So Long, Freddie..

Freddie Ljungberg, the man with the magic finishing touch, who could dye his hair red and purple and make it look classy, the guy who wrestled down Olaf the one eyed
cannibal in a Swedish training ground has left Arsenal.

That Freddie had lost his magic touch was apparent the entire last season and maybe even the season before that. How many times have we seen him pump those fists and
bellow at the enemy over the past 18 months? He probably collapsed to the ground as many times as Drogba but for the fact that his weren't given as fouls. There were glimpses..
the Bolton FA Cup match reminded us of the awesome vision for goal he once possessed.. almost Henry-like except that even Henry couldn't pull it off like Freddie!

Freddie and Thierry.. always thought these two were the quintessential Gunners. Both will no longer be seen wearing the red and white.
Similar players.. played with a passion, evinced emotions on the ground that would pump up even the mildest of Arsenal fans. Different kind of exits though.
While Henry's was associated more with shock and a feeling of betrayal, Freddie had it coming for almost a year. Yet, his departure saddens me more than Henry's.
It's sad to see one of your heroes, after almost 5years of brilliance, moping and fumbling on the ground an entire season and then move to
almost-relegated West Ham. I only wish, he had got a proper farewell.

Another invincible departs and with the exception of Lehmann and Gilberto, the entire 2002 squad seems to have vanished.. disappeared..
scattered all over the continent. Keown, Lauren, Cole, Campbell, Vieira, Pires, Parlour, Bergkamp.. all gone.

The last few days before the transfer window closes should be interesting though. With Ljungberg gone, and Reyes literally begging Arsene to let him go,
we need a winger who can tear up and down the flanks and give good 'ol Fake Ronaldo a kick on his shins.

Here's a compilation -
Adios Freddie. Hope you score lot of goals at West Ham. Not against us though! Here's to Freddie and his training ground bust-ups! You will always be in our hearts.
You will always be a gunner.

Real Football

I was incensed at this blundering headline on CNN-IBN "Mittal eyeing English soccer club". No, it wasn't because yet another premier league club is under the uber-rich guys' scanner. And no, it's not because Mittal's looking at Birmingham City - a mid table club when at it's best (Mittal is twice as rich as Chelsea's owner - Abramovich). Isn't it obvious? Soccer?.. Soccer?? Since when did Indians start calling football soccer? Where are all the guys that cry hoarse over the malignant impact of the Western culture on Indian society? I demand that Shiv Sena immediately send some of it's youth wing people to the IBN headquarters to smash some TVs and windows and maybe even to 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens (just for the heck of it.. it sure does have a lot of windows!)

Why do the Amricans call it football anyway? It's not like the players use a lot of their feet. And certainly American football wasn't invented before football. I guess you could put it down to one of those "American things" that you cannot fathom. Like mashed potatoes?

Some more cool shirts:

You can buy these and more at this site. Isn't it ironic that the site's name is soccer.com?

Technorati Tags: Football, American Football, Mittal, Birmingham City

"Desert Rose"

You can't help but feel sorry for these chaps. Not only do they have to risk their lives everyday, they have to pee into concatenated plastic water bottles! Call of duty?

Courtesy: Michael Yon's excellent report on the Iraq war

 

Technorati Tags: Iraq, war, British

Moi Lolita

The innocent face. The sparkling eyes. The soothing voice. The hypnotizing hip movements which make the likes of Shakira and J'Lo look like fat gyrating hippos. The mesmerizing smile. *sigh* How could anyone be so perfect? There must be something wrong with her somewhere. Maybe she has a craving for pony-tailed Hyderabadi engineers? No?

Imagine my trauma then when I found out that not only was she married but had a child too! Needless to say, the guy looks like a toothless vampire. Pourquoi avez-vous brisé mon coeur, Alizee ?

I wanted to put up a video of her, maybe most of you have already seen her performances but sill I didn't want to give you guys an excuse to ogle at her. Perverts!

Enough of mushy talk.. think i'll gulp down a beer. On second thoughts, maybe some orange juice, i'm not much of a beer guy.

 

Technorati Tags: Alizee, Vampires

Life's Biggest Question?

"In a progressively more secularized world, the only religious people in the world seem to be fanatics"

Is God Real? I'm sure many of us might have debated the question at some point in our lives. I'm not here to drill in my opinion or bore you to boredom heaven with facts. Oh wait! This is a blog and I am supposed to give opinions and facts!

Sam Harris, the bestselling author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason has some pretty interesting and solid points to make about well, religion terrorism and reason.

Now, all of us are familiar with the Religion vs Science and the whole 'If the human body were to be one of God's intelligent design products, where does the appendix figure?' argument. What Harris talks about is the reason behind a person's belief. Hope turns into belief as long as you have a convincing argument supporting it he says. This is plausible as far as science is concerned and indeed he makes an excellent point saying there is no Christian Physics and Muslim Mathematics. But what happens when we start treading on the slippery religious and moral grounds? What distinguishes belief from hope?

The Tibetans have been oppressed and flogged for centuries. Do we see Tibetan suicide bombers running amok in Tiananmen Square? Yet, politicians and thinkers alike wouldn't dare discuss issues like this let alone topics like atheism. Coming to atheism, stats say that half of Great Britain and almost 80% of Sweden and most parts of Western Europe consists of atheists. I'm not saying we should have more atheists in India, but we don't even seem to be anywhere near an intelligent debate on the subject. I'd love to see Sam Harris face off with the likes of Praveen Togadia and Ashok Singhal!



Newsweek has an interesting debate between the evangelist Rick Warren and Sam Harris here.

 

Technorati Tags: Athiesm, Terrorism, Religion, Sam Harris, Rick Warren

World Cup and Tendulkar

Well.. hello again! Apparently my faithful readers (all 3 of them!) were very disappointed that I haven't been updating my blog. Remember my friend Mr. Dilly Dally? Entirely his fault.

World Cup.. Ah! Where do we start? At the beginning? or at the end? Doesn't matter.. both were the same! I'm not usually an optimist but I was wondering about the positives from the early exit.. just for the heck of it. I thought and I thought and actually managed to come up with... one.

With the big firms and TV channels losing millions, it might prove to be a deterrent. In the future, there might be a lot less money pouring into cricket. Indians will be exasperated with cricket and cricketers, and because the money has to go somewhere.. new sports will be promoted(football?) in a never before seen way. This in turn makes the BCCI sit up and take notice and improve the system from the roots. India excelling at new sports(figure skating??) and improving on old ones.. that can only mean one thing.. Olympic gold!

Any chance of that happening? Nah! And I'm not a pessimist either!

One Mr. Ian Chappell feels Tendulkar should retire. "At the moment he looks like a player trying to eke out a career; built on a glittering array of statistics. If he really is playing for that reason and not to help win as many matches as he can for India then he is wasting his time and should retire immediately." Absolutely shit logic.

If there is anyone in the team who is absolutely selfless and plays for the team.. its sachin(maybe after dravid). India not winning is not entirely his fault. We were knocked out because EVERYONE played miserably. And just because he's got a pot load of runs under his belt doesn't mean he has to start packing.

In my humble opinion, a player's got to move on when either he's got nothing more to offer to the team or there's somebody better than him on the bench. Well?
And I don't understand the whole argument about retiring on a high note either. If a player's on a high, doesn't that mean he's in a position to contribute to the team? All that barking about players playing for individual records, isn't quitting when you are in fine form selfish?

 

Technorati Tags: Cricket World Cup, India, Tendulkar, Ian Chappell