Brazil has revealed the venues for the
2013 Confederations Cup, the now traditional
warm-up for the following season's World Cup Finals.
The six stadia for the eight-team competition are as follows:
Belo Horizonte (Mineirao) - 70,000Brasilia (Nacional) - 71,500Fortaleza (Castelao)
- 67,000Recife (Pernambuco) - 44,000Rio (Maracana) - 76,500Salvador (Fonte
Nova) - 56,500The tournament, which will take place between the
15th and 30th of June 2013, has five of
the eight finalists confirmed already.
While most of the soccer world were talking and cascading about Liverpool striker Luis Suarez's
snub to Manchester United defender Patrice Evra in a season marred by racism not only in the EPL
but across Europe, there was something magical about to happen in Gabon as rank
outsiders Zambia took on the might of Ivory Coast in the African Nations Cup final.
Zambia's sensational African Cup of Nations has just ended with emotional glory when they defeated
the huge favourites Côte d'Ivoire in an intense final in Libreville! Like everyone in the stadium
(except the Ivorians), I also got carried away by the glorious spirit, fight, and the memory of the
1994 team that died in Gabon.
Kashiwa Reysol's FIFA Club World Cup dream ended today at the hands of South American champions
Santos FC. Neymar was amongst the goals for the Brazilians as they claimed a 3-1 win against the
J-League champions whilst earlier in the day North and Central American champions Monterrey CF won
the 5th/6th place play-off, getting the better of African champions Espérance Tunis by the odd
goal in five.
Houston Dynamo fans have been waiting since the club's inaugural 2006 season for a
soccer-specific stadium they could call their own, and, come May, that dream will be realized.
According to the Houston Chronicle, that stadium will be named BBVA Compass Stadium at an
official ceremony slated for Wednesday afternoon.
An exciting pair of matches in the 2011 Club World Cup took place on Sunday at Toyota Stadium, just
outside Nagoya.
In the early kick off, Al Sadd from Qatar defeated Esperance Sportive De Tunis 2-1 in a fractious
match which saw a shoe thrown on to the pitch and a solitary fan run on to the field as Al Sadd
wasted time at the end to hold on to a hard fought win over the African champions.
Kashiwa Reysol and Al Sadd have booked their semi-final places in the FIFA Club World Cup
following hard fought victories over Monterrey CF and Esperance Tunis respectively.
Kashiwa, representing the host nation Japan as the 2011 J-League champions, needed a penalty
shoot-out to get past North and Central American champions Monterrey after the two teams had played
out a 1-1 draw.
FC Barcelona won their final La Liga match on Tuesday night before flying out to Japan for the
FIFA Club World Cup.
Goals from Alexis Sanchez (2), David Villa and Lionel Messi gave the Spanish and European
champions a comfortable 4-0 victory at home to Rayo Vallecano. The win meant that Barcelona reduced
the gap between themselves and league leaders Real Madrid to three points but the capital side do
have the advantage of a game in hand.
FC Barcelona, FIFA Club World Cup champions in 2009, will face either African champions
Esperance Tunis or Asian champions Al-Sadd in the semi-finals of the 2011 edition.
The tournament, which returns to Japan this time following a two year stint in the United Arab
Emirates, will open up on December 8th with the Japanese national champions, as yet undecided,
facing off against Oceania champions Auckland City with both clubs hoping for a quarter-final
meeting with North and Central American winners Monterrey CF three days later.
African football's two main club competitions have reached the halfway stage in the group phase.
Two teams continue to dominate in Group A of the CAF Champions League whilst Group B is a more
competitive affair. In the CAF Confederation Cup things remain tight in both groups and there is no
team who has yet laid down a marker for the rest of the tournament.
Mazembe won the last two titles. Who will take their title this year?
With much political and civil unrest disrupting a great deal of the 2011 CAF Champions League it
is an achievement in itself that the group stages will be played as originally scheduled. Many
games were either postponed, re-scheduled or teams disqualified from the tournament for various
reasons in what has been a difficult tournament to organize.
In 1978 the president of Uganda (or to give him his full title His Excellency, President for
Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor) was Idi Amin, the country was embroiled in a war with
neighbours Tanzania and Idi Amin was still twelve months from relinquishing power. It was also the
last time that Uganda's national football team (The Cranes) had qualified for an African Cup of
Nations.
Photo by ISIPhotos.com
The political unrest and dangerous conditions in Egypt led to the cancellation of Wednesday's
friendly between the United States and the defending African champions, but that doesn't mean we
can't think about what could have been.
We'll never know what lineup Bob Bradley would have gone with against the Egyptians, but we can
speculate.
