A gathering point for all news articles concerning football players.
Today’s transfer roundup won’t be too long, because I’m being generous. I’m sure you all have much better things to do than to sit and read for an extended period of time…right?
Written by Eddie Griffin. One comment
Today’s transfer roundup starts with transfer-related news, but not a big rumor. Instead, I give two thumbs-up to Real Madrid’s Wesley Sneijder for looking out for his brother’s best interests, as he stepped in to prevent Real from making an offer to former club Ajax for his brother Rodney, a promising youth team player.
Written by Eddie Griffin. Leave a response
So, what’s going on in the world of transfer rumors today? As always, chime in and chip in with opinions - and with rumors!
Written by Eddie Griffin. 2 comments
The North East of England is often described as a ‘football hotbed’ – an area that is widely accepted to be rich in the culture, tradition and passion of the beautiful game. Three big clubs, hundreds of thousands of loyal supporters and a breeding ground for talent through the eras, there can’t be many parts of the world that top Tyneside, Wearside and the Tees on the hotbed thermometer ?
Well of course there are. Bobby Charlton, Alan Shearer and Paul Gascoigne apart, how many world class players has the ‘hotbed’ produced ? And how many trophies have their teams won on a national or international stage ?
I know it’s not all about glory and home grown talent, but I can make a case for ten diverse areas on this planet all being bigger hotbeds than the North East (population: 2,515,442):
Written by Betfair. 13 comments
Today’s transfer roundup starts up as the last one did, so Arsenal fans, feel free to jump a couple of paragraphs.
Written by Eddie Griffin. 15 comments
Guess who’s back? That’s right, me and the transfer roundup.
The season’s winding down and the rumors are heating up, so you’ll be seeing me in this space regularly.
Anyway, on to the good stuff!
Written by Eddie Griffin. 13 comments
Image courtesy of the Chicago Fire and Major League Soccer.
Last year, Major League Soccer welcomed David Beckham amidst significant mainstream media coverage in North America. Another player who joined the growing league in 2007, although with less fanfare, was a legend of Mexican football: Cuauhtémoc Blanco Bravo. Many believe that he had much more of an impact than Beckham’s injury-plagued campaign.
He began a stellar career with his childhood side, Club América, of Mexico City. Since 1995, he has represented his country at two World Cups, along with several other prestigious international competitions. Until 2007, with the exception of two years in Spain, Cuauhtémoc had spent his entire professional career in the Mexican Football League.
Written by Steve Amoia. Leave a response
The World’s Most Influential People in 2008 - Time 100.
I’m sure one can find many flaws with this list - as opinions go, everyone has one and we all think ours smells of roses. Fair enough, and I’m sure the editorial team at TIME magazine did their due diligence when compiling this list.
But having said that, and keeping in mind that this list was compiled not through public opinion but through the filter of what some people think matters most in the world, who put Kaka on this list?
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 21 comments
Looking through the Soccerlens mailbag this week we came across a letter from a Premier League player who is facing a difficult dilemma. As always, Soccerlens can help.
Dear Soccerlens,
I am faced with an impossible decision at a crucial stage in my career. I don’t know what to do for the best and I am told that you are the people to come to for advice. I certainly enjoy reading Graham Fisher’s stuff, I really don’t think he gets paid enough.
I am twenty-seven years old and am a one club man. I skipper my team and everyone here likes me. I have played at centre-half, left back, left midfield and am now one of the best central midfield players in the country. I must be because I’ve got eighteen England caps to prove it. So put that in your pipe in smoke it.
Written by Graham Fisher. 42 comments
Images courtesy of GolTV.
Soccerlens is very privileged and honored to welcome a legend of world football, Enzo Francescoli. Mr. Francescoli, who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, was one of the best players of the modern era. He was a striker with unusual grace and elegance on the football pitch. He was affectionately known as “El Principe.” For younger members in our audience, please take a few minutes to watch the featured highlight video (below). You will see an artist at work, and understand why he was called “The Prince.”
He is now the CEO of GolTV, which began operations in 2003, and is the only Spanish language network that televises soccer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in North America. GolTV also broadcasts in English, and reaches a nationwide audience through cable and satellite operators. Their target audience is comprised mainly of Hispanic, European, Asian, and American fans 16 years and older.
Written by Steve Amoia. 4 comments
Don’t call me Hugo any more. I’m English, don’t you know? So you have to change my name. At school, P.E. teachers insisted on branding me “Steckel”, although I suppose I should just be grateful I escaped that awful nom de plume that is the quintessentially British “Macca”.
It’s 10:30pm, and a day both frustrating and unproductive has truckled obeisantly past. I’ve seen the interview with “La Radio” yabbering on about “Berba/The Assassin” and “Keano”. “Curbs” is frustrated – who wouldn’t be? “Stevie G” and “El niño” just won’t stop scoring, and “the Pope” feels a little more secure on his Anfield throne. They once had a cocaine-snorting “God” in Liverpool, you know? They say anything’s possible up north.
As you will have made out from my opening paragraph, this post is going to be about NICKNAMES, and I must extend a note of thanks to my father, who was responsible for informing me about Fitz Hall’s ingenious moniker “One size”, and to Hall himself for inspiring this article. A shout out also to former Everton player Neil “Dissa” Pointin and QPR’s on-loan Chelsea midfielder Michael “Haunted” Mancienne.
Written by Hugo Steckelmacher. 17 comments
England boss Fabio Capello has warned his players that those who make themselves unavailable for games without a genuine reason will be putting their international careers at risk.
This message has been sent prior to the forthcoming friendlies against the United States at Wembley on 28 May and the visit to Trinidad and Tobago on 1 June.
Capello said: “If someone doesn’t want to come and play for England, it means they don’t love the shirt enough and obviously they must prefer to go on holiday.”
Capello added: “By the time of the two games, some of the players will have been on holiday for a week already. Do I want to see commitment to England? If a player doesn’t love to play for England, then perhaps he should stay at home. Players must love the England shirt and wearing the England shirt. That is all there is to it.”
I don’t know about any other English fans out there but at first this sort of talk is absolute music to my ears. OK, the two performances we have seen from England since Don Fabio took over may not have been obviously full of passion and ‘love of the shirt’ but this is a message that I was so pleased to have heard.
Written by Graham Fisher. Leave a response
From Coca Cola kid to Kazim Kazim. Whether you know him as the player who Brighton fans won in a fizzy drinks promotion or the Champions League super-sub who shook a billionaire’s empire and now goes by a Brazilian-style moniker, Colin Kazim-Richards is a modern rarity.
In these days of over-stuffed Premier League academies and foreign scouting networks there aren’t any players who come through the divisions to play at the highest level.
But if you look carefully there are some gems to be had below the Championship and here’s a few names who could be warming the away benches at Old Trafford and Anfield next season:
Written by Betfair. 6 comments
There has been an awful lot written this season about the ‘respect agenda’, the malicious tackles creeping into the game and the hounding of referees. Most of what has been written has been along the lines of suggesting that the players at the very top of the game have a duty to act as role models to lesser and younger players around the country.
There have been articles about the lack of discipline shown by these ‘overpaid, playboy prima donnas’ in the Premier League and their terrible lifestyles and poor example setting on the pitch.
I would like to write something that tries to put some of these matters into perspective and stop some of the hypocritical, ‘holier than thou’ reporting we have seen every week throughout the season. (Yes, I agree, some of that has been written by yours truly. I have now seen the light!)
Written by Graham Fisher. One comment
After a turbulent season as replete with failure as success – an extremely disappointing league position and a whimpering exit from the UEFA Cup compensated only by a euphoric Carling Cup win – one gets the feeling that Juande Ramos and his team are to take advantage of the long summer break to effect a heavy clearout of a squad that was by and large inherited from their predecessors.
Written by Hugo Steckelmacher. 17 comments
Just got done reading through Steve’s translation of Seedorf’s recent interview (the original appeared in La Gazetta dello Sport last week, I think).
Seedorf talks about his future plans (he’s very focused and clear on them), how he deals with pressure, his thoughts on the commercialisation of football and most enlightening, what he says about footballing authorities acting only in terms of protecting their public image as opposed to doing what is right (something that we see, sadly, everywhere in football and elsewhere in our society as well).
Good stuff, go have a read.
Written by Ahmed Bilal. Leave a response
Comparisons can be a pain in the backside. My dad says that nobody was ever better than Tom Finney or Puskas, my older brother says George Best and Pele have no equals, I believe Maradona to be the best ever and my son says that Cristiano Ronaldo has more than the lot of them put together.
It has always been this way. We always think that the top players of ‘our generation’ are the best of all time. It is impossible to compare these great players because they are all from a different place and time. Of course George Best wouldn’t be as quick, as fit or strong enough to play in today’s Premiership and Ronaldo would have been even more of a phenomenon than he is now if you transported him back thirty or forty years.
You can only judge them by how good they were amongst their contemporaries. It is no good listening to anecdotal evidence because the fans of each player will only tell you why their particular favourite is the best of all time. The only way to judge this fairly is to look at the facts and figures. So let’s do it:
Written by Graham Fisher. 58 comments
In June, 16 of Europe’s best national sides will descend upon Austria and Switzerland for the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship, or as most people call it, Euro 2008. While many of the continent’s top teams will be on display, some of Europe’s - and the world’s - best will be as well, so even if your team isn’t in it, you still have plenty reason to watch.
With that in mind and before the tournament begins, we (as in I) have conjured up the juggernaut of juggernauts, an All-Star Euro 2008 Starting XI.
There are several players you won’t see on this list, like Francesco Totti, Fernando Torres, and others, but I compiled this list with one major rule - no more than two players from one country, for the sake of diversity. Keeping that rule in mind, I did try to include the best players, both promising youngsters and experienced stalwarts alike. So, while all of the names below are recognizable, you may not agree with all of the selections. Then again, you’re not supposed to.
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Written by Eddie Griffin. 18 comments
To quote Guardian blogger Paolo Baldini, this fixture represents a match between “the Proud and the Usurpers; the Honest against the Defrauded; the Champions against the… eh… actual Champions. Don’t let those pretenders from AC Milan or Roma tell you otherwise - from the moment Juventus sealed promotion back to the top flight […] Italy has been counting down towards one game, and one game only“.
After the first round last November, which ended 1-1 draw at the Stadio Olimpico of Turin, the Derby d’Italia between Juventus and Internazionale is back. Saturday, the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza of Milan will be the host to one of the most intense derby matches in Italy. Two teams not from the same city but who are very much bitter rivals, and also have the highest goals total in Serie A history.
Written by Marco Pantanella. 6 comments
Hugo has an interesting article up today on back-up goalkeepers - and one of the points he makes is how first-choice keepers, when demoted to the bench, become easily frustrated and move off to greener pastures.
Hugo:
…it is in this light that we can see the desertion of a trio of excellent goalies from a Liverpool side that seems to have delighted in stockpiling exciting guardians: we are talking, of course, about Scott Carson, Chris Kirkland and Jerzy Dudek, although the latter rather insanely opted to join Real Madrid, where he is kept out of the side by a goalkeeper in Iker Casillas who is a good deal better than the man who had blocked his path at Liverpool!
Both Casillas and Reina are top-quality keepers. Both are young (Casillas turns 27 in May, Reina 26 in August), in their prime and have been on top form for quite some time now. Both are considered indispensable to their clubs (Casillas is Real Madrid for life and a club icon, and one suspects that Reina may reach the same status if he stays on at Liverpool). Along with Gigi Buffon, Petr Cech and Edwin van der Sar, these two are considered among the best goalkeepers in the world (Reina is easily one of the best keepers in the Premier League - and stats-wise, perhaps even better in the last two seasons).
So the question is - who is better - Casillas or Reina? More importantly, does the defence in front of the keeper matter (Liverpool have a better defensive record than Real Madrid), and what criteria should we use to find out which keeper is better?
Written by Ahmed Bilal. 26 comments
For one reason or another, this season has seen a number of long-suffering back-up goalkeepers finally venturing into the first eleven on a regular basis.
Almunia at Arsenal has at long last cast off the albatross of Mad Jens Lehmann from around his neck, leaving Lehmann to vilipend and gnash his teeth together like Muttley from Wacky Races – to the chagrin of Arsene Wenger, but to the utmost amusement of other spectators. Almunia has been one of The Gunners most consistent performers so far this campaign.
Meanwhile, over the last two seasons a goalkeeper who has spent so long glued to the bench that doctors might have pronounced him comatose – Steve Harper – has profited from the injury misfortune of Shay Given to notch up 17 and 11 league performances in 2006-07 and 2007-08 respectively.
This run of games, if it continues, could allow Harper to reach the milestone of 100 games in a Newcastle jersey, spread over some 10 years in the first-team squad, as well as opening the possibility of surpassing the 18 league appearances managed in the 1999-00 season – an impressive record considering the three bareen seasons in the early noughties when Harper did not make a single league appearance.
Written by Hugo Steckelmacher. 13 comments
“See I was supposed to be a footballer
but they kept pickin’ the other kid
who was a foot taller
I got lazy and less enthusiastic
I stopped trainin’ and turning up to matches
started sabotaging the manager’s tactics
but when I did play I used to score hat-tricks
then I gave up
now I’m in the music biz
and I wont ever let my laziness ruin this” (Kano – 9 to 5)
“I appreciate football because without football I wouldn’t have anything else” (Ince, interview with The Independent, 1998)
“I love tackling, love it. It’s better than sex”
(Ince in an interview from England’s World Cup training camp in France 1998)
In my article on Tony Mowbray, I noted that certain images of the West Brom manager during his ‘Boro days have crystallized in time to encapsulate a certain experience of the triumph of a working class club when sailing through rocky economic seas. Paul Ince is another such figure: more than a player, Ince is an icon. And it is indeed this iconic status that can be found both at the source of Ince’s considerable success and the root of the series of outlandish faux-pas that have plagued his career.
Ince’s story, like that of a number of footballers, presents an alternating amalgam of free-fall and tragic resistance in the face of significant social and economical adversity; his plot is that of the Hollywood protagonist teeter-tottering between good and evil and ending up going in for both.
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Written by Hugo Steckelmacher. 8 comments
Dan Leo takes an in-depth look at US Soccer, the problems it faces and what the future holds for soccer in America.
Soccer isn’t big in the US. It’s not a major sport. It’s not even a second tier sport. It’s below that.
The top American soccer league MLS draws the attendance numbers similar to small European nations, which makes it an insignificant presence on the American sports scene.
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FIFA has the US ranked at 28, while Elo has them at 29. Both are probably tad too generous, as the US national team plays far too many matches at home and against weak CONCACAF opposition. It rarely meets a quality international squad under a duress of sanctioned competition. The last time the US sent a squad - albeit of a B/C level 
- to an international event, it lost three straight games at Copa America with a 2-8 goal difference.
Major League Soccer is no great shakes either. In a recently completed Pan-Pacific tournament, the MLS champion Houston Dynamo was trounced 6:1 in the final by the Japanese Gamba Osaka club that was missing its top six Japanese players due to their national team commitment.
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Written by Dan Leo. 12 comments
Ashley Stestanovich may have acted as a body double for Thierry Henry but the similarity between the two ends there. Henry has legendary status at Arsenal, would be high on the list of all-time greatest foreigners to grace the Premier League, and currently plies his trade at Barcelona. Stestanovich is currently serving eight years for his part in an armed robbery and is central to a cash dispute that could drive non-league club Grays Athletic out of business.
The dispute centres around Stestanovich’s brief spell with the Essex side back in 2006, when he played 23 minutes in a pre-season friendly before the club found out he was on remand for the bungled robbery in Streatham, in which new dad-of-one Thomas Fahey was shot dead; not motoring offences, as club claimed he’d told them. Grays swiftly served up a P45 while the footballer was awaiting trial.
Written by Gary Andrews. One comment
Everything is ready for Real Madrid vs. Roma. Giallorossi supporters have arrived in the Spanish capital, ready to face off against their Merengues opponents in a battle stadium chants. Meanwhile, the two managers Bernd Schuster and Luciano Spalletti have already begun their ‘battle of the mind’: a tactical showdown which will determine who holds the key to this game, whose nerves will fail and whose will prevail, who will be left standing at the end of the second leg. Roma was victorious in the first encounter at Stadio Olimpico, but the away goal scored by Real may prove very costly to the Giallorossi… which of the two clubs will reign supreme?
Meanwhile players, Real Madrid’s and Roma’s alike, have been training hard and are fretting in anticipation of the big match. I am talking about all players of course, but in particular two of them: Francesco Totti and Fabio Cannavaro, will will be the protagonists on a veritable ‘match-within-a-match’ on Wednesday night. Riccardo Pratesi of La Gazzetta dello Sport introduces us to this epic battle.
Written by Marco Pantanella. 6 comments
There was once an Aladdin who used to gently stroke the side of his magic lamp and a genii would rush out and serve him as he would ask him to. There was once a Frank Rijkaard who used to lightly pat Ronaldinho on the back before matches and the Brazilian would tie the knot between sorcery and efficiency with marvelous result.
But that gold-encrusted magic lamp has corroded to a pale bronze and even after you brush its side for hours, the only things that gallop out are a dense cloud of smoke and a rueful sense of nostalgia. Yet on Saturday night, it was slightly different. And the difference was that for one moment there was a bit of the leg of that Ronaldinho genii stretching out. And boy, wasn’t that some leg!
Written by Subhankar Mondal. 19 comments
This is my first post in a while so I thought I would talk about the less than serious points of the beautiful game. I have one very simple question to answer in this article; what would a footballer do if football didn’t exist?
To put it kindly, footballers would have bugger-all in terms of usage to the modern world if they weren’t professional athletes. So how stupid is the average footballer? Well this article is going to show you just how daft they sometimes can be if we never had football, and the footballers are going to explain why themselves in some rather funny sound-bites.
Written by Shaun Daley. 13 comments
He hasn’t scored in the French Ligue 1 since December 8, and in the African Cup of Nations, his performance was average at best. What on Earth seems to be the problem for Ivorian striker Aruna Dindane?
Dark magic, that’s what. At least according to some people back in Africa…
Written by Marco Pantanella. Leave a response
“You give your life to football and then it often forgets you. Football clubs have a bad habit of taking players in, making the most of them, and then vomiting them up once they’re too old or injured […] That’s where the Professional Footballers’ Association are so wonderful, because they do not forget anyone”.
- Malcolm Macdonald
Hugo Steckelmacher takes a very analytical look at the world’s oldest professional sportsman’s association: is it needed, what is it for, and ultimately, is it doing its job? Soccerlens investigates.
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Written by Hugo Steckelmacher. 5 comments
On Saturday morning, with some bookmakers, you could get odds as low as 8/11 on Arsenal regaining the Premier League title. And with their lead over Manchester United standing at five points with just twelve league games to play, some people may have argued those odds as fair.
Yet flick through the sports pages and websites today, and you won’t have to look far to find someone who is convinced that yesterday’s 2-2 draw away to 10-man Birmingham (coupled with United’s emphatic 5-1 demolition of Newcastle), proves that in fact Arsenal should not be regarded as favourites for this title. Have the bookmakers, not for the first time, got it all wrong? Or are the doom and gloom merchants gathering around the Emirates guilty off the typical sports writers’ error- over-reaction.
Written by Neil Jones. 40 comments
