Thierry Henry, once again, has stated his desire to play in the United
States.
In particular . . . . New York.
Big thanks to Ives, who is absolutely the most reliable source there is in the MLS. When is he
ever wrong?! Especially when he gets it from the Times! Love ya.
This is not the first time Henry has expressed interest in our little team.
HERE WE GO AGAIN
FSC: 7:30pm. YOU GOTTA GET IN THE GAME!
For the third time in five years, we face off, in the postseason, against another strong New
England team.
For the fourth time this year, these two teams will collide. And the Revodouchers have the
season advantage, with 2 wins and 1 tie.
Celtic Milan Dida VS sale gosse
Uploaded by Shooting-star
When Nelson Dida went down as if he'd been shot by the supporter who ran onto the Parkhead pitch
last night, there were a lot of theories put forth about the reason for the four day delay between
the contact and the falling down in agony. Me, I was thinking late-acting acid, while others
suggested things like an eye-poke so dire it took several seconds to register, and the well-known
Five-Point-Palm Exploding Heart Technique (thanks, for that Paolo).
An organization called Observatory on the Referee Mistakes in Football (That's the Milan
website's translation of its name; I'm sure it sounds a lot better in Italian.), run by a couple of
independent organizations, has published its first study of how human error has so far affected
Serie A results this season, and there are a lot of surprises in their findings.
The Rematch of the Match of the Year.
Well, leading up to the season ender, I ask ya, what will happen tonite?
My prediction?
RBNY 2 - LA 1
I really dont think they have what it takes to beat us. Even if we play our reserves (and I dont
feel that is pompous thinking considering the circumstances).
This will be short and sweet.
Yesterdays loss left a bitter taste in my mouth (which then turned to vomit when I watched the
rest of the Yankees game).
We have a World Class Coach, World Class players, Youngsters who play hard and well, and are a
piece or two away from having a truly dominant club. At least, thats what we thought.
You heard it here first, people, Zlatan Ibrahimovic's life will be in danger tomorrow night when
he takes the pitch in Reggina. Or at least it will be if certain people have their way.
Reggina defender Salvatore Aronica has revealed to the press his secret plan for stopping the
unstoppable Swede: Murder. Said, Aronica, "I'd need a gun to stop him.
Yup. You heard right. Our curly maned Goalkeeper is calling it a career.
With a 6-6-5 record, a GAA under 1.79, and a team that has made the playoffs, Waterreus has been
at times the hero, and at others, the goat.
What can be agreed upon is the fact that Ronnie has not been the same since that rumored ankle
sprain.
OCTOBER 9th IS HERE!!!!!
AND FIFA 08 IS READY FOR YOUR GAME CONSOLES!
JOZY ALTIDORE IS ON THE COVER, SO NEW YORK BETTER REPRESENT!
. . . . And as for me?
Well, I may have a couple of surprise interviews, and some more EA related stuff to share. Tune
in tommorrow night for more.
EVERYONE ENJOY!
OCTOBER 9th IS HERE!!!!!
AND FIFA 08 IS READY FOR YOUR GAME CONSOLES!
JOZY ALTIDORE IS ON THE COVER, SO NEW YORK BETTER REPRESENT!
. . . . And as for me?
Well, I may have a couple of surprise interviews, and some more EA related stuff to share. Tune
in tommorrow night for more.
EVERYONE ENJOY!
•Last season I got all righteously indignant about Inter's Pulcini A team (they're 11 years
old, and under) beating opponents by scores like 39-0 and 32-1. Well, I should have saved my
breath, because they've now surpassed even that: This year's team just beat someone 40-0, and are
averaging 26 goals/match this season. Classy, that.
•The UEFA Cup draw takes place tomorrow, and Fiorentina (AKA Italy's lone remaining
representative) are in the third pot, meaning they'll be in a group with two of the top 16 teams
still in the tournament including Villarreal and Giuseppe Rossi, and Bayern Munich and Luca Toni as
determined by UEFA's magical co-efficient system.
FIFA's nomination list for their World Player of the Year Award is so laughable that, really,
it's difficult to even get too worked up about it. For me, it's less the absences that make it so
absurd than it is two little words that are there: "Patrick" and "Vieira." This is the same Patrick
Vieira who, for those among you who don't follow Inter as closely as you should, played in just 20
Serie A matches last season (28 in all competitions), and has put in a grand total of 68 minutes so
far this year, all of them in a single Coppa Italia match.
As Francesco mentioned in the comments last night, Roberto Donadoni has called up a very
different team for the upcoming friendly against South Africa than he fielded against Georgia.
Among other things, this approach allows him to finally give Alessandro Rosina the call he
deserves, thus shutting people up without actually, you know, picking the lad for a real match.
Jeez Louise. For once, things were quiet on the Kaka to Madrid! front. The
Spanish papers have stopped making up stories about Ricky Kaka and his fervent desire to join Real
Madrid, and the last major article about him there was an interview in Marca with Silvio
Berlusconi, who agreed to talk entirely because he wanted to emphasize the Brazilian's desperate
loyalty to Milan.
Alex Del Piero will surely be thrilled to see Roberto Donadoni's list of call-ups for the
upcoming Azzurri matches (a qualifier against Georgia and a friendly against South Africa), because
the Juve captain successfully talked himself out of a spot in the team. Great work, Ale! Also
missing are Pippo Inzaghi, who is yet to score for Milan, and a whole bunch of injured squad
regulars, including Gianluca Zambrotta, Marco Materazzi, Mauro Camoranesi and Alberto Aquilani.
So, I am separating this into two parts.
Part I will feature FIFA 08, and the actual playing of the video game
v. Jozy, review on its features, some trash talkin in between, and other stuff . . .
Part II, is the actual interview, where we discuss everything from gaming to
the U-20 WC, to the current Red Bulls situation and more
So without further ado .
FINALLY!!! LET THE KVECHING OFFICIALLY CEASE!!!
PUT ON THAT HAPPY FACE!!!
WE ARE MARCHING INTO THE PLAYOFFS!
AND THE SKIES ARE LOOKING BRIGHT!
More aimless "pie in the sky" Red Bull Championship dreams? YOU BET!
But this time folks . . . we are gonna be positive with GOOD reason.
Check it out . .
Though they took their sweet time about it, Italian sporting judges have finally handed down
their decision about the racist/regional-based abuse of Napoli supporters by Inter fans during the
last round of games. (The abuse was mostly in the form of a series of large banners, but there were
accounts of racists chants, as well.) As a result of the fan behavior, Inter has been fined
€30,000 (Moratti is not pleased), and the upper part of the Curva Nord will be closed when Inter
host Genoa on October 31, the first home game after the offenses took place.
To sum up: Total domination; Lucarelli brace; several dozen players and nearly that many
debutants.
Really, that's all you need to know. Italy's B-team, AKA Lucarelli and the Kids, dominated South
Africa, threatening to run them off the pitch in the first 10 minutes until SA settled down and
hung in there, pulling out a counter now and then and putting together the odd pretty move (all of
which ended with Benni McCarthy running really fast).
As we discussed in the comments yesterday, Adrian Mutu* is the rumored target
of a whole lot of clubs, among them Manchester City (of course), Lyon, Real Madrid and, most
recently, Roma. Every time a new story comes out and the Italian media ask Mutu for his reaction,
his answer is always the same: "I love Fiorentina. I want to have the club's babies.
BLACKBOARD FODDER?
======
Ladies and Gentlemen, Steve Nicol:
"The secret to the game is stopping the service."
"We can dominate in the middle of the park and it will nullify their midfield. If we give them
scraps, hopefully we can deal with that, which I am sure we can."
"Best thing to happen to Altidore is playing aside Angel.
Jesus, Fiorentina are good. I know Siena are in the bottom four and didn't pose that much of a
challenge, but the Viola in the first half were easily as good as any team team in Serie A, and
would have been trouble no matter who they were playing. They play magical, one-touch football, and
have such a young, skilled core that their target of seriously competing for the Scudetto in 2010
seems almost laughable conservative.
The people at France Football must be so stoked that FIFA's World Player of the Year list came
out before theirs did, because they're going to look like a bunch of geniuses by comparison no
matter who they put on their list, as long as they get it at least somewhat right.
I mean, they got Totti and Zlatan on there, along with Kaka, Ronaldo (the pretty one) and Messi,
so who's going to complain about the fact that David Beckham and Fabio Cannavaro are on the
list?
Last time Inter were in Russia, Julio Cruz scored in the first minute(ish) and they beat Spartak
Moscow on a plastic pitch to begin turning around last season's nightmarish Champions League start.
Though the turnaround has started a little earlier this time round, three away points again would
be very nice: CSKA Moscow are bottom of Group G with one point from two matches, and Inter need to
beat them to make sure they say in the top two (or take over the top spot, if Fenerbahçe fail to
beat PSV), as well as for the good of their fragile European confidence.
Shortly after Dida's little performance in Scotland, the media were full of reports about the
other goalkeepers Milan would be pursuing when the summer transfer window opens. Among the possible
future Rossoneri was Sebastian Frey, Fiorentina's resident French genius who is beloved by all
Viola fans and habitually ignored by a certain arch individual by the name of Raymond.
There were rumblings at the end of the last season about Roberto Mancini's
desire to make his team "more blue" (As in Azzurri, not as in sadder.) but, shockingly, nothing
came of it, and their major arrivals over the summer were Honduran, Romanian and Chilean. Now,
though, the story is back, this time in the context of fears that FIFA might introduce restrictions
on the number of foreign players in each team, a rule that, obviously, would leave Inter unable to
actually field 11 players.
Someone is always pissed at the referees after a matchday, and today it's the Torino boardroom
that's reverberating with impotent rage, blaming the officials for their derby lost.
Immediately after David Trezeguet's brutal, injury-time winner yesterday, coach Walter Novellino
exploded, claiming the striker had been miles offside, and that the goal should have been
disallowed.
•John Gregory has finally been sacked by QPR; Gianluca Vialli and Billy Costacurta are still
top of the list to replace him. Trust an Italian owner (well, if the takeover ever actually
happens, that is) to bring in an Italian manager I suppose he's got more to choose from among his
countrymen than the Americans, the Thai and the Russian, huh?
Both Turin clubs are locked in difficult contract negotiations right now with arguably their
biggest stars, with both Alessandro Rosina and Alex Del Piero apparently wanting a whole lot more
money than their clubs are offering.
Del Piero's contract expires at the end of the season, but he and Juventus have been far apart
on his wages since this summer, and the latest reports don't offer any sign that things have
changed.
There's terrible news for Roma this morning: Alberto Aquilani is expected to be out for two
months with a partially torn quadriceps muscle. Having just recovered from an injury in order to be
fit for the Man U match, he was stretched off the pitch yesterday in what appeared to be terrible
pain, after "feeling" his quad snap. Ouch. The tears the poor lad shed on his way off the field may
also have come as much from fear of the diagnosis as from pain Aquilani missed a chunk of last
season with a thigh problem, and it must be beyond frustrating to hear that he's going to go
through the same thing again now, particularly in light of how important he's become to Roma, and
how many injuries they're already carrying.
Either Scotland's Daily Record is perpetrating an elaborate "we interviewed Franck
Ribery!" scam, or the latest French genius (who wasn't so genius-y against the Azzurri) is talking
a whole lot of smack about Italy and their chances of qualification for Euro 2008. According to the
(alleged) exclusive interview, Ribery is quite sure the teams advancing to the finals out of Group
B will be Scotland and France, leaving Italy "at home watching the tournament on TV next
summer.
That second name got your attention, didn't it? Yes, Queens Park Rangers' new Italian owner, F1
partyboy Flavio Briatore, has shared with the press his greatest fantasy (fit for a family
audience): For Francesco Totti to end his career in London, with QPR. Not going to happen, of
course, unless Rosella personally eats one of Totti's babies, but it's rather sweet of Briatore to
launch into such lofty ambitions, particularly when his team is rooted to the bottom of the
Championship.
Since the crowd trouble during their home match against Livorno on September 23, Napoli
supporters have been forbidden to do pretty much anything. The club's next home game after the
Livorno match (against Genoa) was played behind closed doors, and away fans were banned from last
weekend's loss to Inter.
And it gets worse: Today, news has come down from the powers that be of another travel ban.
No matter who ultimately fills the positions, it's safe to assume to Azzurri will go out in a
4-3-3 against Georgia tomorrow, this time without any whining from Alex Del Piero about having to
play out wide. Instead of Ale, the supporting players behind Luca Toni are likely to be Antonio Di
Natale (Or, as Google likes to call him, "Antonio Of Been born") and, despite his poor domestic
form, Donadoni's beloved Fabio Quagliarella.
God that was boring. A win is a win, and three points were absolutely necessary so Donadoni and
his team deserve full credit for that, but they certainly don't get any style points, do they?
Neither team put together a sustained early threat, though Luca Toni was putting a ton of work
in trying to connect the midfield and the strikers, dropping deep for the ball and playing it
forward to his compatriots throughout the first half.
Despite concluding the Emerson deal with a public assurance that they wouldn't get back into the
market again until next summer, the people at Milan are really bad at just sitting on their hands,
and are already eying up new players for their giant shopping list.
Near the top of that list, at least according to his very chatty agent, is Palermo striker
Amauri, who is said to be in the sights of several major Italian teams.
Since we're through all of seven weeks of the season, the time has apparently come for serious
transfer talk. To that end, today's print edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport* has a
feature on which one player each Serie A team needs to buy either this winter or next summer to
solve their single greatest problem. It's wonderfully detailed and completely obsessive, not to
mention sure to make a few heads explode with, yes, indignation.
