Sorry it's taken a couple of days for this post, I needed to get my breath back. I also wanted to write a less emotional and more analytical piece. However, the feelings I get when thinking of Saturday are tied up with all sorts of emotions.
The first is absolute pride in a performance that showed we are a team to take seriously, that works unbelievably hard and has bags of potential to push on from this. Stand out performances were Yossi once again who just appeared everywhere on the pitch, Mattie for coming back from injury and working his little socks off and Danny G for being a rock yet again in the centre of defence.
Unofrtuantely, the second emotion is anger towards Lionel Scaloni, who up to the 90th minute had an acceotable game. Then kicks the ball out for a non injury right next to our penalty area, then proceeds to lose posession when the ball is thrown back to him. I was screaming at him as he did it and more so when it resulted in Gerrard's fantastic strike. Just make sure you do that in Germany Mr G. That Scaloni was on his own when the end finally came is no surpruse, Teddy had a go at him at the time and I understand nigel was not too happy either.
Our penalties were poor and I would have expected other players to put themselves forward ahead of the defenders who both hit theirs weakly and low, which any decent keeper will deal with.
But look, the seaon is over and 9th, FA Cup Runners-Up and a UEFA cup place are what we have to look back on and forward to. And that beats trips to Britannia Stdium and Gresty Road any day of the week. Well done lads and Mr Scaloni, ciao, and don't look back....
Hi,
I would have sent this in e-mail but I couldn't find one on your site.
I'm working on a project that aims to raise the profile of football podcasting and blogging, and create some cool World Cup shows in the process. Wanna be in on it?
I'm bringing together a posse of folks who produce their own websites and podcasts on the Soccer Shout podcast. They will be calling our voicemail hotlines and/or e-mailing me their own audio comments. I'll splice all of these together each day - along with the usual patter from me and Tony - to make some really interesting World Cup shows.
We're all encouraging our audiences to listen in. Each listener will be able to make up their own mind as to which blogs/podcasts they want to stick with after the tournament is over and the new season begins. Hopefully everyone who was enjoying one blog/podcast will be subscribed to several more by the time the trophy is handed out.
We're starting to get a good amount of press coverage too. The Sunday Times (UK) is going to cover the podcast in the run-up to the world cup, and we're going to be on BBC Radio Five next week.
Check out our press release at: http://media.libsyn.com/media/soccershout/Tipped_for_the_tipping_point_at_World_Cup_final.doc
The website has a list of ways to contribute - but it's as easy as picking up the phone and leaving a voicemail.
If you want to get involved, please feel free to contribute as frequently as possible - the more the better really.
This week we're focusing on group A - the Thursday night show is gonna have a bunch of different views on the this from our contrubutors.
ONE MORE THING your readers may be interested in: We have a free World Cup Wallchart available for download. It's Excel based, you can track the tournament, play what-if, and even run a prediction league with your friends/colleagues.
Cheers,
Phil
Posted by: Phil from Soccershout | 17/05/2006 at 18:08