When it comes to Awesome McCoolname footballers, Zander Diamond is third, behind Eden Hazard and his even more ridiculously named younger brother, Thorgan Hazard. Thorgan? Seriously? That's not even anything! Except insanely awesome.
edited 16th Jul '11 6:58:10 PM by Saeglopur
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!I always thought that Zinedine Zidane has a cool name, but yeah, now that I think of it, Eden Hazard is an awesome name.
Speaking of footballers' names, one thing that anyone who's been to Finland and seen team Finland play would notice is that many, if not most, of the players in our national team are from families that are not originally from Finland; you can tell from the names.
I'm gonna list our players (first squad) and italicise each name that sounds Swedish (thus likely belonging to a Swedish speaking Finnish player or one from Swedish speaking descent, in which case they're probably 100% Finnish) and bold each name that sounds really foreign. I'll handle first and last names seperately.
Goalies: Otto Fredrikson, Anssi Jaakkola, Lukas Hradecky
Defenders: Veli Lampi (I just realised that his namely literally translates to "Brother Lake"; such Native American-sounding names are really rare in Finland) Niklas Moisander, Markus Heikkinen, Petri Pasanen, Jukka Raitala, Joona Toivio, Markus Halsti.
Midfield: Kasper Hämäläinen, Tim Sparv, Riku Riski, Mika Väyrynen, Roman Eremenko, Alexei Eremenko, Perparim Hetemaj, Alexander Ring, Daniel Sjölund, Sebastian Sorsa.
Strikers: Mikael Forssell, Mika Ääritalo, Berat Sadik.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.1:1 USA-Japan in the women's world cup final after 90 minutes. The Japanese 1:1 was a real major fuck-up in the US defence...
Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 FanficAnd Japan is Women Football World Champion!
...yeah. USA gave away the first three penalties. Only Wambach scored. That was a bit weak indeed.
Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 FanficHoly shit Japan actually won. That was... very unexpected. Very much a plucky underdog story. The die-hard traditional Brit in me is moved to tears.
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!Season starts this weekend! We kick off the 2011/2012 SPL season with the Dark Side as Rangers face Hearts at Ibrox, and later in the day Aberdeen host St Johnstone while Motherwell face Inverness.
On Sunday, Dundee Utd are at home to Kilmarnock and on Monday night Dunfermline announce their return to the top flight when they face St Mirren at home.
We, Celtic, return to action on Sunday afternoon when we go to Easter Road to play Hibs.
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)Rangers 1-1 Hearts. A fair reflection of the game, I reckon, Hearts looked far better for most of the game but Rangers came into it towards the end and you could see the equaliser coming from a mile off. But no one really deserved three points, I don't think.
MEANWHILE... Arsenal are playing a pre-season friendly against 1. FC Köln of Germany, a top division team including German international striker Lucas Podolski, Slovenian internationals Mišo Brečko and Milivoje Novakovič and talented young Polish midfielder Adam Matuszczyk. We're 2-1 up at half time, thanks to two goals from debutant Gervinho. The Köln reply came courtesy of Carl Jenkinson, our other new signing, scoring the most ridiculous own-goal I've seen in years.
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!The German Supercup is on You Tube tonight, that should get me nice and pumped ahead of tomorrow, when we get down to business to defeat the Huns.
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)Hell yes I am so watching that. Free football, can't exactly turn it down
Hibernian 0-2 Celtic (Stokes, Ki)
That'll do me
not an outstanding performance but a solid start to the new season with some excellent finishing from Anthony Stokes and Ki Sung-Yeung. Could have been more, too: Gary Hooper missed a penalty and Mark Wilson had a goal wrongly ruled offside.
Good performances from Glenn Loovens and new Bhoy Kelvin Wilson at centre back, too.
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)I'm actually thankful that the Philippine team lost.
...for obvious reasons.
At least the Fan Dumb should tone down a bit....I hope.
edited 24th Jul '11 8:31:15 AM by Chorvaqueen
idkWelp, it's 1-0 Uruguay at the moment after 30 mins, but Uruguay have also had 4 bookings already. Someone is getting sent off in the game, calling it now.
Also Luis Suarez is a diving bastard. Not looking forward to having to put up with his antics week in week out for Liverpool.
EDIT: BOOM! Forlan. 2-0.
EDIT 2: 89th minute, Paraguay desperately piling on pressure, Uruguay with a fantastic counter-attack, Forlan slides in his 2nd, Uruguay's 3rd, game over.
Aaaaaand the final whistle's gone. Final Score, Uruguay 3-0 Paraguay.
edited 24th Jul '11 1:56:13 PM by Saeglopur
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!Sorry for the double-post, but I have to say:
And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)Finally some good, though somewhat insignificant, news for Finland - we just beat Latvia (which is about as good as us) in a friendly game. 2-0. Both of our goals were the result of beautiful and innovative game, which is a very rare sight from team Finland, which usually bases its offence on long passes along the sides and desperate attempts from there to deliver it to the goal via a couple of one-touch plays.
Now, onto real news: Wesley Sneijder is rumoured to be "unofficially" negotiating a transfer from Inter Milan to Manchester United, making ManU about as strong as Barca. (Except that Barca seems to be about to finally seal the deal to purchase Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal, thus making them the stronger team again.)
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.Fabregas has now sealed the deal to leave Arsenal. Fortunately for me, he's departing my second favourite team in the world for my favourite team in the world, which is FC Barcelona.
I watched an interesting game yesterday. It was a Europa League first round play-off game between HJK Helsinki (who currently lead Finland's top league, Veikkausliiga) and FC Schalke 04.
There were two interesting details in that game. First: Schalke has about €60 million put aside in their budget to spend on player transfers and salaries every year. HJK's entire budget - not just player-related expenses, but everything - is just €2 million. Now, onto the other detail: HJK won, 2-0. Who would've thought.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Aston Villa bid for Charles N'Zogbia
.
Offloading the over-rated Stewart Downing for a huge sum of money, and bringing in N'Zogbia, probably the most under-rated winger in the Premiership? Smooth moves there, Villa.
Also, changes to Premier League rules mean that teams can no longer be punished for fielding 'weakened teams'
, which I always thought was an unneccesarily harsh rule anyhow.
edited 15th Jul '11 8:19:12 AM by Saeglopur
Listen to Music with Tropers at The Troper Turntable!