May 29, 2011

Football World has rendered itself to the feet of FC BARCELONA Argentine forward LIONEL MESSI. Spanish Football press & media have dedicated covers & pages to the player as he once again put in a brilliant performance & goal to help FC Barcelona win 3 - 1 Manchester United in the Champions League Final.

The “magician” yesterday placed himself in the Olympus of the Football Gods: Di Stefano, Pele, Cruyff & Maradona, leaving his stamp without any doubt that he is the “Best Player in World Football” & heading towards the “ALL-TIME” status. The man is only 23 years of age & none of the above mentioned “Football Gods” had so many titles as Messi has at his age. The only title missing that would put LIONEL MESSI in the solitary position of the “Greatest ever Football Player in History” would be a World Cup Championship title with Argentina, & that is a real possiblity  in the next coming 12 years.

LIONEL MESSI with the Champions League 2011 Trophy

Here is the impressive list of Club, Team & Individual Titles that LIONEL MESSI has already with only 23 years of age:

FC Barcelona
Spanish Football League - La Liga: 5 2004–05, 2005–06, 2008–09, 2009–10, 2010–11
Copa del Rey - Spanish Cup: 1 2008–09
Supercopa Spain : 4 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010
UEFA Champions League: 3 2005–06, 2008–09, 2010–11
UEFA Super Cup: 1 2009
FIFA Club World Cup: 1 2009


Argentina
FIFA U-20 World Cup: 1 2005
Olympic Gold Medal: 1 2008


Individual
FIFA Ballon d’Or: 1 2010
Ballon d’Or: 1 2009
FIFA World Player of the Year: 1 2009
FIFA Team of the Year: 3 2008, 2009, 2010
U-21 European Footballer of the Year: 1 2007
Spanish Football League - La Liga Player of the Year: 2 2009, 2010
Spanish Football League - La Liga top goalscorer: 1 2010
Copa del Rey - Spanish Cup top goalscorer: 1 2011
Spanish Football League - La Liga Foreign Player of the Year: 3 2007, 2009, 2010
Spanish Football League - La Liga Ibero-American Player of the Year: 3 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011
European Golden Shoe: 1 2010
UEFA Champions League top goalscorer: 3 2009, 2010, 2011
UEFA Champions League Player of the Year: 1 2009
UEFA Champions League Forward of the Year: 1 2009
UEFA Champions League Final Man of the Match: 1 2011
UEFA Champions League Final Fans’ Man of the Match: 1 2009
UEFA Team of the Year: 3 2008, 2009, 2010
Footballer of the Year of Argentina: 5   2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010

But there is more:

FIFPro World Player of the Year: 2 2009, 2010
FIFPro World Young Player of the Year: 3 2006, 2007, 2008
FIFPro Special Young Player of the Year: 2 2007, 2008
FIFPro World XI: 4 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010
FIFA U-20 World Cup Player of the Tournament: 1 2005
FIFA U-20 World Cup top goalscorer: 1 2005
Copa América Young Player of the Tournament: 1 2007
World Soccer Player of the Year: 1 2009
World Soccer Young Player of the Year: 3 2006, 2007, 2008
FIFA Club World Cup Golden Ball: 1 2009
ESM Team of the Year: 4 2005–06, 2007–08, 2008–09, 2009–10
Marca Leyenda: 1 2009
Tuttosport Golden Boy: 1 2005
UEFA best goal of the year: 1 2007

Lionel Messi : courtesy of Reuters

The above list will without any doubt get longer & longer in the coming years.

With just two days to go, the anticipation for the world’s biggest game, El Clasico, couldn’t be higher. After both sides, FC Barcelona & Real Madrid have defeated their respective opponents (Shakhtar Donetsk & Tottenham Hotspurs) in the knock-out stages of the UEFA Champions League, Saturday’s match will be the first of four Clasico’s within the span of 18 days.

The exit of Shakhtar Donetsk and Tottenham Hotspurs means that not only will the UEFA Champions League semi-final be an all-Spanish affair, but two mouth-watering Clasico encounters over two legs in their battle for European supremacy.

One Clasico creates a media-frenzy; now imagine four within a couple of weeks. Furthermore, these Clasico’s have a direct impact on all three competitions (La Liga, the Copa del Rey & the Champions League).

The Merengue head into Saturday’s La Liga clash with an eight-point deficit against their eternal rivals, FC Barcelona. Neither a draw nor defeat is an acceptable result if Real Madrid is to end the Blaugrana’s stranglehold on the Primera Division.

Having witnessed FC Barcelona accumulating the treble just two years ago, the Spanish capital club is just as motivated as any side to match this achievement.

Nevertheless, FC Barcelona own treble hopes are still very much alive. And although the Blaugrana have to travel to the most hostile of environments, the Santiago Bernabeu, they presumably hold the psychological advantage over their archrivals, having won all their encounters since Pep Guardiola’s appointment.

In Jose Mourinho, however, Pep Guardiola & FC Barcelona will have to face one the finest managers, some even go as far and champion the self-proclaimed “Special One” the greatest manager of them all.

Since this year is almost devoid of major football tournaments bar the Copa America, the Clasico’s and the UEFA Champions League final can be considered THE highlights of 2011.

Let’s find out what the Barca Blaugranes team (Arron Duckling, Bostjan Cernensek, Gabriel Roberts, Paul Udani, Shehryar Khan & I) think of the upcoming Clash of the Titans.

With just two days to go, the anticipation for the world’s biggest game, El Clasico, couldn’t be higher. After both sides, FC Barcelona & Real Madrid have defeated their respective opponents (Shakhtar Donetsk & Tottenham Hotspurs) in the knock-out stages of the UEFA Champions League, Saturday’s match will be the first of four Clasico’s within the span of 18 days.

The exit of Shakhtar Donetsk and Tottenham Hotspurs means that not only will the UEFA Champions League semi-final be an all-Spanish affair, but two mouth-watering Clasico encounters over two legs in their battle for European supremacy.

One Clasico creates a media-frenzy; now imagine four within a couple of weeks. Furthermore, these Clasico’s have a direct impact on all three competitions (La Liga, the Copa del Rey & the Champions League).

The Merengue head into Saturday’s La Liga clash with an eight-point deficit against their eternal rivals, FC Barcelona. Neither a draw nor defeat is an acceptable result if Real Madrid is to end the Blaugrana’s stranglehold on the Primera Division.

Having witnessed FC Barcelona accumulating the treble just two years ago, the Spanish capital club is just as motivated as any side to match this achievement.

Nevertheless, FC Barcelona own treble hopes are still very much alive. And although the Blaugrana have to travel to the most hostile of environments, the Santiago Bernabeu, they presumably hold the psychological advantage over their archrivals, having won all their encounters since Pep Guardiola’s appointment.

In Jose Mourinho, however, Pep Guardiola & FC Barcelona will have to face one the finest managers, some even go as far and champion the self-proclaimed “Special One” the greatest manager of them all.

Since this year is almost devoid of major football tournaments bar the Copa America, the Clasico’s and the UEFA Champions League final can be considered THE highlights of 2011.

Let’s find out what the Barca Blaugranes team (Arron Duckling, Bostjan Cernensek, Gabriel Roberts, Paul Udani, Shehryar Khan & I) think of the upcoming Clash of the Titans.

August 12, 2010

Theirry Henry will not say American soccer fans sing better than English fans. But they do sing well.

And maybe that is the missing link, the natural order of soccer progression. First the fans learn to sing together in a cappella support of their lads, then a great homegrown striker emerges from the mists.

Henry, once a great star in the Premier League with Arsenal, says he has heard home fans in Houston, Chicago and now the New York metropolitan area keep their teams in the game with musical accompaniment for the entire 90 minutes.

Without blaring vuvuzelas marring the sound, Henry made his home debut Wednesday evening, playing the first half and assisting on the goal as the Red Bulls defeated Toronto, 1-0.

But this musical talent breaking out all over Major League Soccer does not mean the sport is in for a golden age. In fact, this part of the continent might have had its golden age in the 1970s, when the late, lamented Cosmos were filling the late and perhaps soon-to-be-lamented Giants Stadium and other places.

Something is stirring in the United States in the wake of the recent World Cup in South Africa. Apparently a few stirring rallies as the Yanks were eliminated in the Round of 16 went over better with fans back home than they did with the hard-to-please American players, officials and even reporters who witnessed the sluggish starts and lapses up close.

“I never say we are turning the corner because it seems to me that if you turn the corner four times, you are back where you started,” Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States Soccer Federation, said the other night, when 77,223 fans nearly filled New Meadowlands Stadium for a rather unimpressive 2-0 loss to Brazil by the national team.

Something is definitely happening, Gulati added, “when you can’t get into a pub to watch a World Cup match at 10 o’clock in the morning.”

Landon Donovan’s stirring goal in the 91st minute against Algeria, to allow the Yanks to advance to the next round, seems to have been a magic moment back home — so much so that Donovan was on David Letterman shortly after the Yanks were knocked out by Ghana.

All 25,000 seats in the lovely if modest-sized Red Bull Arena are sold out for Donovan’s appearance with the Los Angeles Galaxy on Saturday night. Perhaps some of those tickets were sold before what’s-his-name blew out his Achilles’ tendon last spring, but Donovan, not any of the elderly stars from the top leagues in Europe, is now the glamour boy of M.L.S.

“You guys should be proud of Landon Donovan, he’s a great player,” Henry told reporters Wednesday after his first league home game enticed only 19,035 fans on a weekday night. Henry is working through a tight groin muscle and cannot guarantee he will be up for 90 minutes Saturday, but he made a few silky moves and alert passes, enough to give promise of more.

This franchise has been down this road. The MetroStars, now in witness-protection identity as the Red Bulls, have trotted out one Donadoni after another Djorkaeff, without much impact. They were cool guys, but they were essentially taking a pay cut to live in New York in their athletic old age.

So is Henry, for that matter, taking the PATH train out to the stadium on occasion. He came by car for Wednesday’s match, he said, because his mother is visiting from France. C’est un bon fils.

This influx of so-called designated players is a departure for the league, which has tried to avoid lavishing huge sums of money on aged glamour. But maybe in the 15th season, it is time to spend.

“Our goals are different,” said Erik Stover, the managing director of the Red Bulls, who are owned by the Austria-based highly caffeinated energy-drink maker, which advances its brand with soccer.

“We need to be the flagship club of the M.L.S.,” Stover said. “Our owners are not going to accept anything less.”

Stover does not think the World Cup has any “magic bullet” on the gate; otherwise there might have been a sellout Wednesday. But the crowd raised the season average for nine matches to 16,583, which would be the best season average for the club since 2004. In this economy, that’s not bad.

Still, the crowds — and the salaries — are nothing like the giddy blitz of the ’70s, when Pelé and Beckenbauer walked the land.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see them replicate the Cosmos, but I would say it’s nearly impossible,” said Shep Messing, the goalkeeper for part of the ’70s and now a broadcaster with the Red Bulls, who said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the progress.

Investors recently bought the name Cosmos, which had been languishing under legal lock and key for a few decades, and are talking about building a New York rival to the Red Bulls. Stover is all for it, but says it will not be easy.

Anybody who saw the Yanks stumble around against Brazil the other night may worry if this country is ever going to have a golden age in the World Cup. But Thierry Henry says American fans sing well. Maybe there will be Welsh-style choral competitions in 2014 to go along with the World Cup in Brazil. Maybe M.L.S. fans can advance further than the Round of 16.

Here we have tried to bring out the variety of soccer moves, the style, the effort and implication of the move taken. Let us look at them one by one.
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Learning is a no-ending process. When you are committed to being a decent and good soccer player, you need to keep abreast of the new tactics and maneuvers to match up and be at par. You have to always be on the look out for newer ways to improve the game. Once you understand this, your development as any sports player is unbound. There will always be new drills, new techniques, and new strategies.
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A physically demanding game like soccer requires immense amount of physical and mental strength. It is a game, in which the players stand at a high risk of susceptible injuries which could be either trivial or serious in nature. It is a game, in which though the physical contact between players from opposing team is not exactly planned but is inevitable during the course of the game, when players from both the teams are trying to control the ball by snatching it from their opponent.
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The most strategic job played on the field is defense. When no goals are made, the soccer match cannot be finished. A strong defense enables the soccer players to move forward, so as to concentrate properly and leaving job of defense with the specialists (defenders). Winning a soccer game without using soccer techniques required for defense is not at all possible. A player should learn everything about the defensive strategy to win the goal, which is near to its opponent goal.
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For some, soccer is not just about name, fame and affluence. Rather, it’s a ritual, an art, indelible piece of destiny and finally life! Improving soccer shoots, drills and passes is the desperate need of hundreds of soccer players. Here are some important points which the rookies and the established players, should keep in mind.
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Football or soccer is also called association football. It is one of the most popular games in the world played between two teams of eleven players each. The game is played on grass terrain of natural or artificial grass.
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The perfect goal! The dazzling defense and the flawless throw! Over the decades, this game has evolved as a religious revelry, cut throat competition and crowd pulling event. Though, it might appear as a cake walk on blockbuster movies, in real life, it’s not less than a Herculean job. Thus, training techniques play a very vital role in the game of soccer. It hardly matters, which soccer star we figure out, as they have reached the celebrity status with their perfect moves and shakes, only through committed training.
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