Liverpool 2 West Ham 0

Caught the game last night at home. Was initially surprised by the omission of a certain Harry, as I thought the gaffer wanted to build his match fitness. Despite his recurring injury problems and consistent poor form, I'm sure Harry Kewell is one player all pool fans want to see 'back to his best'.

We may support different teams, or even watch different sports, but the bottomline for most of us is that we want to be entertained. As Cruyff said, the big clubs have a responsibility to entertain. Watching your team lift a trophy can be satisfying to a certain degree, but in this case the journey is certainly just as important as the destination. Believe me, there is little joy in watching Carragher and friends performing a 'back to the wall defending'. I have never liked Carragher in the past for the simple reason that he is uncomfortable on the ball and can't pass the ball to save his life. Indeed, in the Roy Evans era, Carragher would have looked strange amongst the likes of Steve McManaman, Patrik Berger and Robbie Fowler. In today's reality, Carragher was Liverpool's player of the year last season and that alone tells you how the club plays their football.

To be fair, Carragher has improved a lot under Benitez's guidance; hell, he even initiates an attacking move at times these days! But in an ideal world, he should not be a star in the Liverpool team; a defensive rock? Yes. But not someone whom people would think synonymously with Liverpool. Claude Makelele plays a very important role in the Chelsea team, but you can be sure it is the likes of Lampard, Robben and Joe Cole who will be mentioned when you talk about Chelsea. The same goes for Sol Campbell and so many other 'defensive rocks' who are destined to be unsung heroes.

Hence, I am looking forward to the days when Liverpool headlines will be grabbed by Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso, Morientes, Kewell and dare I say, Luis Garcia? Garcia certainly gave a delightful performance in the win over West Ham; his passing, dribbling and tricks finally quenched my thirst for entertainment. If you saw the game, you would have noticed the painfully obvious body language of Gerrard; he was trying so hard to create goalscoring chances of Morientes. It was only when the latter left the pitch did Gerrard resume taking shots again.

Anyway, the West Ham game was a typical performance by the Reds these days; numerous chances but only a few goals to show for their efforts. Well, I guess mutiple orgasms remains the birthright of the womenfolk... =)

Miscellaneous

Nothing interesting has happened of late.. The usual stuff.. Tropical storms turning into cat 5 hurricanes, birds passing the flu bug to each other, earthquakes causing such terrible problems that somehow manage to elude the entire world.. Of coz, closer to home, mosquitoes are doing their very best too. Or as in an anime, mosquito-chan kambade ne!

Interestingly, amidst all the gloom, something good happened to one of my old pals, who finally got attached after 26 years of waiting.. Well, if it took Manchester United that long to win the league title, I suppose it would be a
reasonable amount of time to wait for your first love.. =)

Caught the animation movie, Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. All I can say is that it is a must for all FF fans! The animation totally rocks and the characters are drawn and dubbed so fantastically! Tifa!!!

I love the Beautiful Game

The most popular sport in my primary school was actually basketball. Every boy joined the basketball club, it didn't matter if you were athletic, hopelessly clumsy or didn't care for the game at all. Our school always ended first or second in our zone area, losing only to Nan Hua whose team was full of stocky dudes, restricting our attacks to only speculative shots outside the zone. I remember wearing the number 13 jersey, which meant I wasn't a star player. But we stayed back everyday after school and played till late in the evening, meaning a scolding/beating awaited back home.

On a fateful day in primary five, soccer entered my life as another group of schoolmates got me into a game of void deck soccer. Like most people, I started off as a defender but as we mostly played on the field, my stamina quickly pushed me to take up a place in midfield. Now here's something that not many of you will be able to boast; I actually played a game which was captured on video! It was a classmate's birthday and his dad came down after the party to flim the game on his videocam. During those days, we all had fake jersey replicas; England, Germany, Argentina, etc.. I still have my tiny England replica with me:

When I entered secondary school, it took quite a bit of trouble to get my new classmates to play a game of soccer. To my horror, we played our first game with a rubber ball bought at the mama shop! Anyway, we eventually had 6 to 8 guys who would play every sunday at a basketball court at Queenstown after swimming. That was fun! We also formed a team and we wore a blue jersey with red shorts. There was a 'training bust-up' incident between myself and Benedict, where I threw my jersey into the dustbin after leaving the court in anger, haha.. Although we played mostly on the basketball court due to the lack of players, we managed the occasional game at the Telok Blangah field which was so muddy that your boots would get stuck in the the mud.. Looking back, I was a very selfish player who dribbled the ball with my head down and could have passed the darn ball more often, haha..

I seriously believe I spent more time on the basketball court playing soccer than the lecture theatres during my JC days.. Almost everyone in my class was nuts about football and there were enough players in our class alone to form a team! And we were a bloody good team as well, not once did we lose a match for 2 years in JC, including a classic 4-3 comeback after trailing 0-3 at half-time!

There is so much to crap about soccer so I'll continue some other day, gonna sleep now.. Here are some footie links:

Freestyle Soccer

Great Soccer Moves