karma capello?

nice tevas

well michael ballack you were right on cue sir. just as soon as i put your big ugly mug up you go on ahead and lose your cool and try to injur poor little carlitos tevez who was by far the best player on the field at the bridge yesterday. that should have been a straight red in itself and he remains the forerunner for biggest bastard in the premeirship. still like villa for 4th though.

i didn't/don't want to see the tackle on aaron ramsey. its a wonder that more people don't brake their ankles in the premiership, but i guess its now a much safer place with joey barton and alan smith and newcastle's shenanigans out of the league. but i'd trade newcastle for bald man pulis' joke city any minute. stoke are just that, a joke. their basically not even playing football up there, but credit to them, the style of the prem is built for these big barging sides to just basically beat the shit out of each other and then bundle in a goal out of a rugby style throw in courtesy of some rory bloke who has less foot skills than dan ritter/greg o'brien.

but what the hell is fabio capello trying to pull here calling up shawcross? just a big fuck you to arsenal fans? is he trying to endure himself to the potter faithful? doesn't he need a left back? i don't get it.

goal of the day belongs to leo messi, those barca highlights are worth watching. check out the pass from xavi to dani alves to messi for the deciding goal. doesn't get any sweeter than that.

fingers crossed for usa hockey tonight, which could salvage what would otherwise be deemed the most succesful olympics ever by are ever-more annoying nother neighbors. where the hell are they coming up with these speed skaters and gold medals? i use to subscribe to the belief that most cummulative medals is worth more than golds. not so sir, at least not in the ROTW, out of the american media's grasp. And i can't tell you how much i've enjoyed watching the olympics on eurosport where not every 10/11 events you see doesn't have to contain an american.

god i hate chelsea

Its all too easy to draw parallels between the nemesis of my beloved O's the yankees and chelsea. abramovic is basically the steinbrenner of the prem. but its not really the brand of football that they play that irks me, I even respect what they do. As resident asshole and jorge posada of the blues Michael Ballack says, "arsenal are easy to beat for us." And yeah he's right, Chelsea just physically beat the shit out of us like no one else can, and Arsene has no answer for it. But I can't find any team more enjoyable to root against. How satisfying was it from a purists perspective when Iniesta snatched that champs league tie from the jaws of death last year after chelsea had played 180 minutes of anti-football. You had the feeling that good had triumphed over evil despite Drogba shoving his donkey mug into your living room huffing, "this is a fucking disgrace." Thanks Didier, that one was for the kids. I still him and his country are grossly overrated and he gets way too much respect from prem defenders, with his whole play when i want to randy moss attitude, i'd never want him on my team.

So you'll forgive me if I didn't empathize with the typical chelea player's protest and english media's verdict that chelsea "deserved more" from their efforts in the san siro. Tough shit chelsea, ever heard of karma kramer? You complain to the referees more than Ferguson almost, and you lead the league in arrogance. chelsea players have a cute little habit of surrounding the referee after every single fucking decision. Womp womp womp, I hope them and Madrid crash out before the quarterfinals.

On a more pleasant sporting note, there really is something special and refreshing about the olympics. Perhaps its just their rarity, but how often do you find yourself rooting for a woman doing anything competitive? Yes the curling coverage is a little excessive, and they only need to show the last stone, but being in the Czech Republic, you really savour the small country - underdog mentality and find yourself rooting for every single biathlete, just feeding off the energy and genuine enthusiasm in the commentator's voice.

when in rome...(don't expect good pizza)

I returned home last night from 3 days in Rome just in time to catch the second half of U of R and GW on the internet, and i have to say that there really is nothing quite like college basketball this time of year, still probably #1 on the American sports depth chart for me. I also managed to stay completely isolated from the champions league proceedings of the week, and was eager to see my highlights.

Its a good thing it wasn't summer because I like to take my computer outside on my balcony and watch stuff out there, and I'm pretty sure I would have thrown the old lenovo off if I had been last night. I wanted to do hang fabianski up from my coat hanger Ala harry and marv and list out all the things i was gonna do to him in home alone 1 before the south ben shovel slayer comes in and saves the day, (smash his face with an iron, bite of each of his little fingers one by one...)

*Home alone sidenote courtesy of jon szuchy: Try to not think about the home alone theme song when you hear the seat-belt on/off sign on a flight now, go on, I dare you. its literally impossible and i'm sure i will think of it every time i fly for the rest of my life now, thank you jon.*

But back to the game, I know there are purists out there who will say that the second goal was a fair enough to allow, and they may be right. But I'm sorry, that's not the kind of bullshit you want deciding the champions league, especially when the ref was actually in sol campbell's way, and as hypocritical as it seems, you just can't allow that type of shit under the circumstances. is that ref just trying to create a new controversy so people forget about the ireland france thing? sheesh.

but i guess i can be happy enough that this happened in the first and not the second leg, and that rosicky is starting to look like his old self again.

Flying with Italians is annoying enough, with their undisputed title of loudest collective nation ever, and their requisite applause and bravos after the plane successfully lands, but this flight to rome had the most non-nonchalant italian ever, unbuckling getting up out of his seat before we were even off the runway, probably still going like 100mph to get his jacket out of the overhead compartment, prompting a "PLEASE SIT DOWN SIR!" on the intercom.

some other highlights from my rome trip:

token pissed off man gesticulating wildly and really getting into a police officers face for writing him a traffic ticket for just leaving his car on the street.

the coliseum

best gelato ever (mango)

the pantheon

lowlight:
2 real scraggly looking folks having sex on a park bench.

and since all you prognosticators are hung up on your europa league teams, i'll go ahead and throw my hat into the mix and say that Villa (who truly have been the 4th best team this year) will find a way to sneak into 4th place.

COME ON YOU PIIIES

that was the resounding cry around craven cottage for my first live taste of english football. and yes that is notts county's nickname, the pies!
First of all, craven cottage is all sorts of cool, perched literally on thames with the water rusted roof you've always seen on tv, not to mention the charming little one mile walk from the tube station through some gardens and churches to the stadium, and that there is an actual cottage that people can watch the game from in one of the corners, well just awesome.

Apparently 15 pounds gets you three rows from the field adjacent to the fulham bench for a 5th round FA cup tie, and I have mr Hawes to thank for that, but we were both shocked at how close we were to the action, "cheapest courside seat i'll ever see." I could have reached over and touched erik nevland riding on the stationary bike the whole time to stay loose.

As for the actual game, Notts County were unlucky to be losing 2-0 at the break. Bobby Zamora is much more impressive in person that you'd have ever known from the tv, and he wasn't up against the best center halfs, but he was doing whatever he wanted when he got the ball to his feet, esp in the box.

But what made this game so cool was the little things that you can't pick up on tv, like how a little guy like Nickey Shorey times his jump to perfection to win headers he has no business winning, how much Riise the younger enjoys his keep-me-uppy at halftime, or just how fucking tall brede hangeland really is.

It wasn't much of a contest in the end on the field, but the back and forth between the 3,000 or so Notts county supporters and the not so vocal ho-hum fulham supporters was also well worth the price of admission. At 0-3 the county faithful decided to break out the: your support, your support, YOUR SUPPORT IS FUCKING SHIT! chant. and all sorts of "who are yas" were exchanged until fulham scored the 4th and final goal, which didn't actually quiet the travelling fans. In fact, they were perhaps the loudest after every fulham goal, never faltering in their support, with this "on top of
spaghetti..."

but this video pretty much sums it up, notts hired-actor-bald-white-guy-of-a-striker whose name is hughsey apparently has a dance named after him, which is pretty badass, he appeased the crowed after he'd been subbed off in like the 80th minute. and then in this video straight into the wheelbarrel



will we ever see a luckier goal than paul scholes off the standing leg?

another discouraging loss

yep. not much else to say about chelsea's brushing aside of the arsenal this past weekend. although i will say its amazing how far almunia has regressed. remember when people were talking about him for england?

here is some off season goodness courtesy of buster olney, this page is just loaded with baseball fight goodies.

PROBLEM #2!!!!!!

'Tacón de Dios'

Yeah, i don't really care for Real Madrid, and certainly not what they stand for. And yeah, I think Raul is overrated, Pepe is a thug, and Ronaldo is prima-donna. But my god, if you can't appreciate Guti and his semi-psychotic backheel, then you don't have a footballing pulse. I dont care that this is what Phil Ball wrote about, and I dont care that it was 5 days ago, it's still worthy of reposting here, and as Mr. Ball so keenly points out, notice how old Guti Haz never even bothers to glance over his shoulder to see if Benzema is indeed arriving at the penalty spot. One of the most daring things I've seen ever come off. Wow.



this does not bode well

just awesome

although i didn't quite grow up on the radio. i can see what made it so special. i like to stream the o's games on mlb.tv, mute it, and keep the radio audio. these 2 guys, are my 2 best friends in the dog days of summer. joe angel and jon miller. the whole video is awesome, but skip to like 3 mins if you want your vin scully impression.

London here i come in 2 weeks. look out craven cottage, i'm wearing my N'Zogbia jersey