General Football Discussion

[Per]

quote]

I hadn't caught the result.

You're not exaggerating like all English when it comes to your national team?

No, they've been really bad of late. To be honest I'm not terribly nationalistic about footy (or politically) anyway so have never really followed that fanatically, I always used to watch the games though but just can't get into it at the moment.

"You're not exagerating like all English...."hmm, seems I not the only one who's exagerating :D ;)

I had it coming....

But still, IMO your papers write you up every year and you hardly ever perform. Still loosing to NI was alow-point, I have to admit.

[DanK]

The netherlands are even closer after they beat Andorra 4-0 raffie scored and Sneyder and Maduro played some minutes(one came in for the other).Italy is almost there too... and man Thierry Henry's goal :worshippy: class pure class

For class...how nice was Raffie's chip against Andora???

[SPL]

I am not nationalistic about football. Our team is full of over hyped over rated ponces. Coached !!! by a non entity who is paid £5m a year and gives the idea that he does not have a clue. Yes he did win the league with Lazio but spent about £100m to do so.

This is not me sounding off because we lost I really could not give a toss. English footballers believe they come from a different planet and wont ever get my support.

I look forward to the day Ericson resigns and Beckham , the most overrated football ever , retires.

PS The whole of England is cricket mad at the moment and as this sport is my no 1 love I am going to cheer them on against the enemy Australia.

[Venezuelan Ajacied]

The netherlands are even closer after they beat Andorra 4-0 raffie scored and Sneyder and Maduro played some minutes(one came in for the other).Italy is almost there too... and man Thierry Henry's goal :worshippy: class pure class

For class...how nice was Raffie's chip against Andora???

Just watched it :xyxthumbs: nice one. But i cant say the same about Cocu and Ruud. :nooo:

[jakobg]

By the way Jakobg and Per must be jumping after Zlatan`s last minute winner, Sweden 1 Hungary 0 add to that Croacia`s blunder against Malta and it looks like the swede's are heading to the big dance.

Was about to fall asleep after 91 minutes of boring football. The players were poor and had almost no chances to score at all. Hungary was closer to the victory at this time. But with a Zlatan in the team, you should never give up. One hell of a goal he scores on overtime. Aboslutely unbelievable.

[Manneken Pis]

One hell of a goal he scores on overtime. Aboslutely unbelievable.

Anywhere I can see it on the web?

[Over Pasanens Head]

as they said, this is the first time NI have beaten England since 1927!

1927 was the last time they beat us in Belfast with 1972 being the last time they beat us anywhere.

Whatever - a bloody disgrace :redcard:

[carcajou]

as they said, this is the first time NI have beaten England since 1927!

1927 was the last time they beat us in Belfast with 1972 being the last time they beat us anywhere.

Whatever - a bloody disgrace :redcard:

Geez..... Where you there ? ;)

[Over Pasanens Head]

as they said, this is the first time NI have beaten England since 1927!

1927 was the last time they beat us in Belfast with 1972 being the last time they beat us anywhere.

Whatever - a bloody disgrace :redcard:

Geez..... Where you there ? ;)

Cheeky :D

In fact I was there for the 1972 game as I used to go to a lot of England games at that time.

[Per]

Here you go: http://www.aftonbladet.se/atv/player.ht ... lipID=2589

The Zlatan goal against Hungary :headbang:

It's last in the clip, you'll have to see some ads first and the then some "highlights" until Zlatan does his thing.

[jakobg]

Here's a downloadable version of Zlatan's goal:

http://www.spelkontroll.se/martin/hunga ... n_1_0a.mpg

[AsgAarD_xxx]

GOD DAMN YOU, ZLATAN!!!!!!- That headline is almost in every polish newspaper. We had (and still have, I think) a chance to qualify to the World Cup from second place without a games with other teams from 2nd places. After a game against Wales (Poland won 1-0) we prayed for good result in a game Hungary vs Sweden. And the result was fantastic for us... Unfortunately, in 91' Zlatan scored a goal and our plans crashed.

Only 2 best teams from second places will qualify to the World Cup automatically. And Poland fight with Sweden (or maybe Croatia, after their draw against Malta) and Czech Republic of one of this 2 places. Now we must believe that Holland will win (or draw) against Czech Republic on next game. The most optimistic variant for us is draw against England (they've lost against N. Ireland), but I think it will be very hard to do that.


So, LET'S GO HOLLAND!!!!

[SE6Ajacied]

1927 was the last time they beat us in Belfast with 1972 being the last time they beat us anywhere.

Yeah, I saw that today, suppose my "King Statto" crown is slipping, oh well

[SoliloQuy]

I think I could of scored Zlatans goal :D, I don't think it counts when Hungary's goalkeeper wears what he wears in bed!

[English Eagle]

Hey no taking the mickey out of a Palace player thankyou,great goal Zlatan.

[Philippe]

any news about the sanctions against the cheats from juventus ? since they were convincted for massive and continuous doping during the 90's, I was convinced they would have to give the 96 CL trophy back :hypocrite:

[Manneken Pis]

Just saw South Korea have chosen Dicky Advocaat as their new coach.

That's them screwed for the WC then......

[Philippe]

Milan doctor charged with indecent exposure Posted Thursday September 15, 2005LONDON (Reuters) - A doctor attached to Italian Serie A soccer club AC Milan will appear before a court today after being charged with indecent exposure ahead of the team's Champions League match against Manchester United. Armando Gozzini, 44, was arrested on Tuesday night after officers from Greater Manchester Police were told a man had indecently exposed himself to a female employee at a hotel in Salford. "Armando Gozzini has today been charged with indecent exposure following an incident at the Salford hotel on Tuesday, February 22," a police spokeswoman said. He is due to appear before Salford magistrates later on Thursday. In a statement released at Old Trafford shortly before the match kickoff, AC Milan expressed "its full confidence" in club doctor Gozzini. "Doctor Gozzini is a man of the highest professional and moral standing," said the club. "AC Milan believe it is inconceivable that he could have been involved in the action for which he has been charged. "The club hopes to see a swift and satisfactory conclusion to this matter." Milan went on to win Wednesday's game 1-0.

I think van Persie is thinking of moving to Milan, but I am not sure. :inlove2

[DanK]

Just checking the result from last night ado-twente 0 - 0 (yeah thriller!). Then checked the standings...I know its early days, but who would have thought it would look like this:
1 AZ Alkmaar
2 Feyenoord
3 RKC Waalwijk
4 PSV Eindhoven
5 Heracles Almelo
6 Ajax

Again, i know its early, but Heracles??? AZ are looking good to stay near the top.

[jakobg]

Again, i know its early, but Heracles??? AZ are looking good to stay near the top.

This is a common case with newcomers. Just wait a few months and they'll be struggeling in the bottom of the table.

[DanK]

Again, i know its early, but Heracles??? AZ are looking good to stay near the top.

This is a common case with newcomers. Just wait a few months and they'll be struggeling in the bottom of the table.

Yeah...in most cases this is the case. Once the injuries and suspensions kick in it will take its toll.

[Frans]

Again, i know its early, but Heracles???

Maybe their artificial pitch is giving them a bit of an advantage.

[DanK]

Again, i know its early, but Heracles???

Maybe their artificial pitch is giving them a bit of an advantage.

Not much of an advantage...looks like i put the mozz on them. 0-2 at home to RKC.

[Philippe]

Good news from abroad :

RCD Espanyol 1-0 Real Madrid CF

Madrid's woeful start to the season continued in Barcelona as a Daniel Jarque header midway through the second half condemned them to a third defeat in eight days. Madrid found Espanyol goalkeeper Carlos Kameni in sublime form and when Robinho did finally find a way past the obdurate Cameroon international, he was denied by the crossbar. Iván De la Peña also hit the woodwork at the other end before his deep cross was met by the head of Jarque on 68 minutes.

Madrid found themselves further at a loss when Sergio Ramos and then Julio César Baptista were ordered off, the latter receiving a direct red card for a challenge on Jonathan in the dying minutes, and could not find a way back into the game. The loss follows defeats by RC Celta de Vigo and Olympique Lyonnais, and Madrid will hope Zinedine Zidane can make a hasty recovery from the groin strain that continues to rule him out.

Vanderlei Luxemburgo said: "We had a few chances but their goalkeeper stopped everything we threw at him and played a great match. Espanyol were determined to hit us on the counterattack. I'm not looking for excuses because I felt we did enough to win but unfortunately it wasn't to be."

:D

[Over Pasanens Head]

This was taken from a link in Bubble Blowers - it is an absolute classic :D :D


You hear a lot of stories about the dreaded English Football Hooligan. How they fought pitched battles in the streets, rioted in soccer grounds and disgraced the “good” name of Britain on foreign shores. I was there. Sort of. Heading in the opposite direction.
I came late to football. I was born within a stone’s throw of the tip that is Chelsea football ground in London, and my father tried his best to make me go and see the Blues in action. It was awful. Awful ground, awful team, awful supporters, awful match. It was nearly ten years before I went to another football match. That was after my boss heard I was a “lapsed” fan and took me along to the tip that was Reading instead.

I stuck with it for a couple of years. It was quiet, inoffensive fun, and ideal if you wanted to be alone on Saturday afternoons. It was then that my brother saved me from a lifetime of footballing mediocrity and introduced me to the Arsenal. It was a baptism of fire. My first ever Arsenal match was away to West Ham, a bunch of cocky Eastenders whose fans believed they were as hard as nails, but in reality all looked like the Hofmeister bear. There was history too. Recent matches between Arsenal and West Ham had resulted in two deaths. I was shitting meself.

Let’s just add in another couple of factors - this was Arsenal’s first match since winning their first trophy in eight years, and West Ham had just brought back former Arsenal legend Liam Brady back from Italy, and he’d vowed to put one over his old club. Arsenal lost 3-1. Someone had fired a flare into the West Ham fans inside the ground, and after the match there was a pitched battle up and down the Barking Road. It was ace.

Nigel had introduced me to his friends. Mark was a college mate, who hung round with Ginger James, Ritchie and Paul. The latter two were bonafide members of the Arsenal hooligan firm - The Gooners, and while they were having the time of their lives charging up and down the streets of East London, the rest of us hid in a kebab shop. It was the start of something beautiful.

As a matter of fact, if I tell anybody that I once ran with the famous Arsenal Gooners, I do tend not to tell them that any actual running was usually in the direction of “away”. I was running marathons at the time, so I could get a fair old distance between myself and any trouble if needs be. You were perfectly safe in the crowd, singing songs and generally insulting the opposition, but once it “went off”, you were well advised to slink away and leave the actual fighting to your more excitable friends. And they did such a good job of it, too.

Places I have hidden during infamous football riots:

Everton: the back bar in the Stanley Arms. hic!
West Ham: Medina kebab shop
Tottenham: in a hall full of bouncing Jews on the infamous Broadwater Farm estate
Chelsea: The pic’n’mix counter in a Waitrose supermarket
Millwall - at home, under my bed
As I became a regular at Arsenal matches home and away, my cowardice in the face of enemy action increased. You could swagger along, full of bravado, but as soon as the shit hit the fan, it was time to make yourself scarce. I became an expert, and could run away from anything at the drop of a hat. Enemies, friends, old grannies, family picnics, Princess Diana, and on one occasion, the massed pipes and drums of the Scots Guards. They just looked like trouble. Bagpipes are evil.
In the meantime, Ritchie had already attracted the attention of the police. He was the bozo who had fired the flare at West Ham, and already had a conviction drunk and disorderly conduct at a Liverpool match. When the police carried out those infamous early morning raids on suspected football hoolies, Ritchie was one of those who received a knock on the door at 6am, and it was his genuine collection of antique medieval weapons which was paraded before the world’s press as an example of how low we were prepared to stoop. They cost him a small fortune, and despite the mass acquittal of all suspects over scandalous police fabrication of evidence, he never saw them again.

It was the away trips which were most fun. Home games were a routine of pub, meet mates, drink, go to game, go home. Away was a completely different ball game. A trip into enemy territory, as it were. We’d meet at Mark’s place in Kingston and drive up in convoy, scarves flapping out of the rear windows. We’d often meet fellow football fans in those islands of wanton hooliganism - the motorway service station.

How the police never cottoned on to the fact that even football fans had to take a piss at some stage is beyond me. Saturdays at Watford Gap services were hell on Earth. If two London clubs were playing “Oop North”, trouble was virtually guaranteed, and the twee, overpriced coffee shop would become a battleground. I should know, I was hiding in Burger King.

Sometimes there were fights, most of the time there wasn’t. The football, it had to be said, was rather good too as the Arsenal were putting together quite a tidy team under George Graham. Trips to Norwich, Nottingham, Aston Villa were memorable for the football rather than the aggro. Then there was Portsmouth.

It was New Year’s Day. It was cold, it was wet, and some evil bugger had given us an away game. We met up in Kingy and headed off down the M3. Ritchie and Paul hadn’t actually slept and were still drunk from the night before. And I had them in my car. Ritch decided to wind back the sunroof in the pouring rain, and stand up while we were going along at 70 mph so he could “wave at people like the Pope”. Then he fell unconscious.

We soon found a pub in Pompey that was willing to take further away fans, and we spent the afternoon before the match getting even more bladdered. The match itself is indelibly stamped on my mind. It was truly the worst spectacle I had ever seen. We’d hammered Pompey 6-0 back in August, but this was a dull, hungover 1-1 draw lacking in any commitment whatsoever. It pelted down with rain, and we were forced to stand on an open terrace, soaked to the skin.

At 5pm, it was cold, wet and dark as we squelched out of the ground back towards the cars. A cry went up: “GOOOONERS!”, with the traditional reply “Come and get it you London Cockney wankers!”. It had gone off. And we were right in the middle as the two opposing armies bore down on each other. The Arsenal guys looked tough. But Pompey looked tougher still. Portsmouth is a naval city, and these guys were built like ships. I’m sure they would have carried us off and buggered us to death at their leisure given half the chance. There was no escaping. To use the correct technical term, we were heading for a right kicking.

With both mobs only yards away, the cowardice gene took over. I legged it sideways just at the rumble started in a frenzy of boots and fists and jumped over a garden wall. There, cowering in fear, in the very place I had chosen to do exactly the same thing, were four teenage Pompey fans. Who was more scared? I was outnumbered and fully expecting free dentistry work courtesy of Dr Marten’s. I froze.

The Pompey boys reacted first. “Fucking hell! They’ve found us!” one screamed in wild-eyed panic, backing away in fright. They were bigger chickens than I was. I could be onto a winner here. They jumped up and back over the wall, and in an ill-conceived fit of bravado I was after them.

“COME ON THEN YOU SLAAAAGS!” I shouted after them in my best fake Cockney accent as set off in hot pursuit. This had an unexpected effect. The rest of the big, tough Pompey army of Matelots, hardcases and nutters, seeing some of their number legging it up the road in abject terror thought their number was up too. They legged it.

I continued running for fifty yards watching some thirty hoolies scattering before me, before turning to encourage the rest of my Gooner mates to follow. That’s when I realized I was alone. I had “run” the entire Pompey firm with nothing but a blood-curdling scream to my name, completely by accident. Sheepishly, I jogged back to where the rest of the guys were waiting me with the Gooner crew.

They were clapping. Clapping me, the world’s greatest coward, for my act of wanton stupidity, which could well have left me a red smear across a Portsmouth back street. Ritchie introduced me to the top guys as his mate, and I became The Nutter Who Ran The Pompey whenever I entered an Arsenal pub, and it was the key to free drinks for several years after.

In future, I made it my business to run even faster, harder and further away whenever trouble reared its ugly head. That was one kicking too far.