That Beckenbauer quote
CL semi final second leg: Barca vs Bayern
That Beckenbauer quote
The Preternaturally Cool Barack 'Django' Obama
Check out his jibes at Jay Z, Michelle Obama, the Republicans, George W. Bush's new Library etc.
Few were spared!
His rap entrance music was cool personified
Barack Obama: smashing toes, shooting down stereotypes, kicking derrières and taking names!
Now, that's just gangster!! *slow nod*
Real Madrid's CL dreams : Salvageable or Mission Impossible?
Key Facts from the first leg-
Semi final Champions League-Half time: These Germans!!
Words to describe what we saw in the last 72 hrs:
Germacalypse, Ballanstorm, Blitzkrieg,
"seismic shift", "new dawn" and "changing football landscape"
Guys, the Germans are in town!!
Tuesday was a meticulous dismantling!
Wednesday was a beat down. A ruthless beat down!!
All over the world football hipsters are now switching their TVs over to The Bundesliga- as German football has now become mainstream.
When the CL Semi draw was made, the headlines were: "Barca and Real kept apart". Some even cried foul at the fact that the Germans were playing at home first!. How very patronising!!
In retrospect the true headline ought to have been "Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund kept apart". Some of us saw the handwriting on the wall, but the letters were just not this BOLD!!
BORUSSIA DORTMUND
Robert Lewandowski. Woof!
Jurgen Klopp. You beauty!
What made them tick again yesterday?
Relentless work ethic, Klopp, the fans, the athmosphere in the Westfalenstadion ( arguably World football's most kick-ass stadium) where 80 000 gather frequently irrespective of the opposition
-they play as if they have another man on the field. They are successful because they want to be. Desire can go a long way. It’s the effort that counts most.
Klopp - "At Dortmund you just can't be pleased with staying back and hoofing the ball upfield, the Fans don't like that.
Here people demand that the team should play with the attributes that are closest to my heart: with a lot of feeling and with intensity until the very last minute. We want to play the kind of football people remember."
He is enthusiastic, clever and funny.
In fact, he is very much like Mourinho during his early Chelsea years.
Against Real Madrid, you didn’t see so many tricks and flicks, but little bursts of speed, short sprints, and lots of quick passing and pressing high up the pitch ( Gegenpressing)
Anthony Lopopolo, a blogger, wrote:
"The team in yellow played without time to spare, as if they were late for an appointment
The German club came and went so quickly, and executed the Spanish giant so cleanly. This wasn’t a massacre or a hack job. You couldn’t find any blood on the ground. But there was a carcass, a few shrieks, and a lot of confusion.
Mourinho couldn’t explain why immediately after the match. He just knew his team lost, and that they deserved to lose
Such is the hallmark of Dortmund and modern German football: pace, and lots of it. They play to devastate. One blow follows another before you can even worry about the initial wound, and when Madrid fell to a 4-1 deficit, there was nothing they could really do. And they gave up"
BAYERN MUNCHEN
They gave us a thrashing," said Gerard Pique
"They were better and faster than us"
They 'munched' Barca
Van Gaal gave Bayern, the club that has always prided itself on the individual ability of their players, a strong footballing identity.
Heynckes built on these foundations, making the team more defensively balanced. Van Gaal's dogmatic "positional football" - everyone had to stick to their specific space on the pitch when attacking the opposition goal - was replaced by a much more fluid style that has given the front men licence to roam and swap almost at will.
In his second season, Heynckes has also added an element of the high pressing that has made Dortmund (and Barcelona before them) so effective. The team's excellent work ethic, a careful rotation policy and unparalleled strength in depth have made them the complete package.
Putting Tuesday's 4-0 routing of Barca into words:
It was just one rapier thrust after another. Furious one-touch passing and aggression in attack, always looking for the quick turn-around when intercepting the ball on the break and never wasting time with lateral passing to team mates
Unlike Barcelona, they don’t like to wait and ponder and debate their next move.
They've been compared them to the German stock market-"Whenever you feel this is it, they just keep going up, up, up. I have no idea where this one could end." (Gushed a fan)
This is the best football in the club's history," -club president , Uli Hoeness
Heynckes: "FC Bayern have never played a football this modern, this attractive, this contemporary in their whole history"
Of course, there is still 180 mins of football ( or more) to be played in this semi final clashes but you'd have balls of steel to bet against an all German final at Wembley
The future of Germany is in good hands with players like:
Hummels, Schmelzer, Boateng, Bender, Özil, Schürrle, Müller, Gündoğan, Herman, Götze, Reus... and that's just the players under the age of twenty five. The fact that all but one of them plays in the Bundesliga speaks volumes.
.
David Luiz: Like A Boss
David Luiz's 40- yard Screamer, against Fulham yesterday, in pixs.
LIKE A BOSS!!
Caveat- pixs don't do the goal enough justice
Chelsea won 3-0
Andre Schurrle is a Chelsea player
Chelsea's new signing Andre Schürrle , 22yrs,
22 million Euros
Currently plays for: Bayer Leverkusen
Tall- 6 ft
Weight- 74 kg
-talented, technical, exciting
-high work rate and stamina.
- long range shots and goals
-averages a goal or assist every 2 games (12 goals in 38 for Bayer this season)
European Champions League Semi final- Tactical Nous, Key Players: My thoughts
If football teaches anything; it’s the importance of the details. Precision. Desire. Quality. In Cups, the supposition is the team who finds the day in better form usually prevails.
Bayern Munich:
Director of football, Mattias Sammer: "playing at home first is no disadvantage. We'll approach the tie with the same strategy we adopted against Juventus"
Head coach Jupp Heynckes said: "I always got good results with my teams against Barcelona. With Athletic Bilbao, we won there twice, for example"
Tactically, we’re experiencing the era of universality – players are expected to perform tasks previously only demanded of teammates in very different positions. The best modern football sides start their attacks from the back, and begin their defending from the front – Barcelona have taken that concept to new heights, but Bayern Munich are arguably the best exponents of this in the 2012/13 season"
High pressing game: ideal scenario- Bayern München would press like mad at home and that could create a lot of problems for Barcelona-particularly with their dodgy defence
Big miss- Mario Mandzukic: suspended for the first leg.
(Bayern’s yellow-card situation is awful. If they make it to the final they may have half the team suspended!!. You know damn well they will foul a lot against Barca)
Mario Mandzukic’s excellent display as Bayern’s lone centre-forward- particularly in the first leg against Juve- is all what you expect from the contemporary Striker. He didn’t get himself a goal, but he did pretty much everything else – he teed up the second for Muller, he had a fantastic running battle in the air with Giorgio Chiellini, and also spent periods back helping his own defence.
His pressing from the front encouraged Bayern to push up and support him, while he also helped pressure Pirlo on the few occasions Muller found himself elsewhere. (Pirlo – “I am the first to say I’m not satisfied with my performance, as I made many mistakes in such an important match and it’s disappointing,” he said. He finished with his lowest pass completion rate in a Juve shirt)
This was a classic ‘defensive’ centre-forward display by Mandzukic( Torres, please note- goal scoring is important but simply being a 'beast' to the opposing team's defence will win you admirers always. This is why Wellbeck is currently favoured by SAF too) NB- I'm a Chelsea fan
I don't think Mario Gomez or Claudio Pizarro would offer the same work rate.
Key Players: Mandzukic, Schweinsteiger, Kroos, and the fullbacks who like attacking: Alaba and Lahm
FC Barcelona:
We know a lot about this side already. I hope their defence doesn't prove to be their Achilles heel in this Cup.
Busquets- was marked effectively out of the PSG game by Lavezzi's pressing. So he couldn't link defence to the 'Conductors' in midfield
Iniesta-gets better like wine but he didn't influence the PSG game as much- this may be because he missed those Messi runs that take away defenders, allowing him more space and time on the ball
Xavi Hernandez completed all of his 96 passes in that PSG game, but these were very conservative, and none directly created a chance
Messi- is crucial to this team. That's all I'm going to say about that!! ( in local parlance: Das all!)
Verdict: Bayern are the team with all the possession and the tactical nous in their league. They’ll not be used to playing a team that is actually very similar to theirs ( Barca) My heart tells me Bayern but my head says Barca (never underestimate the vertically- challenged one, Lionel Messi)
Borussia Dortmund:
Dortmund chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke: "having taken four points off the men from Madrid, "they'll respect us - as of course we respect them"
The most important thing about Dortmund is “Gegenpressing”. To press the opponent immediately after losing the ball (this is not so easy like it sounds) They made that word famous 2 years ago after they won the Bundesliga.
They are a relentless, fluid, pacy, automatic team effort when they are on the top of their game. Everyone runs for everyone else. Their transitions from defence to attack are dangerous and impeccable
(Goetze covered 136m every minute and Lewandowski covered 123m every minute. Ronaldo covered 112m. - an excerpt from The Guardian)
They will create chances.
Flaw: not clinical enough in front of goal
Key players: Gundogan, Reus, Goetze, Lewandowski
Lewandowski a striker who makes chances as well as takes them.
Gundogan: He is their Xabi Alonso or Iniesta. He controls their tempo and often starts their quick attacks with an incisive pass from deep. He will not be easily marked out of the game though, due to his dynamism and how how comfortable he is all over the midfield on the ball.
Another asset is their fans: crazy fanatical lot- a Real Madrid fan had this to say: "The only thing they have over us is their fans . 5 thousand of their fans can make more noise than our 80 thousand"
Real Madrid:
We know a lot about them already
Real Madrid fans will say:
"We have been there and done that , we have the better players , we have the better coach and we have the better history"
But Dortmund have already shown superiority in the earlier games
Crucial: Real Madrid was clearly short-handed without Coentrao, Marcelo, Khedira and Arbeloa for those games. Iker Casillas had average displays and Pepe was just bad. Real Madrid now have a much safer defensive line- with Varane's birth as an elite player and both left backs recovered
Key: Cristiano Ronaldo ( CR7) -that's all!!
Verdict: Mourinho should win the tactical battle, CR7 will have a say and the quest for La Decima should go right down to the wire
Margaret Thatcher- Hero or Antihero?
Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) -Hero or Antihero? You make up your mind
What do you think?
ODD ENGLISH FA RULE
PUNISHMENTS - Relating to First Team Competitive Matches (FTCM)
CAUTIONS ADMINISTERED ON THE FIELD OF PLAY
If a player accumulates 10 (ten) recorded cautions in FTCM between the opening day of the Playing Season and the second Sunday of April in the same Season, he will be suspended automatically for a period covering: - Two First Team matches
If a player accumulates 10 (ten) recorded cautions in FTCM between the opening day of the Playing Season and the last day of the same Season, he will be: - "Severely Censured and Warned as to his future Conduct"
David Luiz and Luis Suarez are both in danger of picking their 10th cautions this season and missing two subsequent matches. But if both are left out this weekend, they may escape sanctions as explained above
Play them or not?
Blue is the colour
Blue is the colour, Football is the game, Chelsea is our name. CHELSEA!!
Roger Ebert- dead at 70
Great film Critic Roger Ebert died yesterday (4th April) He was 70 years
He had battled various forms of cancer ( thyroid, salivary, jaw) for years- losing his voice in the process
The closing sentence on his final blog post, two days before his death, said, "So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I'll see you at the movies
Tom Van Riper of Forbes described him as "the most powerful pundit in America",
Here are a few of his great ( often scathing and sarcastic) quotes on films:
"To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts"
"A great film should feel new every time you see it"
“Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people"
"To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material."
“To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.”
"Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time..."
"To call 'A Lot like Love' dead in the water is an insult to water."
On Armageddon - "No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out."
"Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica."
On Shyamalan's The Village: "To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes."
Pearl Harbor: the story of "how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle."
“To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.”
"I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."
Of Fascism, Racism, Di Canio and the apparent collective ignorance of the Sunderland FC Board
Paolo Di Canio- I am a fascist, not a racist. I give the straight arm salute because it is a salute from a 'camerata' [comrade] to 'camerati'. The salute is aimed at my people. With the straight arm I don't want to incite violence and certainly not racial hatred." .
This was Di Canio's reaction to his infamous salute in a derby win over Roma in January 2005 *what part of the game is that*
This statement is errorneous as Fascism and Racism are not mutually exclusive. Either Di Canio is a liar or is just another ignorant Sports person. I'd love to stick with the latter- based on the way he has conducted his affairs ( at least in Public) since the incidence. But as the saying goes, ignorance is not an excuse
Mussolini's (who was the Chief Protagonist of Fascism) views on Race: he justified colonialism in Africa by claiming that the spiritual and cultural superiority of Italians as part of the white race, justified the right for Italy and other powers of the white race to rule over the black race, while asserting that racial segregation of whites and blacks in its colonies.
It claimed that Fascism's colonial goals were to civilize the inferior races and defend the purity of Western civilization from racial interbreeding (sic) that it claimed would harm the intellectual qualities of the white race
Hitler and Mussolini: The German stamp in the pics box below shows the two. The text at the top says "Two peoples and one struggle." They believed in the superiority of the Aryan Race, were anti-Semitic and Racist
The cost of the Second World war to Sunderland:
The British still remember the terrifying German Luftwaffe air raids during the Second World War
Sunderland’s shipyards were crucial to the war effort. As the naval fleet and merchant vessels fell victim to the enemy’s submarine attacks, Sunderland played a crucial role in building new ships and repairing damaged ones. The strategic importance of the area meant that those who lived there were under constant threat of bombing.
In May 1943, Sunderland was the target of a series of heavy raids. The last major raid (the 35th) of the war in the North-East caused the highest death toll. Eighty-four people died and 221 were injured in Sunderland
In an article which appeared in the Sunderland Echo, the raid of 16th May 1943 was described as “one of the worst raids of the war”.
A graphic picture of the danger and destruction is painted in a newspaper’s coverage: “Showers of incendiary bombs as well as high explosives were dropped and these caused several fires, some of which burned furiously for a considerable time.”
During the war, the traditionally male-dominated environment was home to a new type of worker: women. In order to keep the yards running at maximum capacity, women were called in to help.
Obviously, the Sunderland FC Board had collective amnesia or were just as ignorant as Paolo Di Canio
Never mix sports with politics- is what Di Canio's supporters would say. I say Bollocks!! 6 million Jews died at the hands of Hitler ( whose main collaborator was the Fascist Mussolini) One shudders at the thought of what these lots would have done to blacks if they weren't stopped by the Allies. In this context you'd agree that "Never mix sports with politics" is just inconsequential semantics!!
Di Canio shouldn't have done what he did back then, the Sunderland Board should have had more sense. That way we won't have be stuck in this CouldaWouldaShouldaville
I don't know how all these will end, I don't see any happy ever after endings
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. ~Abraham Lincoln
UCL Q/finals 1st leg: Initial thoughts
PSG-Barca 2-2
Barca are not quite the same team without Messi.
Ibrahimovic will still have a large say in the return fixture at the Nou Camp
Lucas Moura looked quite the part with his pace in the first half
Beckham can still ping a pass but he's never going to be a 90 mins player again
Thiago Silva oozes class in the defence
Bayern- Juve 2-0
Juve has it all to do in Turin. But don't write the Old Lady off yet
Bayern are a different proposition when both Ribery and Robben play
Pirlo was made to look his age today. He couldn't cope with the pacy Bayern midfielders
Contemporary Nigerian Music Artistes: Two bit Chancers, the lot
Listening to some so-called 'Top Ten Chart' Nigerian music recently and to say that I was appalled is putting it mildly!! The beats (quite a few are danceable, admittedly) are so similar that you'd think it's the same Artiste singing in most of the songs. Where is the originality?
There is a shocking lack of content in the lyrics. You've got to ask yourself if most of these would stand the test of time.
(Plus you have no right to be looking so suave and debonair in your pix if your music game sucks. Just saying!!)
Anyway, what's my own? I guess so many of these Two-bit Chancers are successful 'cos they give the audience what they want. It's just soul-destroying when you think about the audience that actually prefers this now.
Or may be I'm too Westernised or getting too old!!
Examples:
P Square-Magical Healing-Where are my crazy ladies
Where una dey because I’m ready
Get the vibe and don’t be lazy
For tonight I’m going crazy (so crazy)
(*Somebody pass me the sick bucket*)
Dbanj- Top of the world: "You only have one life to live
If you lucky then
You might get two"
(For real!?! *giving you the side eye*)
Iyanya ft Wiz Kid- Sexy Mama: "Sexy mama
Oya ka jo mama
Ki ya masa mama
Oya ka jo mama"
(*Knock me over with a feather*)
Danny Young ft Olamide- Omo Lepa- O ti ko si kpenkpe. Give it to me omo daddy, give it to me omo Mummy
(*Cheesy with a capital C*)
Iyanya - Flavour -Baby this your booty na confirm o
Lemme see you whine it to the ground o
I like the way you dey buga, Omoge what’s your flavour
(*Someone make it stop*)
Tiwa Savage ft Don Jazzy- "Without my heart
Couple of drinks in me, feeling a little tipsy....don't leave without my heart"
(Tiwa is actually talented but including the croaky- voiced Don Jazzy in this!!!.....*I.Just.Can't*)
Davido- Gobe: "Girl your behind is a killer
I can see you’re sensual
See gobe, Omo see gobe"
(At least we know what Gobe means now! *weeps for humanity*)
Olamide ft Samklef-Stupid Love: "she carry front, she carry back, she's too packaged I can't leave her, she's one of the reason I get liver"
(*I. Am. Speechless*)
NB- I have the earlier(much better) works of some of the Artistes mentioned above on my MP3 player. They have just not taken their ish to the next level. That's.A.Shame