Fazzinchi

Are We There Yet?

Thousands sat through the Man United v Watford FA Cup semi final waiting to see whether Watford could pull off a shock victory.  Not through any great sporting interest, or even for a love of football but because the BBC had announced that, if the match was to go to extra-time then the third episode of Doctor Who, “Gridlock” would be delayed by a week.  What outrage there would have been.  The season was already a week later than planned after being delayed by the England v (more…)

Lost and Found

My experiences of the last seven days have been dominated by sport and Doctor Who. The latter in aid of the retrospective series of blog posts looking back at the 2005 series and in anticipation of the forthcoming third series. The former has been a veritable deluge of soccer, helped in no small part by the fact that my team’s last three matches have all been shown live and seen an accumulation of 19 goals, which is no bad return. The sporting theme is set to continue as (more…)

Not impressed, Gary?

The new football season is upon us once more. After the dissapointment of the World Cup from an English perspective, the domestic Premiership season has started once more. To prove it we’ve had shock defeats, horror tackles, poor refereeing, transfer shenanigans, whining managers, new managers, sky rocketing wage packets and a healthy spot of our new, favourite past-time… Sven-bashing. Match Of The Day, great drama from the BBC. All this and we’re only two weeks in. Thankfully, it seems the one thing we have been spared so far is insight into the vices and seedy private lives of the players themselves, although the inevitability of this may have escaped my notice as I don’t tend to dwell too heavily on the content of the redtops. Ironically, the one saving grace is that it’s not quite as controversial as the cricket! After the pre-season dismantling of Greece, it’s back to the competetive internationals this weekend as England take on the might of Andorra.

Don’t Lose Your Head

There we have it…. 32 teams, 64 games, 147 goals and 28 red cards. A moment of outrageous indiscipline from the star player followed by ignaminious defeat in that cruelest fashion, the penalty shoot-out. Oddly, not England this time but our close neighbours France. What a game Marco Materazzi had though: he gave away the penalty to gift France the lead, leapt salmon-like in the box to head home the equalizer, stroked in one of the quintet of perfect Italian spot-kicks and (most memorably now) was on the receiving end of the Zidane head-butt. The feeling here is that this World Cup, though always the greatest of sporting spectacles, seemed to fizzle out a touch after the great start we had in the group stages. The only exception being the brilliance of the Italy v Germany semi-final, after which I guess it was only right for the Italians to win it in the end (it is the Chinese Year of the Dog after all, and only Brazil or Italy are allowed to win, if you put faith in such quirks). It was a good tournament though and as always, I left with a feeling that they should do that every year.

Quarter Finals day 2

We all worried about his foot and, when all was said and done, it was his head that should have been the subject of our concerns. Rooney saw red as another World Cup drifted away from England’s grasp in the cruelest of penalty shoot-outs (yet again). The accusations will be undoubtedly, and to a large part correctly, levelled at Sven and his choices of selection, substitutions and tactics but he has long since announced his departure. It came of more of a surprise to hear that his captain had handed back the armband for good. And so, as the Eriksson/Beckham era comes to an end we will begin to look at their legacy of 3 consecutive quarter-finals, we will look back at the 5-1 game in Munich and the Beckham free-kick against Greece and wonder how a team of this undoubted talent have failed to secure any silverware. Ah well, there’s always next time… it’s always next time. Elsewhere, France beat Brazil by a solitary Henry goal. It was apparently a great game but I was too despondant to watch.

Quarter Finals, Day 1

Well the early match saw Germany face Argentina. As a loyal England follower, it was hard to know who to cheer for as our two old footballing enemies went head to head. The first half was a dire affair with no chances, no imagination and almost nothing of interest. Ayala bravely headed the South Americans in front shortly after the break only for Klose to get his fifth of the tournament with 10 minutes left and the tie livened up a bit. Extra time was tense; penalties were inevitable; the Germans were lethal. 4 almost perfect pens from the hosts has taken them through to yet another semi final. It was after everything had finished when everything kicked off, so to speak. There were some pretty ugly scenes as the two sets of players clashed after the final whistle. Then the Argentinian head coach resigned, which was only fair given the terrible substitution decisions he made during the game.

The Germans’ opponents in the semi-final will, in another mouthwatering tie, be Italy. Zambrotta opened the scoring early against Ukraine and a 1-0 result looked to be a dead cert. However, in a more lively second half, Ukraine began to threaten only for Luca Toni to double the lead when Italy counter attacked and then score his second and Italy’s third after 70 minutes. It was easy in the end, but if we’re honest we’re only worried about tomorrow afternoon’s match, England v Portugal is sure to get masses of viewers, and I’ll be one of them. C’MON ENGLAND!!!!!