Barcelona wizz kid, Lionel Mezzi scored one of the greatest goals in the history of the game last night against Getafe.
The goal can be seen here…..
Astonishing goal from the 19 year old, let’s hope he doesn’t burn out like so many of our new upcoming stars seem to do nowadays!
Last night must have been one of the most hillarious moments in Irish soccer on TV since this….
The panel, made up of the usual suspects, Johnny Giles, Liam Brady and Eamonn Dunphy completely lashed Manchester United and Ronaldo ahead of their game against Roma in Old Trafford last night.
Not one of the panel believed that United could even scrape a one goal win that would secure them a place in this years champions league semi-final.
At half time, when United had gone 4 goals ahead of Roma, I think the panel looked more shell shocked than Roma themselves. Johnny Giles, looked so embarrassed and came out with a statement such as “I’ve never seen United play like that before”.
After they all agreed before the game that Ronaldo would have to show his talents in game as big as this to prove he is a world class player, they rebuked the comments at full-time by saying that he must prove it more often.
Lads face it, you’ve made complete arses of yourselves and got it completely wrong again!!! But I don’t think you’ve ever been this wrong before…. To use the excuse that “if we had of known United would play like that…” - What way did you expect them to play?
Anyway, my analysis of the game is a bit different than all our pundits. I personally believe United have been playing like this most of the season. The one major factor between last nights performance and any other of the season is that United took their chances!!
Every shot we had last night, seemed to have that midas touch. If you look closely at Rooney’s goal, he even scuffed it, but it went in last night. (p.s. I’m not knocking the fact that he made an amazing run to get into that area!)
One point that annoyed me about the Irish pundits was the fact that “Carrick is never usually in that position”. They were talking about his positioning for his two goals.
They were ignorant enough to ignore the starting line up, in which it was obvious with the introduction of Fletcher, that Carrick would in fact be taking up Scholes position and playing in a more advanced role than his typical holding midfielder role.
Ronaldo - well - I can’t really disagree with them much on this. I’m not a huge fan of Ronaldo, he’s a selfish player and ignores the game of football in favour of self glory. HOWEVER!! Last night he was fantastic and he even tried to play football at times. I don’t think he’s far off being a world class and top player, but he still has some work to do.
All in all, 7-1 was a great win for us last night, I always thought United had it in them to get at least a 1-0 win over Roma. I never expected the result we got last night…. LONG MAY IT CONTINUE!! :):)
It’s been a while since I posted a story about soccer. To be honest, I just have been so busy, I haven’t had the chance to talk about football!
But I had a quick look over my old posts the other day and noticed the one I wrote in August… You can read it here…. http://www.tomdoyletalk.com/2006/08/14/chelsea-miss-out-on-their-first-trophy-of-the-season/
At the very end of the story, I posted this:
“My predictions for the premiership this season are:
1. Chelsea
2. Man United
3. Liverpool
4. Arsenal
I think United and Liverpool will be very close, but Chelsea will walk away with it again. ”
So far, the only thing I got right is that Liverpool and Arsenal are where I’d said they’d be - BUT - Arsenal have 2 games in hand and are only a pint behind.
The race at the top is way to close to call right now, that will most likely go all the way to the wire. So far it hasn’t been the greatest season ever, but interesting none the less to see how many people have turned and no longer like Chelsea. Chelsea in my opinion have been exceptionally poor in the way they played this season, very non-entertaining, but none-the-less grinding out results.
For me as a United fan, I hope we can stick it out, even though I gave Alex fergusaon so much abuse at the start of the season about his team - he has yet again proven me wrong - but that’s why I’m here and he’s there! And I hope to God we can stick it out!!! Cmon UNITED!!! 
I noticed that I’ve got a stage of only writing about football when something bad happens. I rarely write about a great performance by the Irish team.
Well today is no different, I can’t help but bring myself to moan about another dismal display by Ireland.
Staunton wants us to believe that it’s all part of the rebuilding process that we nearly failed to beat one of the poorest sides in Europe, if not the poorest (I hear they’re 195th in the world rankings). Well I for one don’t believe that and by the looks of things, the team still has no faith in him as a manager.
I think it’s time the FAI realised they’ve made a huge mistake. Someone on the radio asked this morning “Why do we blame the manager, he wasn’t on the pitch”, my answer to that is that he should make himself felt on the pitch through the passion and desire of his team. The team played as bad as they did against Cyprus. They simply didn’t look like they wanted to win.
Anyway, enough of the rant. I enjoyed my trip to Old Trafford last week to see Man United’s thrashing of Watford - that’s my happy news! 
Just when we thought things were turning around for Newcastle after beating Spurs on Sunday, things now can’t get much worse.
A disgraceful performance, left them 5-1 down to championship side Birmingham in the FA Cup 4th round.
Poor Glenn….. 
Well anyone that reads this blog, knows I am a non believer in Louis Saha. So to see Henrik Larsson join Man United on loan really makes me happy!
2 games in and for me he’s been an instant success, exactly what United need from a front man. His link up play with Rooney in his debut was brilliant, if only Wayne Rooney was on form, it could have been one of the best displays from front men for United since the Cole and Yorke era.
So what does he bring to the team that Saha doesn’t?
Well he has a huge amount of desire, he’s constantly running trying to get into positions for people to play him in. He can hold the ball up, everytim he receives the ball, he’s not thinking of having a shot on goal, his awareness makes him be alwyas on the look out for what play will be best for the team.
I’m so happy, I just hope we can hold on to him after March!
Well there’s been a lot of talk over the last few days about Mourinho’s future. It seems there are problems in the dressing room. What they are have yet come to light.
I have to admit, I felt from the start of the season that Mourinho looked unhappy this season. He just didn;t seem to be himself at all. Even in interviews he conducted, he was no longer the sarcastic man that some of came to love. Some of us that is, because a lot of people thought it was arrogance and others knew he was just having a laugh.
However, this season his comments on games he lost made him look like a sore loser and his arrogant sense of humour had all but disappeared.
It will be huge loss for the Premiership if he leaves. His skills as a manager and his skills at media management have been second to none for the last couple of seasons. I hope he can sort it out and give us some more for many seasons to come.
Well I’m finally getting back some time to write some posts after my weekend away in Manchester. I was lucky enough to be able to attend Manchester United and Chelsea at Old Trafford on Sunday.
I personally thought it was a good game, however, the guys I travelled with were Chelsea supporters and thought the game was poor. This shocked me as I really thought it was good!
So we met up with some other people who couldn’t get tickets for the game afterwards. They had all spent the afternoon in the pub watching the game on the telly and all of them thought it was a great game. So the jury is still out on this!!!
Anyway, to get to the point, I thought United were the best team in the first half, but Chelsea were the better team in the second half. So it was a fair result. My biggest problem with the game was Ronaldo, I’m sick and tired of his lack of willingness to chase back for a ball after he’s lost it. It’s something that you don’t get to see on TV too often, but it really annoyed me.
Everytime he made a run, he just strolled back to the halfway line, whether Chelsea were on a break or not. The you look over at a 33 year old legend in Ryan Giggs, who constantly chased back, whether or not he lost the ball. The sort of attitude Ronaldo has really got on my nerves. It’s easy for us who watch these games on the TV to forget that Ronaldo is always like this and when you see him in the flesh, only then to you get a real idea of how annoying it is!
Well as predicted, if United scored, there was only going to be one scorer and that was Saha. I thought he had a poor game, but you can’t knock the way he took his goal. I was sitting right behind it and from where I you could see exactly what he meant…. and he did it! I still don’t rate him though!!
Feels like De Ja Vu… I think I was only talking about this a couple of weeks ago. Does anyone believe me yet that he’s a waste of space?
Maybe I’m being too harsh, but God does that guy get up my goat! United were comfortable throughout tonights game. Celtic never looked like scoring. An absolute wonder free kick, from a shocking decision by the referee, who it must be noted was poor all night, gave Celtic the lead.
Louis Saha had the chance to even things up when he beat the offside trap to go one on one with the keeper from a glorious Rooney ball. But what does he do? He tries to be good and he’s not… The legend that he is (hahahahahaha), thought that he could chip the keeper from like two yards. Unsurprisingly, Boruc easily caught it in the air.
In the closing stages of the game, United were awarded a penalty from another terrible decision by the referee, but at this stage I would have taken anything.
Low and behold who steps up to take it? The legend again, Louis Saha. After another feable attempt on goal (from 10 yards) he basically handed the ball to Boruc again…..
Seriously, if this was Van Nistelrooy, Ferguson would have him on the bench for Sundays game against Chelsea, but do you think that will happen? Nah, either do i!
But I don’t mind, I’ll be at Old Trafford for that game, so that will be fun for me anyway!!!
Well as every Irish supporter expected, Ireland came through tonights game convincing winners in their game against San Marino. The 5-0 scoreline was a deserved result for Ireland, but I can’t help feeling that Ireland we’re very poor on the night.
For the first 20 minutes it looked like San Marino’s own goal was the only way Ireland were going to score. But in fairness to Ireland they kept at it and get their rewards.
How Kilbane stayed on the pitch as long as he did is beyond me, he was poor from the start until he came off late in the game. Another person I thought was very poor tonite was Stephen Reid. It’s obvious that he has tremendous talent and a sweet left foot, but he is over weight, lacks match fitness and most of the time he was playing nothing balls or just losing it to the opposition .
Three players caught my eye tonight, Robbie Keane, Paul McShane and Aiden McGeady. Robbie Keane, who seems to be back to his very best was fantastic. Each time he touched the ball he seemed to create something and of course he scored a hat-trick to prove it.
Paul McShane was again very confident looking and always trying to get involved in the game. He even got forward and won a pentaly, which was slotted home by Robbie Keane.
Aiden McGeady game on late in the game and should some fantastic skills running down the wing. This guy is really a class act and should definitely start before Kilbane, even if they have to play him out of position!!!
All in all, I thought it was a flattering scoreline for Ireland. Although they thoroughly deserved to win, it was more down to the fact that they played a really poor team rather than them putting in a world class performance.
I worry about our game against Wales, we’ll have to play a lot better to get a win out of that game!
