World Cup Fever

Yazeed:

Carlsb3rg and I started this blog out of our passion for football. A comment on his blog was the start. World Cup Fever grew to be a bigger thing that what we imagined. I never thought we would get this many users. We have worked hard in trying to making this thing work, writing up reports, previews, news, uploading goals and highlights, in the end its all worth it. We are both proud at what we have achieved here. It has been a nice compliment to watching the matches. We achieved all our goals. We covered each match, each goal, major news, basically everything that matters. I always have fond memories associated with past World Cups, World Cup Fever would be one of those for this year’s World Cup.

I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. I hope everybody appreciates the work we have done here.

Carlsb3rg:

No, the world cup didn’t feel like it started yesterday. I feel a sense of happiness with it’s ending, as I return to my routine life. Perhaps because I wasn’t that excited overall with this world cup. Neither was I excited with the last world cup in 2002. Refereeing is a major part of my disappointment. The new trend of playing defensively is another factor. Controversial refereeing decisions were part of the excitement in football. Not when the winning team wins 1-0 through a bad penalty though. Not to mention the leniency towards host nation Germany, and South Korea in 2002.

If FIFA should learn one lesson from this world cup, it’s that it’s time video evidence was introduced. We don’t need a second official. Zidane was dismissed through video evidence as the match official asked the fourth official, who saw the replay. Based on FIFA’s laws, Zidane should not have been dismissed as the official and the lines man did not see the incident.

We saw new and young players rise (Pudolski, Lahm, Gilardino, Ribery, Torres, ..), we saw old players rise (Kahn, Ronaldo, Zidane, Figo), we saw good players fade (Brazilian squad, Henry, Ibrahimovic, Nistelrooy, Nedved), and some players we wanted to see, but did not have the chance to (Messi, and all the bench players who did not figure in the tournament).

There wasn’t any big surprises in the tournament, but all the new qualifiers made a good showing (Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ukraine, Togo, T&T), some of them return powerfully (Australia, Switzerland, Ecuador) some of them made history in reaching later stages, and some teams were just disappointing (Poland, Serbia & Montenegro, Czech).

In any case, Italy has won the world cup. I think Italy was blessed with Alessandro Nesta’s injury. His replacement Marco Materazzi proved vital in his nation’s success. An Evertonian won the world cup! I guess there is some good in the ‘other’ team in the city of Liverpool!

Best World Cup 2006 moment: Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt.

The world cup is over for some, but the football season is just beginning, with the English League, Italian League and Spanish league all starting in August and not to forget the Champions League. International football will not stop, as the Euro 2008 qualifiers are coming soon. While the coming month will see some hot news regarding player transfers and movements. Be sure to check all the latest in football news at footyinaweek.wordpress.com
Final Notes:

This blog will always be here. I will let the goals here too. Everything will stay.

Both of us have our respective blogs, pay us a visit sometimes.

• Yazeed
• Carlsb3rg