more news – part II – soccer

with the world cup looming, soccer is pretty much 'in' the news. imho, while a tournament on the grounds of an actual 'league' of champions from different countries would be far more interesting than a tournament based on nationality, the world cup is still something to look forward to. what do i mean by an actual 'league' of champions? instead of the league + KO rounds of the Champions League, a competition based purely on a 'league' basis would be more fair, although the fun / agony of being KO-ed would be missing.

The World Cup

unlike most other people, i dont have a 'favourite' nation to support. which brings up a pretty good question – just who to support? most ppl seem to support brazil, simply on the grounds that they are the likeliest to win. of course, they are outright favourites to win, but in a one-off match, the underdogs could win too, and more often than not, they do win, dont they?

now, watching a tournament as big as this without supporting some side doesnt seem to be a good idea. so, just WHO does someone support? (someone who is pretty much neutral, but is hugely biased toward Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso). some unfancied african nation, without knowing more than a couple of their players, just on the underdog grounds?

spain, perhaps, with their madman of a manager and underperforming players? italy, whose reputation is badly tarnished with the recent scandal? england, who have neither rooney nor a set formation nor even a fixed starting 11 for that matter? or perhaps germany, who didnt have a 1st choice keeper decided till a few months back, all due to their US-resident manager? or maybe argentina, whom i know very little about? france, who should be within a fair shout of winning the cup? no? perhaps some of the lesser fancied nations? sweden, paraguay, the czech republic, portugal, mexico, the netherlands, the us of a? or maybe support iran, japan or korea on the we are all asians grounds?

half a week left, and still with no team to support. sad, aint it? how does the world cup affect the club transfer market? some players are cheaper before it, or so the the clubs seem to think. most club managers claim that they want to get all their transfers done before the world cup. but judging from the actual transfers which have taken place so far, they havent been too successful in tying up players before the tournament.

The Transfer Market – Chelsea

chelsea promised their fans that they would buy 2-3 world class players, and a couple of promising youngsters. sadly, they seem to be nearly done with their transfers. first they got ballack, on a free sure, but supposedly on a 150k pounds per week wage, although they have denied this. thats some 8-mil per year, if its even true! then, they bought kalou for an 'undisclosed' fee, in the promising youngster quota of theirs. this was followed by shevchenko, supposedly for some 25-30 mil pounds, on a wage similar to that of ballack. and a couple of days back, the tied up Jon Obi Mikel, under the same promising youngster quota. and now, they are supposed to be interested in Roberto Carlos.

normally, on such a spending spree, i would just curse the club, foul mouth moaninho and abramovich, call the fans downright dumbasses to support such a team, and leave it at that. so, whats different now? the worst part is that they paid some 12 mil to ManUre for Jon Mikel Obi, who would no doubt love to go out on a little spending spree of their own and get themselves a competent central midfielder. and all this spending by chelski, a club which had a nine digit loss figure (in pounds again ~ 150 mil). damn abramovich and the bottemless pit that is his wallet.

The Transfer Market – Liverpool

apart from gonzalez and paletta, who are already bought, there have been no other confirmed signings, and apart from the sale of morientes, there has been very little activity. there are rumors, though, linking them with players for nearly every position except in the goalkeeping department, which is pretty surprising given they have a pretty solid squad, and counting ballack out, the best central midfielders in the EPL. there has been confirmed interest in Daniel Alves (right back), Dirk Kuyt (striker) apart from the constant rumors linking them with nearly every right winger in Spain. and then there are rumors of Benitez being handed a 'war-chest' of 30 mil. hope its true.

back to the world cup, i'll probably end up supporting either of Spain or England. heres hoping theres no cricket during the world cup. i mean the soccer world cup.

->Badrinath S

PS : was unable to get the post on E3 completed, its too long and unwieldy. and its mostly a collection of facts ,which makes it even more boring. this post was typed up a week and a half back, was too lazy to update and publish it.

P-PS : Hitman : Blood Money was pretty darn nice. how i love fiberwire! sadly, there was a bad, bad bug in the p0rn tycoon level. if you try to drop something from your inventory, the game crashes. as all my efforts at runnin and gunnin didnt work, i had to cheat through the level

P-PPS : which brings me to the main part of this blog (yes, in the 3rd PS) – who is the player to watch this world cup? the one player guaranteed to take the WC by storm? the one player to worship? in short, whos da man?

This Guy ->

*bows down and proceeds to worship*

Next Posts include :

• The World Cup – A Little Rundown of the Teams and Their Stars
• Blogs – Why Some Suck So Darn Bad