Yesterday's Group D action between Ghana and Botswana and Guinea and Mali capped the end of the first round of fixtures in the Orange African Cup of Nations. Both Ghana and Mali scooped points each after winning their matches by slender 1-0 margins.

It is quickly emerging that no team can be underestimated.

This weekend is crucial to all the top teams in the Premiership and the winners will be counting their blessings, while the losers will be rueing an opportunity lost. Man City face Tottenham and the winners will have a great boost to their title hopes, while Arsenal face Man Utd who also can't afford to [.

Perhaps all the Boston Celtics needed was their best player. Losers of their first three games this season, the Celtics welcomed back Paul Pierce and then welcomed themselves to the win column with a 96-85 victory over the Detroit Pistons.

In his debut, Pierce had 12 points, five assists and four rebounds.

Having watched "Moneyball" this week, it got me thinking about the state of this year's Premier League and the perpetual losers in the modern age: Liverpool. Liverpool are hurtling towards a longer wait for the title than United's quarter of a century and their saviour is not the one they were looking for.

We ended up giving a good account of ourselves against Man City but not winning, which was pardonable enough, but embracing the tag of honourable losers is not an act any team should partake in with any relish or frequency. Getting a positive result was the most important thing against Villa, and it gave me perverse pleasure when we managed to do it in spite of being quite poor overall.

The FFA and Adelaide United held their breadth at the Asian Casino last night...and won.
United have won direct entry into the Asian Champions League - meaning Australia now has three teams in the group stages for the first time.
More exciting than watching Lou Sticca's fundraiser in Melbourne?

It really is make or break for Chelsea tonight and I cannot emphasise enough just how important the right result is for our season. We have come up against adversity in recent weeks and took a massive step in the right direction at Newcastle on Saturday.
I have to stress that it's important that we do not get carried away as there is plenty still to do.

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QPR of 1897 (From the Bushman Archives)
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- Throughout the day, the QPR Report Messageboard has news updates, comments and perspectives - even links to other board comments of interest re QPR matters (on and off the field) along with football (and ONLY football) topics in general.

So after a much awaited night of footballing action, i have to say i am very disappointed. Disappointed because not only did Milan lose (which i was not expecting), but also because of other shocking results across the continent.

Before i get into the Chelsea game, i just want to give my 2 cents worth on the Milan v Barcelona tie.

This says it all:
'Qatari club... failed to qualify for the tournament and was only granted entry after a Vietnamese team was barred for failing to submit the correct documentation... Al Sadd lost both legs in the quarterfinals but still made it to the last four. After losing, 1-0, at home to Sepahan, the Asian confederation gave the losers a 3-0 win after discovering that the Iranian team had fielded an ineligible player.

Three of four lower seeds in the MLS conference playoff semifinals suffered home losses, leaving most of higher seeds in total control heading into the second leg rematches at mid-week. While that may not bode well for seeing a true upset in the conference semifinals for the first time in a good while (unless you think RSL beating Seattle is actually an upset), we still might see some surprises.

Happy Halloween to our fellow Skankensteins!

In the spirit of tricking as well as treating our lovely readership, we've put together a little 'guess who' game of 'ballers in kooky Halloween costumes. Because our spooky celebrations have been mildly sloppy for the past few years, we were keen on improving our drunken levels to 'inappropriate' at this year's office fete.

The Colorado Rapids kick off defense of the 2010 MLS Cup tonight in conditions reminiscent of the night the team won the title in Toronto in November.

It will be chilly in Dick's Sporting Goods Park for the 8 p.m. battle with the Columbus Crew. But there will be plenty of heat on the field for the Rapids.

Image Credit: Sporten.dk.

We always joke about the extreme lengths we'd go to in order to get ourselves mixed up in a situation such as this, but now that our lifelong dreams have come true we suddenly find ourselves acting like gun shy prudes. Go figure.

Last Friday during their Norwegian team's practice, Stian Antonsen and Marius Berntzen challenged their squad's veteran goalkeepers to a game of footy tennis.

Shootout is the name of the game this year. Losers in shootouts have been more famous than winners on some occasions, first Argentina and Brazil in Copa America, than the U.S. Women's National Team in the World Cup Final.

Goal.com predicts...who will be the big winners & losers of the 2011-12 Premier League season?

Do you agree with the new season verdicts given by our panel of pundits?

View the full story here: Goal

A news article on 2011-08-11 11:47:00 from: Goal

This news item has been reproduced from today's media.

It is a quirky system that requires two-thirds of the matches to knock out one-third of the entrants. But the opportunity for a well-placed third-placed team in a group to qualify for the last-16 gave us what drama there was in the third series of matches at the Under-20s World Cup... and perhaps the most bizarre qualification in recent tournament football history.

Now before we all line-up to shoot our Coach, Han Berger, Jan Boultbee, Andrew Dimitriou (didn't he nick all our players) maybe, just maybe we ain't so bad.
We went in as Asian Cup losers and lost Matthew Leckie before the tournament.
The World Game is tough - Spain are tougher still.

With 11 games in Major League Soccer this past week we figured we'd get a fair amount of movement in the rankings. For the most part we did. Finally, a week with no scoreless draws made things so much more enjoyable as we had plenty of goals to discuss and plenty of points to talk about.

There were no real big winners or losers in this week's rankings.

While this doesn't specifically relate to Valencia, it is an issue that has and will affect all teams playing the beautiful game at some point or other. Watching the highlights reel of the Copa America quarter finals inspired this piece, as it reminded me of one of my greatest hates in modern football, after the corruption and hypocrisy of Fifa, and the role of money and the media as an all-too-powerful force.

The somewhat light pre-season fixture list gets underway for us tomorrow with a familiar trip to the Bescot. It's a game that Shay Given expects to play in and should provide the first clues about Alex McLeish's thinking in terms of tactics and style of play.

It's highly unlikely that we'll have recruited a new left winger by then, so perhaps we'll see how innovative McLeish is too.

Disgraceful scenes of violence after the final whistle of the 2011 Copa Libertadores between winners Santos and losers Penarol.

Overview Due to the complexities of the Argentine relegation system a number of playoffs were needed to determine which of the teams finishing between 17th and 19th in the 2010-11 relegation table would suffer relegation. The first game was between Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata and Huracán who finished on identical points averages either side of the automatic relegation line.

Unless you were living under a rock last summer, you probably heard that Cesc Fabregas was linked with F.C. Barcelona. The Fabregas saga was one of the biggest stories of the transfer season last year as there were months of on-going speculation about his future. At the time, Fabregas was frankly on top of the world.

Genoa owner Enrico Preziosi is a sometimes abrasive character who has frequently fallen foul of football's authorities and his own fans. You wouldn't trust him to be gracious to losers, but he was - and it was not just any loser. It was Sampdoria, Genoa's local rivals and the subject of much scorn, grief and disbelief across the nation after their unexpected plunge to Serie B just 12 months after qualifying for the Champions League preliminary round.

When TP Mazembe won their second leg against Wydad Casablanca by two goals to nil, overturning a first leg 1-0 defeat, it looked certain that they had made the group stages of the CAF Champions League. However, a protest from Simba Sports of Tanzania (who Mazembe had knocked out in a previous round) regarding the eligibility of Mazembe defender Janvier Bokungu was heard by CAF and the African giants TP Mazembe were thrown out of the competition.

Remember that time last week when we had a poll as part of our move towards wrapping up the season? And then we had another and another and another? Well, no more polls this week, but what we will be having are the results of those polls, with commentary on the winners (and occasionally the losers) from all the bloggers and guest editors involved in order to give a bit of perspective on things.

9:00am Ozark vs. Willard
10:45am Nixa vs. Parkview
1:00pm Losers of first games
3:00pm Winners of first games

MSHSAA overtime procedure will be used to determine the winners in case of a tie.

9:00am Ozark vs. Willard
10:45am Nixa vs. Parkview
1:00pm Losers of first games
3:00pm Winners of first games

MSHSAA overtime procedure will be used to determine the winners in case of a tie.

Now in general I am a huge subscriber to the notion that "you are what your record says you are" (apologies to Bill Parcels). Ifs, ands, buts, and the like are generally for losers. That said, I came across this on The Twitter this morning and thought it would be interesting to share in light of the criticism that Arsene Wenger has received this season for sticking to his (ahem) guns when it

Well, that was nice, wasn't it? Does it make up for the collapse we've had since the end of February? No, certainly not. Did it revive any hopes of winning a trophy for us this season? Certainly not. But does it feel great to throw a wrench in United's title parade, beat them for the first time in years, and watch them walk off the Emirates pitch as losers?

Tasha Ugbah, West Plains Zizzers takes on Greenwood player

UPDATE: Fields are wet, but everything should be on schedule today for the Lady Zizzer Soccer Classic The annual tournament opens Friday at lunch for the eight teams participating. The favorites should be Notre Dame from St Louis, a program ranked the #5 Small School in St Louis.

The Liga Primer Indonesia continues apace. My Jakarta Globe column looks at the leaders and losers so far.

The second full weekend of MLS action kicks off today in Toronto, where Toronto FC takes on Portland at BMO Field in a battle of week one losers.

Today's U.S. national team match against Argentina is grabbing most of the headlines today but the two top teams in MLS are squaring off tonight, with Real Salt Lake playing host to the Los Angeles Galaxy.

West Plains Lady Zizzers at Harrison (credit: Randy Hunt)

My 'Spring Cardinal', the harbinger of the season's start, kicked off early this morning in Harrison AR. Coach Chris Pratt has brought together a competitive set of teams in both Boy's and Girl's soccer for the day. The Goblin's got pretty good weather for the event, where it's 51 degree's with a chance of rain today (at 9:45 am).

I know that's a bold statement right off the bat, but I'm getting genuinely baffled by a competition that clubs, players and particularly UEFA consistently treat as the Champions League's annoying little brother. So by the end of last night's ‘entertainment' I found myself asking this exact question rhetorically, because there seems to no love left for UEFA's secondary competition.

Perhaps the title of this post should be "Predicting the Unpredictable." Given the size and nature of the current format for Allsvenskan, predictions for a season are extremely complicated. So many factors have to be taken into account. The big one is always pre-season investments. In this case it means determining which teams brought back what ageing players from other European leagues.

The post-season Play-Offs have got under way in Australia and for Minor Premiers Brisbane Roar the Grand Final is just 90 minutes away after enjoying a first leg win over Central Coast Mariners. In the straight knock-out phase, played between teams finishing from third to sixth in the regular season standings, Adelaide United and Gold Coast United saw off the challenges of Wellington Phoenix and Melbourne Victory respectively.

In what has become an increasingly bitter and personal battle to win the right to take-over the Olympic Stadium West Ham appear to have won the race ahead of Spurs.
But if that proves to be the case, the decision has to be confirmed by London Major Boris Johnson and the government, you get the impression Hammers fans aren't exactly ecstatic with the move.

Lucy Zelic says Sydney FC to win, Eamonn says De Vanna, and Paddy calls it Sydney in the Grand Final this weekend.
Brickbats to the ABC - Golf over football - pap!
Paddy,Lucy and Eamonn are on the pitch and review the W-League final, the A-League losers - those that didn't make the finals and who of the losers were actually winners - and why.