After slogging through 89 minutes of the tie and finding themselves 4-3 up, Ecuador's El Nacional began to start running down the clock in their Copa Sudamericana first round match against San Jose of Bolivia.
Chief among the time-wasters was El Nacional goalkeeper Johan Padilla, who managed to get himself booked for taking an age over a freekick.
The great Sepp Maier was and is pretty much untouchable when it comes to German football idolatry.
As close to the modern ideal of the lithe superstar goalkeeper as it was possible to get back then, Maier made over 600 appearances for Bayern Munich, the majority of which coming as a cornerstone of the Bavarian club's peerless 1970s team of Franz Beckenbaur, Paul Breitner, Gerd Muller et al, that won three European Cups on the bounce.
Sunday's south-coast clash between Bournemouth and Southampton at Vitality Stadium ended 1-1, with Ryan Fraser's opener for the hosts cancelled out by Charlie Austin in the second-half.
With the game well into injury time, Saints full-back Ryan Bertrand proceeded to produce one of the worst throws-in the history of the game, managing to throw the ball up in the air and straight out of play.
Chelsea travel to the Nou Camp for the second leg of this Champions League semi-final in what is
sure to be a memorable clash. Chelsea lead Barcelona 1-0 thanks to a great goal from Didier Drogba
last week at Stamford Bridge. They'll need to be able to repeat this performance, and again have
luck on their side when they face a hurting Barcelona team who have just been beaten by Real Madrid
in La Liga to effectively end their chances of clawing back the league.
Watching live football always has that curious edge of nervous expectancy. Never knowing what
will come next draws us back time and again. When events turn against us, we say that it was
inevitable, we could see it coming, but when the footballing gods deem it is an Arsenal fan's
moment in the sunshine, nothing quite beats the thrill of an Arsenal goal in the final minutes of a
game.
Watching live football always has that curious edge of nervous expectancy. Never knowing what
will come next draws us back time and again. When events turn against us, we say that it was
inevitable, we could see it coming, but when the footballing gods deem it is an Arsenal fan's
moment in the sunshine, nothing quite beats the thrill of an Arsenal goal in the final minutes of a
game.
Those were the exact words from Mrs Lower when I came home last night and she asked me what the
score was (she's not into this football thing you see, and at times like this, I can't say I blame
her).
It was indeed vintage poor defending that got us into another fine mess, and vintage
park-on-the-edge-of-the-area, out-of-ideas stuff that made for a second half of infuriating
frustration.
Netherlands teammates Robin van Persie and Tim Krul nearly came to blows while playing on
opposite sides of Arsenal's 2-1 win over Newcastle on Tuesday. The following is a transcript of
their first meeting since that incident at the Dutch team's hotel for Euro 2012.
Arsenal on Twitter @UntoldArsenal Untold Arsenal on Facebook here By Tony Attwood A while ago the
excellent Swiss Ramble covered Bolton. Bolton, (generally known as Notlob in these august
columns), a team symbolic of all that was previously wrong with football: rotational fouling,
rotational time wasting, and the snarling antediluvian himself: the Fat Slug.
By Walter Broeckx One of our readers said that the problem with time wasting is not the rules but
the refs who for some reason don't enforce the rules on the field. And I could only agree with
this. I must say that I sometimes feel like doing a crusade against dangerous tackles on my [...]
At the end of the final with seconds waning and the Spanish celebration looking the part of a
formality, Fernando Torres pulled up lame running after a ball down the wing and immediately went
to ground. The cynics in the crowd were calling diving, time wasting and general cheating, even
though it looked like a very real injury.
He said, he said, but he said, no he said, what he meant, he said.
Yawn and yawn again.
It seems that the laws of bloody mindedness mean that when we have an interesting Old Firm game the
post mortem is so unbelievably dull and without merit it sours the whole experience for everyone.
I'm having a very hard time resisting the temptation to call JOHN JAGOU this morning.
I don't want to wait until this afternoon to get his take on Mexican Coach Javier Aguirre's send
off last night during El Tri's match against Panama.
I mean sure, maybe Sven Goren Erikkson didn't exactly get the job done down there but in the
"credit where credit is due" department he never kicked an opposing player in the junk, either:
According to Aguirre, using the now-familiar Mexican team player-and/or-official non-apology
format, the problem was of course not that he was guilty of doing something stupid; rather, he was
simply defending the integrity of the game, serving as sort of an auxiliary referee:
"I didn't have good conduct in those two or three minutes, that in my opinion, were brought on
by a waste of time by part of the opponent that tried to defend a ball when the referee had
called a throw in.
Cardiff shocked just about everyone by recovering from the loss of their 16th minute lead over
Liverpool in the Carling Cup final and then falling behind in extra time to push the match to a
shootout with an equalizer of their own in the 118th minute. Cardiff goalkeeper Tom Heaton then
came up with another shock by stopping Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard's first penalty of the
shootout.
The Bundesliga doesn't get the concept of extra time. On paper the Bundesliga
referees get it. It's up to them to decide, how much time was wasted through substitutions, injury
delays, time wasting or excessive goal celebrations. It's OK for them to routinely add only one or
two minutes or call it quits after exactly 90 minutes.
On opening day of the season at least one MLS Cup contender doesn't yet know who will be their
starting keeper. Sigi Schmid and Bruce Arena though have a great advantage in that not only do they
know who their keeper is going to be, they also have two of the better ones in the league.
While Donovan Ricketts has frustrated fans at Qwest Field with fake injuries, time wasting and
his reluctance to take goal kicks.
Physical play, red cards, and draws were prevalent in the rather pedestrian tenth week of Major
League. Four of seven results were draws, and no one seemed interesting in separating themselves
from the pack. Chicago remained unbeaten, Toronto FC finally picked up another win albeit a rather
ugly one at home, and Seattle battled to a draw despite missing three of their top four
midfielders.
In honour of Victoria Beckham's 36th birthday last Saturday, American mag People has
compiled a slide show of Victoria's funniest and most memorable quotes.
Love her or "meh" her, you can't deny that VB knows how to bring the LOLz. One of our personal
favorites (followed closely behind by the one discussing the David's tractor pipe) has got to be
this one:
"They always say, 'My God David is so handsome, he's gorgeous, he's so good looking,
and she's so funny.
In honour of Victoria Beckham's 36th birthday last Saturday, American mag People has
compiled a slide show of Victoria's funniest and most memorable quotes.
Love her or "meh" her, you can't deny that VB knows how to bring the LOLz. One of our personal
favorites (followed closely behind by the one discussing the David's tractor pipe) has got to be
this one:
"They always say, 'My God David is so handsome, he's gorgeous, he's so good looking,
and she's so funny.
Dinamo Lokomotiv against Los Andes was always destined to be eventful. In the first round we called
a forfeit on them because having wasted 20 minutes of playing time they then fielded unregistered
players - 'why can't you just play ?' - whined one particularly odious fat cheat.
Because you fools are a disgrace to the game.
Dinamo Lokomotiv against Los Andes was always destined to be eventful. In the first round we called
a forfeit on them because having wasted 20 minutes of playing time they then fielded unregistered
players - 'why can't you just play ?' - whined one particularly odious fat cheat.
Because you fools are a disgrace to the game.
Round about the time GAIS fired the ball off of a defender for the sixth consecutive corner, what
do you think think was rattling around the brains of the Norrköping players? a) "If I've
done the same thing five times in a row with the same result five times, I'll definitely get a
different result the [.
Earlier this week, Daryl brought you Computer Foosball. And your boss gnashed his teeth. Now we
bring you: The Soccer Fidget. Just plug it into your USB port, and suddenly you have a fun new way
to get through those conference calls. (But you might want to turn the sound down first. Unless
[...]
I have written a fair bit about contentious last minute penalties but that has been from afar,
safe with my laptop, a cold beer and a plate of chips. When you're actually in the stadium, the
home side are trailing 1-0, the game is entering injury time and fans are throwing missiles on to
the field from all sides of the stadium there is only one thought crossing my mind.
There's a lot of talk that the Champions League is becoming dull, but there's been no evidence
of this in Tottenham's four games in the tournament. Every one has been absolutely compelling in
it's own way and none more so than last night's 4-1 win over FC Twente.
It was a good team performance, but one player shined so brightly that he took most of the
limelight.
The man who is on the verge of a move to Real Madrid has had some school report cards
from around 15 years ago surface in The Sun and they make interesting reading. They clearly show
that the best left-back in the world had the attitude back then that he still has
today...