Tuesday, October 20, 2009

3 Points

I'm not living up to the title of this site lately, so I'm going to try and post one of these futbol updates daily..

1. Liverpool coach Rafa Benitez is feeling the heat after a beach-ball aided (see video below if you don't know what I'm talking about) 1-0 loss to Sunderland this past weekend dropped the mega-club into 8th place in the Premier League. The Reds have been without Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, and have a lackluster 5-4-0 record in the Premiership, and suffered an ugly 2-0 loss to Fiorentina in their last Champions League match.




2. In case you are keeping score at home..here are the countries that have qualified for the 2010 World Cup

CONCACAF
United States
Mexico
Honduras
Costa Rica- Must defeat Uruguay in 2 leg qualifier

UEFA
Denmark
Switzerland
Slovakia
Germany
Spain
England
Serbia
Italy
Netherlands

These 8 teams will be squaring off against each other with the winners of these 4 two leg matches qualifying..

Greece v. Ukraine
Ireland v. France
Portugal v. Bosnia-Herzegovina
Russia v. Slovenia

CONMEBOL
Brazil
Chile
Paraguay
Argentina

Uruguay plays Costa Rica in a 2 leg qualifier, winner moves on.

CAF
We don't know, they're not done yet, but teams that currently stand to move on are:
Cameroon
Tunisia
Algeria
Ghana

AFC
South Korea
North Korea
Australia
Japan

Saudi Arabia and New Zealand playoff for qualifying spot.

Host Nation- South Africa

So there you go. Most notable thing here is that France is in danger of not qualifying after reaching the finals in 2 out of the last 3 World Cups, and Portugal might not qualify even though they have the magical, enchanted Cristiano Ronaldo. Don't worry though, you'll still get to see North Korea. That's guaranteed.


3. Champions League action today! Liverpool has a huge match at home against Lyon. They are currently in 3rd place in their group, and another loss would put them in serious jeopardy of not getting out of the group stage. Inter Milan is another team that has disappointed in the group stage so far, getting only 2 points out of 2 matches. They host Dynamo Kiev today, and it's imperative they get 3 points out of that match. Barca faces Russia's FC Rubin, and Arsenal goes to Holland to face AZ Alkmaar.

1 comment:

Oli Porter said...

I hate beachballs. I also hate football right now.

Wake me up next season.