帥哥啊！！:)
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Owen Hargreaves' goal
Owen Hargreaves' winning free-kick goal against Arsenal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoTVZfp4e_c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoTVZfp4e_c&feature=related
Thursday, September 18, 2008
http://www.goalvideoz.com/watch/23088-marseille-vs-liverpool-1-0-goal-by-cana/
Great goal by Marseille's central/defensive midfielder and skipper Lorik Cana in the Champions League match against Liverpool.
Great goal by Marseille's central/defensive midfielder and skipper Lorik Cana in the Champions League match against Liverpool.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Owen Hargreaves has to be Fabio Capello's middle man
Once again the Croatians loom ominously on England’s horizon and once more the first name on the team-sheet should be that of Owen Hargreaves.
But will Fabio Capello, who eventually conceded late last Wednesday night that the grit in his midfield had been badly missed against the Czechs, be permitted the opportunity to avoid the crucial selection error made by Steve McClaren before the European qualifying match against Slaven Bilic’s side nine months ago?
Time is short – just over two weeks before England trot out in Zagreb – and Manchester United, for whom Hargreaves has not appeared since the Champions League final because of a knee problem, are seldom happy for newly restored players to leave the care of their own experts. Hargreaves is not even scheduled for action until the Super Cup match against Zenit St Petersburg in Monaco on Friday night.
So, from the national point of view, his availability is as shrouded in doubt as it is urgently required – and in this context Capello performed unimpressively in the most recent friendly, as he had in each of his previous four attempts to adjust to international management. By admitting – with a shrug that emphasised the bleedin’ obviousness of the point – that Hargreaves’s holding qualities would have lessened England’s “suffering’’ every time the Czechs counter-attacked, he merely highlighted the question of why someone else had not been introduced to help Gareth Barry plug the gaps in midfield.
Here’s another question: would Capello’s native Italy, if shorn of Rino Gattuso in 2006, have left Andrea Pirlo alone to protect the back four? Of course not. Marcello Lippi did not become a World Cup winner without being aware that it is even more important for a team’s shape to be right when they lose the ball as when they have it. But you do not have to be a managerial legend to set out a stall and even McClaren’s most dogmatic critics would have to concede that he made sure the Hargreaves role was filled when Brazil visited London in the early summer of 2007. He used Steven Gerrard and the Liverpool captain, who naturally prefers to brandish his talent in attack, responded surprisingly well, blunting the thrusts of Kaka and Diego until the latter equalised very late. If only McClaren had put Hargreaves – or, if he suspected the player’s fitness, another – in the space Luka Modric was to enjoy, England might have gone to Euro 2008.
Capello, though, simply appears slow to think laterally. His attitude seems to be: “Today England have no Emerson – therefore we have no holding midfielder.’’ This is the problem with managers from abroad. However splendid their record in club football – and Capello is up there with the best – they do not know English players like a native. Thus Capello still asks Gerrard and Frank Lampard to share responsibility. Still! While it is acceptable for any group of coaches to ask for patience while they adjust to an unfamiliar culture, it has to be said that these Italians – Capello and his assistants – are overdoing it. The Football Association have lavished an awful lot of money on students. For upwards of £30 million over four years, you would think we are entitled to teachers.
Even so, I cannot work out what there is to learn from the continued appearance in the starting line-up for friendlies of David Beckham. Surely even Capello knows what the erstwhile captain can do and harbours a curiosity about David Bentley, the heir apparent. Yet Bentley, if he is to be bedded in, will have to do it during the qualifying process. As will Micah Richards if Capello reaches the conclusion Wes Brown is not an England right-back. Although the manager cannot be blamed for the injury that denied him the chance to assess Dean Ashton as a spearhead – trying poor Jermain Defoe was an exercise in futility – this ought to be on the agenda for the group opener against Andorra in Barcelona on Saturday week, undesirable though it is to be experimenting in competitive matches.
After Barcelona the squad head for Zagreb and, if they are no better prepared than last week, defeat. They should still qualify for the World Cup. But thus far Capello and company are making this job so much harder than it need be. As Harry Redknapp observed during Setanta’s admirably candid coverage, England were “awful’’.
Capello, defiantly facing a journalistic inquisition that must have made him think he was facing the massed ranks of the Italian and Swiss tax authorities, claimed: “For the first time, we played without fear at Wembley.’’ Heaven knows how bad England will be when they get to Croatia and once more discover, as on the October night two years ago when Eduardo and a malign fate left them ragged, that disparate egos are no match for a real team.
Waiting for Owen
Fabio Capello says Owen Hargreaves holds the key for his England team, but the Manchester United midfielder’s catalogue of inuries has become a concern.
Once again the Croatians loom ominously on England’s horizon and once more the first name on the team-sheet should be that of Owen Hargreaves.
But will Fabio Capello, who eventually conceded late last Wednesday night that the grit in his midfield had been badly missed against the Czechs, be permitted the opportunity to avoid the crucial selection error made by Steve McClaren before the European qualifying match against Slaven Bilic’s side nine months ago?
Time is short – just over two weeks before England trot out in Zagreb – and Manchester United, for whom Hargreaves has not appeared since the Champions League final because of a knee problem, are seldom happy for newly restored players to leave the care of their own experts. Hargreaves is not even scheduled for action until the Super Cup match against Zenit St Petersburg in Monaco on Friday night.
So, from the national point of view, his availability is as shrouded in doubt as it is urgently required – and in this context Capello performed unimpressively in the most recent friendly, as he had in each of his previous four attempts to adjust to international management. By admitting – with a shrug that emphasised the bleedin’ obviousness of the point – that Hargreaves’s holding qualities would have lessened England’s “suffering’’ every time the Czechs counter-attacked, he merely highlighted the question of why someone else had not been introduced to help Gareth Barry plug the gaps in midfield.
Here’s another question: would Capello’s native Italy, if shorn of Rino Gattuso in 2006, have left Andrea Pirlo alone to protect the back four? Of course not. Marcello Lippi did not become a World Cup winner without being aware that it is even more important for a team’s shape to be right when they lose the ball as when they have it. But you do not have to be a managerial legend to set out a stall and even McClaren’s most dogmatic critics would have to concede that he made sure the Hargreaves role was filled when Brazil visited London in the early summer of 2007. He used Steven Gerrard and the Liverpool captain, who naturally prefers to brandish his talent in attack, responded surprisingly well, blunting the thrusts of Kaka and Diego until the latter equalised very late. If only McClaren had put Hargreaves – or, if he suspected the player’s fitness, another – in the space Luka Modric was to enjoy, England might have gone to Euro 2008.
Capello, though, simply appears slow to think laterally. His attitude seems to be: “Today England have no Emerson – therefore we have no holding midfielder.’’ This is the problem with managers from abroad. However splendid their record in club football – and Capello is up there with the best – they do not know English players like a native. Thus Capello still asks Gerrard and Frank Lampard to share responsibility. Still! While it is acceptable for any group of coaches to ask for patience while they adjust to an unfamiliar culture, it has to be said that these Italians – Capello and his assistants – are overdoing it. The Football Association have lavished an awful lot of money on students. For upwards of £30 million over four years, you would think we are entitled to teachers.
Even so, I cannot work out what there is to learn from the continued appearance in the starting line-up for friendlies of David Beckham. Surely even Capello knows what the erstwhile captain can do and harbours a curiosity about David Bentley, the heir apparent. Yet Bentley, if he is to be bedded in, will have to do it during the qualifying process. As will Micah Richards if Capello reaches the conclusion Wes Brown is not an England right-back. Although the manager cannot be blamed for the injury that denied him the chance to assess Dean Ashton as a spearhead – trying poor Jermain Defoe was an exercise in futility – this ought to be on the agenda for the group opener against Andorra in Barcelona on Saturday week, undesirable though it is to be experimenting in competitive matches.
After Barcelona the squad head for Zagreb and, if they are no better prepared than last week, defeat. They should still qualify for the World Cup. But thus far Capello and company are making this job so much harder than it need be. As Harry Redknapp observed during Setanta’s admirably candid coverage, England were “awful’’.
Capello, defiantly facing a journalistic inquisition that must have made him think he was facing the massed ranks of the Italian and Swiss tax authorities, claimed: “For the first time, we played without fear at Wembley.’’ Heaven knows how bad England will be when they get to Croatia and once more discover, as on the October night two years ago when Eduardo and a malign fate left them ragged, that disparate egos are no match for a real team.
Waiting for Owen
Fabio Capello says Owen Hargreaves holds the key for his England team, but the Manchester United midfielder’s catalogue of inuries has become a concern.
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