Barcelona - Real Madrid: World’s Biggest Match

Tomorrow sees the return of the world’s biggest club football match: Real Madrid-Barcelona.

There’s nothing quite like it in the world of professional football.
Pageantry. A true despise and hatred for each other. A frenetic atmosphere. An idealogical clash between ‘good and evil.’

It has a little bit of everything … and then some.

I can not wait for this match!

Real Madrid are undergoing massive change these days, letting coach Bernd Schuster go in favor of former Sevilla and Tottenham skipper Juande Ramos.

Meanwhile, Barcelona are coasting. After destroying Valencia (my beloved club) 4-0 last weekend, Barca look unstoppable. Samuel Eto’o is the league’s leading scorer, new coach Pep Guardiola has instilled a fresh philosophy to the club and they have some guy named Lionel Messi who just happens to be very good …

This match has it all … as Sky Sports journalist Guillem Balague says in his preview of the match:

What else is there left to say? This is Barca-Real after all. As (Barca president Joan) Laporta said in our interview this week, there is no other sporting spectacle like it in the world. More clichés? Why not. This is more than a game. This is the ultimate grudge match. This is history. A clash of the Titans. For everyone in Spain it represents a variety of conflicting symbols: two nations; two great sporting institutions; two worldviews; two philosophies or even just two football teams. Wherever you come from, it means something different, but wherever you are, it matters.

Very, very true … it is the Game of Games. The Big Show. The irresistible force vs. the immovable object … shall I go on?

Here, a smorgasbord of highlights from previous Classico’s …

First off, remember the day Ronaldhino was cheered at Madrid’s Bernabeau?

Remember Luis Figo’s first time at the Nou Camp wearing the white shirt of Real Madrid? I’m sure he’ll never forget …

What’s it like in the Nou Camp before the match?

How have the last 10 Classico’s gone? Check out this review, in Spanish …

For a preview of the match, make sure to click here. And here.

What does Spain’s prime minister think of the match? 5-1? No me digas!

What do the fans think ahead of the big one?

Written by Darkvader on December 12th, 2008 with no comments.
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HOCKEY : POL AMAT AWARDED BEST PLAYER IN THE WORD 2008

Spanish Sport is having an increible year of titles in all fields, now
it has another in Hockey. Spanish International POL AMAT was
awarded by the International Hockey Federation (IHF) the “Best
Player In The World” prize for 2008.

SFS congratulates the player for his outstanding achievement &
keeping the Spanish flag waving!

Written by STRIKER on December 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Hockey and Spain.

TENNIS 2008: SPAIN DEFEATS ARGENTINA FOR ITS 3ºRD DAVIS CUP

FERNANDO VERDASCO (below)substituted in the last moment his
teammate - & higher ranked player - David Ferrer to take the winning

tie against Argentine JOSE ACASUSO 6-3, 6-7, 4-6, 6-3, 6-1 to give
SPAIN its 3ºrd DAVIS CUP. It was simply an amazing comeback from
the Spaniard after the Argentine was 2 - 1 ahead & just wore himself out
by attempting to halt the Spaniards attacks. Spain wins 1-3 the 2008
Davis Cup & without its Nº1 World Ranked player Rafael Nadal.

Written by STRIKER on November 23rd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Davis Cup and Spain and Tennis.

INDOOR FOOTBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2008: BRAZIL 6 - SPAIN 5

Brazil won Spain on penalties in today´s Indoor Football World
Championship Final held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). The game was
a tough affair of strategy, discipline & little chances which finished
after extra time with a 2-2 result that took the match into the penalties
stage.

The two time World & defending Champions Spain missed twice - Torras
& Marcelo - to give the 2008 title to Brazil. The end result was 2-2
(4-3 penalties) = 6-5

Written by STRIKER on October 19th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Brazil and Indoor Football and Spain.

BEIJING 2008 - OLYMPIC TENNIS: RAFAEL NADAL WINS GOLD MEDAL IN MENS SINGLES (SEE VIDEO)

At the age of 22 Spaniard RAFAEL NADAL has already notched up
30 individual titles ( including 4 French Open & 1 Wimbeldon), a Davies
Cup title & now an Olympic Gold Medal after defeating Chilean
Fernando Gonzalez 6-3, 7-6, 6-3.

To add to this years golden run, tomorrow Rafael Nadal will be officially
acclaimed as the World´s Nº1 ranked player in Tennis, taking the spot off
long time “owner” Roger Federer.

Amazing for such a youngman & for a Spaniard. Rafael Nadal is
the personafication & the epitomy of what this country aspires to
be in the modern World: a winner, humble yet proud, persistant,
International prestige, hard working, cosmopolitan, a tough &
calculating mentally & a great Champion. These qualities are not
common to the mayority of Spaniards who are everything opposed,
but things are changing & Rafael Nadal is leading the generational
change.

The Spanish mentality is changing, its opening & its globalizing, all thanks
to Nadal & his barrier breaking mentality & humanity. Thank you Rafael,
thanks for making this country feel optimistic & proud, we hope not to
wave the flag & praise you when you only win, but also be there for you
when you lose. As we all know its common for Spaniards to disappear
from the “spotlight” & scene when things go bad & the good times
disappear.

See VIDEO of final point & medal presentation. WARNING: Enjoy
while you can before You Tube removes due to someone solicitating
rights violation…stupid, but it happens.

Written by STRIKER on August 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Gold Medal and Olympic Games and Rafael Nadal and Spain and Tennis.

ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE KICKS OFF WITH GOAL FROM FERNANDO TORRES & MIKEL ARTETA

The English Premier League kicked off its 2008/09 season today
& we got beamed the SUNDERLAND vs LIVERPOOL FC match.
Liverpool always stimulates interest in Spain because of its Spanish
Manager & players.

In a nut shell, Liverpool played badly until Xavi Alonso came on for
the 2º half & got his team moving the ball around. Then in the 82th
min FERNANDO TORRES got the ball & “powered” a furious shot
from 20 -25mts to score a super goal that gave Liverpool the victory.

Great start for Torres who continues where he left off. This could be
another great season for the Spaniard, SFS wishes him all the best
as he is in Golden Ball contention!

Speaking of goals & Spaniards, MIKEL ARTETA for Everton
scored a fantastic goal that surprised everyone, including the
goalkeeper. However, his goal was´nt enough to give his team
the victory how lost 2-3 to Blackburn Rovers.

Written by STRIKER on August 16th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on English Premier League and Spain and Spanish Players Overseas.

U/19 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS 2008: BAD START FOR SPAIN

The U/19 European Championships at the Czech Rep. got under
way with GERMANY defeating two time Champions SPAIN
2-1 in the opening game of Group A ( other teams Hungary &
Bulgaria) with Spains only goal from ALBA.

The Germans out played Spain with a better organized team in
defence & strenght. The Spaniards controlled the ball but were
frustrated by the “German Wall”.

Spain now meets Hungary in their next game & must win to keep
their chances alive. SFS feels that a good lesson was learnt against
Germany & Spain will not repeat mistakes.

GERMANY 2
Zieler; Diekmeier, Jungwirth, Reinartz, Toprak (Kopplin, m.79);
Risse, Sven Bender, Latza, Nsereko; Gebhart y Sukuta-Pasu
(Soyudogru, m.89).
SPAIN 1
De Gea; Azpilicueta, Ortiz, Sanjosé, Antón; Alba, Parejo, Camacho
(Luque, m.63), Aarón (Lillo, m.77); Aquino (Bolado, m.54) & N’sue.

Goals: 1-0, m.7: Sukuta-Pasu. 2-0, m.56: Toprak. 2-1, m.66: Alba.

Written by STRIKER on July 15th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Euro U/19 2008 and Soccer and Spain and football.

Euro 2008 Final: Spain 1-0 Germany

I wanted to get this post up sooner, but I’ve been blog-less for the past few days as a result of a beer-filled long weekend out of town. I did watch the final on Sunday, though, and although I was cheering for Germany, I can’t say I’m disappointed that Spain won — they were the best team both over the course of the tournament and in the final itself.

Germany started the stronger team in this game, with Miroslav Klose spurning a good chance to score as early as the third minute. They looked particularly dangerous as they attacked Sergio Ramos down Spain’s right wing. But Spain were on top soon enough, with Jens Lehmann called on to make a great save in the 14th minute when Christoph Metzelder and his awful playoff beard almost deflected Andres Iniesta’s shot into the net for an own-goal.

In the absence of injured Golden Boot winner David Villa, Fernando Torres was playing as a lone striker — a familiar role from his time at Liverpool — and causing lots of trouble for the lumbering German defence. He’d already sent a header off the post with Jens Lehmann well beaten, when he scored the game’s only goal in the 32nd minute. Xavi’s through ball split the defenders, Torres outmuscled Philipp Lahm and then, with Lehmann coming out to claim the ball, clipped it perfectly over the keeper and into the net.

If Torres was the pivotal figure for Spain, so too was Michael Ballack for Germany. Ballack has had horrible luck in major finals, and it didn’t get any better for him here. He was already hampered by a calf injury — although I think you’d have had to chain him down to stop him playing — and then he got a cut over the eye toward the end of the first half, after a collision with Marcos Senna.

I think that just added to his sense of frustration, because a few minutes later he got booked for an altercation with Carles Puyol, and he seemed to spend the second half getting increasingly pissed off at the entire world. He did have a couple decent shots on goal over the course of the game — one deflected by Ramos, another one going just barely wide — but mostly he was cro-magnon-ing around and fouling people.

And with Ballack not at 100%, the rest of the team was also malfunctioning. Philipp Lahm was hauled off at halftime and replaced by Marcell Jansen — supposedly due to injury, but come on. (Poor Lahm — I swear I remember him being a good defender; I don’t know what went wrong.) Klose got kicked in the balls early in the second half. And then later in the game had the indignity of being replaced by Mario Gomez. It just wasn’t a good day for them, really.

Germany did have a good spell of pressure partway through the second half, but Iker Casillas and his defence held firm. Luis Aragones sent on Xabi Alonso for Cesc Fabregas — who’d been much less effective than in the semi-final — to shore up the midfield, and shortly thereafter brought on more fresh legs in the form of Santi Cazorla — to replace David Silva, who’d come dangerously close to getting sent off after going nose-to-nose with Lukas Podolski. (I think Silva must have been on his tippy-toes at the time.)

There was a chance that things could’ve gotten out of hand, with the Germans trying to muscle their way back into the game, but the referee did a good job of calming things down — although I still don’t understand why he’d booked Casillas in the first half. Anyway, Spain reasserted themselves, passing their way through Germany as they’d been doing all game. Lehmann had to make another good save from Ramos’ diving header in the 66th minute, and then from the corner, Iniesta’s shot was cleared off the line by Torsten Frings.

The clock ticked inexorably down, and Germany had still only managed one shot on goal all game. Spain, meanwhile, continued to threaten, with Dani Guiza coming on for Fernando Torres — who’d worked his ass off — and almost immediately setting up Senna for what should have been their second goal. Spain might have liked to pad their one-goal lead, as there was always a chance that Germany could surprise them with an equalizer, but the Germans were mostly just lumping the ball forward in the late stages of the game, and Spain were always able to regain possession.

And so it finished 1-0 — albeit a pretty action-packed one-goal game — with Spain becoming European champions for only the second time. They’d already overcome their reputation as chokers with that penalty shootout victory over Italy, but they’ve now killed it off completely with such a comprehensive win. As for Germany, I said before the game that they had been more than the sum of their parts, but they showed their limitations here against a Spanish team that was undoubtedly superior.

I’m not going to pick a team of the tournament, because I’d probably end up like the TSN/Sportsnet crew, who went with an unorthodox sort of 2-5-3 formation. But a few awards to round things up…

Game of the tournament: Turkey 3-2 Czech Republic
It’s hard to narrow this down, because there were so many great games, and Turkey in particular were involved in several incredible results. But this was the epitome of their tournament: a comeback from 2-0 down with 15 minutes to go that was highlighted by brain farts on the part of both goalkeepers, with Petr Cech dropping a cross to gift Turkey an equalizer in the 87th minute, and then Volkan Demirel getting sent off in stoppage time for flattening Jan Koller — no mean feat.

Runner-up: Russia 3-0 Holland
Holland had disposed of Italy and France with ease in the supposed group of death, but an Andriy Arshavin-inspired Russia were brilliant in the quarterfinal and essentially beat them at their own whirlwind attacking game.

Goal of the tournament: Wesley Sneijder vs. Italy
A textbook-perfect counter-attacking move, with Gio van Bronckhorst clearing the ball off the line at a corner, and then pelting downfield to get involved again with a crossfield pass to Dirk Kuyt. Kuyt then headed the ball down for Sneijder to hook it past Gigi Buffon from an almost impossible angle. A fantastic team goal and a fantastic finish from Sneijder.

Runner-up: Bastian Schweinsteiger vs. Turkey
Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski sometimes seem to have a telepathic connection — see also Schweinsteiger’s goal against Portugal in the preceding game; here, Podolski broke down the left and crossed to Schweinsteiger coming in from the other flank, who flicked the ball brilliantly across the keeper with the outside of his right boot.

Player of the tournament: Marcos Senna
UEFA’s technical panel may disagree with me — they gave the Golden Ball to another Spanish midfielder, Xavi. But Xavi had periods where he was brilliant and periods where he was invisible. Senna was also often invisible, but for the right reasons: you want your defensive midfielder to go unnoticed, because that means he’s doing his job. He was the solid base for Spain’s tiki-taka attacking play, and a shield for their not always convincing defence. Consistently good throughout the tournament.

Hotass of the tournament: Iker Casillas
Captained his team to the title. Possibly the only keeper in Swisstria who actually knew how to deal with crosses. A big part of the reason why Spain gave up only three goals, and none of those in the knockout rounds. Went mano-a-mano with world champion Gianluigi Buffon in a penalty shootout and emerged victorious. And celebrated winning the whole shebang by stripping down and spraying his teammates with champagne. Well done.

Written by Jen on July 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Euro 2008 and Germany and Spain.

Spain – Winner of the Euro 2008

Euro 2008 is over and Spain are the new European champions. One hour before midnight Iker Casillas lifted the trophy and the celebrations begun all over Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna and in every major city in Spain.
La furia roja is finally on the top of Europe 44 years after the glorious generation that dominated the Old continent in 1964.
The lads of Aragones showed off great maturity in the matches, despite their youth and inexperience, and by many football reviewers they deserved the victory.

The Spanish national team was in the group D alongside with Greece (former European champion), Russia and Sweden. The group phase was passed easily with 3 wins of the three matches. Italy was the team who met Spain in the quarter-finals. The game was not one of the best of the tournament coz Spain faced very dangerous opponent who knew how to play on a result, despite the awful football for watching. The game was decided after penalty shoot-out and Casillas was the man of the match saving 2 of the 4 penalties. Once again the Madridista showed to the world that he is the No1 goalkeeper. In the semi-finals we all saw one of the best matches of this Euro when Spain faced Russia. Led by the excellent coach Hiddink, Russia showed great display during the group stage and especially in the quarter-final with Netherlands, but obviously Spain was way too big bite for them. The match ends 3-0 for Spain and the whole squad was about to prepare for the great final. Big loss for the final match for Spain was the injury of David Villa – the top scorer of the Euro 2008.
The last barrier on the way to the glory was Germany – team who didn’t play such a good football during this competition but their experience showed off as crucial when they beat the opponents Portugal and Turkey which showed much better display then Germany in the matches. First 15 minutes of the game haven’t promised anything good for Spain, but then they turned over the match and took the ball possession also creating some chances. In the 32” Fernando Torres picked up a through ball from Xavi and flipped over Lehman and that was the end for the Germans. They had more than one hour for playing but I think that even if they played whole night they wouldn’t score. In the rest of the match the attendance saw only chances for Spain but they didn’t score. It was 1-0 for Spain in the end!

So, if you make a little overview of the Euro 2008 I think that you will agree with me that Spain deserved this trophy more than any other team.
Congratulations!

Written by done_mkd on July 2nd, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Aragones and Euro 2008 and Germany and Spain and Torres and Villa and Xavi and casillas.

Hey Look We’re Exprets, Too

That was intentional.

Anyway, we’re going to milk the Euro for all we can, because once we run out of related posts, we’re going to have to think of things to write about.

Sure there’s the transfer market, but Liverpool is holding Crouch hostage for a fee that is almost exactly what they need to buy Gareth Barry. So their financial situation is fairly transparent and any move they make will be similarly telegraphed. As for the Gunner contingency among us, we will simply plug our ears—la la la la not listening—place faith in Wenger, and conveniently forget that it hasn’t really worked out the last two seasons.

So as futbol’s hot stove heats up, we go to eleven and present our best squads from Euro 08.

Of note, only one of us put Xavi, the EUFA player of the tournament, in their starting XI. In fact, by our collective accounting, Marcos Senna was probably the Spanish midfielder of choice, as he made every single list.

In fact, I’m just going to call out UEFA’s panel of nine technical experts collectively ‘tarded up for their choice. Not that Xavi was at all bad, but it’s pretty clear that Senna was the main reason that Spain went through the knock out stages without conceding a goal.

He so disrupted the Russian and German midfields that Casillas didn’t even have that much to do; and the reflex kick-save on Camoranesi in the quarters turned out to be the most title-saving save he had to make.

Anyway, David Villa and Carlos Puyol were similarly lauded. The latter made every list but one and the former all but two (and the two he was absent from had striker partner Torres instead).

As for players not from Spain (or naturalized Brazil-born Spaniards) there was lots of love for Andrei Arshavin.

It’s tough to poo poo that choice after he riddled the Dutch silly, but I’m going to try anyway. Arshavin only played in three games, and in one of them he was completely shut down—like NYC November ‘65 shut down—by Senna. So Arshavin had one nice game against Sweden, and a superb game against a Dutch team that, pre-tourney, everyone thought had a suspect back line that was waiting to be exposed. So maybe don’t believe the hype.

My personal favorite squad? Not even mine. The NY Kid went genius crazy on us and cooked up a formidable 4-5-2.

Written by Darkvader on July 1st, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Euro 2008 and Precious Roy and Spain.