While some dictators qualify as relatively batshit crazy, North Korean Supreme Commander Kim Jong-il took run-of-the-mill guano and weaponized it with a deep, visceral nuclear fear factor. Against the backdrop of a starving nation, he enriched uranium, trained missiles on South Korea and Japan and generally gave everyone the heebie jeebies with the supremely iffy accuracy of the North Korean military's test fires.
Up until Christmas 1989 when a three-man firing squad executed Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena after a quickie two hour tribunal, the archetypal Iron Curtain strongman ruled Romania with an iron fist. After getting strafed with bullets, however, the iron fist swiftly went limp, then rigor mortis.
The trend of increasing U.S. TV soccer viewership continued with the 2012 European Championship,
with Americans tuning in throughout the tournament but particularly for Spain's 4-0 mauling of
10-man Italy in the final. As such, even new viewers could probably repeat the super-over-reported
stat that Spain became not only the first country to win consecutive Euros but also the first to
win an unprecedented three major international tournaments in a row, factoring in the 2010 World
Cup.
Without a "Group of Death," and without 5 of the top 8 ranked African countries (Egypt, Algeria,
Nigeria, Cameroon and South Africa all failed to qualify), the opening stages of the African Cup of
Nations lacks a bit in the tasty fixtures department. For perspective, Tunisia, the participating
country with the fourth-highest FIFA ranking is still behind tiny Cape Verde Islands (who also did
not qualify).
For my first Arsenal match in August 2006, covered in the 10 am spilled beers and yell spit of
fellow patrons at Nevada Smith's in New York, I saw Robin van Persie and Theo Walcott come on as
subs after Thierry Henry had done something or other phenomenal. My buddy Roland, who deserves all
the blame for me being a Gunner, had filled me in on the Walcott World Cup call up fiasco and
considered van Persie his favorite player.
If you've hardly seen Arsenal's new signings in action, let alone live up to the hype on a
frequent basis, you may be at high risk for getting carried away. But you're excited, because
they're names you recognize, they're each coming off great seasons, stats-wise, and your best
player has just signed for Manchester United, so you really need this right now.
We took a close look at the remaining fixtures in this season's Barclay's Premiership, and we
are unimpressed. Surely the Manchesters won't simply run away with the league, and there's got to
be some sort of shakeup between third, fourth and the also rans between now and the middle of
May... But apparently no.
A slow, tentative Arsenal team visited Milan in Champions League knock-out play yesterday, and
by god were their frailties exposed. Milan ended 4-o winners on the night, and that was a kind
scoreline to the Londoners. Milan, far from the best squad they've ever had, abused Arsenal's weak
defense, and if Pato and Nocerino had been more composed it could have easily been six goals to the
rossoneri.
The Tevez-Pato "will he? won't he" questions ricocheted every which way this January as the
musical chairs transfers song played at AC Milan, but at the end everyone retook their own chairs.
Boring. Perhaps they were dating Berlusconi's daughter, or were on £200,000 a week slave wages
that no one else could match, but whatever the reason, that anti-climax will be followed up by a
busy February and early March.
With Arsenal currently sitting 7th in the Premier League Table, it's now truly inevitable that
Robin van Persie will choose a new club come summertime, barring some miracle. Because it seems so
predestined, the notion doesn't trigger anxiety levels of Fabregas proportions in summers past,
where you just really didn't know what was going to happen.
Arsenal's victory over Barcelona yesterday was the stuff that dreams are made of. A bit of a
rivalry has been developing between the clubs, and Arsenal has now tipped the scales in their
favor. It was an epic performance against an equally brilliant challenger, and Arsenal deserve much
more praise than anyone outside the Arsenal blogosphere are giving them.
It's put up or shut up time for the old Arsenal. Today we host Barcelona in the fabled
Champion's League in a game which surely the entire world will be watching. When we have a global
audience for big games like this I get extremely excited and extremely worried.
For one, the lads have the opportunity to really strut their stuff and make what many people say
is "the best team in the world" look like a bunch of school kids.
Sometimes the internet is a terrible thing. Like when it creates a storm of hate around
something from nothing.
It began with a match in which the referee made some horrendous calls. Then it boiled over when
Moyes called out Fabregas after the eventual win against Everton. Moyes claims that Fabregas said
"How much are Everton paying you?
That was probably the craziest last-day-of-the-transfer-window ever. There were some pretty high
figures being bounded about over some equally high name players. Sort of. The new Liverpool owners
are literally going for broke to try to rescue their season.
The Premiership... the final frontier. These are the voyages of the football club Huddersfield
Town. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new stadiums, to seek out new players and new
teams, to boldly go where no Terrier has gone before.
Well, it's Huddersfield in the F.A. Cup today. At the Emirates, too.
Guess what? Sagna joined twitter! All you technophobes are probably rolling your eyes... well
pick them up off the floor already and listen up. Having any of our players on twitter is great
because we get to hear directly from them about their lives, their matches, and all the other
behind the scene goodies.
Yesterday we won against Ipswich at home in a 3-0 victory (a score I predicted). It was a great
game that had a fair amount of tension built up after a scoreless first half. We never really
looked in doubt though, given the amount of pressure we were putting on their goal.
Recently Robin van Persie was spotted over the coastal town of Portsmouth engaging in some
leisure activity. Skydiving to be exact. In his full kit and cleats for Christ's sake.
It's all part of a new marketing effort from an American PR firm to add more excitement and
synergy to the start of the match.
More than any other matchup, the coming together of Barcelona and Madrid forces apart the
usually shared preferences of the cultfootball brain trust. So today's match was one where both
sides could come away feeling they'd won some important battles, if not the war.
The game was not 90 minutes of pure flowing football.
I make fun of a lot of players for pretending to be models. Everyone from Beckham to Ronaldo as
tried their hands at modeling, but Canadian soccer player Adrian Cann is actually a model. Before
he played professionally, he was walking down runways in Milan. He got his big break signing to top
agencies such as Next Models in Canada and Boss Models in New York.
Dear The Red Bullentin,If you are going to put one of the world's most recognizable sports figures
on the cover of your magazine, make sure you can see his face. Yours Truly,The 12th Man Blog
Liverpool 3 Everton 2 (1989) Ian Rush scores in Liverpool's 3-2 FA Cup win. The match started in a
solemn fashion as both sets of fans remembered the 96 Liverpool fans who died in the Hillsborough
disaster. Everton 4 Liverpool 4 (1991) Everton troubled the Reds in this 90's FA Cup tie, manager
Kenny Dalglish saw out his last game as Everton forced a replay after coming back four times in
Everyone has been talking for weeks about the new LFC kit, and plenty of fakes have been
circulated over the internet, but we have a picture of both the LFC 11/12 away kit and the new
11/12 LFC goalkeeper shirt!
A lot has been said about the Newcastle game, but I haven't had a chance to chime in yet. My
very quick summary is that we lost that match for three reasons, in order of importance:
That was a dirty, scrappy match that we won yesterday. There wasn't a stretch of the match that
wen't on for more than 5 minutes (I think) that didn't have a rough tackle, foul, or whistle.
Unfortunately, in the first half, the ref was entirely one-sided.
I am beyond angry at the announcers for that match.
Robin Van Persie put on a finishing clinic at the Emirates yesterday. Fortunately, Wigan
obliged. Although Wigan goalkeeper Al-Habsi was putting on a clinic of his own in reactionary
saves. Arsenal's play was just too good and one goalkeeper alone was never going to save the
day.
I can't tell you how happy I was with yesterday's match.
Theo Walcott has really come into his own in the 2010-11 season. Proof: He has more goals
already this season than any of his previous seasons. Supplementary proof: He already has more
assists than any of his previous seasons.
Theo's maturing nicely, and his game shows it. As we all know, a key aspect of Walcott's game is
his blinding fast speed.
Sunday's display of misogyny between Andy Gray and Richard Keys was something legendary indeed.
Men capable of displaying such baffling thoughts are far and few between, unless you live in the
Middle Ages (in which case, get off this future contraption and back to your manure patch). But
finding men that genuinely think women don't understand off-sides and then actually
verbalize that is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Expect more deaths on March 9 in Egypt—both from judicial death sentences and the inevitable post-verdict riot—in the continuing fallout from the demise of the Mubarak regime in January 2011 and the soccer stadium massacre an anniversary-perfect year later.
After a February 2012 match in Port Said, Egypt, between Cairo's most successful club Al-Ahly and its portside rival, Al-Masry, fans set upon one another with rocks, fireworks, broken bottles, knives and reportedly even swords.
Jurgen Klinsman, Jermaine Jones and Ricardo Clark. The first a German, and famous at that. The
second a mix of American and German, currently playing his club ball with Schalke 04 in der
fatherland. The third born in America, a defensive midfielder in the 2nd Bundesliga for Eintracht
Frankfurt. Could it be some hidden understanding from this shared German-ness that pushed Klinsman
to pick Clark off the bench, and for Jones to find the late substitute with a perfectly dipped
cross?
None of today's matches are necessarily must-see; but if you must watch some football, here's
what we recommend:
Saturday, Jan 21
England, Norwich-Chelsea (7:30amET ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Norwich
(and Swansea) have attracted attention as newly-promoted sides that have fought their way into the
top half the table.
Those crazy kids over at TMZ managed to get their hands on pictures of Amanda Knox wearing a
Seattle Sounders scarf, along with her Halloween outfit. Considering Knox has played the beautiful
game, not surprising that she's pulling for the home team in the MLS playoffs (though Real Salt
Lake beat them up pretty good, 3-0, this weekend).
No se que deporte sea el que tenga mas aficionadas sexys , pero en el beisbol de grandes ligas
incluso en el local siempre hay bellezas como las que veras a continuación:
foto por Culture Shlock
foto por brownsshowdown
foto por 66Baseball
foto por nonnygoats
foto por ddurbin123
foto por Jill Clardy
Artículos relacionados:
Sexy aficionadas al Cricket
Sexy Ana Ivanovic en acción
Sexy Emelexista ecuatorianas
El debut de Mistico ¨Sin Cara¨ en la WWE
La nueva camiseta de Chivas rayadas del Guadalajara 2011 adidas
So right now, as I write this, Fabregas and van Persie have been taking pictures of their
teammates as they sleep. I'm not sure what kind of a team bonding experience this is, but it's
clear that this is how you are supposed to treat your teammates.
Wilshere is awake and tweeted that he is never going to be able to sleep while travelling
again.
Two teams. Two coaches who count on the Coupe de France to salvage their record at the end of
the season. Granted, Nice is in a far worse position than Lyon; but when you're coaching Lyon,
you're expected to win the title, or, at the very least, to be qualified for the Champions
League.
I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but it looks painful. The fine ladies over at Kickette
seem to think this is Denilson giving a little somethin-somethin to the family jewels of Bradley
Johson. It certainly looks like it is Denilson.
Whatever sort of approach Johnson was taking to this incoming aerial ball was entirely
the wrong choice.
He's the friendliest ghost there is. In that he plays for Leeds, so even his amazing goalkeeping
skills can't prevent us from putting 3 past him. That save he made against Chamakh's header was
something else though.
