Christian Panucci retires from football
Posted on | August 23, 2010 | No Comments
One of the most famous Italian defenders decided that it’s time to hang up boots after 20 years of activity at the highest level.
Panucci aged 37, played during his career at clubs like Internationale, Milan, Roma, Chelsea or Real Madrid.
The right back started his career his career at Genoa. He moved to Milan where he won the Serie A and Champions League and Uefa Super Cup titles.
At Real Madrid he won almost everything, being the first Italian who won the Champions League with Real Madrid. In fact he declared that his best moments were at Real Madrid.
At Roma he won the Coppa Italia and the Super Cup, the Italian trophies that were missing from his CV.
Panucci has not forgot to thank Fabio Capello, the coach that trained him at Real, Roma and Milan.
The former Italian defender signed for Parma at the beginning of this year after leaving Roma. The player declared that he still had offers fro SUA but that he decided that is best to retire.
Europa League qualification 2010 - 2011
Posted on | August 19, 2010 | No Comments
Sibir Novosibirsk 1 - 0 PSV
BATE 3 - 0 Maritimo
CSKA Moscow 4 - 0 Anorthosis
Leverkusen 3 - 0 Tavriya
PSG 2 - 0 M. Tel Aviv
Rapid Vienna 1 - 1 Aston Villa
Slovan Bratislava 0 - 1 Stuttgart
AIK 0 - 0 Levski
Debrecen 2 - 0 Litex Lovech
Dnepr 0 - 1 Lech
Omonia 0 - 1 Metalist Kharkiv
Vaslui 0 - 0 Lille
Odense 2 - 1 Motherwell
Feyenoord 1 - 0 Gent
Steaua Bucharest 1 - 0 Grasshoppers
Galatasaray 2 - 2 Karpaty
Club Brugge 2 - 1 Din. Minsk
CSKA Sofia 3 - 0 TNS
Genk 0 - 3 FC Porto
Hajduk Split 4 - 1 Unirea U.
Lausanne 1 - 1 Lok. Moscow
Palermo 3 - 0 Maribor
PAOK 1 - 0 Fenerbahce
Celtic 2 - 0 Utrecht
Liverpool 1 - 0 Trabzonspor
Alkmaar 2 - 0 Aktobe
Dundee Utd 0 - 1 AEK
FC Timisoara 0 - 1 Manchester City
Getafe 1 - 0 APOEL
Györ 0 - 2 Din. Zagreb
Napoli 1 - 0 Elfsborg
Dortmund 4 - 0 Karabakh
Sturm 1 - 2 Juventus
Tags: articles > europa league > online > qualifications > results > sports
Big clubs have started to give more importance to young players
Posted on | August 19, 2010 | No Comments
Sami Khedira, Angel Di Maria, Pedro Leon or Ricardo Carvalho were the players that Mourinho wanted from the early days at Real Madrid. Besides them Mourinho managed to sign another star player, Germany’s Messi, Mesut Ozil.
The transfer sum was around €15millions and the player signed a six years contract. Another young player wanted by Mourinho is Lukaku from Anderlecht.
Manchester City, as usual us lately, added another two important acquisitions to the squad Mario Balotelli who came from Inter for €30 millions and James Milner who camed for the same price from Aston Villa.
On the other way City are trying to trim the squad by selling or loaning players like Robinho, Bellamy,Caicedo, Wright-Philips or Santa Cruz.
Also Galatasaray is close to sign Misimovic for €12 millions. Chelsea signed two Brazilians Ramirez from Benfica and Neymar from Santos.
So teams like Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madri, Barcelona but not only have started to put accent on young players with potential.
In the last couple of years many young talents were sold for a small amount of money or even for free and who became important players for the new clubs. Some examples here are Giovani Dos Santos, Fabregas, Pique. Now the things have changed a little and players with potential are kept at the club.
Jose Mourinho, Guardiola, Ferguson, Wenger and may others have started to promote young players to the first team. But not only the big teams are using this strategy.
Besides the fact that they wont have to buy other players for those positions there is also the possibility of selling the eventual star at a higher price.
The promotion of young players to the first team can be called a transfer and it can prove to be profitable business over years.
Should Fifa introduce video replay?
Posted on | August 18, 2010 | No Comments
The video replay one of the most discussed topic in football in the recent years.
Everyone expects from the referees to be perfect, or at least to reduce the mistakes during the games but it looks that this is a very hard task to do. So everyone tries to find solutions, and Fifa is pressed from all sides to come with an alternative.
In the first phase Fifa tried the system with 6 referees, tested it in Europa League, but even this solution doesn’t seem to be better. There were also speculations that the ball should contain a chip to signal when the ball passes the line of the goal but the solutions is not well seen by the specialists.
So at the moment it looks like the only viable solution is the video replay.Regarding the video replay the opinions are divided with a plus for it. Fifa is pressed to take a decision especially after the World Cup mistakes, when some of them proved to be crucial.
So after rugby, basketball, tennis or american football we might have video replays also in football. This decision would bring advantages but not only.
At advantages we can mention fewer mistakes that can decide games and fewer scandals. On the other side the spirit and the charm of the game would suffer. Imagine for example a game show with a similar setup - a Who Wants To Be Millionaire Online Game for example would take so long and become boring. Also the game could have more than 10 minutes of additional time which could determine the players to lose their patience awaiting for the verdict, the fluidity of the game could also suffer.
The final decision will be taken in November but there are chances for a positive answer.
Uefa Champions League Playoffs 2010-2011
Posted on | August 17, 2010 | No Comments
Zenit 1 - 0 Auxerre
Din. Kiev 1 - 1 Ajax
Rosenborg 2 - 1 FC Copenhagen
Sparta Prague 0 - 2 Zilina
Young Boys 3 - 2 Tottenham
Basel 1 - 0 S. Tiraspol
Braga 1 - 0 Sevilla
Bremen 3 - 1 Sampdoria
Partizan 2 - 2 Anderlecht
Salzburg 2 - 3 H. Tel Aviv
Tags: articles > Champions League > online > results > sports > uefa