10.21.07
WE2008
ASDASDFADFGDAFGDA
Popularity? A lovely friggin edit mode? aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
No wonder I’ve never put down my controller on this wonderful franchise. To hell with EA’s FIFA shit. They still have never really come close to the realism WE has to offer.
Oh, and I don’t play PES. That can also go to hell, because I like my games in Japanese. Anyway, enough negative talk, that’s so not me. This baby will be out exactly next month, and I’m ordering it because I know it’ll never see the light of day here and instead stock up on PES.
The PS2 version… mmm will prolly get it also, I’m sure there will be out and about soon. I’m just really sad that a lot of people here get fooled by fan game mods and say they’re authentic.
10.18.07
England.
I saw the game last night.Before the game, I read about the pitch. Fieldturf, some artificial stuff is gonna be used for the game. That made people go “wtf!!! Football should be played on grass and only grass!”
Actually, no. You can play football anywhere, even concrete (street soccer) or, if you are really some strict hardline person who thinks football needs to be only 11 v 11 and have goalposts that measure 7.32 x 2.44 metres exactly to 3 s.f., sand, if you look at North African pitches.
Now since England have lost, they’ll blame everything under the sun. McClaren, the players, the pitch, the referee (poor decision on the pen, by the way), the away supporters, even the damn teapot lady maybe. Should I do the same?
No, I don’t wanna be tagged a sympathetic writer, because I do criticise. But only when the see fit, and with the right language, while other people would add curses and expletives.
For the England loss, I blame it all on the 14 players, except Gareth Barry. Barry was again outstanding with his tackles and passes, just like the last 3 games he started. Such a shame we won’t be seeing him at Euro 2008.
So here we go. I saw for myself what the artificial pitch would do to wreck “pure football”, but as far as I can see, the Russians are the ones who were losing possession and slipping around.
About 60 minutes in, Rooney made a bad pass which was intercepted and gave the Russians a half-chance. I was going “take him off, take him off” because I felt something might happen if he stayed, and guess what? He concedes a penalty, albeit a wrongly-awarded one.
After that the England team just went haywire. They needed a really vocal player as captain, like Gary Neville or John Terry, but Stevie G had no Liverpool colleague in the side at the back so nobody listened to him.
Let’s give a little credit to Guus Hiddink. I respect that manager, everywhere he goes, he gets you results. Taking PSV to the semis of the Champs League is awesome. Taking Korea all the way to 4th place in 2002 was awesome, but he had a lot of backing. The Aussie job was no easy business too, remember the Uruguay game. So I really believed that he could beat England, given a chance – and at home with a weird pitch and the away side’s injury problems helped him do it.
So… no England, no Scotland (beaten at Georgia sigh.), no UK representatives in next year’s Euro campaign. Nice. It’s time they take it on the chin and realise what a lacking side the country’s football team are. I’m not going to be the one who’s gonna beat up or kill them anyway, because there’s lots of haters and flamers who could do better.
10.03.07
Is Dida Asian or something?
No, before you make wild assumptions, I’m not insulting Asians, I’m one myself.
I said that because his playacting looked like all those tumbling, rolling Asian keepers I saw at the Asian Cup recently. You should really look it up somewhere, silly Asian Cup highlights. Like the Vietnam keeper, to waste time, everytime he throws his body to save a shot, he purposely collides with the post and rolls around for 2-3 minutes holding his back in pain.
Okay, you can look at the pitch invasion in the spoilsport light. Celtic will be thrown out of this and next year’s competition. There will only be 3 sides in the group. They’ll play the next few European games behind closed doors or something. Hefty fine. Whatever.
But please be sensible. You saw actors climb Buckingham Palace dressed in terrorist clothes to test security. He wasn’t shot dead was he? In this case it’s just a stupid fan who gotten ahead of himself with the occasion and did something brainless. Dida, I’m sad to say, also made a stupid decision. I know he’d suffered a flare thrown on him, but you can’t be that paranoid.
And I should say a real kudos to AC Milan for dismissing it. If it was a different team, they’d press charges. But AC Milan didn’t whine (I think they know their keeper would be prone to doing that sort of thing?) or walk off the pitch or something. They even lost the game. I tell you, other sides would ask for club suspension, even if they had won the game. They were gracious in defeat, and most importantly, sensible.
And let’s hope UEFA also is.
Rafa’s getting deaf, and it’s not his fault
I think a lot of people have already spoken about the tactics Rafa Benitez have employed, mostly negative. I didn’t want them to be in the final honestly, I thought their time was due, even if knocking Barca out was a great help, and it’s high time Chelsea got to the final instead and try. It might even would have made Jose stay.
But he has faltered in European competition at home (not for the first time, in fact they’ve lost to Barca 1-0 at Anfield this year too) to Marseille. It was down to tactics I heard (again, I can’t speak in length because I didn’t see the game in entirety), and people will again repeat what they’ve said; play your best 11, don’t rotate etc. etc..
Nowadays you may already know I’m a sort of an apologetic/sympathetic writer, but there’s very few of us around. Why am I defending Rafa? Forget about my own basis of “try filling in”. No, I don’t think the “new team, not used to playing together” argument holds too as Man City has done. I just think it was boiled down to an away result by a very good team, riding their luck, and the terrible off-days of a team that looks to be saying to themselves, “here we go again”.
I’m faulting their players for not stepping up to the plate. Best eleven? Rafa’s rotation system, if you look at it in another way, means he has trust in his fringe players to perform. They get paid to play, and they want to, even if they seem to lack quality.
But that team who played tonight, even with the “low-success-rate” Pennant (who I put a lot of blame on in last season’s final) out, didn’t look too appealing. Sissoko lose balls consistently, even if he wins many tackles. Aurelio is just too rigid for the English game. In other words, taking away Gerrard, the midfield lost it for them. And you can’t score goals without good service.
Rafa needs earplugs before this weekend. But his eyes, mouth and most importantly brain needs to be open.
