Confederation Cup is right on the corner, and every team is trying to choose best of its available talents, but on the other side, there is one team who is equally promoting its young talent along with using its experienced players. Nigeria, who won the Africa Cup of Nations in February, has made nine surprising changes to the team that crowned them Africa’s prestigious title. The newly selected teammates include four players who have never played in an international match before. This is rather a brave attempt from the coach who says his team consist a well needed mixture of both talent and experience. As far Nigerian defense is concerned, coach tries to retain a solid firewall by excluding players like Joseph Yobo, Peter Odemwingie, and Obafemi Martins. Earlier, local media aggressively criticized Coach Stephen Keshi for making a biased decision while selecting players; perhaps some of them even blamed him for choosing players out of his local clubs, while on the other side, coach … [Read more...]
Brazil 3-0 triumph over France in Confederation Cup warm-up match
It was just a warm-up match ahead of next week’s Confederation Cup where Brazil successfully defeated its rival France with a 3-0 margin – something it always wanted since 1992. Notably, Brazil has not beaten France in any international match since a friendly success twenty one years ago. Both these teams have since met six times: two of them ended in a draw while French side taken the lead in four of them and who can forget the 1998 world cup final along with 2006 quarterfinal defeat? France captain Karim Benzema has not done anything interesting this year losing three out of four played matches; perhaps France is on second place to Spain in its world cup qualifying group. Looking at the winning margin, it looks like it would have been a one sided affair, but on the contrary, France was dominating right from the beginning; perhaps it was the second half when Chelsea playmaker Oscar opened the score tally for Brazil from a close range shot. Around 30 minutes later, another Brazilian … [Read more...]
Phil Neville says goodbye to soccer
Former England’s national team defender, 36-year-old, Phil Neville has announced his retirement from soccer. Neville has been one of the legendary English defenders who could manage to stretch his playing career for more than eighteen glorious years. During his career, he played for several teams including some high profile clubs as well, like Manchester United and Everton. He also served England under21 team as coach for Championship campaign back in Israel. He started his career playing for EPL club Manchester United back in 1995 and initiated his soccer profession with a victory over arch rival Manchester City. Later, he participated in six EPL titles, three FA cups along with Community Shield and Champions League in 1999. His last club was Everton which he joined back in 2005 at a signing fee of £3.5m; he also captained The Toffeemen during David Moyes regime and ended his eight glorious years playing for them this season. He also revealed that he had planned much earlier to retire … [Read more...]
Hawk-Eye to enter Dutch’s domestic league
Despite Platini’s repeated denials to use any goal line technology within UEFA competitions, Dutch is going to be the first European country to install one of the approved goal line technologies into their domestic league matches. Though, the use is only on trial basis that too not on all the matches being played in Dutch cup competitions, however, all major matches including relegation fixtures would have a tight eye of technology to find out if ball has actually crossed the line or not. Reportedly, Dutch has shortlisted Hawk-Eye as their preferred technology provider which uses seven high resolution cameras spread across both goal posts; these cameras can take the highest frame per second images to check ball’s exact location at any point of time. Similarly, FIFA has also declared to use German company’s GoalControl technology in coming Confederation matches, and if this trial gets succeeded, FIFA has plans to further extend its use in upcoming World cup. On the other side, part … [Read more...]
Guillermo Varela is on the radar of United
Uruguay under-20 starlet Guillermo Varela is not on his feet these days after knowing the interest of EPL Champions in him. Perhaps, he is among the youngest players to be signed by the United this summer. Actually, every club is keeping its eyes on the emerging young talents and trying to secure them only for themselves; we have seen this already that how Barcelona, Manchester City, Real Madrid, and AC Milan have done this, and now ManU is also trying to fill its portfolio with promising youngsters. The deal is quite surprising looking at Varela’s experience playing in the senior team; perhaps he has only played one match for senior team and now becomes a United’s man. Complete details are not available at the moment, but according to some insiders, player is expected to receive £1million initially with an escalation clause that could surge this figure to £2.5m. Looking at the high rising demands of top players these days, these kinds of ‘petty’ investments are more a strategic step … [Read more...]
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