Off-topic: Sport
As a Wales-Swansea-Chelsea-Federer fan, what a great week! Wales win the grand slam, Federer beats Nadal, Swansea beat Man City and Fulham, Chelsea beat Napoli and now Torres scores twice and is man of the match in the FA Cup. Of course if you’re not a Wales-Chelsea-Swansea-Federer fan, maybe not such a great week.
Where are all the sports fans? What a triumph for Chelsea against adversity! Let’s have some good old fashioned arguments, i mean reasoned debates, on the respective merits of players, teams, past and present, across different sports. Come on, let’s be ’avin yer.
Bayern 2 – 1 Chelski
Here’s a great cycling film
@ Mais1, pahaha that is great! I do hope Bayern win. I hate on John Terry
What? Terry won’t be playing and he did already slip up in one final shoot-out. Then again, he might lift the trophy, and it would appear he has racist tendencies, but so do others….Bayern should win with home advantage and Chelsea’s central defence problems, but there may yet be an extraordinary turn-up after so many Chelsea near misses. Fingers crossed for fate to shine on the underdogs….
Didn’t Terry fuck a teammate’s wife, too? Sounds like a worthless assclown all around.
@ Kenji
I know but he is part of Chelsea. I can name the people I like on that team on one hand. Di Matteo seems like a nice chap
OK, for various odd reasons, I’m a Gunners fan. But mostly, I love to hate Man Utd. like all decent people should. So what’s this with this strange news of Man City on top? I so wish I had seen some of these games.
@ Jerry: Terry fucked Bridge’s girlfriend, not wife, but isn’t she free, not a possession anyway? Still, playing with fire on a team-mate is gonna make things awkward, undermine the team and feel like a betrayal, sure
@ Cosi. Ramires has been likeable and excellent this season. If Chelsea win Champions League i may concentrate more/divert to Swansea, the Barcelona of Wales, who were in old 4th divison when i started supporting Chelsea in 69..and went to top of the league in early 80s (as i predicted) then right back down again, then back up.
Come to think of it. i’m not overjoyed with many Chelsea players either. And i don’t like the owner. Dirty money. It’s not easy to break a life-time habit and stop supporting a team though. Mourinho, now he’s the special one and would be welcome back, even if he can moan with the best of em. Di Matteo’s done a great job. I was very pleased Torres kept working hard for the team this season, making goals before scoring himself.
The sex scandals round Terry and Ashley Cole remind me of playing Rugby for Verdun in France years ago- we went off to Paris to see France v All Blacks, and then someone suggested a raffle to savour the delights of the ladies of the Rue St Denis. I was young and single and innocent- i’d never seen anything like it- but a lot of the dirty old dogs were married and should have been disqualified…
Craaaaazy premiership. Happy for Man City, Mancini is ok
yes, always great to see new blood….
….having some oil money doesn’t hurt…
Windies Eng test @ Lords today. Hope Windies put up a fight but it’s cold so they won’t enjoy the fielding. Pretty sure Eng will walk the test series and Windies will actually show up for the one day and 2020. Gayle will be back for those
£500 billion, could do very nicely to sort out the Euro crisis, save Greece…i’m sure being left £1 billion, the rest wouldn’t be noticed missing.
i hope the Windies win and start restoring their glorious tradition. Viv Richards still the most majestic and magnificent batsman of my lifetime. That 189 v England still the best one day innings. I served some of their players when working at a pub as a student in Leeds in 1980, and got into the match free..
Congratulations Kenji and all Chelsea fans- a well-deserved victory against Bayern in their own turf!
Thanks, Nightshift. :) Have you changed your name? I tend to miss these things
Sad day for Football. Chelsea is the worst winner of a major trophy since Greece. The defensiveness, the ugliness and a whole shitload of luck have prevailed. Yay. :((
6 semi-finals, 2 lost penalty shoot-outs, bad ref v Liverpool, disgraceful ref v Barca and away goals rule in 09: Chelsea were due some luck. 3-1 down to Napoli, 2-0 down v Barca away with 10 men, 1-0 down with 8 minutes left v Bayern away and 1-0 down in penalty shoot-out: that took heroic effort. Tt wasn’t simply a tale of 1-0 grinding, but coming back against the odds. I loved watching teams like Brazil 70, Holland in 74, but when Italy won 82 world cup, beating beautiful Brazilian attacking football on the way i didn’t begrudge them. Attacking football works sometimes, other times it progresses from challenges posed by defensive tactics. The sport evolves. This is hardly the end of attacking football. Barca’s style has been shown to have limitations.
I’m sorry, Kenji, but I’am agree with Chambord_RO. Bayern deserved to win. Di Matteo winner of a Champion’s League it’s quite a shame but many Chelsea players, Drogba, Lampard, Cole, Cech are real champions and they deserved it. Anyway, congratulations to all Chelsea fans
(p.s. I’m an Inter fan :)
Bayern created more, of course. Let’s not forget they had home advantage. I think Chelsea were slightly more disadvantaged by the players missing: Terry, Ivanovic, Ramires.. Chelsea, with better teams than now, should surely have won it a couple of earlier occasions among the near misses. Terry slipping for crucial penalty v Man Utd. 09 semi v Barca was shameful- that annoyed me, as did the 02 world cup refereeing S Korea v Spain and Italy. Bayern were lucky in 75 v Leeds, unlucky v Man Utd in 99. There are still some clubs i consider unlucky like Luton and Cardiff who keep just missing out at their level, for promotion etc, while Hearts had near misses in Scotland, making up for that with the Cup yesterday. Holland deserved to win a world cup in the 70s- they lost each time to the team playing at home.
To call Chelsea winning a sad day for football is probably taking it too far. Though i’m no fan of Abramovic, i think there’s too much obsession with the Champions League and money at the expense of other competitions, devaluing the FA Cup, and capitalism has concentrated power too much in a small number of clubs and countries’ leagues. Chelsea winning could be considered quite good for the profile of African players- a pity we don’t have African clubs at the very top, but their top players are in rich European countries.
Greece were boring and defensive in winning Euro, but they were underdogs who did their best and other teams should have been more creative to overcome their discipline. Their failure shouldn’t be blamed on Greece- even though i really wanted Portugal to win and was cheesed off at the time.
I was conflicted last night. I follow Spurs, but I wanted an English team to win :)
When Chelsea reached the semi v Barca there were pundits and journalists here who said they should concentrate instead on qualifying for next season’s Champions League by coming 4th in the Premier League, as they had no chance of winning the Champions League. That attitude, which i despise, has undermined football, the idea that money is more important than a trophy, never mind the defeatism that would leave power with only the teams considered best. The Premier League is now too important due to marketing and money, more so than the FA Cup, for which clubs often pick weakened teams. The FA Cup was undermined by the money men and FIFA wanting Man Utd in an inter-continental tournament, and by having semi-finals and divisions’ play-offs at Wembley too. Again, money ahead of romantic tradition.
Anyway, Chelsea didn’t settle for being also rans or simply for a seemingly more likely route to money- they rode their luck but kept belief when struggling. Football gained from them not handing over the cup to the likes of Barca without a fight. If Chelsea simply hacked their way to winning or relied on corrupt officials, that would be bad for football, as it would have been if Holland- even though unlucky in the 70s- had beaten Spain in the World Cup final.
Luck, or as we say ‘good bounce’ is part of football.
A Penalty shootout is a dreadful way to break a tie- hell, perhaps that’s the teams’ punishment for not scoring a winning goal in regular time. There were enough gaping lapses on Chelsea’s back line at the startof the 2nd half which Bayern failed to exploit.
I’m a lifelong Liverpool and Brasil supporter but I believe Chelsea deserved it as much as Bayern. Any team who can reach the semifinal of any major competition had surely done their time, beat the odds and deserved to go all the way.
I’m thinking anyway i should concentrate more on Swansea as #1 team to support. Well, i follow both teams, but really i feel i should be a Swansea fan foremost. With Abramovic i feel a bit of guilt. I’ve been very pleased with the way Swansea played this season. Can they keep it up? Is Martinez going to Liverpool? He did a good job at Swansea in the Championship. Do you remember Toshack taking Swansea to top of the old 1st division in the early 80s?
Change to cycling: I see there’s a new book on Eddy Merckx mentioned in the Sunday paper. I may get it, his achievements over several years were incredible, how he swept all before him in various races, fearlessly going for it whether on flat or mountains or sprint finishes or time trials or 1 hour record..
TeamRafa \o/
AVB seems to be favorite though, more so than Martinez.
Toshack is a legend. It’s unfortunate that his successful managerial spell in Spain didn’t materialise while in charge of Wales.
Recently Fabio Capello seems to be showing interest in managing LFC.
I’m down for Capello. I’m down for anybody at this point really, I hate the damn suspense.
Kenji, according to the shitty papers Torres is an “outcast” and is in “rage over final snub”.
£10m sounds good to me…
Cosi
Ha ha ha fuck Tottenham wide boy chavs! Wenger “I love Tomas Rosicky”
I do not really support Arsenal but I hate on Tottenham