadoni.

Group D sees two rivalries from the last season resurrected as Benfica and Celtic meet again in the group phase and Celtic come face to face with last season's 2nd round opponents and eventual winners AC Milan. While you'd expect Milan to top their group it's by no means a guarantee, especially with Ronaldo injured. [...]

FC Porto 0, Liverpool 2
This match could very well end 0-0, it just depends on how FC Porto manager Jesualdo Ferreira approaches the match. With Torres, Gerrard, and Mascherano likely to start, it won't matter how brilliant Quaresma, Lucho Gonzalez, and Jorge Fucile play.
Real Madrid 3, Werder Bremen 1
Real Madrid is just playing too well right now for pretty much anyone to go into Santiago Bernabéu and beat them.

Despite wearing their pretty new pink away kit, Benfica were overmatched today in Milan, their case was not helped by uninspired goalkeeping when Quim palmed an early (and very good, it must be said) Andrea Pirlo free kick carefully into his own goal in the ninth minute. And then, within in the first half hour, Pippo Inzaghi scored off a brilliant counterattack without a hint of offside, always a very bad sign for Milan opponents.

Group standings. Group A FC Porto 1, Liverpool 1 Jermaine Pennant was sent off with 30 minutes to go, but Liverpool survived finding the equalizer well before Pennant's ejection and hanging on from there. Lucho Gonzalez converted an 8th minute penalty to put Porto up early. Marseille 2, Besiktas 0 Having trouble finding domestic success again, but Les Bleus found a way past [.

The Kaka-obsessed Spanish press are going way out on a limb today, prediction that the object of their affection will win this year's Ballon d'Or when it is handed out on December 2. Even though the ballots have not even gone out yet, the people at AS seem quite sure they're right about this one, presumably because of the endless praise the Brazilian receives from footballers at all corners of the earth.

- 25-year-old Derby County striker/right winger Craig Fagan has been charged by the Football Association with stomping Liverpool defender Alvaro Arbeloa in Saturday's 6-0 massacre of the Rams at Anfield. I watched this match and vividly remember the incident that is being referred to and I have to say, it looked pretty intentional. Fagan did not look off-balance at all and appeared to take a deliberate step on Arbeloa's calf after losing the ball to him out-of-bounds.

A look at the football news headlines today: Inter Milan want to swap Adriano for Chelsea's Ballack The Italian press reports that Inter Milan are pushing for a loan swap deal with Chelsea for Adriano and Ballack. The move makes sense (hah!) in one sense because Chelsea will lose Drogba and Kalou to the African Nations [...]

•Everyone and his brother are proclaiming mad love for Gila. A memo must have gone out, or something.

•The FIGC are getting serious: Angelo Pagotto was just slapped with an eight-year ban after his second positive test for cocaine. Wow. If this was in the US, he'd have taken a very high-profile, very short trip to rehab and found Jesus by now, but since he's 34 already I guess that sort of penance wouldn't do much to help the career.

25-year old Brazilian midfielder Kak , who earns €6.0m a year is top of the hill in Serie A's rich list with Roma's Francesco Totti a close 2nd (€5.5m), followed by 3 Inter players (Patrick Vieira, Adriano, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, all with €5.0m).

Check out the full list here.

Milan, playing without the resting Massimo Oddo, Ricky Kaka and Andrea Pirlo, threw away so many gilt-edge chances in the first 10 minutes that a Siena goal seems almost inevitable; such wastefulness almost never goes unpunished. Plus, Milan were making terrible decisions with the ball, passing up wide open people to shoot from long-range through three defenders (I'm looking at you, Gourcuff) with ludicrous frequency.

Greetings Soccerlens readers! Your resident Serie A expert Marco Pantanella is here to tell you all about what's hot & hip, in other words 'what's happening' over in the 'Old boot' these days. Here's a round-up of everything that took place in the past 7 days: 1. Euro 2008 qualifiers, it's a tight race in [...]

Two of the four Count 'em, four! Italian teams in the Champions League group stages open their play today, with Milan hosting Benfica and Lazio traveling to Greek champions Olympiakos.

The Milan match holds an added interest for Rossoneri fans because it marks the return to the San Siro of Rui Costa, a former key figure at the club and also one of the classiest, most awesome men in football.

This is exactly the sort of post that could come back to bite me in the ass, because as I write it this morning, The Special One is unemployed, but by the time the post goes live later this afternoon, he could be the coach of the Portuguese national team,* and all of my sweat and tears could be for naught. I'm going to take the chance, though that's how much I love Mourinho you.

Paolo Maldini, normally among the calmest men on earth, is really, really pissed off today. And it's not at, say, Ronaldo for being fat, or Gila for being useless. Instead, he's furious with Milan supporters, who he feels don't actually live up to that whole "support" thing.

The immediate motivation for his mini-rant was apparently the relative silence at the San Siro during the Benfica match (it better be only that, and not the ovation they gave Rui Costa), but Maldini's statement is very broad, taking in pretty much ALL home matches, and actually blames the fans for the team's failure to win the the home leg of the Milan derby last season.

- In a shocking revelation, both Serie A Milan clubs, AC and Inter, have been indicted on charges of false accounting. I am in complete and utter shock, an Italian club cheating? Impossible. Apparently they 'added a zero or two' in player transfer valuations between the clubs. Both sides have denied any wrongdoing which means it's just an accepted part of the sport in Italy.

For though of you who were blissfully unaware of the terrible injustices that took place yesterday, Rodrigo Taddei and Carlo Ancelotti want everyone to know that Roma and Milan didn't get full points because of the GOD DAMN REFEREES. Yes, that's reasonable. I mean, dropped points are very rarely the fault of the people on the pitch, right? And surely the fact that Milan managed to score on only one of their 19 shots had nothing to do with the loss.

While a match between the holders of the UEFA Cup and the Champions League trophy is a nice idea, holding said match at the end of the week during the season is not, and it makes it hard to view the meeting as anything more than a glorified friendly, even if there is silverware involved. This season, though, the match was given tragic significance by the death of Sevilla's Antonio Puerta, whose club was playing its first game without him n Friday's Super Cup.

[Note: I'm on the road through next Sunday; I'll check in when I can, but unavoidable slacking will continue until then.]

Man alive who would have thought Napoli (who scored fewer goals than all but three of the top 10 teams in Serie B last season) would rise up and put five past anyone in the second week, let alone Udinese, a team which looked pretty good in holding Inter to a draw in week one?

Good news, Milan fans: Ronaldo is due back in Italy very shortly. Woo hoo! There is, however, the small issue of that treatment he received in Brazil, which hasn't been approved by the Italian Olympic Committee and therefore has him in hot water with The Powers that Be in Italy.

The treatment, which I still don't understand despite help from both Channel 4 and Marco, involves injecting protein strains from Ronaldo's own blood directly into the damaged tissue, a cutting-edge procedure which supposedly encourages healing.

Continuing this week's trend of publicizing everyone in calcio's salaries, the list of how much each coach in Serie A earns was released today by La Gazzetta, and topping the list is everyone's favorite tactician, Inter's Roberto Mancini. In fact, Mancini is the second highest-paid manager in all of Europe, his €5 million topping every salary but that of The Great Jose Mourinho (with whom Mancio was once rumored to be about to swap jobs), who earns €5.

There have been a lot of small stories in the Italian media over the past few days about Milan legend Billy Costacurta and his wife using the international break for a trip to London. While normally this sort of thing wouldn't be newsworthy (seriously, it wouldn't), the fact that while there Costacurta was also having conversations with his homie Flavio Briatore an F1 bigwig and serial dater of models who just so happens to have recently bought Championship side QPR has quite understandably caught the attention of the press.

Where has the time slipped away to? I've not even finished my previews and Matchday 1 has already come and gone! As I was watching some of the matches and highlights, I made some notes and thought I would share them with you here.
Real Madrid 2 - Werder Bremen 1
This was a very entertaining match though the first half was the better of the two.

Back in June, there was a frenzy about investigations into sketchy transfers among Serie A clubs, leading to speculation that it was Calciopoli 2.0, and perhaps cost Inter the title 2005-2006 title they got from Juve, or even get them sent down. While none of that is remotely likely to happen, phase one of the investigations are now completed, and indictments for fraud have been requested against several big cheeses from Inter and Milan including Adriano Galliani, but not calcio's own Teflon man, Massimo Moratti.

Hello everyone! Your Italian Calcio expert Marco Pantanella is back, ready to begin his second week here on Soccerlens. Up on the menu today we've got a full report on the mid-week Champions League matches for Milan, Inter, Roma and Lazio, and full review of the Italian league week-end in which matchday nº4 of [...]

•Former Milan player Oscar Damiani, now a FIFA agent who somehow oversees his old club's transfers, has revealed to the press that Milan decided mid-summer to stick with poor Alberto Gilardino after they had already made "positive contact" with strikers such as Luca Toni, Ruud Van Nistelrooy and David Trezeguet. Brilliant. (In case you're not up on these things, Trezeguet has five goals in four games, while Gila hasn't scored with anyone but his wife in months.

This might sound a little wierd as Carlo Ancelotti has done a wonderful job at AC Milan, winning the Champions League last season but Chelsea's ex-coach Jose Mourinho has been linked with his job especially after last night's embarrassing defeat to Palermo and seeing city rivals Inter Milan begin to put distance at the top of the table.

Mourinho has already admitted he fancies working in Italy after dramatically leaving Chelsea last week.