Archives For football

United Loses Derby And Victory Dumps Covic

1 May 2012

It’s really been a bad day for me in terms of football.

United lost to City with only two games left in the season and City is now level on points with United but in top position due to a better goal difference.

I’m absolutely gutted that we couldn’t finish off Everton last weekend, lost to Wigan a couple of weeks ago and fell to Blackburn during the Christmas period. If we had won all those games, we wouldn’t be finding ourselves in this vulnerable position and would probably have wrapped the title up by now.

We only registered three shots on goal last night and NONE on target. Yes NONE. That’s unforgivable for a team like United.

Now I can only hope Newcastle can do us a favour next weekend and get a result against City and fingers cross, let the title stay in the red half of Manchester. At this point in time, the title is City’s to lose.

Turning to local football, Melbourne Victory hasn’t been in the best of forms for this season even though we signed probably the biggest star of the league thus far, Harry Kewell. The only shining beacon of light for me this season was the performance of Ante Covic who has saved our blushes a couple of times.

Our defence looked out of sorts in some games and the experience of Covic has pulled us through and got us a couple of draws. Covic was in fact supposed to be a back up to new signing from Perth Glory, Tando Velaphi. Velaphi injured himself early on during pre-season and Covic was thrusted in the spotlight and he did not disappoint. In fact, he did so well that he was voted as Melbourne Victory’s Player of the Season.

And with Covic’s contract expiring this season, what did Melbourne Victory do? With Velaphi now returning from injury and youngster Lawrence Thomas on the bylines, Victory deemed that Covic was surplus to demands despite consistent performances this season and saving Brett Emerton’s penalty in the first game of the season against Sydney FC.

Melbourne Victory announced that they had released Ante Covic from the club along with another stalwart, former Manchester United trainee Grant Brebner.

I respect the fact that newly appointed coach Ange Postecoglou wants to make new changes to the team who did so badly this season but keeping sub par performers like Archie Thompson and Danny Allsop p (who played for Manchester City between 1998 – 2000 and is turning 34 years old in August) just does not sit well with me.

What infuriated me further was when someone tweeted to the Melbourne Victory twitter account and asked why was Covic released and this was their response:

So Covic was plain “unlucky” because his contract was expiring and Velaphi and Thomas wasn’t? This is how you reward a player who played well for the club? A player who has been ever present for Victory is taken for granted whereas a star like Kewell isn’t even going to be showing up for the upcoming friendly against Olympiakos.

The football teams I am supporting are seriously giving me the shits these couple of days. I’m going to go back to watching The Voice on telly. #fml

Epic UCL Semi Final Match Between Barcelona and Chelsea

25 April 2012
Messi

It’s ANZAC Day today so I got the day off work and it just so happens that it coincided with the first 2nd leg semi-final of the Champions League match between Barcelona and Chelsea. I wasn’t really looking forward to this match to tell the truth (My blood bleeds Red Devils) but I was sure glad I did.

Barcelona was peppering the Chelsea goal the moment the match started and after going down one nil in the first leg at Stamford Bridge, it was obvious Pep Guardiola wanted to get the goals early with a fairly offensive formation.

Things were going swell for Barcelona when they scored in the 35th minute from a Busquets tap in. They got the goal they so desperately wanted and it seems things are finally going Barcelona’s way after their last two defeats to Chelsea and Real Madrid.

Chelsea was trying to cling on to dear life after losing Cahill to an injury early on but things got worse when captain Terry was shown a red card for an inconspicuous knee jab into Alexis Sanchez’s back.

One nil down and one man down, Barcelona wasted no time in taking advantage. Two mins after Terry was sent off, Messi sent Iniesta clear with a deft through ball and Iniesta wasted no time slotting the ball home to bring Barcelona into a two nil lead (2-1 on aggregate).

Chelsea looked clueless after losing their captain and seemed like they need to move into damage control to avoid any embarrassment. But in a weird twist of fate, Lampard managed to put Ramires through on goal and he delicately chipped the ball over Valdes to bring the score to 2-1 with an advantage to Chelsea on the away goals rule.

By now, all the hard work the Barcelona players have produced were undone and the silence in the Camp Nou was deafening.

The second half pretty much started like the first half and Barcelona was award a penalty two minutes in after Drogba tripped Fabregas in the box but Messi – who has been blamed in the media for his lack of form recently – smashed his kick against the crossbar.

Barcelona continued to pile on the pressure with all ten Chelsea players defending, the Barcelona players are finding it hard to penetrate the organized Chelsea defence even with their slick passing.

Chelsea would have gone through to the finals if the score stood at 2-1 but substitute Torres – who came on for the tireless Drogba – managed to latch onto a clearance unmarked and rounded Valdes to score.

By now it was game set and match. Chelsea was definitely through to the finals and Barcelona, who seemed invincible in recent years, succumbed to an organized Chelsea side.

I was also looking at tweets that were being fired up on Twitter and was actually quite surprised to find out that @BradBlanks, the Hollywood reporter for @HamishandAndy was actually watching the match in New York as well and he was tweet replying me and followed me on Twitter after the match!

But the funniest tweet has to definitely go to @RobbieSavage8 with him having a go at “fat” Ronaldo’s diet/weight when he saw a tweet from @Persie_Official.

And to round this post off, I’ll leave you with Gary Neville’s orgasmic celebrations after Torres scores the last goal for Chelsea. Oh what a morning it has been. God I love football.