Lazy Sunday Afternoon......

 After finishing off another weekend of football by watching Brazil - who appeared to have a 12 year old boy playing & scoring for them beat Scotland, it's time to look back at a week that ended successfully for Fabio Capello after he adopted an unheard of formation by us here at 4-4-2 and comfortably beat the Welsh, its a results business after all and his handling of the captaincy is now all but forgotten.
But..........
The irony now of course is that after letting six players - amongst them Terry - go back to their clubs and not play on Tuesday against Ghana he now has to pick another captain for that game!



The topic of a Great Britain Football team at the London Olympics came up again with still a bit of confusion as to who will actually turn up and play! The Scottish & Irish FA are worried that by joining up with the rest of Great Britain it will put ideas into Sepp Blatter's head and will see the end of their national identity football wise. It had been decided that the English FA would take over running the team and basically put out an all English team, but individually if a player from any of the Home Nations were to be selected they could still decide to play off their own backs. All very confusing, it's bound to have a few more twists and turns before the big kick off, but let's hope they get it sorted, would be good to see a proper "Team GB" and players such as Gareth Bale is apparently keen to play.
Whatever happens though I feel a petition coming on, let's get the team playing in replica "Escape to Victory" kits!

Modern Football is Rubbish - Some Evidence.
Watched a documentary the other day about Bert Trautmann, he was born in Germany in 1923. As a kid he joined the Hitler Youth as many others did, then onto to the army fighting in World War II, was captured by the English, made a POW and brought to this country. After the war he decided to stay here, he went on of course to play in goal for Manchester City. Accepted there eventully but having to face abuse from fans at away grounds he turned people around with many fine performances. None more so than in the FA Cup Final of 1956, when having gone down at the feet of an advancing forward he suffered an injury, but suffering with what he thought was just a stiff neck carried on though in pain for the rest of the match, making more brave saves before the final whistle. It was only two days after, with a visit to the doctor's that Bert found out that he had in fact broken his neck.! He is the only footballer to be awarded Player of the Season, the OBE and the Iron Cross.
Fast foward to 2011, Mario Batolli is allergic to grass, can't put a bib on without help, wears a thing round his neck that makes you think it's broke......and today it was reported that he threw darts from a first floor window at a Manchester City trainee.........because he was bored! :(

Finally over at Qatar the latest bit of nonsense - apart from the fact that they got the World Cup gig in the first place - is 'Articficial Clouds'.
The good thing I guess about choosing such a rich country to host the world's biggest football competition is that they have the money to create these things....
Filled with helium and powered by the sun (probably wouldn't work in an English Summer then) they'll hover above the stadium filtering out harmful UV rays and cooling the temperatures "inside" on the pitch.....somehow?!
Only $500,000 each and could be interesting if the sun goes behind a real cloud during a match and the thing comes crashing out of the sky and lands on Adrian Chiles during some side of the pitch chit chat..........we live in hope!

Don't forget to keep checking back here for more news and views next week!