Well...

I'm currently "watching" the Man U. v. Barcelona Champions League match (recording it at home, the first half sounds worthy of keeping for later viewing)...and just found a news article about the Olympic draw for both US National Teams.

Also, this evening will be the second round of the new season of my new >30s team at Warners. The team name, if I haven't mentioned it yet, is Independientes F.C, borrowed from an Argentine team with the name Independientes ("los diablos rojos"). We're in blue and white (once the uniforms arrive) and the unis are said to be loosely based on the other "red devils," yes, Man U....NOT happy about that, but I guess it's a step up from our previous unis which were loosely based on AC Milan's). Our defacto captain, Santi, listed the Argentine team, Independientes, as one of his favorites (he's also a La Liga follower like myself).

The season has not started well as we lost our first match against Barely Kicking, 4-1 (I think). But the attitude was better with our team and we had a lot more show up for the first match (3 subs is a good thing). I'm hopeful about this season and it seems others are as well. Tonight we play 1040s and our goal is to shut them out...focusing on defense. I hope it works.

Nightmarish weekend in La Liga

Once again I was unable to watch the one match I truly wanted to see but it did not matter as nothing went right for me this weekend. First, and foremost, Sevilla lost in a match they should have won quite easily. Granted the team they played, Deportivo La Coruña, has had a late season run themselves, they are (or were) in the bottom of the bunch, in the relegation area. The final score was 2-1, but if you look at the shots and time of possession I'd guess it could have been worse. I'll still browse around and see if a replay of the match will be shown.
Next up was Barcelona (sort of my number two team), and they had a poor showing as well. Not sure why but they did not put in Messi until almost an hour of the match had past. They ended up losing to Atletico Madrid 4-2 which puts Atletico further ahead of Sevilla in the standings.
Lastly, Real Madrid somehow pulls out a win in the last SECONDS of the match to hold onto the number one position in the standings. After the final goal was scored, Recreativo Huelva only had time to tap the ball off of the midfield line to "re-start" the match before the ref blew the final whistle. Painful.
And to top all this off it was just announced that Sevilla FC has dropped in the world club rankings. For 17 months they held the top position, but understandably, they have dropped a bit. Now Sevilla sits in Third place behind AC Milan and Chelsea FC.
NOT a fun soccer weekend.
This week we have Sevilla's second match with Fenerbahce and of course next week Olympic qualifiers begin, In TAMPA, for the US Men's U-23 team (FSC will broadcast these matches).

A pretty good soccer weekend...

We'll start with the Sevilla FC match against Zaragoza. Sadly I only got to watch the first half hour as I had to go to my own season finale'. But, from the hightlights and all the stories i've read Sevilla pretty much put on a clinic in their 5-0 win to Zaragoza. I'd still like to see the full match, even though I did get to see Fabiano add to his goal tally (leads la liga with 19 in all this season). This win moves them into 5th place in La Liga, just ahead of Espanyol by goal differential (both have 39 points but Sevilla has a +18 to Espanyol's +3 goal differential). Though I believe Sevilla are out of the running at this point, it was nice to see Barcelona gain on Real Madrid this weekend as the Madrid side lost, at home, to Getafe, who have only won half as many matches as Real Madrid. Go Barca! Sevilla's next match will be with Deportivo La Coruña on Saturday and then next Wednesday they play a Champion's League match in their second round with Fenerbahce. Go Sevilla!!

On to my match...Liam's United went into our final match of the Crazy 8s season undefeated (only one tie in the full season). So we were optimistically cautious going into this final match. As with last week's last minute win, the match was against a side with several pick-ups (if a team does not have enough players those that are not a regular team member for another side OR those that want to play in more than one match a day can "pick-up" and play for another side, teams are given a fair amount of players so they have enough to play a match). This can be bad as frequently it's the better players that want to play multiple games in a day (us "old" folks are lucky to finish a full single match). Plus we were missing our star scoring machine, Josh. This match ended up being pretty even and at the half we held the lead with the only score of the match (1-0). But as the second half started they began working their own scoring drives. In the end, the final was 2-2 and Liam's United remained undefeated. Not sure I can remember the last time I was on a team that went undefeated. Good times.

Next up is FC St Pauli...against Greuther Fürth, who are currently third in the 2nd Bundesliga (St. Pauli is currently 11th). With several players out either injured or due to yellow cards, St Pauli had many opportunities to score and capitalized on very few of them. Eventually they also tied their match at 1-1. I suppose a single point is better than none, but to start gaining some ground they really need to win some more matches. St. Pauli have tied their last four matches against FC Köln, Carl Zeiss Jena, TuS Koblenz and now against Greuther Fürth. This has left them in the middle of the pack in 11th place out of the 18 teams. Let's go St. Pauli!!! [Edit: Glad to hear the MillernTaler idea was squashed before it really got going.]

Addendum: Love this shot of Eto celebrating his (first?) hat-trick with his Barcelona teammates.