With a chance to extend our lead to four points at the KC Stadium last night we blew it with some sloppy defending from a set piece once more.
We still took an additional point last night to extend the lead over United to 2 points but we all know it could of been and should of been so much more!

La reconocida fotografa Annie Leibovitz tuvo la oportunidad de fotografiar a las stars , perdón estrellas del firmamento futbolero, para su próxima edición de Junio incluyendo a Cristiano Ronaldo de Portugal, Didier Drogba de Costa de Marfil , Samuel Eto'o de Camerun ,Landon Donovan de Estados Unidos,Stankovic de Serbia,Michael Ballack de Alemania y de Brazil Kaká y Pato, todos unica y exclusivamente portando calzoncillos con la bandera de sus países.

Adidas kicked of its World Cup activity with an advertising campaign for its F5O adiZero football boots, featuring the likes of Lionel Messi and David Villa.

Parece que los futbolistas del mundial no tienen miedo a nada. Varios de ellos se animaron a posar para la revista "Vanity Fair" en paños menores provocando el suspiro de mas de una fanática.
Los osados players en cuestión fueron: Cristiano Ronaldo, el portugués del Madrid, el delantero del Chelsea, Didier Drogba, Pato, el jugador brasileño del Milan, el camerunés del Inter de Milan, Samuel Eto'o, Ballack, el centrocampista alemán del Chelsea, Muntari, el ghanés procedente del Inter de Milán, Stankovic, el jugador serbio del Inter de Milán, y Landon Donovan, el delantero estadounidense de LA Galaxy
El único que se resistió a sacarse los jeans, por una cuestión religiosa fue Kaká.

All the 32 teams participating in the FIFA World Cup 2010 which starts in South Africa from June 11 have announced their preliminary squads of 30 which will eventually be cut down to 23.
Several Chelsea players are participating in the tournament and here is a list of players included in the preliminary squads.

Must have been pretty cold temperatures at game time
I got an e-mail this morning from Blogger 1-1-8. "As much as I think that he is a fine German player, I'm done with Ballack." [Or something along those lines. Expletives removed for our classy audience.]
And I couldn't agree more.

Chelsea have made approximately 50 signings since the take-over of Roman Abramovich. About £470 million (and William Gallas) has been spent on these players – that averages out at just over £9 million (and one of Gallas' hands) per player.

Compiling a list of the best 10 signings in this time is not a simple task and there will, no doubt, be objections.

Arshavin Liverpool or Arshavin United?

I have had it with Didier Drogba and the sight of him celebrating scoring a goal or two every time Arsenal play Chelsea. You might not remember this but there was a time 3 points are all we ever get out of this fixture. Since Roman Abramovich used his oil money to sign Drogba, the latter has disrupted the balance of nature.

Former Chelsea stud Eidur Gudjohnsen has joined Tottenham
We predicted an Arsenal - Aston Villa draw, as well as a 2-goal Everton win on Monday, (pats self on back) but now we are back to our regularly scheduled weekend gameweeks, so let's get to it:
I. Manchester United @ Arsenal: Sol Campbell is old, and much slower, and will face off against a Wayne Rooney in the form of his life on Sunday.

Today I read that Didier Drogba might not be able to play the World Cup in South Africa due to a hernia operation he might go through. The info comes from France's L'Equipe. I do feel bad for the guy, but unfortunately the rapid change of feeling comes when I remember Brazil is playing Ivory Coast, and playing Ivory Coast without Drogba would be a heck lot easier.

Today *today* *today*... I consider myself *myself* *myself*... Germany captain Michal Ballack has been ruled out of the World Cup after injuring his ankle in Chelsea's FA Cup final win over Portsmouth. The German Football Federation (DFB) said Ballack underwent a scan on Monday which showed that he had partially torn a ligament in his right leg.

Espn largó una serie de 32 afiches mundialistas para Sudafrica 2010. Las ideas son realmente geniales y las ilustraciones mejores aún.
32 obras de arte que cualquier fanático del fútbol desearía tener en su living.
Los protagonistas son las grandes estrellas de la cita futbolera entre los que se encuentran: Fernando Torres, Henry, Kaká, Eto'o (¿va?

So, now that England has lost its captain, Rio Ferdinand, has the momentum for this game swung towards the USA?

By the way, it is freaky that Germany (Ballack), Ghana (Essien), Ivory Coast (Drogba) and now England (Ferdinand) have all lost their captains before the tournament has even started.

By Eric Beard

With recent news coming out of South Africa that England captain Rio Ferdinand will miss the World Cup due to a knee injury suffered in training and Ivory Coast national hero & captain Didier Drogba is questionable for the cup as well thanks to an elbow fracture suffered in a friendly match against Japan, it seems like the right time to recognize a few truly special players that fans from all around the world would have loved to see partake in this summer's festivities.

The Chelsea Daily Drivel is a daily update of all the stories concerning our club, the rumours, the opinions and more....
So here is the latest from around the web on Wednesday 9th June 2010 including: Ballack, Joe Cole, Bastian Schweinsteiger and Andrew Driver.

Who Will Win the Race in England?

The Premier League has nearly reached its halfway point, and the title race has narrowed to five, as there is no reason to supsect any team from Bolton on down to make a serious run to the summit.

The current leaders Manchester United stand two points clear and have yet to lose, but have not impressed, relying on late comebacks from both ahead and behind to draw too many matches.

So with United winning against Arsenal on Sunday its another must win game for us tonight. We travel to the KC Stadium to take on Hull in our game in hand on the others and we simply must win to re-establish our four point lead over United ahead of this weekends games.
Tonight it looks as though we will welcome Didier Drogba back into the starting line up along with Ricardo Carvalho and Deco but its Didier's comeback that will be the main talking point and questions from Chelsea fans as to how Ancelotti will line the side up this evening.

After capitulating so miserably against Manchester United on Sunday, it's bounce-back time for Arsenal as they look to show the league, and themselves, that they are title contenders.

Next stop is Stamford Bridge for Wengers' men and they are seriously going to have to do some re-jigging if they are to leave West London with anything.

Goalkeeper: Hugo Lloris (Lyon)

With six saves against Real Madrid including a fine save off of a Ronaldo strike, the French international was a major player in Lyon's victory.

Left Back: Per Kroldrup (Fiorentina)

Kroldrup scored the important away goal for La Viola and couldn't be blamed for either Munich goal.

This is the first installment of the weekly Good News Bad News Friday, it's quite simple: every Friday SWU will find some good, and some bad to report, whether it be tabloid gossip or player injuries. And now on with the news...
Good News: Jim Lovetoy has a wonderblog


Jim Lovetoy's blog is probably the funniest football blog around right now, bringing memories of the fantastic Ballack and Neville diaries (if you haven't read those then search em up) the Lovetoy blog on The Football Ramble site is hilarious.

It was a brilliant performance by Inter as they beat Chelsea 1-0 to reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League.

With Chelsea struggling to find the net in front of their home fans, Samuel Eto'o's pre-match dreams came true when he popped up with the winning goal twelve minutes from time to complete a 3-1 aggregate victory.

Still too early for United to start celebrating

Another weekend, another twist in the race for the coveted prize of the Premier League. This weekend saw two different league leaders and one team slip a little off the pace. Seeing the reaction of Liverpool's no. 1 fan Gary Neville, you would have thought they had just won the title – especially when listening to the talk of the fans after the game who sounded confident – wait, actually cocky – in their views and opinions.

Seemingly unimpressed by my attempts to jinx himFrom Carlo Ancelloti's press conference:'Some players I want to rest, for sure will start from the beginning Ballack, and Kalou in place of Joe Cole. For the strikers I want to take a decision tomorrow.'All players want to play 90 minutes and Deco was not happy when he came out [against Aston Villa] after doing a good job for 70 minutes.

Michael Ballack has reportedly said to Chelsea that he wants a two year deal or he will look for a move to Jose's Inter Milan who have been strongly linked to the 33 year-old Midfielder.
I believe that Chelsea won't budge and as reported on here a few weeks back it looks like Roman Abramovich will adopt a different transfer/contract policy this summer.

Some days it's more beautiful than others.

Now, I know it's up to me to post a little something for the ladies, in particular, to appreciate. But you guys don't you have a little bit of a man-crush when you see videos like this?

More photos from Annie Leibovitz's Vanity Fair World Cup spread.

By FRANCO PANIZO

Oguchi Onyewu's first season at AC Milan wasn't the one he had hoped for, but that hasn't stopped the U.S. international from extending his stay with the club.

It's not like I didn't tell the world.

After Ballack's injury, today there was sad news that Rio Ferdinand is leaving the English squad due to a left knee injury, after a challenge with Emile Heskey during England's first training session. Tottenham's Michael Dawson will take his place and Steven Gerrard will now become captain.

News of Didier Drogba's fatal elbow injury has cast a dark cloud over the month long FIFA World Cup tournament that is scheduled to begin in 6 days. The entire continent is now bringing itself to terms with the fact that one of its brightest and most iconic stars won't be part of this history making event.

Who is playing Voodoo on the World Cup's stars?

While rumors of looming disaster in South Africa have been swirling around for a few years, rumors of the World Cup being cursed are running amok in both the blogosphere and in twitterland as the sport's biggest stars are dropping like flies before the tournament has even begun!

Who is playing Voodoo on the World Cup's stars?

While rumors of looming disaster in South Africa have been swirling around for a few years, rumors of the World Cup being cursed are running amok in both the blogosphere and in twitterland as the sport's biggest stars are dropping like flies before the tournament has even begun!

Today's Soccerlens World Cup column is brought to you by the number '4′ and by the word 'curse'.

There's an awful lot, and I mean an awful lot of injury news doing the rounds this weekend.

Holland are the latest side to suffer the wrath of the dreaded curse, after Arjen Robben (see below) hobbled out of their tune-up match against Hungary yesterday although an injury to the former Chelsea man shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise, given that his skeleton seems to be made of warm chocolate.

Germany's coach Joachim Loew lights a candle in Enke's memory
On the eve of the World Cup, players reminded the press that this tournament was different. This year, they were playing in the wake of traumatic loss, and would do their best to honor the memory of Robert Enke, the German National Team goalkeeper who committed suicide in November 2009.

Loew Has Proven His Worth On The Biggest Stage In World Football.

Germany's head coach, Joachim Loew, who served as assistant coach to Jurgen Klinsmann at the 2006 World Cup tournament in Germany, has been performing small miracles with the German national team at this summer's World Cup tournament in South Africa.

Ballack, who has missed the tournament due to an ankle injury, flew out to be with the team ahead of the quarter-final with Argentina but returned to Europe on Monday prompting speculation he may have been upset with Lahm's comments.

While discussing the openness of the title race as predicted by Arsene, my thoughts were that the year end table will look like United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, City, and doesn't matter after that. But I wanted to wait till the end of the transfer window before making my predictions for the season.

Bah. So Sunday's thrashing at the feet of Sunderland at the Bridge should be a wakeup call to all of Chelsea nation. But let's not overreact, it was one match, and true champions usually bounce back after a poor performance, which I expect us to do against Birmingham on Saturday. But still...

I think it's safe to say that after the strength of our starting XI, we have some serious depth issues.

Michael Ballack has spoken this week of lunching with Carlo Ancelotti after the club decided to let him go after his contract expired and of the fact that no one at Chelsea made direct contact with him to inform him of their decision but instead "informed" his agent...
In a week where Carlo Ancelotti seems to have little say in decisions being made at boardroom level, Ballack said:

"I had the feeling that when we spoke about it that he wanted to keep me but it became different.

In the summer of 2010 Chelsea let go of established, quality players like Deco, Ballack, Belletti, Joe Cole and Carvalho and replaced them with younger blood in an attempt to breed a side with staying power. Unfortunately, Chelsea's plan has backfired. Abramovic and Anncelotti have done too much to fast.

Hello everyone and Happy New Year!
Today the blue boys take on Watford in the FA Cup at Stamford Bridge as we look to defend our Trophy we won against Everton last season. Today is also a chance for Chelsea to make a fresh start to the new year, and get our form back on track.
This started with the win against Fulham, but with Championship opposition in Watford coming to the bridge, its a chance to get our game back on track and really get the confidence back.

uma participação ipsis literis do ilustre Daniel Schultz, correspondente global do Retranca Crônica (blog muito do retrancado mas que não tá morto, não).
Cara, descobri outra pérola do mundo da bola!
Foi numa conversa em Berlin com um torcedor do Stuttgart, o Basti, que entendia bem do assunto.