French Connection (formerly known as London Connection)

10:00pm I´m satrting to think to myself "if we don´t score before the 60-65th minute we might be dead". I don´t know why I always come up with these ideas but I guess it´s an effect of time running out and not really being able to help it. And there goes Ljungberg on one of Arsenal´s counter-attacks and... damn, that was close!!! By the way, it´s pi$$ing it down right now, "awesome" weather for a Champions League Final, yep... When it´s about Barça and Finals I can only think about the "Where is the love, the love, the love, love, love..." song. :.(

10:05pm ...Henry on the run as Arsenal´s left wing on a counter-attack, once again, Puyol tackles but misses the French guy by about 2 miles, Oleguer to help out (which is not saying much, considering the way he´s been playing) doesn´t do any better than his teammate.. and Arsenal "only" forces a corner!!! Jeeeeeeeeeeesus, what the hell was that??? The guy next to me is looking depressed, I try to cheer him up but the effect is about as positive as being a 26-year old single and being offered the chance of dating an 85 year old grandma: -100! And all Arsenal supporters are f*ckingly excited about that corner, which fears the hell out of me!!! ... Barça clears with a header!! "Venga Barçaaaaaaaaa". Suffer-o-meter is on 8.5 out of 10 now, where 10 is passing away...

10:07pm 27th cross into the box by Oleguer, on Barça´s right side, and yet again the same result, NOTHING!!! Oh God, he´s worse than Bolo Zenden back in the Van Gaal era!! I´m desperate now!!! Can someone TAKE HIM OUT, pleaaaaaaseeeee. Barça´s looking better with Iniesta and Larsson who´s come in for the "typical 1700 Dutch painter look-a-like" Van Bommel, who, just by the way, SUX!!!

10:08pm Mr. Canary looks worn down... yikes.

10:09pm WHERE IN THIS WORLD IS DECO?!? He´s been looking like sh*t for about 2 months already!!! But still you want him out there on the pitch and you don´t know why... I´m confused here...

10:10pm Holly sh*t, Henry one on one on Valdés and he misses, HE MISSES!! Unbelieavble!!! He could easily have sealed the game here!!!! I think my heart stopped punding at some moment here... He never misses an easy shot like that, coming across from the left side. ... maybe a bit of "love" for Barça after all??? All this "2-0 situation that could have been but wsn´t" leads to us fans cheering and getting really behind Barça now!!! It´s now or never!! And I´m telling everyone that this was the key moment of the game!!!!! Oh wait, we´re still 1-0 down and 20 to go... But as we all know by now, "Hope´s a good thing", isn´t it?

10:12pm Ronaldinho is starting to make me wanna jump out of my seat and punch him!! Pass the damn ball, don´t try it all yourself!!!! Damn, he´s playing like crap, hideous performance!!! Come on man, you are supposed to be the best player in the World!!!

10:16pm ... and it happens: Larsson with an awesome pass to Eto´o and the Camerunese striker send it home!!!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLL!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. All even!!! YES, YES, YES!!!! We´re there!! I knew it!!!! Come onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Barçaaaaaaa!!! Everyone just jumped out with an inmense sense of relief!!!! Eto´o is the man!!! Just awesome!!!

10:20pm ... Belletti on the right, ball into the box, he shoots and SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCORES, SCOOOOORESSSSSSSSSSS, EVERYONE GOES BONKERS!!!!!!!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLL!

We´re just jumping, shouting, high-fiving, hugging each other!!! You just can´t describe the moment!! My buddy in tears and we´re 10 mins. away from being the Champions!!!!!!

10:33pm And the game is up, we won, we won, WE WON!!! Words missing here, we won, we are the champs and no one will be able to take away this moment from us!!!! I can´t believe it!!! "Campeones, campeones, oe, oe, oe" The atmosphere is indescribable!!!

10:35-11:15pm Ongoing celebrations. Belletti is the man of the night!!! Every 3 mins he comes back towards the stands and we cheer, we cheer, we almost cheer him up into the Barça Pantheon!!!

... from here on the night is all about celebrating!! We meet Inma, Dani, Cheso and their boss in a Spanish bar to comment on the game and have a few drinks. Not that Cheso is pi$$ed or anything, hahaha. He tries to hide his dissapointment but can´t really... Dani meanwhile is all excited about Larsson and pi$$ed because "Puyol raising the cup will be the last image to be seen on the video before every Champions League game next season". Yep, and that´s so cool!!! :)

Then we decide to go to a Club called Queen or something similar in Champs Elysées. The place is packed!!! Ideal venue for celebrating, hehe... It´s awesome!!! For a Wednesday, the party mood is incredible. And whenever I take out my Barça flag people start cheering and French Barça "supporters" come out from everywhere... Then there´s the moment someone notices the presence of a Ronaldinha in a Barça shirt in the club, and everyone, even Cheso&Dani start the "Campeones, campeones..." chant! She even comes by with her friend to join the celebration but that´s about it... :D Probably, the "having a girlfriend effect", cause everyone has one, except for me... Now that I think of it, I´m about the only one left single of my group of friends, hmmmm, even the most unlikely character is hooked up... Whatever, being single is cool!!!

Then we get to know this French young lady, Raphaëlle. She comes by spontanously and joins our celebration, even puts on the Barça flag and performs some dances, hehehe. Aweeeesomeee!!! She turns out to be a very cool chick, besides speaking English with a NON-FRENCH accent, which trumps about every other crazy moment of the day!!! Incroyable!

Apart from that, Sanyu´s putting on a show his own way: Jumping up and down to the vibes of music with anti-Barça chants! Cheso vom Alpli is a pissed Real Madrid fan trying to forget what just happened, Inma (a Barça supporter by the way, which automatically earns her 100 points in her score ranking) turns out to be the surprise contributor of the night, keeping pace with everyone else, Dani is busy talking to "Rafaela" and the Canary... well, he´s on another level since St. Denis, experiencing an ecstatic state of Nirvana or something like that ... As for myself, I´m just there, partying, having fun and just seizing the moment and getting carried away...

Finally, Dani and I leave the club at about 5:15, when about everyone else is gone already, with the exception of their boss and the Parisienne girl... From there we go to the apartment, I take a shower and make my way to Charles de Gaulle. The poeple working at the Lufthansa desks are all about quickness, it takes aaaaaages for just 1 passenger to do the check-in!!! I´m going mental now... Fortunately I´m allowed to cut the line, as my plane is about to depart... I arrive at the office in Staines, via Frankfurt, after what seems to be 100 hours later!!! And surprise, surprise, the Spanish boss has come to visit us and she invites me for lunch to talk about some things... Perfect timing, I just wanna go to bed!!!!!!! But hey, at least WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!

Quote of the day (Thursday) would be when my mum asked about the trip and I told her it had been "...the best day in my life".

She: "... what? I can´t believe you are saying that!!! Better then being with a girl???"

Me: "Mmmmmh, yep, better, it was awesome, plus there were nice chicks in the Club as well during the celebration, soooo..."

Go figure!!!

Labels: The Ramblings

Labels: Sports

Labels: Sports

3pm I leave Staines office... long way to go and lots of expectations!!!

3:30pm Cool, although a bit crazy, bus driver on the way to Heathrow airport. Half Somalian, half Suomi, go figure... Held a speach on how to make the world a better place and how much certain politicians s*ck! Ended up fist-fiving me when I left the bus: "yo, brotha". Funny guy.

4pm First Arsenal supporters at Heathrow airport. You could even avoid paying exchange commisions if you were an Arsenal supporter at one office...

5:30pm Plane leaving late as always. Then they gave us shitty sandwich. Wasn´t Lufthansa supposed to be a cool airline???

7:45pm Leaving the plane in Frankfurt, connecting flight boarding in 5 mins. I missed the freaking exit, had to go out to the arrivals terminal, then pass a control again and run like 1(?!) frekin' km to be at my gate on time... Good job by the Frankfurt signaling team!!! Clap, clap, clap!

8:30pm Same damn sandwich on the second flight, what the hell? When about 30% of the people pass on something the crew offers FOR FREE you know something´s going wrong!

9:35pm Arrival in time in Paris. You gotta hand this one to the Germans and their timing, orrrrrrrr... now that I´m thinking of it, it might just be Lufthansa, because German trains are THE mess and Germanwings´ timing is poor, too, and it took T-Online like 7 weeks to give me Internet access, and... let´s move on here.

9:37pm Last words of a "Gunner" before disembarking the plane: "All the preassure´s on Barça, I have that feeling, we win, we win 2-1... I mean, we are the underdogs, they have all the responsibility coming into the game." Yep, good argument my friend. It´s good that sports actually is not as much about responsibility and feelings as it is about talent sometimes... But who could blame him, considering how cursed Barça has looked so many times in their history.

11:00pm Watched Madrid loose their last league game at my buddies´ place. Also got to know their boss, Sanyu, who turned out to be "un genio" :) Right after that we started our PES5 mini tournament where the PS2 was conected to a beamer. Now that was aweeesome!! Messi, the Big Final´s absentee, just destroyed Real Madrid in one of the games, pretty cool...

Wednesday

10:30am Woke up feeling a bit nervous already

12:00pm Went out for a walk in Paris, with my buddy the Canary... Lots of Barça fans all over the place and you could sense a certain feeling o euphoria amongst them, never a good omen before a final.

1:30pm First verbal exchange (well, sort of...) with Barça supporerts wearing a "Catalonia is not Spain" flag. Me: "Arriba España, cooooño"... which inevitabely led to their angry "Who´s that f*cker?!?" gesture. I guess those fools haven´t figured out their nationality yet, maybe if they checked their passport or ID more often, oh well... Lesson as always here: Don´t ever miss the chance to take the mick out of a separatist.

1:44pm First comments on les parisiennes:

Me: Hmmmmm, lots of cute women here in Paris...

Canary: Yep, much more than in London

Me: ... yeah, but they are more "chaud" in the UK (which eventually turned out to be not true after all)

Canary: Agreed

(May I note here, that his taste is a biiiiiiiiit off sometimes...)

2:05pm Me urging us to find a church and light a candle, just in case... Perplexed look on the Canary´s face.

2:30pm We met Dani (aka Rivers) for lunch. Straaaange waitress. She had no voice, was slow and acted strangely. Either she was flirting or about to collapse after a journey of hard work...

4:40pm We leave for the game. You can feel the tension already. Everyone salutes us on the streets and wishes Barça good luck. It was a bit weird. No other football supporter to be seen anywhere close, people starring at us, kids telling mums "look Barcelona"... It felt like being in the wrong place at the wrong time, almost like the Final had taken place already or so...

5:20pm We´re lost!

5:23pm It starts raining a bit...

5:29pm We find a metro and it seems we have to make 17 changes in order to arrive at the station. That s*cks! Plus I bought a beer and it´s too warm to drink!

5:45pm Christian (formerly known as "The Canary") flirts with a chick in the tube. She speaks Spanish. I urge him to talk to her but he refuses. That´s what happens when you have a girlfriend...

6:05pm Arrival at the stadium, we´re finally there. Arsenal supporters "outchant" everyone else with some of their songs.

6:10pm-7:30pm Circling around the stadium feeling the atmosphere and having some drinks. Two conclusions here: 1) No Barça female supporter is even close to being called cute. 2) If we loose, we jump into one of those brooks close to Saint-Denis.

7:40pm Inside the stadium!!!!!! Great atmosphere already!!!! I have that special "we´re in a Final, I hope we don´t screw it" feeling, just like in 92 against Sampdoria and the 267 times Barça´s basketball team made the Final Four, and then actually lost, between 1988-2003...

8:10pm A rumour´s out there that Iniesta will start on the bench. Ok, can we just maybe start 8-11 as well?? Why????? He´s possibly been the best central midfielder of the world for the past two months and Rijkaard leaves him buried on the bench in th Champions League Final?? Someone please explain that to me!! (PS: I told you that Iniesta would be part of Spain´s World Cup roster some time ago, when barely someone counted him in, well, it was confirmed last week. Look out for him to start for the team from game 2, to never be benched again. He´ll stand out in Germany!! The way he´s playing, fresh, quick, precise, he´s almost unstoppable these days!)

8:35pm Both teams´ lineups are being announced and Barça supporters start clapping when Henry´s name comes up!! I´m shocked!!! WTF??? Why would you chant for the most dangerous guy on the rival team, the guy who potentially could destroy your Championship hopes... Reason is, his name has been linked to Barcelona several time, so what??? We´re in a damn freakin´ Champions League Final here!!! Booooooooooo and shout at any, ANY, opposite player, supporter, coach, assistant coach... well except for the chick on the pictures (see below) :P (just kidding)

And yeah, Iniesta starts on the bench... Why would Rijkaard do this to us? Further, why would a coach who's proven himself of being a reasonable person these years, something rather uncommon in sports, do something like this?? Whatever...

8:43pm Barça fans display the usual "big-occasion-mosaic" with cardboards. Cool to be part of it!!!!

8:48pm The game just started 3 mins ago and Henry is left alone in front of Valdés... who denies him!!!!! Lack of concentration? The curse? Jesus Christ, that was so close, I´m speechless!!! Can anyone call a timeout here?

8:57pm Arsenal is controlling the first minutes of the game...

9:03pm Lehmann is sent of for a foul on Eto´o on a ball through from Ronaldinho, but why didn´t the referee allow Giuly´s goal? What the hell? Lots of confusion here...

9:09pm Barça looks more confortable now playing 11 vs 10. Arsenal is giving all the space of the World to Edmilson who obviously S*CKS!!!! Not one decent pass, nor a shot... and he´s wide open!!! Why is he even on the pitch??? I´m getting nervous in the ranks... By the way, what is Eto´o doing playing left wing!?!?

9:22pm Campbell scores!!! Oh, oh... it didn´t look like a foul though??? Worst thing here, I´m starting to think of my conversation with my friend Jimmy on Monday where he said something like "Barça should clearly win but... what if Arsenal scores like in the 37th minute (no kidding here) and your team starts getting nervous and you´re 1 down after the first half... what then?"

9:29pm Almunia denies Eto´o and the ball hits the post! Dammit!!!! That goal would have been so important. Fans starting to get rather nervous, including myself. I start noticing those "what if" gestures on some of us...

Some other thoughts...

Nevertheless, if Arsenal had won the Champions League, he´d have left. I´m 100% positive here! It´s just that he´s a proud guy, too, and wants to prove the world and himself that he can win it all as an Arsenal player. Not gonna happen. No way!!! The gunners have a good team, young players but the competence is fierce in the Champions League and with Adebayor up front, forget it.

Labels: The Ramblings

Wicked Champions League Final day in Paris!!! Barça comes back to win 2-1 (Eto´o and Belletti).

• Man of the match: Valdés & Eto´o!! Special mention as well to Iniesta, Larsson and Belletti for his match winner.

All in all, deserved win with some moments of luck (Valdés denying Henry in the 70. minute). Watching it in the stadium was just too cool and the party afterwards till 5:00am was just aweeeesooooomeeeeeee!!!

Here some pics:

Labels: Sports

Labels: Sports

Labels: London

Labels: Sports

"Spain´s Quest for Redemption": First thoughts and roster analysis

Luis Aragonés announces Spanish 27-roster preselection for the World Cup (Mai 05, 2006)

So let´s see what we have:

Keepers: Casillas, Reina, Cañizares. Not bad, some quality here

Central Backs: Puyol, Pablo, Juanito, Marchena (likely and HOPEFULLY to be ruled out)

Right Backs: Sergio Ramos, Salgado and Javi Venta (odd man out)

Left Backs: Antonio López (soft), Del Horno (not commited to Spain if I may say so) and Capdevilla (likely to be ruled out, although I hope he gets the nod over Del Horno miracolously...). Definitely one of our weakest positions.

Central Midfield: Xabi Alonso, Cesc, Xavi, Iniesta (yep, there you go, just as stated in my April 27 column) Senna, Albelda, Baraja (hopefully to be ruled out)

Wing Players: Reyes, Joaquín, Luis García

Strikers: Torres, Villa, Morientes, Raúl

OK, it doesn´t look too promising, I know, I know but if the Greeks could win the Eurocup in 2004 with their crappy squad, anything is possible in this world, just ask Steve Nash (back to bck NBA MVP when people were questioning 2 sumers ago on whether it was a good idea to hand out a 60 million contract to an injury prone PG in his early 30s, but that´s another story...) and I´m not gonna quote Andy Dufresne this time...

Alright then, here are some key facts for our national team:

We might well have the worst scoring midfield of all 32 participants. None of our midfielders normally scores from the second line for their clubs, at least some of the guys know how to score through free kicks... But it gets worse: None of our left or right backs is a great finisher either (Pernía anyone?!?!), not to mention that our central backs hardly ever score from a corner or a free kick either. Reyes and Luis García have scoring ability from the wings unlike Joaquín and of our strikers, one of them is washed up (Raúl) and two are having their worst seasons in quite some time (Torres and Morientes, although I must admit that I´ve always faith in "El Moro"). That basically leaves us praying for Villa not to be running on fumes when World Cup time arrives but rather keeping up his league momentum... Oh well, there wasn´t much more to choose from except for maybe Tamudo, Arteta (not a scorer either), Navas (great talent from Seville but he´s aparently nuts, so... He starts feeling depressed during training camp cos he misses his girlfriend, so go figure...) and good old Salva. :-)

What we have is some good keepers and that´s fundamental in a World Cup, a defensive leader, Puyol, probably our most reliable player, and some good organizers. I´d start the following 11 on opening day:

Casillas; Salgado, Puyol, Juanito, López (yikes!!); Senna, Iniesta, Cesc; L. García, Villa and Morientes

Paying like a team and being solid defensively will be a key. If we figure out what 3 players work best together in the midfield we might have a real strength there. If then Reyes and Torres combine nicely on offense and focus on playing football, rather than the normal $hit they are up to, and Villa doesn´t loose his scoring touch, well there might be something to grab after all. But for me the key definitely are Cesc, he´s basically the only guy we have who can beat someone of the dribble and do something in our midfield and Iniesta who has just looked awesome as of lately, like a real pitch general!

Ok, that´s it for now. More to follow soon...

Labels: Sports

Labels: Sports

Labels: Random stuff

"Spain´s Quest for Redemption": First thoughts and roster analysis

• We might well have the worst scoring midfield of all 32 participants. None of our midfielders normally scores from the second line for their clubs, at least some of the guys know how to score through free kicks... But it gets worse: None of our left or right backs is a great finisher either (Pernía anyone?!?!), not to mention that our central backs hardly ever score from a corner or a free kick either. Reyes and Luis García have scoring ability from the wings unlike Joaquín and of our strikers, one of them is washed up (Raúl) and two are having their worst seasons in quite some time (Torres and Morientes, although I must admit that I´ve always faith in "El Moro"). That basically leaves us praying for Villa not to be running on fumes when World Cup time arrives but rather keeping up his league momentum... Oh well, there wasn´t much more to choose from except for maybe Tamudo, Arteta (not a scorer either), Navas (great talent from Seville but he´s aparently nuts, so... He aparently starts feeling depressed during training camp cos he misses his girlfriend, so go figure...) and good old Salva. :-)

• What we have is some good keepers and that´s fundamental in a World Cup, a defensive leader, Puyol, probably our most reliable player, and some good organizers. I´d start the following 11 on opening day:

• Casillas; Salgado, Puyol, Juanito, López (yikes!!); Senna, Iniesta, Cesc; L. García, Villa and Morientes

• Paying like a team and being solid defensively will be a key. If we figure out what 3 players work best together in the midfield we might have a real strength there. If then Reyes and Torres combine nicely on offense and focus on playing football, rather than the normal $hit they are up to, and Villa doesn´t loose his scoring touch, well there might be something to grab after all. But for me the key definitely are Cesc, he´s basically the only guy we have who can beat someone of the dribble and do something in our midfield and Iniesta who has just looked awesome as of lately, like a real pitch general!

Ok, that´s it for now. More to follow soon...

Labels: Sports

Labels: Sports

(If you haven't seen the movie and pretend to do so, I'd recommend you stop reading here!!!)

• So, Mavs-Gasol&co. (3-0) looks done. Disappointing performance by Gasol in games 2 and 3 and a bit of bad luck with the OT loss in a rather strange succession of events in the last couple of second were Terry missed a FT, grabbed his own rebound (Hello, boxing out someone? Terry actually is the PG...) and the German Guy hit a three pointer to send the game into OT. As if I didn't hate him enough... The Grizz' should at leaaaaaaaast grab tonight's. If Dallas wins it's a blowout, I'm telling you...
• Wizards-Cavs (2-2) looks quite intriguing. Both play through motions and none actually seems to know quite what it's doing. Great 3rd and 4th quarters by Arenas who really started to feel it (plus every time he put some preassure on D he got the foul, hey, very much Euroleague style here... The Cavs need to take more advantage of Ilgauskas who basically scored at will ehen fed by Lebron in the 4th. Hughes form should be worrying for Cleveland. He's absolutely our of rythm. On the opposite Caron Butler looks very good, sharp, nice addition to the mix for the Wizards and he's delivering!!
• Heat-Bulls (2-2) I think I mentioned Miami should've learnt the lesson from game 1. Ok, so they didn't wanna listen and now Chicago has won two ina row, caught some momentum going into game 5 and the preassure all of a sudden is on Miami. Some Shaq+Wade needed here desperately. Meanwhile, Nocioni is having a helluva series with 22+ and 9+ boards, while shooting above .500%. And think he sort of screwed it in game 1 for the Bulls...
• Lakers-Suns (3-1) Kobe sinkin' unbevlievable shots to first tie and then seal the game in regular and overtime. Who screwed it for the Suns? Mister Nash, back-to-back MVP candidate. I don't wanna take anything away from him. I think he's amazing and definitely makes his teammates better (Boris Diaw anyone?!!?!?) but... would MJ, Larry... have screwed it in to crucial moments in one and the same game with time running out and ahead in the score? I'll just leave that question up to you...
• Pistons-Bucks (2-1) Blowout win by Milwaukee the other night. Let's see if they can keep it up tonight...
• Clippers-Nuggets (3-1) I'll say 4-1 and bye to George Karl and his boys. By the way, Carmelo is overrated, Kenyon Martin might end up playing for the Knicks next season (he's a PRICK) and Vandeweghe's whole process of making Denver a contener might be tottering... All that work over the last few years for nothing? We'll see...
• Nets-Pacers (2-2) Ha, this a a cool one. Carlisle doing a pretty good job with his team, although Jermaine is helping him one of every two nights. This one will go into 7, and if it was tennis would end 20-18 in the fifth set. Now, you tell me these wouldn't have been the perfect playoffs, open for almost every team to grab a win here and there, for the Celtics kids to gain some experience. Everytime I think of it...
• Spurs-Kings (2-2) O dear, the Kings are reigning as of lately. Man, I knew it, I knew they could upset San Antonio. If they just hadn't botched game 2. High hopes on the Kings here. It'd be too cool to say bye to Monsieur Parker and his crew. Keep focused guys and don't screw it cause game 5 is the key!!!!

I'll leave the Euroleague update for Monday:

Labels: London