So what’s the lesson boys and girls? That’s right, you can’t buy success. Although money certainly helps, it doesn’t help to have crazy people running your club. There’s something heartwarming about Real Madrid, a team that went out and bought the two best players in world, losing to a Lyon side who sold Madrid their best player as well. That’s the football gods for you.
If you love perms or Didier Drogba, you’ll love the Les Éléphants shirt …
Spain is trying to conquer the world again. This time, they might succeed.
Argentine newspaper Clarín recently reported that the Barra Bravas of several teams in the Argentine First Division have struck a deal with the Argentine government to provide security for government events (whatever that means) in exchange for tickets to the World Cup in South Africa — paid for by the government. That is, airfare paid for by Argentine taxpayers. Needless to say, many Argentines are not pleased by this news.
A few nights ago, I was at the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina’s residence in Buenos Aires. Why? Because that’s how I roll.
While there, I was speaking with two women, one Argentine and the other Colombian, who both live in Buenos Aires. These two had something else in common. They were football fanatics. Full-fledged terrace walking, song singing, team news absorbing maniacs. So we got on quite well.
So just in case anyone out there doubts the craziness that is football or soccer, or whatever you want to call it, I give you Egypt.
Following defeat at the hands of Algeria for a World Cup spot, Egypt has recalled its ambassador from Algeria. To be fair, it seems that a fair amount of violence has been going down on both sides as a result of the tension brought about by the match.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com fame has crossed over into football. A few days ago, Mr. Silver in conjunction with ESPN released the Soccer Power Index on ESPN.com. According to Silver, “the SPI rating is designed to provide the best possible objective representation of a team’s overall skill level. In particular, the SPI ratings are intended to be forward-looking: They measure a team’s relative likelihood of victory if a competitive match were to be held tomorrow.”
Translation: If you bet, you’ve got a new index to help you justify why you make your next incorrect bet.
Is the Fix in or is the Fix in?
Many crazy things happened over the weekend. Nigeria came from behind to beat Kenya, while Tunisia fell to Mozambique, thus sending Nigeria through to the first WC on the Continent (my new point of Africa, since so many refer to it as if it were a country…I digress). Ireland squandered multiple opportunities and lost to a lackluster France squad 1-0 in the first leg of their play-off. Bosnia-Herzegovina missed two glorious chances to score a tying goal and lost 1-0 in the first leg of their play-off against Portugal.
As amazing as all these games were, none were as riveting as the happenings before and during the Egypt v Algeria match in Egypt.
Upon arrival in Cairo, it was reported (and supported with some video footage) that the Algerian team bus was attacked by rowdy Egyptian fans.
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