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Saturday, April 12, 2008

La Liga - Henry laments positional change




Thierry Henry fears his scoring instincts have been dulled by playing on the left wing instead of centre forward at Barcelona.

"Honestly, it can be a problem," Henry told French sports daily L'Equipe in an interview on Friday.

"When [France] played in Spain in February, I was lost up front, I didn't know where to run. My reflexes in front of goal are not what they used to be.

"Hopefully, I will play up front again with France before the Euro [2008] finals," he said.

Henry became France's all-time top scorer in October and has netted 44 goals in 98 internationals.

He remains coach Raymond Domenech's first choice for the Euro 2008 finals in June despite competition from Lyon's Karim Benzema and a resurgent Nicolas Anelka.

The former Arsenal forward joined Barcelona last year but has failed to live up to expectations from fans and media.

"You can't compare with what I used to do with Arsenal. It is impossible," Henry told L'Equipe.

"Here, I am the guy who plays on the left, only the guy who plays on the left. Once again, you can't score as many goals whether you play in the box or, like I do, you start running 60 yards from goal.

"I have never run so much in my whole career."

Henry was deployed as a winger during an unsuccessful early-career stint at Italian side Juventus, before being converted to a prolific centre forward by Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

Despite his complaints, Henry naturally assumes a position on the left of the pitch even when playing as a centre forward, and it was from the left-hand side that Henry scored many of his most famous goals for the North London club.

Is Football more important more important than life and death?




“It’s just a game. Twenty-two stupid men chasing a ball around a pitch.” We’ve all heard it said. In fact, when our team have lost a game we have even been known to say it ourselves. Usually after the fourth or fifth pint.

Bill Shankly once famously said that football was more important than life and death.

Apart from my friends and family I am somewhat ashamed to say that Football is the most important thing in my life. I know that many people in the world would think that makes me a very sad individual indeed, but I’m not alone.

If it is one of the most important things in my life then surely it can’t just be a stupid game. If it is not as important as friends and family then it surely isn’t more important than life or death.

So that’s what I am going to try to look at today. Why is football so important to me and to millions of others? What is it about the game that takes over my life?

Ahmed Bilal started the website Soccerlens “to put all the time he and his friends spent talking about football to good use.”

I became a football writer because I watched and talked about little else in my life and it seemed a sensible way to try to earn a living. At least I can give my wife a realistic excuse for wanting to watch Accrington Stanley against Dagenham and Redbridge on the television. Now it is for my career. In the past it was because I was a sad old git.

I should give you some background on my own life within football. As a youngster I captained my school side and everyone agreed that I was a very promising player indeed. Like millions of young boys I dreamed of lifting the FA Cup at Wembley in the famous old yellow shirt of Watford. (OK, maybe there aren’t millions who dream the yellow shirt bit.)

Despite everything looking good my playing career was cruelly cut short when I discovered that I had a serious and indeed, career threatening, lack of talent. There is no doubt that I had a good football brain. I knew exactly what should be done and to a certain extent I could do it. The problem was that the extent to which I could do it was never going to be better than local league standard.

I kept the dream going but despite a series of adequate performances for Bushey in the Watford and District league, my big chance of fame with a top club never materialized. Sometimes, if there was a man watching who I thought might be a scout for a professional club, I even put my cigarette out before walking on the pitch. I was very dedicated indeed.

I never, ever drank alcohol on the morning of a match and I nearly always got to bed at some point the night before a game. I was setting these sort of standards long before the continental approach to football fitness and living your life right hit the English game.

I continued playing until I was thirty-seven when I realised that not only could I not do the little I used to be able to do when I was younger anymore, I also realised that on a Sunday, I was still in pain from the game seven days previously.

All through those years I spent thousands of pounds and hours watching Watford play all over the country. If there was football on television I watched it. If there was a conversation about football I joined in. If there was an article about football I read it.

Now, everything has changed. Well, actually it hasn’t. I don’t follow Watford all over the country anymore, but I still see them occasionally and now I go to watch Salisbury City as well.

So why is it all so important to me? The fact is that the World can be a pretty miserable place. There are bombs and wars. There is famine and disease. There are terrible crimes of violence. There is an endemic drug problem and corruption in public life. Watching the news on television is one of the most depressing things that anyone can do. Is there nothing nice or good going on in the entire world?

Yes there is. It’s called football. People in every country in the world including, hopefully soon, the USA love the game. They love it’s passion, colour, intensity, skill, tactical appreciation, pace and beauty.

Football truly is an international language. You could walk into a remote village in Africa and ask the people who they support and they will tell you; they could have a conversation about Manchester United or David Beckham. If you took a football with you and kicked it to someone they would kick it back.

I used to be a Police Officer and on night duty we would play football with the youths in town who were regarded as ‘trouble makers’.

In World War one there was the famous occasion when the troops took time out from trying to kill each other in order to have a game of footy.

The USA could play Iraq at football. Bosnia have played Serbia. Football is one thing in this sad world that can unite us all. I think that makes it pretty important.

The game gives so much pleasure to millions of people around the world. We watch it, play it, talk about it, read about it and yes, disagree and argue about it, but we are all united by a common love of the game.

So do I think Bill Shankly was right? No, it’s not more important than life or death, but it’s pretty close

Friday, April 4, 2008

Rafa set to ring the changes




Rafael Benitez could gamble on wholesale changes when Liverpool return to the Emirates Stadium tomorrow for the second of three clashes with Arsenal in seven days.

With Arsenal still in with a shout of the Premier League crown, the chances of Arsene Wenger making such dramatic changes for this league clash are less likely.


But Liverpool will have looked at the run-in that they and fifth-placed Everton have got and seen that the Toffees must also go to the Emirates and they also have to play Chelsea.

So with a five-point lead in the race for the final Champions League spot going into the weekend - and a far superior goal difference - Liverpool have more breathing space than Arsenal and therefore it is likely most of Liverpool's big guns will be left on the sidelines.

Fernando Torres, taken off in the final minutes of Wednesday's 1-1 Champions League draw, is highly unlikely to be risked again if only to make sure that he avoids injury ahead of Tuesday's semi-final second leg against the Gunners at Anfield.

And there is every chance that skipper Steven Gerrard, Sami Hyypia, Jamie Carragher, Dirk Kuyt and Ryan Babel could be rested for this one.

Benitez, who could play Peter Crouch and fit-again Andriy Voronin up front, said: 'I will need to think carefully about my team for the league match. Torres and Gerrard will need to be strong for the second leg, and Kuyt ran himself to a standstill on Wednesday.

'Some players recover in two or three days, others need four. Maybe we will need to change some players.

'The age may be the key. Fernando can recover in two days, but Sami could take five. We will have to wait and see.

'I am expecting to make changes, I cannot expect them to play three times like that in seven days, certainly with the very high tempo of the games.

'It is impossible to play these same players three times in a week. Impossible.'

Liverpool's fringe players could well find themselves thrown into this Emirates clash, with Alvaro Arbeloa, Steve Finnan, John Arne Riise, Crouch, Lucas, Voronin and Jermaine Pennant all in line for call-ups.

Suspended Javier Mascherano will obviously be out but it is debatable whether he would have played tomorrow even if the FA had not given him an extra two-game ban for the charge that followed the Argentinian's red card at Old Trafford.

Liverpool's priorities are also clear to Babel, who accepts he may be rested for the match.

'The boss will have to make decisions now on who to start and who to rest,' he said.

'It will be impossible to play with the same eleven in three games against Arsenal.

'I think, in this situation, rotation is maybe good.

'We flew back from London on Wednesday night after the match, and we will go back today. It's a hard few days, mentally difficult.

'On Thursday we had a light training session, and then we will rest and discuss tactics and how we will play in the league match.

'Rafa will have already seen the first game back a couple of times to tell us what we did good and bad. He will now tell us how we can do better.'

Beckham: Galaxy star scores in MLS win




David Beckham scored his first goal of the Major League Soccer season to help the Los Angeles Galaxy to a 2-0 win over the San Jose Earthquakes.

The England midfielder also laid on his side's second for Landon Donovan, helping his side to their first victory of the campaign following last weekend's opening defeat to the Colorado Rapids.

Playing the full 90 minutes, Beckham was played in by Donovan's eighth-minute pass and his low right-foot shot beat visiting goalkeeper Joe Cannon.

Beckham's chipped through ball returned the favour in the 36th minute, Donovan lobbing Cannon from the edge of the area.

After the game, Beckham expressed delight with his match fitness, admitting it is a far cry from last season.

"Last year, I was probably 50% fit when I started," he said.

"I was playing in games I shouldn't have been and it just sort of went downhill from there. I feel great after two games and my England game, so I'm ready to get on with it.

"It's important from my part and the team's that (I'm) here from the beginning.

"Last year, there were a lot of distractions and I think I suffered from that - and also the team.

"I'm happy to be through the pre-season and ready to play. Last year, I wasn't even training and I was playing. It wasn't good. That's not right to do and I won't do it again."

Beckham's goal was just his second for the Galaxy but he chose to focus on the team's display, saying: "I think tonight was a good team performance.

"After our first game, which was difficult to take, we worked hard tonight and played well and that makes us happy."

Los Angeles coach Ruud Gullit agreed with his Beckham's assessment.

"I thought we played an excellent game," he said. "Tactically, I thought we had a good awareness of the team.

"You could see the difference in the work rate from the last game.

"I'm still saying that there has to be something said about the altitude in Colorado that makes it hard to play there."

Arsenal vs Liverpool 1-1 | UEFA Champions League (Quarter-finals)

Fenerbahce vs Chelsea 2-1 | UEFA Champions League (Quarter-finals)

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Pizarro blasts 'spiteful' and 'arrogant' Ronaldo




Roma midfielder David Pizarro rates Cristiano Ronaldo as a great player but reckons the Manchester United winger has a lot to learn regarding sportsmanship.

Pizarro accused Ronaldo of showing arrogance and a lack of respect towards his opponents in United's 2-0 Champions League quarter-final first-leg win in the Eternal City on Tuesday.


Ronaldo, who scored the opener with a stunning header and almost made it 3-0 when he hit the bar, was booed by the home crowd for teasing opposing defenders with his tricks on the pitch.

'Despite the fact that he is a great champion, he is very arrogant,' said Pizarro. 'He does certain spiteful things on the pitch.

'This is the ugliest thing for a player. In the return leg I will have something to say to him.'

The Portugal international defended his actions after helping his team put one foot in the semi-finals.

'It's nothing against my rivals,' said the 23-year-old. 'Those plays are just part of my way of interpreting football.

'I have always done them, even three or four years ago when I was younger.

'But there are plays that I do for the good of the team and never to ridicule my opponents.

'I tried to do the best for Manchester United and not to make a show. It's just a part of who I am.'

Ronaldo believes Roma have improved since last year - when United eliminated the Giallorossi with a humiliating 7-1 defeat at Old Trafford at the same stage of the competition - but says United have also also grown stronger in the last 12 months.

'I don't think we can talk about a Roma weakness but rather about the strength of Manchester United,' he said.

'Last season we didn't know Roma but this time, we have been perfect in defence.'

Despite his team having taken a giant step towards the last four, Ronaldo prefers to remain cautious.

'It would be bad to think we have done the job,' he warned. 'We have next week's game and although a win away from home gives us confidence, we still have to seal qualification.'

Roma vs Manchester United 0-2 | UEFA Champions League (Quarter-finals)

Schalke 04 vs Barcelona 0-1 | UEFA Champions League (Quarter-finals)

Tottenham vs Newcastle 1-4 | English Premier League

Chelsea vs Middlesbrough 1-0 | English Premier League

Liverpool vs Everton 1-0 | English Premier League

Mr woo again

Mr woo amazing freestyle

Ronaldo my season my style