Any one got a pointer to a place where a Yank can lay a wager down. 80-1 and Italy at 14-1 sure look pretty. Still though from what I've seen which is minimal at best it hard for me believe that Argentina isn't A or A-1. I guess they have no faith in Maradona getting done as the coach?

World cup final; John Terry gets drawn back by his sexual misconduct and with rio injured Englands centre backs are Ledley and Dawson. its written in the stars

Seeing how Argentina do is gonna be fascinating. It won't happen but can you imagine if Maradona actually leads them to the final and they win?!?!? The place will go insane.

the most certain bet is that Argentina will not win.

honestly, if results go as predicted, then they'd play Spain in the semis then either Brazil, Holland or England in the final. Who knows? Maradona sticks to his meds? Mascarano doesn't get sent off? Messi and Tevez click up front? A few wonky decisions in their favour? Stranger thing have happened.

Soooo, has anybody been watching any football lately?




Last night FK Rudar Pljevlja completed the lineup for the UEFA Champions League second qualifying round after easing to a comprehensive 7-1 aggregate victory against SP Tre Fiori.

Leading 3-0 after last week's first leg in San Marino, the Montenegrin titleholders were never quite as dominant as the scoreline suggests. They forged further ahead through captain Predrag Randjelović's early goal before Fabio Vannoni's equaliser. That is how it remained until 23 minutes from time, when Randjelović finally ended any hopes of a comeback.

Late goals from Nedeljko Vlahović and substitute Miroje Jovanović sealed victory and Rudar, making their UEFA Champions League debut this season, will now face PFC Litex Lovech in the second qualifying round. The first leg takes place in Bulgaria on 13/14 July, with the return the following week.



Obviously, it's a good result for the Montenegrins, but you have to feel sorry for the San Marinians who saw their dreams of winning the Champions League go up in smoke that early in the competition. Anyone think FK Rudar Pljevlja can go all the way this year?

Without knowing the first thing about FK Rudar Pljevlja, I'm gonna hazard a no.

i dont know, with the right amount of youth and experience we could see an upset.

West Ham have just signed Mexico winger Pablo Barrera. Does anyone remember if he was good or not? Does anyone remember him at all?

leeds need to sign hooper pronto if they want to make a serious push for the prem and not just a mid table performance.

p.s. i dont remember him sorry^

I'm wondering if there's even been a team with an unpronouncable name win the Champions League.

ixxzakxz moscow?

I remember a sports broadcast where the presenter had to read the UEFA-cup results and when it came to Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk he just said "AZ Alkmaar who played against... ehm, there you can see it on the screen".

Don't remember the Mexican dude.

tonight's AIK - Rosenborg will be an interesting match. come on gnaget

For those interested (me for sure) tonight's game between the Allstars and Man U. is on ESPN2 starting at 8:00 pm EST with 1/2 hour buildup game time at 8:30 pm EST. thank you ESPN

i spotted this yesterday, watched it online on ESPN3, game started around 6:51 my time (7:51 texas, 8:51 EST) -- was this an online delay or was it real time?

anyway, the game got a bit dull after the first 2 manchester goals, but what goals! allstars change the rhythm in their favor but couldn't score. then things picked up again in the 2nd half.

allstars was a bit of a mess, i mean, it's not a real team, and there were so many changes it was hard to keep up who was playing.

a couple of the manchester u goals were beautiful though, holy shit, that free kick was impossible for the goalie to stop, over the barrier and next to the goalpost with spin, wow, and cleverley's play for the goal was nothing short of gorgeous. good times. ah, if we had teams like that here!

I've noticed a lot more pubs showing pre-season friendlies this year. It's almost like a sweetener following the poor taste left by England's poor showing in the World Cup. Sky obviously want to market their product as a top quality one and want to erase the bad memories of their flagship brands like Rooney by showing them 'back on form'. It's gonna be really interesting to see just how a number of star players are going to be received by supporters once the season actually starts. There's a real despondency about English football and footballers across the country now, and it's gonna be interesting seeing how the marketing men deal with it.

England was definitely guilty of having an arrogance about the quality of its players but this was fueled largely by our media hyping them almost as superhuman. The public won't buy that now and companies like Sky, with massive business interests in the Premier league will find it hard to overcome that. Even if Rooney ends up as top scorer, there'll be a new ambivalence about him that Sky certainly won't have had to deal with before. I'm expecting that Rupert Murdoch is brushing up on his Spanish right now.

rooney wasn't playing and macheda is italian and barely 18! so watch out in years to come, this fucker was amazing. chicharito hernandez (mexican) also played and scored. the english national team could be crap and this team would still be amazing. i guess the perception in england is that it's an "english team" but for furrners like me it's like this is the "earth allstars".

haha, yeah. Nobody in England is under any illusion that a team like Man U reflects the abilities of English players. I'm thinking more about individual players who now look increasingly like they're being carried by top grade foreign imports. How many English players are signed to top quality Spanish or Italian clubs? Last time i looked it was precisely none. Every single player in that WC squad played in their domestic league. either that's because the English league really is the 'best in the world' (as Sky likes to constantly remind us) or the top teams in La Liga and Serie A just don't think English players are worth the money. There's always talk about the likes of Lampard or Rooney or Gerrard being courted by teams such as Barcelona and Real but, weirdly, nothing ever comes of it.

The coaching situation is even more depressing. No English manager has ever led a team to win the Premier League (Ferguson and Dalglish being Scottish), an astonishing statistic compared with the likes of La Liga or Serie A. And that's not even going into the whole debacle surrounding our national team being coached by an Italian - a situation that a lot of people are deeply uncomfortable about.. Never mind the fact that only one English club side (Spurs) competing in this season's Champions League is English-owned.

So yeah, "Earth All-Stars" is spot-on.

hey, regardless of nationalisms, you get to watch some great games, either in a stadium or on regular TV? i used to go to RFK in DC (it was cheap and it made for a nice afternoon) but the games weren't anything extraordinary. often downright frustrating. and catching english, italian or spanish games or the bundesliga here? there's some kind of secret cable tv deals or something, but i don't get cable. when i saw those man u goals it made me wanna cry, ha ha ha. seriously, no matter who owns the team or what country are the players from you get to see amazing games every week. ah, the jealousy!

Oh, absolutely and, to be fair, i wasn't really taking an issue with anything you said, just using it as a springboard for another debate which is inevitably only going to be of interest to those constantly being told that the Premiership is the best in the world (which you weren't doing). But yeah, that's an entirely different debate. It is obviously great having good football available on your doorstep, so to speak. although i suppose it's more of a cultural thing than that. It must be a real nuisance for a lot of people in the UK who don't like football in that they are made to feel somewhat marginalised, especially during major tournaments, whereas in the US there's the opposite problem in that there's clearly a fair few real fans of the game, but they likely feel in a bit of a bubble. Hey, maybe the UN should allow free transfer for all football-loving Americans to move to places Rome or Manchester or Barcelona while those in Europe who hate the game can all move to Utah - during the football season, anyway.

That's all well and good, but if its to the detriment of the national side that so many foreign players are signed to English clubs, that's not so good. It smacks of inverted jingoism by the clubs managers.

A dilemma:

England play Hungary tonight in a friendly. It's their first match since the World Cup and I really want them to lose, only because it increases the chances that Capello resigns if they do. And yet a couple of my friends are calling me ridiculous, saying that I have to want the team I support to win. Just wondering if anyone here has done somethinjg similar, regardless of the team or even the sport.

when i was in like the 4th grade me and another little geek booed our class team to stir some anger in them, because we thought they played with no desire, and our aim was to get them to grow some balls and put them into their playing, but our strategy was misunderstood by our class compadres and the teacher scolded us later that day. "but that's not what we meant!" we kept saying. story of my life.

Yeah, it's thinking long-term. Lose the battle to win the war, and all that.

looks like Wilfred Zaha is one to watch this season.
looked good in pre season by all accounts too.

wonder if we'll be able to keep him...

i really dont care about the game tonight.
its pointless and if we win i'll just get cross. If Rooney scores i'll get cross. If Gerard and Rooney play a blinder in this formation i'll get really cross.
If we lose i'm gonna get cross.

only good thing is seeing an ex palace keeper keep a clean sheet

Yeah, I had the same problem, especially watching it in company. As it was they played pretty well but definitely improved without Rooney. Zamora, Adam Johnson and Ashley Young looked decent, as did Walcott. Capello seemed to have gone with what looked like a 4-4-1-1. Frustrating to watch simply because they played better tonight than they managed at any time during the world cup.

There's a definite need to re-think what Rooney's role is and once again Lampard did next to nothing.

Still think Capello has to go.

Well we started out with the Hotspurs vs. Man City this weekend on the telly.
0-0 tie. Man City didn't look like they cared one way or the other and the Spurs should have won it but Joe Hart was absolutely fabulous in goal to save Man City's bacon. My team Everton lost on of course a bumble by Tim Howard. He'll be on the bench before the year's done. Especially if I have my way. My fantasy team not to bad out of the gate. My goalie screwed the pooch with an own-goal and Nobogia didn't even play and Tevez blew as my captain. Oh well it's exciting to be back. We have Man U and Newcastle on Monday afternoon at 2. I haven't checked out espn3.com but I believe I can catch all the games there.

Haha, I'm guessing we might have the same goalie.

Yeah, Spurs were all over Man City, by the looks of things. Could've easily been 3 or 4 up by half time. For all the money City have spent, they still don't look like a team to me. And I'm still not convinced by Mancini.

West Ham went down 3-0 to Villa and were lucky it wasn't 6 or 7 nil. It's gonna be a long season for them, I reckon. And yeah, Howard did fuck up, but not as bad as the person who agreed Everton's away kit this season.:eek:

I'm confused by that last statement Everton's away kit?

Also is the premier league also two separate division? The 8 best from last year make up one league and the other 8 another? Also all the transferring that goes on between teams are there teams that are locked together or is it wide open on who transfers with who?

and especially because your team Everton has bought our national goalkeeper Jan Mucha, which is one hell of a great player, and which will soon replace Howard.

see more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0VkHowCAu8

the premier league is 1 division. It used to be called division 1 but then people got greedy, sky tv started paying big money for tv rights and the big clubs decided to start their own league (kinda).
the bottom 3 clubs get relegated to the Championship (division 2) at the end of the season.

transfers are free in that you can buy from anywhere in the world but you can only buy during the closed season and in january.



the away kit is your strip if your team colours clash with the your oponents. Everton play in blue which is a fairley common colour. For some reason this year their 'away' kit is pink. and pink is all gay and stuff.

Yeah, what Sonicbebs said, basically. The prem can feel like two or even three divisions sometimes though, especially towards the second half of the season, with all the clubs in the bottom third trying to avoid relegation and those in the top half trying to qualify either for the champions league (top four teams at the end of the season) or the UEFA cup (usually those that finish fifth, sixth, and seventh).

You'll hear lots of pundits talk about the 'Big Four', which in recent years has meant Chelsea, Liverpool, Man U and Arsenal, as they almost always finished in the top four places at the end of the season. That's been shaken recently though, with Liverpool having a bad season last year and finishing 7th, and Spurs taking the 4th spot, qualifying them for this years Champions League, along with Chelsea, Manu and Arsenal. Man City have also been threatening to break into the top four, with a rich owner willing to spend silly money on players. Everton and especially Aston Villa have also looked like they might break into it but Everton don't really have the money to go that extra step and Villa have just lost their manager so who knows how they'll do.

The relegation battle, as SB said, is to avoid becoming one of the teams that finishes in the bottom three at the end of the season and so will go down to the Championship league (not to be confused with the Champions League) next season. This is traditionally fought out between the three clubs that just got promoted from the Championship (in this year's case, Blackpool, West Brom and Newcastle) but teams like West Ham and Bolton typically find themselves involved in it too, and many people think Wigan are pretty certain to go down this season.

It sounds more complicated than it is, especially writing it down. It's really easy to pick up, though.

Anyway, early predictions:

Premier League Champions: Chelsea
Top Four/Champions League: Chelsea; Man U; Arsenal; Liverpool
UEFA: Villa; Spurs; Man City
Relegation: Blackpool (even after what happened on Sat); Wigan; West Brom.

i'd go along with that really

I think Blackburn will have a good season. Big Sam (although a Big Cock) has had time to turn his players into Bolton and i think they might be up there challenging for UEFA. And who knows how Villa will do without O'Neil and Milner?

on a side note i had Drogba on the bench (for my fantasy football) as he was injured when i picked him. Then i was told about the automatic substitution if someone is injured so thought i'd swap him back, then i forgot and left him on the bench. then he scored a hatrick...

So the bottom 3 go into like a club league and top 3 in the club league get promoted up to premier?

Yeah, the top three go up to the Premier league and the bottom three go down to League One. As SonicBebs says, it was a lot more straightforward when it was just leagues one (now the Premier League), two (now the Championship), three (now League One) and four (now League two).

Below that are the various Conference leagues, but you really don't need to worry about them at all.


I think Milner leaving is gonna be a bigger blow than O'Neil - who's a decent manager but who strikes me as, up til recently, benefiting from a very spend happy owner. Personally I rate Moyes above O'Neil, who's managed to do wonders with Everton with almost no money. Big Sam always pisses me off; I can't stand him or how he gets his teams playing but I can't deny that he's successful.

The one manager I'm really not convinced by though is Mancini. Considering the money City have to spend he seems to have no clue how to use it to build an actual team. I'd not be at all surprised if Capello walks from the England job, straight into the City one.

cant believe that watt has got into trouble when gunter was clearly out for revenge. maybe he will get just a fine but if its leeds it will probably be much worse.

man, i turn my back for 4 days (beautiful days festival) and we go and sign Edgar fucking Davids!
Edgar............DAVIDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!