1. Mohamed Aboutrika At the 2008 African Cup of Nations, the Egyptian midfielder lifted his shirt after scoring against Sudan to reveal a T-shirt bearing the message "Sympathy with Gaza". He was given a yellow card for breaking FIFA's...

Manchester United's fixtures are approaching a golden period of unprecidented easiness. Over the next 9 weeks, the toughest fixture may well be Aston Villa at Old Trafford.
West Ham v Man Utd
Man Utd v Aston Villa
Man Utd v Wolverhampton
Fulham v Man Utd
Hull v Man Utd
Man Utd v Wigan
Birmingham v Man Utd
Man Utd v Burnley
Man Utd v Hull
A fixture list like this makes Manchester United players definately worth having.

We're almost to the 2010 World Cup in Africa, as the continent is now half way through their last phase of Cup qualifying.
Where do we stand? Let's take a look at the standings for the five groups.
Remember, the five group winners go to the 2010 World Cup. The top three in each group advance to the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola.

So we are just shy of being one-third of the way through the season and we're already at our third (!) interlull. When we return, it will be crunch time with 11 matches in the next 42 days, including Chelsea at home, Liverpool away, the final CL group stage fixtures, and, of course, City away in the Carling Cup quarterfinals.

Brazil v Egypt (Group B)
Date: Monday 15 June
Venue: Bloemfontein
Kickoff: 3pm GMT

Five time world champions Brazil kickoff their Confederations Cup campaign on Monday when they take on African giants Egypt at the Vodacom Park in Bloemfontein. You can watch Brazil v Egypt live here.

It looks like a few teams in the Premier League could suffer a fair bit when the African Cup of Nations 2010 kicks off on Sunday, January 10th 2010. The competition, which always coughs up some great entertainment, will see approximately 27 Premier League players set off for Angola.
Which clubs are going to suffer?

Both Stoke and Fulham have a double header on Gameweek 20, after missing out on Gameweek 17. Arsenal and Bolton are the other teams that gameweek who benefit from the revised fixture list.
The tricky part for a lot of players is that by now many have shaped their teams into something close to what they would like, making the dilemma not so much about who they should transfer in, rather who they will transfer out.

If you've been watching BBC3 of late, you'll notice the adverts for the Confederations Cup, which is due to start tomorrow. If you're like me, you've probably been asking...what exactly is it?

How many teams are there? How long does it last for? Who has won it previously? They are not questions I would be able to ask with entire confidence.

The 2010 African Cup of Nations kicks off on January 10th. With the growing significance of African players plying their trades for the European soccer superpowers, next year's tournament is sure to draw a great degree of attention from fans around the world. Some of the big names on show are expected to be Chelsea's [.

Image from SA Sports Soccer
South Africa has advanced to the Semi Finals of the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup despite suffering a 2-0 defeat against European Champions Spain at the Bloemfontein Stadium on Saturday evening!
Bafana needed at least a draw against the number 1 ranked team in the World to secure their passage to the semi-finals but on the night the Spanish were just a class above their host.

Barcelona are preparing to test Arsenal and Cesc Fabregas with a bid for the Catalan playmaker if Liverpool continue to thwart their bid to prise Javier Mascherano away from Anfield, according to a report.
Blaugrana coach Pep Guardiola confirmed this week that he wants to add a midfielder to his ranks, but while he stated the player would not be expensive, the Board has other ideas.

The 2010 African Cup of Nations kicks off on January 10th. Earlier this week, we got our first look at the Puma kits that will be worn by Angola (home), Cameroon (home and away), Ivory Coast (home and away) and Morocco (home) during the tournament. Now, several more kits for Puma-sponsored African national teams have [.

You might notice the cheeky slight change to our weekly stadium feature's name we've pluralised it as we are looking at more than one this week. We feature the renderings for the four new, impressive stadiums being built in Angola for the African Cup of Nations 2010, to be held in January.

Luanda
Capacity: 40,000
Stadium name: Estádio Cidade Universitária

Rendering of Estádio Cidade Universitária, Luanda's stadium under construction for the 2010 African Cup of Nations

Benguela
Stadium Name: Complexo da Sr.

This weekend was the World Cup qualifying climax in Africa, and there was plenty of qualification drama to go around. The winners of each of the five groups qualified for World Cup 2010, and everyone else missed out. But there was a pretty decent consolation prize for the ten second and third placed teams, as World Cup qualifying doubles as Africa Cup of Nations qualifying and the top three in each group qualified for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations (also known as the African Nations Cup, ACN and CAN) in Angola.

We're making our way around the world with these patches, and today we have part four, Spain:In case you haven't been following, each patch in the Confederations Cup is different. All eight teams' patches have a unique look, each with the trophy from their confederation's continental championship.

Arsene Wenger has decided to take a different tact. He has sold Adebayor and Toure and Eboue is due to follow. That is three of Arsenal's four Africans. The move can be explained as a massive u-turn by Arsene.

A few years ago Arsenal set-up an agreement with Beveren in Belgium, whereby the Belgian club brought players over from the Ivory Coast and Arsenal were to be given first refusal once the players acquired a Belgian passport.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Euro 2009 for the ladies, a mouthwatering clash in the World Cup qualifiers to look forward to, and controversial decisions from footballs governing bodies all feature on this week's Good, bad and Ugly.

250 million pounds.
Taste it.
Swish it around in your mouth for a moment.
Now spit it out because that's roughly the amount of money that Chelsea F.C, have spent on buying players since 2004. Now, the team that has become synonymous with major spending, at least before Real Madrid's summer spending spree, is banned from buying anybody for the next two transfer windows.

The BBC's recent pre-season analysis of "Where the Premier League's players come from" offered a striking picture of the dramatic demographic changes in European soccer over recent decades. Comparing the EPL's 2009-2010 rosters with the same clubs' 1989-1990 rosters, I was particularly struck by the influx of African players.

Confirmation of the new captain to replace the departed Richard Dunne:

"He has all the attributes you need to be a good captain – great enthusiasm for the game, and is nice and vocal in the dressing room and before, during and after games. And he wants to drive the club forward.
"We are very lucky to now have that mentality in our dressing room with a lot of the lads, who could all carry the mantle of being a football team captain.

Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard is anticipating that January's African Cup of Nations could have a decisive influence in this season's Premier League title race, with the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal and Chelsea losing vital players to the three-week tournament, at a time of year when key points can be collected for the top sides.

Here are the results from the 2010 World Cup CAF qualifiers ( third round) played on October 11, 2009 ( Sunday) Benin 1-0 Ghana ( Mohamed Aoudou 90+2′)- Group D Inconsequential game for the Black Stars as they had already qualified prior to the fixture. However Benin finish second in the group as a result of their [.

The new Ivory Coast ( Côte d'Ivoire) home and away football shirts for the 2009-10 and 2010-11 season have been released by kit maker Puma. They will be worn by Ivory Coast during the 2010 African Cup of Nations tournament. The home shirt is primarily orange in colour. The ends of the sleeves are green in [.

Liverpool striker David Ngog has been approached by Cameroon to play for the African country.
Ngog, who has played for France from Under 16 level through to Under 21, qualifies for Cameroon through his father.
Cameroon coach Paul Le Guen is keen for Ngog to change his allegiance ahead of the African Cup of Nations and World Cup.

The groups for the Africa Cup of Nations 2010 were drawn today, which should go at least some way to cheering up teams like Egypt and Tunisia who very narrowly missed the World Cup 2010 boat.

The tournament takes place in Angola from January 10th to January 31st, 2010. We've got blogs and bloggers for 12 of the 16 teams involved in the tournament.

Chelsea strikers Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou leave for the the African Cup of Nations next week to fool around and twist their backs with the Ivory Coast in a minor league regional tournament that makes absolutely no sense just six months before The World Cup in South Africa.
So it looks like Nicolas Anelka, last year's golden boot winner, is set for a nice run out as the main man in the Chelsea attack.

The South Africa 2009 Confederations Cup will take place across 4 venues from 14 June to 28 June, and will act as a dress-rehearsal for next year's World Cup in South Africa.

Here are the Confed Cup fixtures - all times are BST.

2009 Confederations Cup Teams Team Association Qualification Participation South Africa CAF 2010 FIFA World Cup host 2nd Italy UEFA 2006 FIFA World Cup winner 1st United States CONCACAF 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup winner 4th Brazil CONMEBOL Copa América 2007 winner 6th Iraq AFC 2007 AFC Asian Cup winner 1st Egypt CAF 2008 African Cup of Nations winner 2nd Spain UEFA UEFA Euro 2008 winner 1st New Zealand OFC 2008 OFC Nations Cup winner 3rd

Group A: South Africa, Iraq, New Zealand, Spain
Group B: United States, Italy, Brazil, Egypt

2009 Confederations Cup Fixtures

GROUP STAGE:

Sunday, June 14th
South Africa vs.

This pointless exercise gets underway Sunday. At the very least, however, it should provide some interesting match-ups, as well as some injuries and fatigue to some of your favorite club's players.
The tournament pits the winners of the the six FIFA federation tournaments around the world against each other, plus the World Cup winner and the Host Country.

Stuff to read while you watch a not-quite-svelte Ronaldo score a hat trick..... A team worth shouting about: Athletic Bilbao. (SoccerLens) The ten most shocking transfers - nine of which come from the UK. (ESPN) Premier League might just lose its YouTube claims. (EPL Talk) The rise of Africa's regular tournament.

So, Kolo is off to Citeh to ensure his financial legacy help them meet their ambitions. Where does that leave both clubs?
Citeh Analysis
If Citeh were just trying to improve over last season, then they'd definitely have accomplished their goal. Toure is certainly an upgrade for them.

Chelsea: Siege, Intrigue and Champions League

The Chelsea transfer embargo detonated by Fifa this week will have massive and perturbing repercussions. Even with Chelsea delaying proceeding and stagnating the affect of the transfer prohibition by deploying a stalling bureaucracy the outcome appears inevitable.

The Republic of Ireland played a friendly against World Cup hosts South Africa in Limerick tonight. The game was probably more useful to the visitors however, as they have not qualified for The African Cup of Nations, friendly encounters are their only form of preparation. For Ireland, it was ...

Ancelotti interested in bringing veteran Frenchman?

Portsmouth vs Chelsea Tickets Still Available!

Inter Milan midfielder Patrick Vieira could finally be set to seal his return to London, but surprisingly with Chelsea, according to reports.

The 33-year-old Frenchman who made more than 250 league appearances and won three Premier League titles and four FA Cups during his time at Arsenal - was linked with a return to Arsene Wenger's side along with Tottenham Hotspur earlier this summer.

European leagues take a break this weekend to allow World Cup qualifying action to continue after almost a month. With only 2 rounds of games left to play, many teams will look to secure a spot in South Africa no later than Sunday.

The African qualifying region cannot get any tougher.

This is getting ridiculous.

Barcelona sporting director Txiki Begiristain has not ruled out swooping for Cesc Fabregas in the January transfer window.

The Catalan giants have made no secret of their admiration for the Spain international in the past and have admitted that they are keen to bring the midfielder back to the Nou Camp.

Dutchman looking for Bernabeu escape route.

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Chelsea have been offered Dutch international Rafael van der Vaart. The 26-year-old is out of favour at Real Madrid and eager to change clubs as he seeks playing time before the World Cup.

What language is this? The language of beautiful football
Despite his groin problem, Fernando Torres may feel a bit snubbed after Chelsea manager Carlo Ancelotti and midfielder Frank Lampard both claimed yesterday that Didier Drogba is the best striker in the world.

Ahead of our match against Chelsea, RoM and The Chelsea Blog teamed up for a discussion to put you in the mood for Sunday.

Scott the Red: The question has been raised a few times in the media who would you prefer out of Drogba, Rooney and Torres? Why?

The Chelsea Blog: The first thought that came into my head was Drogba.

Here are all the results and final scores from the African ( CAF) World Cup 2010 third round Qualifying games played on Saturday, November 14, 2009. The marquee game of the evening is obviously Egypt vs Algeria, but we have a few other intriguing qualifiers too. Group A Morocco vs Cameroon ( Kickoff time 15.

This is how lucky the United States got Friday.

After the U.S. was drawn in Group C with England, if I could have handpicked a country from Pot 3 and Pot 4 I would have selected Algeria and Slovenia (if you don't believe me, I worte it yesterday). For the U.S. to actually draw both those teams there was a 1/64 (1.