Fun filled Friday

Hello again. After a hectic week which involved a three day business trip to the Big Apple I arrived back ion Cleveland at 2am this morning after a 4 hr delay at Newark Airport. Oh the joys of flying.

So its biggggg Friday for the World Cup.

Now we will see how brave the Germans are, if the Argies are as good as the media keeps telling us, can Ingalland play football, are the Ukraine a one man band, can Itallians play without selecting the referee in advance, can Portugal play without cheating etc. etc.

Let the fun commence....

Blue Monday

After the firewirks of the Portugal Holland match todasy affair whihc saw the spaghetti eating girly men cheat their way to a victory over Oztrailer with another highly dubious penalty seemed quite tame. I am sorry to see the Ozzies go especially to the Eyeties who asre almost as bad as the Portugese in the cheating department.

Speaking of which I cant believe the nerve of fat Phil who wants Deco's red card rescinding because the Dutch did not give the ball back. Well after what Figo had just got away with if I were on the Dutch team neither would I have given the ball back.

Speaking of Figo I see FIFA had a collective lack of nerve in failing to apply the laws as they are published. A headbutt is a red card irrespective of whether Mark van Bommel recieves it or not.

Oh well I guess I will be supporting England from here on in..... until Saturday anayway...

Disgrace to football

This man used to be good player, now he just a diving cheating bastard.


Luis Figo is nothing other than a cheat pure and simple and should be thrown from the World Cup. I thought a headbutt was an automatic red card and what about his piece of pure acting tpo get the Dutch player sent off. He is a fucking cheat and was directly repsonsible for the farce this match descended into. Commentators on TV were saying that the only thing to be remembered would be the referee well I dont agree. I think the only deceision he got wrong was not sending Figo off after he nutted van Bommel the rest were all correct decisions given the instructions FIFA have given out and the rank stupidity of the players.

Disgrace to football

This man used to be good player, now he just a diving cheating bastard.


Luis Figo is nothing other than a cheat pure and simple and should be thrown from the World Cup. I thought a headbutt was an automatic red card and what about his piece of pure acting tpo get the Dutch player sent off. He is a fucking cheat and was directly repsonsible for the farce this match descended into. Commentators on TV were saying that the only thing to be remembered would be the referee well I dont agree. I think the only deceision he got wrong was not sending Figo off after he nutted van Bommel the rest were all correct decisions given the instructions FIFA have given out and the rank stupidity of the players.

The day after and the day before

So it looks like I succeeded with driving Ozkanka to the point of despair by waving a Coopers before his very eyes!! Tee heee....

I tell you what though the refs are so inconsistent. Today in the Germany Sweden game the Germans asked for a Swedish player, Lucic, to be sent off and the Brazilian ref obliged. His first yellow card was for actually winning the ball from a Kraut and his second was for putting his arm out, complete bullshit in my opinion. What was that all about, I for one am totally sick and fed up of players asking for other players to be booked. This decision basically killed the game and the Germans in my mind are cheating bastards who I really hope get knocked out as soon as possible. And then Frings who made a completely deliberate handball to stop a Swedish attack was only yellow carded and it was him telling the useless ref to send of the Swede. I was so happy when he got smacked in the face later, bastard square head.

Then in the Argentina Mexico match how did Heinze stay on the pitch. He is my favourite Man Utd player but when he took out the Mexican attacker he was the last defender and that should have been a red card. Plus the Swiss ref's performance had more holes in it than a cheese. They are so inconsistent it is so frustrating!!!

Anyway here is the last comment on Graham Poll.

I found this on the official Yahoo World Cup Site. This is the dream team of players leaving after the group stages, what do you think???

Team (4-3-3): Cech (Czech Republic); Eboue (Côte d'Ivoire), R Kovac (Croatia), Vidic (Serbia and Montenegro), Lee Y-P (Korea Republic); Nakata (Japan), Yorke (Trinidad and Tobago), Rosicky (Czech Republic), Nedved (Czech Republic); Drogba (Côte d'Ivoire), Kezman (Serbia and Montenegro). Subs: Kawaguchi (Japan), Jaidi (Tunisia), Acuna (Paraguay), Baros (Czech Republic), Prso (Croatia).

Oz envy

Sorry Ozkanka but I had to post these. Here is what I will be drinking for the next few days in the You Ess of Eh!



And here is what you all will be drinking in Turkey thanks to Tekel and the Turkish Government



and here is a great T shirt I found on the SMH web site whihc you pointed me to in your blog....



I am officially supporting Oztrailer now that the You Ess of Eh! has been sent home much to my Colonial Master husbands complete and utter disgust.....although he did jump from his seat, punch the air and shout yes, get in you bastard, when Kewell scored!!!!!!

Turkey at the World Cupl

Yes you read the title right. I know Turkey are not there but what about the players for other countries who play in Turkey, how are they doing, do you care well you should if they play for your team because if they are doing well the chances are they will be leaving which if truth to be told is good news for Galatasaray.

Galatsaray:
Marek Heinz - Czech Republic. Played for 13 minutes 1 game. Gone home already.
Sasa Ilic - Serbia and Montenegro. Played for 90 minutes 1 game. Gone home already.
Stjepan Tomas - Croatia. Played 1 game 82 minutes, 2 handballs. Gone home already.

Impressive eh!!

Fenerbahce:
Steven Appiah - Ghana captain. Played 3 games, 270 minutes, 1 goal. Through to second round.

Goodbye Appiah!!!! Shame........not.

Ankaraspor:
Richard Kingson - Ghana. Played 3 games, 270 minutes conceded 3 goals, through to second round.
Dragosalv Jervic - Serbia and Montenegro. 3 games 270 minutes, conceded 10 goals, gone home already.

Erciyesspor:
Riadh Bouazizi - Tunisia. Played 3 games, 188 minutes gone home already.

Samsunspor:
Anis Ayari - Tunisia. 2 games 146 minutes. Gone home already.

Gaiantepspor:
Sofiane Melliti - Tunisia. 0 games 0 minutes. Gone home already.

Trabzonspor'
Eul Yong Lee - South Korea. 2 games 112 minutes. Gone home already.

Switzerland:
Hakan Yakin - Through to second round.

Not exactly stunning stuff but at least the Turkish League is providing employment for some of the also rans!!!! There are other players who used to play in Turkey, as well but I have left those out. Anybody knows I have missed someone please let me know and I will update the list accordingly.

I really do wonder how long Appiah will stay after his performace to date though.

The worst referee in the World???

Is Graham Poll the worst referee in football. If you read the hysterical comments published in the Guardian and littering the cybersphere you would certainly think so but I have to say that in this case I disagree. First of all the Swiss idiot who runs FIFA, Splatter has opf course got his own take on things. He is quoted as saying "I'm not surprised about the reaction. There are people there and one of them should have intervened and run on to the field and said, 'Stop, stop.'

"That's why they have the communication system. The assistants and the fourth official have the right to call on the referee and tell him. It is not understandable how this happened."

Splatter seems to have fogotten that the refs and linesmen are miked up!!! Plonker. Of course he has yet to make commnents on referees who give penalties for nothing and send players off for breathing on others, the Swiss (no surpise there then) in Spain Ukraine and Merk in any match you care to mention but then they speak German so must be okay!!! FIFA also have themselvesd to blame, they asked no instructed refs to target time wasting, dissent etc. and the refs have been doing except to the Bazilians of course. The players know it so in my view if they throw or kick a ball away they only have themselves to blame.

Anyway on the specific accustaions, yes he gave three yellow cards and has admitted as much so that was definitley a mistake. As for the two penalties not given, the first one for the rugby tackle should have been easily spotted by the linesman as Poll maybe could not see clearly what was happening. Same for the second handball. When I watched the match I did not see Tomas, Galatsaray's best defender, make contact with his hand. It was only from the fifth slow motion replay that it could be seen. If you check where Poll was there was no way he could have seen it as Tomas's hand was below the level of the other heads. Mistake, absolutely not.

Remember the officials work as a team and the linesman can bring the referee's attention to incidents. This is especially true of the yellow card issue, was no-one else taking notes?????

Of course alot of the Oztrailer supporters are making a huge fuss conveniently forgetting that the linesman allowed an offside goal and that in the Japan Oz game Japan had a clear penalty claim waved away for a clear foul by Cahill a couple of minutes after Oz had scored. What goes around comes around!

Did Poll have a good game, maybe not but I really dont think he deserves the abuse handed out by clueless plonkers who have maybe never played the game and definitley not refereed one with Splatter breathing down you neck.

And before Ozkanka thinks I am being anti Oz I will be wearing the gold and green when they line up to take on the spaghetti eating diving girly men from the shit container that is the boot of Italy......

The good, the bad and the ugly

Tremedous day of football in Germany. The US lost to Ghana but played reasonably well. I do however think that the referee, Markus Merk had a large infuence on the game with the ridiculous penalty award, contrast that to the rugby tackle on Viduka in the Oztrailer game that was not given. On thing about Ghana I don't like is the diving that went on as the game progressed, too much Eyetalian footie watching I think.

Then on to the thud and blunder of Croatia and Oztrailer. Great game, maybe not the prettiest technically but hugely entertaining and tense and with the best goalkeeper mistake of the tournament. Amazingly for a country that is so good at sports that involve catching a ball that the Ozkeeper could not catch a slow moving football! Graham Poll also did well given the circumstances although Simunic should have been sent off about 5 minutes before he was. Hate to say it but one of our own, Tomas should have given up two penalties as he handled the ball twice, the first given the second not. Anyway history was made by the Ozzies, Porknaldo also made history and I hope the French go out tomorrow!

The good


The bad



and the ugly



I wonder when OzKanka will be sober enough to post!!!

The gay swede.....draws

Dams, damn, damn, for a moment there it looked like fast Freddy the gay diving swede was going to lose to Ingerlland but of course some comedy club defending allowed Larsson to score in the last minute. Oh well.

Overall though England looked better although with Owen and possibly Neville out for the remainder of the matches they may struggle later, that is on the assumption they beat Ecuador which I think they should. I tell you what though if Cole was called Colenaldo the entire football media would be dribbling all over their knees after thye goal he scored today. And just think he will be fourth choice at Chelski next season behind Lampard, Essien, Makelele, Bollocks, Mikel and the half dozen other assorted internationals the inflated ego thinks he needs.

So Sweden play Germany next. I hope fast Freddy and his mates stuff them!!!!

Anyone looking for a hotel in Turkey for the summer or wondering what to see check this website out.

Officially bad

With an average of 5 yellow cards per match and a number of reds it would seem that this World Cup could be considered a vicious dirty affair. Well not really. Leaving aside Italian Elbow Jobs there have not been that many really bad fouls or dirty games. I mean even the France Korea match attracted 4 yellow cards and there was hardly a bad tackle. I have watched many EPL games where only one or two cards are issued and there are many more physical challenges. I am obvioulsy not going to comment on Turkish ref's in this regard!!

One thing I have noticed is that in the World Cup the referee's appear to belioeve they just have to shout at players and not talk to them like the refs in the EPL do. Markus Merk set the tone in the Brazil Oztrailer game by basically shouting at the players after the first tackle. Then of course every time some poncy overhyped girly hair sporting Brazilian fell over he awarded a free kick. Obviously the Brazilians have been checking up on Nobhead's art of cheating video collection which by now runs to many DVD's. One thing else I noticed is that every time the Brazilians fell over they grabbed the ball with their hands effectively forcing Merk to give a free kick or daring him to red card them for deliberate hand ball! And lets face it who is going to send of Kaka or Ronaldinho!!! Talk about cheating, I wonder what Splatter would say about that!!!!

Having seen how the Ozzies took the game to Brazil and the very ordinary defending that was present I have a feeling that if a team with a really good playmaker, which lets face it is something the Ozzies do not have, but the same attacking attitude to take on the Brazilians could probably get a result. I hope so.

Bye for now....

Ouch!!!!!!

Who would have thought it, a great and enthralling game played between the US and Italy. The game finished 1-1 and the red card count 2-1 to the US. I have to eat some humble pie as a day after saying the Yanks can't tackle well tackle they certainly did, if a little bit too much at times! However I have some sympathy for the Masroeni as the replay showed he actually got the ball first and whilst it may have been 999/1000 a yellow card, a red card it certainly was not. I guess the total overreaction from the spaghetti eating diving cheat Pirlo helped make up the anti-Yankee referess mind for him. No wonder no-one watches Italian football! De Rossi deserved his, when you look at the player, throw the elbow and make no attempt at the ball its a red card all the way. Pope was perhaps a bit unlucky, certainly in the EPL he would not have been sent off but the ref seemed to want to make the headlines for all the wrong reason tonight. I hope Splatter is pleased that a great game was marred by the ridiculous refereeing performance. Lets hope that's the last we see of that useless moron.

Anyway tomorrow sees the Oz Brazil fest and the Croatia Japan love in. Will Oz Kanak be happy drunk or sad drunk tomorrow....only time will tell. I hope Oztrailer win if only so we get to see the inflatable sheep .........

Surprises and certainties

Well that was a somewhat surprising result, Ghana beating the Czech's 2-0. It could perhaps have been more with the penalty miss and Cech performing heroics in goal. What a difference 5 days can make, the same Czezh team that ripped the US apart were themselves made to look very ordinary by Ghana. I hate to admit it but Appiah had an excellent game, lets hope someone buys him from FB!!!

As for the rest well England are looking ordinary although they have not conceded a goal and against TnT were much better, just could not put the ball in the net!. Argentina are looking awesome but really do you want to peak for the group games or the knockout phase, the performance against Serbia will have given a lot of info to the knockout stage opposition!

Anyway here's hoping that the US can at least draw with Italy this afternoon....

OOps

Its safe to say that football or soccer has been dealt a blow here in the US of A by the crap display of the US team against the Czech's. Apparently 2.3million houselholds watched the match but I wonder how many switched off before the end. If only the team had played the way they talked!!

Whilst I cannot say there was the same sort of fever around that you find in most other countries when their team is in the World Cup there has been more interest shown by people here and more people seem aware that something is happening in Germany. But given the USA's performance in 2002 and contrast that with this year (so far) the locals are already beginning to lose interest. Americans love winning, a draw does not exist for them as they fail to appreciate the subtelties of the beautiful game. So unless the team can pull its collective finger out and win the next two games and progress, the cause of football may be hurt for a couple of years.

Bruce Arena's comments after the match should also be examined. Yes a number of players were awful, Beasley was non-existant and I lost count of how many times he passed backwards, Donavon, was he playing, the defence was poor especially for the first goal. However Arena deserves criticicm for playing Beasley out of position and maybe for not doing his homework on the Czech's. All the focus was on Koller and Nedved, had he never heard of Rosicky!

Having watched the Italy Ghana match I have a feeling that the US will struggle against them both. Italy because of their tactical acumen and skill and Ghana because of their physical presence. One problem the US based players have is that MLS is effectively non-contact so the players have a hard time adjusting to the physical game and I am sure that the match against Ghana will be physical.

I hope the US can improve and at least get a result but I fear for them....

Anyway onwards and upwards.....

Oztrailer set the sun on Japan

What a good game. I wonder when Oz Kanka will be sober enough to post anything remotely sensible!!

For 80 mins though it looked like Oztrailer were going to continue their fine tradition of never scoring a goal in the Workd Cup Finals and then suddenly 3 in eight minutes. The first a tad lucky but the second two excellent ones. Even the first could have been a penalty for handball but what the hell they all count. I bet the ref was glad though that his mistake in allowing the Japanese goal to stand after a somewhat blatant bodycheck on Schwarzer did not in the end affect the outcome. So all Oztrailer need to do now is beat the Oztrailer supply team from Croatia and draw with Brazil....easy really.

As for the other game yesterday, well Portugal looked good for 55 minutes until Ronaldo left and Mexico alos looked proimising whilst perhaps being a tad flattered by the 3-1 score, personally I thought 2-1 would have been a fairere reflection, but hey since when was football fair.

Anyway the TV is warming up for the US match so its bye for now.

Oh yes, Oztrailer basically got a Get OUt of Jaoil Free card today, how the first settlers would have wished for the same thing............tee hee!!!!!!!!!

And finally

Well the World Cup has started at last with a great opening ceremony and two goal filled matches on Friday when all of the US of A was at work, myself included.

Yes I know my blog title says I work from home and I do but I do also have to attend meetings and such like and of course the Americans I work with simply fail to understand about the WC so schedule meetings when there are matches. Oh well. Luckily Yahoo have a world cup dedicated site where you can get video highlights of the matches....full marks to Yahoo.

I have to say that I am fairly stress free for this World Cup. The reason, well I decided not to support any particular team but always the underdog, unless its France. So far I have supported Costa Rica, Ecuador, Paraguay (much to the Husband's disgust), Trinidad and Tobago, and Ivory Coast although the latter was a bit reluctantly with my aversion to diving cheats called Drogba.

Today's matches were more typical of the opening group games, England I guess did just enough to win. Trinidad and Tobago played extremely well even they were playing 12 men as the referee certainly seemed to favor the Swedes. I thought the Swedes were a bit too arrogant and I certainly felt that Wilhelmsen's acting got Avery John sent off as the TnT player clearly got the ball first. Also it seemed that every time a Swedish player was tackled they expected a free kick. I guess playing in yellow and blue can do that to players!!!!!

Good to see Heinze back in action after missing most of Man Utd's season. WHat a valuable player he is and his running battle with Drogba was an interesting subplot in the Argentina, Ivory Coast game.


So whilst I am glad the World Cup is on I am of course dissapointed that Turkey are not there but like I said I am not going to get too stressed becasue of that!

Where can I sign up....

Thanks to Ahmet Hoca I see there is a party in New York in the near future to celebrate coming second in the league but being top of the fines chart. I was going to sign up for this .......but lost my pen, damn shame!!!!!

So Rooney is fit, Oztrailer had a convincing win against......Liechtentstien. I guess its hard to be concentrating on the football when the opposition includes the bank clerk who you have just checked your account with, Harry!

In anticipation......

Broken bones and football in the US of A

So two days to go to the start of the World Cup and a couple of hours in which the entire English nation, if you believe the press will hold its collective breath whilst Wazza goes for a scan on his broken toe. I have to say I hope he plays in the finals as the World Cup should have the best players from the teams that qualify so that the winners can really say they are the World Champions. Of course given the dearth of tickets made available to the normal fan by that champion of the peoples game, Splatter, the winners will celebrate in front of a bunch of corporate sponsors but hey count the dollars and screw the real fan. As I read recently Splatter is a guy who has 50 ideas a day, 51 of them bad.....

Thanks to Oz Kanka for a link to an excellent story about football in the US and the possible rise of the US to be a footballing superpower. I am not going to dissect the article but have to say that I agree with what is said in it. How will countries like Sweden, Norway etc. with their very limited populations hope to compete against a team from a country with such a huge number of people playing the game. Of course finding the best players may become the problem for the US, as finding 22 players from an overall population of over 200million will need a very good scouting network. But let me tell you football here is extremely well organized. Iwas watching a show about the South California Youth Team championships on Fox Soccer Channel the other day. Each team in each age group had a dedicated coach, and most were English, and the tactics, organization and level of talent was very impressive for an under 18's tournament. Scouts from colleges and MLS teams were there and the best will get noticed, scouted and progress. I would say that in about 10 years the US could really begin to dominate.

I agree with the article writer about the advertising campaign in the US though. The Nike soccer ads with Cantona is okay but the better one is by Gatorade showing the US team on their travels, excellent ad. Of course the NBA Championship series starts Thursday with the Dallas Mavericks and the O'Neill Heat so despite the fact that the WC kick's off Friday I still feel that overall more Americans will be watching that than the WC. One thing I notice here is that football is about participation, not watching. A lot of the parents who take their kids to soccer go home and watch Baseball or basketball, sitting through 2 x 45 minutes with no commercials is such an alien concept that they find it difficult to adjust. However once the kids who are playing today become parents the situation might change and the US media will have to start catering for their choices instead of ignoring football and hoping it will go away so they can concentrate on steroid abusers (Baseball), circus freaks, (basketball), steroid abusing circus freaks (NFL), racing cars around oval tracks interminably (Nascar) and hockey, which at least is ugly and proud of it!

Anyway time to go,......

The start of the week

So another week starts and brings us a day closer to the World Cup. I must say that I am glad that finally the US seems to be understanding that there is a major sporting event happening that the rest of the World finds more interesting and compelling. The only downside is that the NBA Finals start on Thursday with the Miami Heat and Dallas Mavericks competing for the World Championship!!! What I did find amazing was that 30,000 tuned up in Cleveland to watch the US play Venezuela in a friendly last week on a cool and rainy Friday evening. And the best thing is all games on ESPN, ESPN2 and abc. Amazing!!! Anybody who managed to get tickets for the World Cup, good on ya despite Splatters best efforts to keep the game of the people in the hands of the corporate sponsors and hopitality types. Now there is a man who has 50 ideas a day, 51 of them bad!!!

I am feeling somewhat happy today. The Kadikoy Mafia seem to be falling to pieces at the moment. The Chairman has quit, no he hasn't, yes he has, Cokehead has quit and instead that idiot Scolari appears to maybe have said yes or no, Bolton want to buy Anelka, Nobhead has gone to BJK and the club seems to be in so much turmoil. Excellent. For more read Turkish Soccer.

Lots of friendlies over the weekend or in Oztrailers case not so friendly game kicking assorted Dutchies all over the pitch. Carry on like that and the upside downers will have no team left to even play Croatia, which will leave a certain blogger rather upset. England crushed Jamaica, Croatia lost to Poland, Brazil beat New Zealand and so on.

As for Galatasaray the silence is deafening, still no real news on transfers. Its the same for the Mancs, I guess all teams are waiting for Cheslki to stop buying all available players.

Anyway better go, my dogs are demanding their walk and the cats need feeding.

New Additions

I tell you going without football at the moment is as bad as stopping smoking! With the build up to the World Cup going on at least there are some friendly matches where Turkey have done okay with a relatively inexperienced squad. Good game yesterday though with England thrashing the Reggae Boyyz 6-0. Anyway its 5 days to go and then one month and 64 games all through June and July, perfect.

I thought I would take this lull in action to show you the latest additions to my family. I rescued what I thought was a young black cat a few weeks ago and called her Kara. Over the weeks she started to expand and I realised she was pregnant. A couple of weeks ago she gave birth to 4 healthy kittens and here they are with their eyes open.



I have named the kittens Pingu, Bob, Eto'o and Luxor.

They are all well and will of course become die hard Galatasaray supporters despite being black and white.

Bye for now everybody