there's always a game on somewhere

Oh Kentaro:

Brazil's 2002 World Cup-winning team will play a friendly next month in the formerly wartorn Russian province of Chechnya, a local official said Wednesday.

Chechnya's government website cited sports minister Haidar Alkhanov as saying Kaka, Ronaldinho and the recently retired Ronaldo are likely to feature in the March 10 match. Chechnya president Ramzan Kadyrov will captain a team comprising local players.

lol

concacaf champions league quarters, snow on the field in columbus

watching the croatian classico, dinamo zagreb and hajduk split. weird looking surface. milan badelj, the new modric, scored a beautiful half-volley from a corner.

the correct term is the eternal derby, apparently

http://dalje.com/slike/slike_3/r1/g2010/m03/y228583083114823.jpg

new krancjar surely? he's 6'1 too

possibly more krancjar-like. i read that dinamo bought him to replace modric. fatos beciraj, a kosavo-born montenegrin, scored a second with a bullet of a header. dinamo 2- hajduk 0.

In what will go down as one of the most bizarre matches in footballing history, Chechnya hosted a game between some of the world's greatest players and a side comprising Chechen and Russian players, captained by the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

With an 11pm start time, the former Liverpool and Real Madrid midfielder Steve McManaman, the ex-Italian defender Franco Baresi, former French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez and the ex-Portuguese player Luis Figo, in addition to Maradona and Fowler, were among those invited to attend. The World Cup-winning French midfielder Zinedine Zidane denied reports he would play.

[...]

The half-time entertainment – almost as stellar as the footballing legends on the pitch – was provided by R&B performer Craig David.

i knew Craig David must still have a career somewhere

Wouldn't be so sure about Robbie Fowler, though.

oh i thought it meant Arthur Fowler, he used to coach a bit iirc

captained by the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.

It's a WTF enough story without me misreading that as "captured by the Chechen leader".

I'd been wondering how Gullit was getting on in Chechnya - still wondering after reading this. Subject seems ripe for a dispatch from Jonathan Wilson, though Kadyrov is probably a difficult interview to line up.

The meaningless summer friendlies have begun - Bayern Munich v Zenit St. Petersburg streaming free (and legal) here. I guess Gazprom money must be hard to pass up. Klose has just equalised for Bayern - he scores when it counts.

just chilling, had a few drinks, about to go to bed
the j-league is on, urawa red diamonds vs niigata
dangerous free kick parried and the first half ends 1-1

http://i51.tinypic.com/scs50k.jpg

drunk, eating satsumas, and into japan vs north korea

http://www.firstrowsports.tv/watch/92058/2/watch-north-korea-vs-japan.html

http://i42.tinypic.com/wsl3qg.jpg

synchronized red and yellow cards in the crowd spelling things out
nk with the best chance and a penalty shout at 18 minutes
0-0 in the 21st

this is an unofficial world title bout

0-0 at the half. physical, pinball-style, some genuine chances for nk. the red and yellow cards in the background are mesmerizing. also it took me a half hour to notice there's no advertising beyond a few sad fifa banners.

love that link, a bunch of it making my head spin (like congrats netherlands antilles, i had no idea). good detail: the England v Scotland match of 1967, which first gave rise to the idea of an unofficial world championship, really was a UFWC title match.

i know i already posted a less interesting pic but srsly look at this
http://i39.tinypic.com/xkupzq.jpg

get up to piss and north korea score

2nd yellow for nk #11, ref had to check his book.

5 minutes added time put up on the sign, then changed to four. that was odd.

north korea wins 1-0. new unofficial champ!! i drunkenly watched history, i had no idea wow.
players smiling and jumping up and down, crowd smiling and singing and waving flags

what league is this? http://veetle.com/index.php/channel/view#4f4598d58ef2e

Polish - Ruch Chorzow v Lech Poznan

http://www.rolandchayer.com/TheVanKarenLife/style_emoticons/RolandChayer-Smileys/RolandChayer-ThankYouSmiley.gif

wondered rpl but the stadium seemed too small. kept thinking the game was live but knew it wasn't. late night space out squint, game in the background

Fenerbahce 2-0 ahead in the Turkish Cup Final vs Bursaspor. 50 mins in.

And there's the 3rd.

late night space out squint, game in the background

describes too many of my evenings tbh

4-0, a tonking.

into this as a collection of names, ucl champions league 2nd round qualifying for tuesday
Shakhter Karaganda v Libere
FK Ventspils v Molde
FK Ekranas v Shamrock
SV Salzburg v F91 Dudelange
Hapoel Kiryat Shmona v MSK Zilina
FC Zestafoni v Neftchi
Sheriff Tiraspol v Uliss Yerevan
Debrecen v Skenderbeu
FC Basel v FC Flora Tallin
Partizan Belgrade v Valletta
Zeljeznicar Sarajevo v NK Maribor
KR Reykjavik v HJK Helsinki

neftchi

Universe devoid of football since the Anderlecht game finished an hour and a half ago. Kinda like it this way tbh.

I've noticed Indian domestic games sneaking onto the schedules lately. East Bengal vs Pune and suchlike. Can't say I'm not intrigued, though it'll take more than that to get me signed up to Bet365 and their evil ways.

Harsh punishments of our time:

NEW DELHI, Dec 29 (Reuters) - India's oldest soccer club, Mohun Bagan, have been kicked out of the league and banned for a further two years after refusing to take the field for the second half of their crowd trouble-hit derby against East Bengal earlier this month.
Mohun Bagan were trailing their arch-rivals 1-0 on Dec. 9 in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata when one of their players was hit by a stone hurled from the stands.
The match resumed after a near 15-minute interruption but Mohun Bagan, founded in 1889, did not return to the field.

Huge match in the Ekstraklasa on atm. Legia (59 points) vs Lech Poznan (57). Still three games to go but the winner of this match would expect to take the league. 0-0 so far.

Interesting first half. Lech slightly more likely I feel.

Kisz of death

with minutes to go in the last day of the Austrian Bundesliga the bottom four teams in the ten team league have a point between them, the single relegation place to be decided...

RIP SV Mattersburg, Innsbruck's five minute turnaround from 0-2 to 3-2 did them in. :'(

I knew the Austrian league would be amazing

Mkhitaryan scored his 25th league goal of the season, finishing three ahead of Sergei Rebrov and Maxim Shatskih's former record total. 25 in 28 games from midfield. Given that they got £30m for Willian and want £40m plus for Fernandinho, idk what price Akhmetov would put on him.

Full-time #Brittany 1-0 Mali. Charlton Athletic striker Yann Kermorgant hits a second-half winner for the non-FIFA side. Report to come soon

feel like Mali are demeaning themselves there tbh

2019 iteration has a supremely aggravating "play one of the big dogs off the park for 89 minutes only to concede a 30 yard screamer at the last minute" thing going on

there's a piece on the Zanzibar Premier League on the World Service right now!

by the way i don't know if it's still on All 4 but the Diego Maradona documentary is really good stuff

Australia has finally shut down the A-League, bringing a close to Adam le Fondre's brief run as the world's best currently-active striker.

Transferring all my football allegiances to Shakhtyor Soligorsk in these difficult times.

Damn. Expect the next best currently-active stiker to be in Belarus then? xp

Hell of a tussle at the top of the Burundi Premier League. Musongati 4pts behind Le Messager Ngozi but with a game in hand.

by the way i don't know if it's still on All 4 but the Diego Maradona documentary is really good stuff

― Two Gentlemen with the Rona (Noodle Vague), Monday, March 23, 2020 7:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

thx for this noodle. watched it today, cracking stuff, tho in a time of social distancing some of the diego being mobbed in the streets wobbly hand cam footage freaked me out a little. know it's not an original thought but oh to see a peak maradona playing on 2020 pitches under 2020 rules. the number of terrible tackles he just rode and stumbled onward from was amazing.

i know! it's a really well put together film. watching the clogging he routinely got, and you think about cliches about Italian defending but imagine how much worse the average shitkicker was in England at the time. tbh i'd never spent so much time just watching how incredible his movement and control was

it's really good at opening a window into the ways football is seen and played and thought about outside the anglo bubble as well i think, which i'm as guilty of as any lazy tv fan

i spent a lot of it thinking how much my old man wouldn't have got it, the entire culture would be so alien and bad to him and all of that belied by those clips of him playing

i actually found it quite frightening, just impossible to imagine how anyone could deal with that level of adulation and expectation and of course he didn't deal with it. but yeah it was a level of fandom that i am not really familiar with tbh.

also stuff that is either badly translated or more likely i am not understanding culturally re argentina in that i think more than one contributor possibly his trainer plus a journalist refers to diego as "that little black kid"

yeah there are ilxors who'll understand that much better than me but my understanding is that South America has a lot of this kinda racial subdivision expressed thru the language, and then put that thru a translation into English and it won't be clear

https://youtu.be/xRIaHZvjipo

Korean league kicks off in just over 40mins lads.

League winners Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors vs cup winners Suwon Samsung Bluewings.

The BBC showed this live on iPlayer, don't know how many more Korean games they'll show.

Kohlenpott derby today at 15.30!

Heard Sky is giving viewers in Germany the option to add crowd noise to the broadcast lol

Wonder who’ll be the first player to be sent off for spitting