futbols24 magazine - march 2012 #1

Futbols24m a g a z i n e

March 2012 # 1

METREVELISOVIET FOOTBALL SUPERSTARSTORY WITHOUT HAPPY END

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THIERRY HENRYBEAUTIFUL RETURN FOR

THE CANONEER KING9

SUAREZ&EVRA REALLY A RACISM OR SIMPLY SOAP OPERA WITH BAD ACTORS?

23 I'M COMING HOME AFTER BEING CRITICISED IN ENGLANDRUSSIAN WINGER ANDREI ARSHAVIN

RETURNS TO HIS HOMETOWN

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In this edition3... Slava Metreveli - Soviet football legend

7... Once in Barcelona, now in Samara

9... Thierry Henry - return of the King

15... Ararat Yerevan - they made Armenia proud

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21... European Top Scorer 2011 goes to Malta

23... Suarez payback to Evra - the right step?

27... Mirandes - once in a 109 years...

17... Misery, failure and resurrection

29... Interview with Ser Alex Ferguson

32... Lacina Traore - rising talent from Krasnodar

33... Three chances to survive for Starkovs...

35... Chelsea in a search for new breeze

37... Champions League 1/8 finals first leg review

48... Russian Gunner returning home...

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Slava MetreveliSoviet Union national football team never reached final of the World Cup, but despite that, this team always was on top. Soviet football had many well know stars and one of

the brightest was Georgian footballer Slava Metreveli.

Metreveli was real gentleman. He got not only great football qualities, but also he was very open minded person, who had intelligence and fearless style of play on pitch. He was very creative and his style of play was similar

to Brazilian legend Garrincha.

Slava Metreveli was born in Sochi, popular tourist destination in Soviet Union. Parents gave him name - Slava, which means fame in Russian language. And in late 50’s he started to become really famous. He had Georgian ethnicity and in Soviet Union they were called Soviet Brazilians, because of their technical abilities. Same was Metreveli. He wasn’t very strongly built and he was just 172 cm tall, but he had great athleticism. His main weapon was his great pace and ability to get past his

wingers in the history of football. And it’s not far away from truth. When Soviet national team won Argentina on their home field 2-1, locals were amazed by performance of Me-treveli and he quickly got various offers from well known teams. As many of you know, Soviet sportsman was formally amateur and he couldn’t leave his country to play profes-sionally and get paid for that. Despite that, Metreveli still got famous outside USSR. Metreveli attracted attention from Torpedo Moscow coaches, who saw that 20 years old striker had great pace and dribbling abilities. In first season, Metreveli played just 5 games, because he was included in Olympic team squad. All footballers who made Olympic squad could play rarely and have rest from games. Their main task were to train and be ready. In his second season with Torpedo, Metreveli scored 5 goals appearing 22 times.

opponents. He mostly played right wing and many of his former team-mates consid-er Metreveli as one of the best right

Young striker helped Torpedo to place second in the end of 1957. Five teams from Moscow battled for title, but in the end it was won by Dynamo. Next few seasons weren’t very successful for Torpedo. Everything changed in 1960. This was, probably, most successful year in career of Metreveli. He helped Torpedo Moscow to win national title and national cup. Winger was also one of the most important players in national team, who played in first European Nation’s Cup in France. USSR made

it to the finals where they faced Yugo-slavian na-tional team. Game was tough and both teams played very well. On such

rainy and cold weather footballers had to play even more carefully. In the end of first half, Yugoslavians opened the score and they had lead after first 45 minutes. USSR needed a comeback and in 49th minute Slava Metreveli scored equaliser! Soviets started to play re-ally attacking football and they had few very good scoring opportunities. Another Georgian, Mikhail Meskhi missed twice and game went to the overtime. High tempo game and more posession helped Soviet team to win this game. Metreveli quickly went past his defend-er on right flang and he crossed to opposite side. Meskhi got the ball and crossed to penal-ty area, where Victor Ponedelnik scored game and tournament winning header. Result was 2-1 and Yugoslavians simply had lack of time to equal game again. Soviet football celebrat-ed best achievement in it’s history - European champions title.

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After such performance on interna-tional level, Metreveli became one of the most beloved and most respected footballers in the country. He was key player in Torpedo first successful title run. They finished just three points ahead Dynamo Kiev and Dynamo Moscow. Torpedo played hard and well dis-ciplined football, but Metreveli was one, who could create chance out of nowhere. He was like artist, who always had ideas, how to beat opponents. All his actions on pitch looked so natural and easy. He faced many defenders, who weren’t gifted technically and they played very rude and dangerous football. Some of them even tried to kick out Metreveli out of the game. Fans loved his fearless attitude and how he shared passes to teammates. He was star, he had love of the fans, but still Metrev-eli was quite simple and outgoing guy, who always tried to help everyone, who needed his help. Torpedo wasn’t far away from title in 1961 too, but they won silver and league was won by Dynamo Kiev. In those seasons of success, Metreveli was thinking about return to his native Georgia, where his parents were living. He probably would leave Torpedo after 1960 title, but coach Victor Maslov asked him

''Soviet footballers looked tired. We didn't saw much improvisa-tion in their game. If they wouldn't have Metreveli and Meskhi, they probably wouldn't win final game. Those two wingers were so gifted, that they could get

past any defence.''L'Equipe

to stay. Metreveli respected Maslov a lot, be-cause he took Georgian to fame and success. When Maslov left Torpedo in 1962, six lead-ing players went away from team too. One of them was Metreveli, who continued his career in Dinamo Tblisi. In native Georgia and Tblisi, Metreveli was simply a superstar. Everyone knew him and everyone wanted to meet him. He was almost a God in those times. Metreveli lived with his family near residence, where many important politicians lived. When locals got news, that Metreveli is coming to Tblisi and they got his adress, there were hundreds of people every day near his house. Many of them took various presents - wine, fruits, champagne and many other goods. Some people came to him asked for help, especially students. They asked Metreveli to help them get better grades at university. Rectors loved Metreveli too and they couldn’t say “no” to their beloved footballer. With every next sea-son, his status in Tblisi became even more im-portant. Metreveli probably had everything he wanted. All doors were open for him. In mod-ern situation, he would be millionaire. Back then, he was millionaire in terms of fame and possibilities. Almost everyone got their limits in Soviet Union. There was just some part of society, who had privilegies and Metreveli was one of those privilliged people. Many former teammates think that Metreveli made wrong decision by leaving Moscow and joining Dinamo. Georgian team had many masters in their squad and Metrev-eli was great addition. This team played more creative football. Footballers tried to create show in every game they played. Fans loved such style, but sometimes team played too

Slava Metreveli was key player in USSR national team., He played in 3 World Cups .

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After he ended his footballer career, he felt lost. There still was fame, but everything slowly changed and life turned into something unusual for him. Maybe he simply wasn't ready for simple life of Soviet citizen. He was used to bring joy and emotions, but now that was

only in memories.

risky and some players sometimes forgot, that most important is result, not a showcase of skills. That wasn’t champion type perfor-mance. Despite their style, Dinamo Tblisi also could reach the highest point of Soviet foot-ball. In 1964 they won national title for the first time. It was huge achievement for Geor-gian football. For Metreveli, this title was very

special. In golden match, Tblisi played against his former team, Torpedo Moscow. Dinamo won 4-1 and Metreveli scored one goal. He was happy about title, but from the other side this match was very hard psycologically for him, because it was team, where he spent many seasons. It was feeling, like he’s playing against his own team. Dinamo continued to be one of the strongest teams in USSR and Metreveli won three bronze medals in following years. He continued to compete for Soviet national team and he took part in three World Cups, in 1962, 1966 and 1970. In 1966, USSR made it to the semi finals, where they lost to West Germany and placed fourth. In 1964, USSR almost secured their European title. Soviet football-ers lost to Spain in final. Despite all success, career slowly came to the end. At age of 35, Slava Metreveli retired and came down from football stage. He won almost all titles he could. After many years spent in football sta-diums, Metreveli was facing simple life of So-viet citizen. Thanks to his fame, he was given a cafe director job. He was quite shy and he didn’t knew how to lead such business, so there were few assistants, who did almost all job. Metreveli was just a face on cover. Cafe had great success because of him. Food sup-pliers were pleased to collaborate with cafe,

where Metreveli was director. He continued to keep himself in shape, but after some time he started to drink heavily. Some of his friends saw, that he was drinking with some passion with no reason. As he worked in cafe, eve-ryone came there to see him and offering a drink. And those were first steps to the end... Metreveli was drunk very rarely, while he was active footballer, but later that was probably one of the reasons, why he started to feel sick. He often had headache and later he was diagnosed some disease. It led to various problems. He often simply felt to the ground and couldn’t stand up. Physically and mentally he was getting weak. He had just family and friends left, who tried to help him somehow. But there was no help possible anymore. In the last years of his life, Metreveli couldn’t even recognize many of his closest friends. They spent years together, but his mental health was so weak, that he simply lived in his own world. In beginning of 1998, at age of 61, legendary Soviet footballer Slava Metreveli died... For most of country it was almost tragedy. Government of Georgia took care about his funeral. Politicians, his former teammates and thousands of people came to Dynamo stadium say goodbye to their hero. After that, his coffin was carried out from stadium near famous right flang, where Slava Metreveli spent most of his career. That was quite emotional moment for everyone, who attended this funeral. It’s sad that such football legend had to spend his last days being in fight with disease. There’re many examples of famous people, who had similar story. You are on top, everyone loves and adores you and then comes that moment, when you need to step down from the spotlights. It’s especially hard for sportsman. They are also artists in some ways, but their career is limited and maximum you can spend 20 or bit more years in profes-sional football. After that, some may find new challenges as managers, but some can’t and then they start to feel strange. One day you’re a star and next day everyone forgets about you. Slava Metreveli is still well remembered and respected in his homeland Georgia. They have many great footballers and some of them play on highest level nowadays too. Still, I think Slava Metreveli is something special for every Soviet and Georgian football fan.

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7

Once in Barcelona, now

in Samara

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Alexander Hleb had great career in Germany and England. Later he chose to join Barcelona. Such level was

too high for him and now he will play in Russian club Krylya Sovetov.

Minsk - Borisov - Stuttgart - London - Barcelona - Stuttgart - Birmingham - Wolfs-burg - Samara. Those are the places, where Alexander Hleb has played in his career. He’s probably the best Belarussian footballer ever. But his career was going downwards for the last years. Recently, 30 years old midfielder joined Russian Premier League side Krylya Sovetov from Samara. I was a bit surprised, that player who played in such clubs as Stuttgart, Arsenal and Barcelona, now will play in Russian club, which isn’t even a top 10 in country for now. They are fighting to maintain place in Russian football elite. Sure, for club like Krylya, it’s great addition and I think Hleb will perform great in Russia. Same mentality, almost the same language as he had in his youth years in native Belarus. But does that means, that his career on highest level (EPL, Primera and such) is over? Hleb played just one season profes-sionally in Belarus and he quickly got interest from Germany. In 2000, he and his brother Vyacheslav were transferred to VfB Stuttgart for just €150 000. In first season, he didn’t had much playing time, but later he became one of the leading players in team. Hleb was playmaker in Stuttgart and he slowly became one of the leading midfielders in Bundesliga. Stuttgart won just one major title - Intertoto Cup in 2002 and silver medals in Bundesliga in 2002/03 season. In 2005, Stuttgart made great deal and Hleb was sold to Arsenal FC for around €18 millions. Quite a good money for a player, which was bought for less than €0.2 millions. Arsene Wenger was impressed of Hleb’s quick touch and great passing abilities. He was also quite versatile player and Wenger needed such footballer in Arsenal. First period in Arsenal wasn’t easy for Belarussian. He was quite surprised, because trainings were different and even more harder, than in Germany. Arsenal also had bright stars in their squad and Hleb had to show every-thing he can, to get place in starting eleven.

Despite fact, that there was worldwide names, such as Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp, there was a lot’s of youngsters in team. Hleb found good friends in his new team and Wenger created great athmosphere around Arsenal. Everyone felt happy back then. Hleb became better with each following season and soon Wenger stated, that Arsenal has one of the best midfielders in the world available. Many top clubs were rumored to buy Hleb. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and many others had interest about midfield-er. When there was time to make decisions, Hleb felt that he would fit in well in Barcelona. After three successful seasons with Arsenal, Hleb was transferred to Barcelona in 2008. Fee was told to be around €15 millions. Being 27 years old, he was ready for new challenge and in Arsenal he was going to become a vet-eran. This transfer was thought to be a great move for everyone. Strong addition for Barce-lona and new chances for Hleb to win various titles. But everything went wrong... Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola wanted to see Hleb in Catalan capital, but it wasn’t easy to adapt for Belarussian. Different language, mentality and management. Hleb hoped to have impor-tant role in team, as he had in Arsenal. Even with help from his former Gunners teammate Henry wasn’t enough to impress Guardiola. Belarussian played single season and they he was loaned three times to three different teams in Germany and England. In Janurary 2012, Hleb’s contract with Barcelona was cancelled and he could look for a chance to resurrect his career. At age of 30 it will be hard to get huge progress, but Hleb still has a chance to at least get back to level he once played. From such point, Krylya Sov-etov looks like a good place, where he could gain back confidence and his form. If final stage of Russian League season will be suc-cessful enough individually for Hleb, he could get contract from better team in summer. Rus-sia, Germany or England? I’m sure Hleb will play in one of these countries in near future.

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King returns.. .After playing in the Spain and USA, Thierry Henry made come

back to HIS team - Arsenal.

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Thierry Henry eternally unchangeable valueEveryone, who is all into football world, knows him. Born in Les Ulis, Essonne, France, made 123 apperances for na-tional team and scored 51 goal, played for Juventus and

Barcelona... list is endless for describing this person.

Now on a two-month deal from MLS club New York Red Bulls he has come back home, in London. Yes, it is Thierry Henry, a true legend of football world and one of the greatest (or the greatest) players ever played for English Premierleague side Arsenal. As Thierry claims now – Arsenal is the club which will always get a place in his heart no matter where he plays or what he does.

Growing up

Thierry Henry was born on August 17, 1977, in the small suburban Paris town of Les Ulis. Henry is of Antillean heritage: his father, Antoine, is from Guadeloupe (La Désirade island), and his mother, Maryse, is from Mar-tinique. Despite sometimes being seen as a tough neighbourhood, little Henry provided good footballing facilities. His father pressured him to attend training, although the young-ster was not particularly drawn to football. Despite the less-than-ideal conditions, Antoine stressed the importance of athletics to Thierry, specifically soccer. Marylese worried that her son spent too much time on the pitch and not enough time studying. Thierry listened to both his parents and became a great student and an even better soccer player.Antoine continually took Thierry to local soc-cer camps and matches, and it soon became evident that the youngster was an above-average player for his age. As a seven-year-old, Henry showed great potential, prompting Claude Chezelle, Henry’s first coach, to recruit him to the local club CO Les Ulis. When Thier-ry reached his early teenage years, he started opening the eyes of local scouts. He joined US

Palaiseau in 1989, but after a year his father fell out with the club, so Henry moved to ES Viry-Châtillon and played there for two years. US Palaiseau coach Jean-Marie Panza, Henry’s future mentor, followed him there.

Teenage years

Just before his 14th birthday, Thierry was one of the 25 boys selected for the French Football Federation’s Clairefontaine Academy, located about 30 miles west of Paris. Like every teen who receives this pres-tigious honor, he lived at the school and con-centrated almost exclusively on soccer. William Gallas, Louis Saha and Nicolas Anelka were among Thierry’s classmates at Clairefontaine.Two years into his stint at Clairefontaine, Thierry was viewed by his coaches as a project player—still too raw to be considered a future star. They liked his speed and his intelligence but worried that his ball-handling, passing and scoring ability would not improve to an elite level. Arsene Wenger, AS Monaco coach at that time, however, saw far greater poten-tial in Thierry. The manager of Monaco at the time, Wenger didn’t hesitate to sign the 16-year-old to an apprentice contract. Thierry made his first professional appearance on Au-gust 31, 1994, in a 2-0 loss to Nice. He played in eight games during his first season and scored three goals. Thierry had a mediocre second season with Monaco, appearing in 18 games and tal-lying only three goals. Wenger struggled to find the right place on the field for the teen-ager. Conventional wisdom said that a player with Thierry’s speed and skill would be a

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natural fit on the wing. But Wenger suspected Thierry could one day become a great striker, even if he didn’t have the deadly scoring touch of past stars like Pele, Maradona and Klinnsman.

Thierry Henry is one of the players, who have won everything they could. National titles, cups, Champions League title on club level. Europe-an champion and World Cup on national team level. Isn't that a complete player? Ask to any

of Arsenal fans and they will give answer.

Thierry for Arsenal and Arsenal for Thierry

Thierry Henry’s career is as bright as sunshine. His biography could be written in the amount of many books. He showed great performance while playing for France national team. Three seasons he spent at Barcelona and alongside all football stars at this level he proved again his world class football skills and understanding of the game. But no matter that Henry is best known as Arsenal leader for many years and key player of this team. The best player who ever played for English club.After 5 years playing for AS Monaco, Henry went to Italian side Juventus in 1999 for £10.5 million. He played on the wing, but he was ineffective against the Serie A defen-sive discipline in a position uncharacteristic for him, and scored just three goals in 16 appear-ances. Unsettled in Italy, Henry transferred from Juventus on 3 August 1999 to Arsenal for an estimated fee of £11 million, reuniting with his former manager Arsène Wenger. It was at Arsenal that Henry made his name as a world-class footballer, and although his trans-fer was not without controversy, Wenger was convinced he was worth the transfer fee. Thierry wanted to win championships with Arsenal. He frequently expressed his jeal-ousy of Arsenal defender Tony Adams and his compatriot, midfielder Patrick Vieira, who won titles with the Gunners and helped establish the club as a Premiership powerhouse. Thierry hoped to be part of that legacy. Unfortunately, Arsenal had a disap-pointing 2000-2001 season, losing to Valencia in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and again finishing a distant second to Man-chester in the Premiership. They could have salvaged the year by beating Liverpool in the

final of the FA Cup, but that was not meant to be, either. Michael Owen and Liverpool turned the Gunners away, 2-1. Thierry finished the season with a respectable 22 goals in all, 17 of them coming in Premiership play. The success Thierry craved came in the 2001-2002 season. Arsenal finished 26-9-3 to win the Premiership by seven points over Liverpool. The team next fought off a scrappy Chelsea team to win the FA Cup, posting a 2-0 victory in the final. Thierry spearheaded the offense, though he didn’t cash in on any of his numerous chances. Ray Parlour and Fred-die Ljungberg tallied the goals. Still, Thierry ranked first in the Premiership in scoring for the first time in his career, netting 24 goals. Season 2002-2003 was not so lucky though. Manchester United won the Premier-ship, going ahead by five points. No matter

disaster at Champions League as well, Arsenal managed to get another victory in FA Cup. Team was eager to get back

he was ineffective against the Serie A defen-sive discipline in a position uncharacteristic for him, and scored just three goals in 16 appear-ances. Unsettled in Italy, Henry transferred from Juventus on 3 August 1999 to Arsenal for an estimated fee of £11 million, reuniting with his former manager Arsène Wenger. It was at Arsenal that Henry made his name as a world-class footballer, and although his trans-fer was not without controversy, Wenger was convinced he was worth the transfer fee. Thierry wanted to win championships with Arsenal. He frequently expressed his jeal-ousy of Arsenal defender Tony Adams and his compatriot, midfielder Patrick Vieira, who won titles with the Gunners and helped establish the club as a Premiership powerhouse. Thierry hoped to be part of that legacy. Unfortunately, Arsenal had a disap-pointing 2000-2001 season, losing to Valencia in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and again finishing a distant second to Man-chester in the Premiership. They could have salvaged the year by beating Liverpool in the

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Premiership title next season and Thierry even more. Their goal came true and not only that... Thierry was in striking distance. In January of 2003, he had notched his 100th goal in just his 180th appearance. Wright’s mark stood at 184 goals in 287 appearances. Wherewith fans started to think: why Henry not to become top goalscorer of the team and break Ian Wright’s record? And few years later he did it... As the 2005–06 season approached, Vieira left Arsenal, and Thierry was elevated to the club ’s captaincy. He thrived in his new role. In an October match, he scored twice against Sparta Prague to become Arsenal’s all-time leading goal scorer. Later in the season, he established a new team record for league goals. On February 1, 2006, Thierry scored his

Career of Thierry Henry can be divided quite simply. Henry in Arsenal and Henry elswhere. He had good seasons in other clubs too, but you can't compare that with his time in Arse-nal. That was something beyond words and

imagination. Henry became icon in Arsenal.

100th Premier League goal. The Premier-ship’s leading scorer for the fourth time in his career, he became the first player to net 20 or moregoals in five consecutive campaigns. Later, after the ending of the season 2006/2007, Thierry began thinking it is time to change something in life. So, in that way after 8 years spent at Arsenal squad, for a 16.1 million pounds he moved to Spanish giants Barce-lona.

admirer and footballer in one persom from Arsenal. Team doesn’t go back in shape so fast how fans would like to. That’s why I am here – to help them make it through. Even if I go on the pitch for 20, 30 or 35 minutes, anyway I will be doing everything for Arsenal success. As I am not on long time here, I will try to do all what I can, make out the best what I can give for the team. Earlier before I never knew when time will come to go away from the club, now I know exactly the date, so I will do all for maximum of my possibili-ties,” said Henry. These words say many about Thierry Henry as a person and football player. With all heart he is ready to put big effort just for Ar-senal. It is astonishing quality and says once again that his heart will always stay for this team. When Henry signed contract with Red

Bulls, he claimed he won’t go back to Europe. Now he thinks differ-ent.„Many things have changed since 2007

here, in Arsenal. Most of the team players are new for me. I remember when I went to USA, I said I won’t play again in Europe. However, when team shows you such love and support, it is hard to say „no”.” Not for every team’s fans comes such chance after many years see their hero an-other time. For Arsenal fans Henry is not just hero. He is something more. One fact sup-ports it – few months before was constructed

I want to make this club great again

Thierry Henry’s career can be divided in 2 parts – Henry in Arsenal and Henry else-where. Now during the MLS off season he is back home – in a loan to Arsenal. Fans are so happy like they were in good old times before 10 years, when Henry scored one goal after the other and Arsenal could win trophies. It is he, our savyer – they think. Henry in the same time is eager to help Arsenal go into TOP 4 in Premierleague. „This year in English Premierleague are many competitive teams, competition is tight. Our team is now on the 5th place in overall standings and it is, of course, not the thing which I want to see as an admirer and


monument of Henry where he is represented in such style when he shows his happiness gesture after goal scoring. Hardly holding his emotions, Henry revealed he never believed he will get such pleasure while being alive. „It is just unbelieveable! Before short time I was made on monument but later I had a chance to play again for Arsenal after many year break. I didn’t expect this at all. You can ask for Wenger. Only he thought about such things to make them happen but didn’t say that to me. Everything happened so fast that till this moment I can’t believe that. I don’t cry that often but when I left Arsenal and when opened my own monu-ment, I was powerless against tears,” reveals Frenchman.

Thierry Henry and... his future?

Thierry may not be the best striker to ever step on a soccer pitch—most people leave that distinction to either Pele or Mara-dona—but he’s still in good company. His primary strength is his lightning-quick speed. Watch him dribble through a defense and slide a ball past a diving goaltender, and it’s not hard to understand why people call him the fastest player to ever touch a soccer ball. Even now, at the age of 34, he still is one of the best forwards in the big football world. Within age you can lose physical abilities but you never lose masterpiece. At least such player like Thierry Henry. In december 2011 Arsenal celebrated its 125th birthday. Quite big cel-ebration. Month later Henry returned there, where he played in his career’s peak. It is like present for whole English team. But if take a little look in the future... Henry signed a multi-year contract with New York Red Bulls in July 2010. It means he will stay quite long time in USA. In the same time, he is not very old to say good bye for his team for life. After 5 years Arsenal will cel-ebrate 130 years. Wouldn’t it be great to hire for that one season their one and only, the best of the best – Thierry Henry? He will be 39 at that time, so it is still solid age to con-tinue professional career. It could be the best way for many people in one time:

1. Arsenal in such way can show to Henry and his fans that they are kindly loyal to him no matter other conditions

3. No doubt that all fans would appreci-ate such step and be very happy. In front of eyes gets vision how he plays his last game in professional career for Arsenal. Stadium is full, last Premiership game against Manchester United. Only win can give Arsenal trophy. It is 0-0 till 90th minute, when suddenly Henry goes past defenders and scores final winning goal. Fans standing in stands make applause for him and in such way he says good bye to football, letting beside back fantastic career...

Dreams? Not at all. It can become true. First of course we need to hope Henry’s health will be fine. Second – his own wish. If these 2 points are acceptable, noone will make obstacles for such gesture. Henry, first of all, deserves to be memorable as a person and football player. And where else he could make such deep memory stamp if not ending pro-fessional career at Asenal?

''In football you always get judged on your last game. Who-ever you are, or how amazing you are, it's the last game that

everyone has seen.''Thierry Henry

2. Such time would be perfect for Thierry to end career in high note, as winner, even more, if team grows, gets some good players and can be competitive for title in the Premier League and Champions League. That would be awesome end of great career.

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''So when I go home, sometimes, even when I had an amazing game, I always think about what

I missed.''Thierry Henry


Ararat Yerevan Every Armenian should be proud about this team. They played in Soviet Top League for a long time and Ararat was

team, who surprised Soviet Union and Europe in 70's.

Armenia has long history and their capital Yerevan has same story. Many Armeni-ans say that Yerevan is the oldest town in the history of our planet. There’s a lot’s of legends about Armenia, Yerevan and Mount Ararat. Most popular, probably, is Biblical legend about Noah and Great Flood. Football also has important place in hearts of Armenian people. They had many great players, great matches played. Some of them, even recently. One of things Armenians can be proud about is Ararat Yerevan team. As for all post Soviet country teams, Ararat history should be divided into two parts - Soviet history and history after independ-ence. Ararat was founded back in 1935, but originally it was called Spartak Yerevan and it competed in local football tournaments. After just few seasons, club name was changed to Dynamo Yerevan. In 1940 club won first lo-cal trophy - Armenian SSR Cup. When WWII started, everyone forgot about football and all major tournaments were closed. When war was going to end, national championship resumed. Until 1949 Yerevan played in low-est USSR divisions, but they slowly went up and made debut in Soviet Top League. Debut season in highest division wasn’t very suc-cessful and Dynamo placed just 16th. Overall, there were no major success till 70’s. Club changed name twice again. In 1954 they got original Spartak name back, but in 1963 name was changed to Ararat and this name remains the same nowadays too. Only success till 70’s for Armenian team was in 1954, when they made it to the finals of Soviet Cup. Yerevan played surprisely well and they faced Ukrain-ian powerhouse Dynamo Kiev in final. Match was played in very bad conditions. Fog and heavy rain accompained footballers trough the game. Dynamo won 2-1, but Armenians showed solid performance. There was at least one sign, that this team could have success.

First Yerevanese football star was Arutyon Kegeyan, who was born and raised in Greece. He can be considered as first star player for Ararat. He spent almost all career in Yerevan, leaving it just for one season in 1955, when he joined Spartak Moscow. He was invited to Moscow, because of Cup success, where he was one of key players. In Spartak he played with many Soviet football stars, but he de-cided to come back to Yerevan. Kegeyan got valuable experience, while playing in Moscow and he used it well. He got honored in 1960, when he became Soviet Master of Football. That was one of the highest achievements in Soviet Union for sportsman. He was first and for a long time, only Armenian footballer who had such honor. In 1962 he retired and contin-ued to work in team. Later, he again had huge success as coach in mid 70’s, when Ararat became Soviet champions and Cup holders.

Arutyon Kegeyan, while playing for Spartak Moscow

in 1955.

16

German champions Bayern Munich with leg-endary Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller. In first leg Bayern won 2-0. At home, Ara-rat could win, but result was just 1-0 and it wasn’t enough to make it to the next round. Ararat lost to eventual champions, but despite losing, they showed solid football and earned respect in Europe. Yerevanese striker Eduard Markarov shared top scorer honor together with Muller. Both strikers scored 5 goals in this European campaign. In following years, Ararat won Soviet Cup again in 1975 and placed second in 1976 Soviet League. Those two achievements were last in Soviet Era. Yerevanese club played in European competitions too, but there were no major success anymore. Ararat was play-ing in Soviet Top League till 1992, when it was folded and Armenia got it’s independence. Beginning of 90’s was very hard for all post Soviet football clubs. And not only for football clubs. All countries got their freedom, it was celebration for many, but in same time, there were financial problems. All countries strug-gled economically and same was in Armenia. Ararat got two Armenian titles and four Arme-nian Cups in 90’s. That can be considered as success, but you can’t compare it with success team had in 70’s. Why? Answer is quite sim-ple. You can’t compare Armenian League with Soviet Top League. Those were two different levels. Because of that, Armenian football was getting weaker and level of Ararat went down. You can’t make progress, if you don’t have regular experience against strong teams. In Armenia, there were strong teams only for lo-cal level. In recent years, Ararat isn’t anymore a leading team in Armenia. Now there’s domi-nance of another Yerevanese team - Pyunik. They have won 10 Armenian titles in a row from 2001 till 2010. Ararat now can be proud only about their history and hope that there will be brighter future. Club is owned by Swiss businessman Hrach Kaprielyan, who has Ar-menian ancestry. If he will give enough finan-cial help in future, maybe we will see some surprises from Ararat and maybe they will re-turn at least to the level, needed to win local titles. But for now, those are only hopes and only God knows, what’s waitin Ararat Yerevan in nearest future. Let’s hope that this club will live on.

Ararat Yerevan - USSR champions 1973

70’s was bright era for Ararat. Team was improved and there came first major achievements. In 1971 Ararat played very well and they surprised everyone, placing second and losing only to Dynamo Kiev. Ara-rat earned chance to play in European Cup. Next season they had European debut and it was quite successful. Ararat won club from Cyprus in first round and Swiss club Zurich in second round. Later they faced German Kai-serslautern. Both games ended 2-0. One win for Ararat, one for German side. Teams had penalty shootout and with a result 5-4 bet-ter were Kaiserslautern. Next season was also quite an exciting for Ararat. In Soviet league they played well, but this time they missed medals. Ararat needed 1 more point to win silver medals. They placed fourth in the end of season and that meant that they didn’t quali-fied to European competitions. Most amazing season for Ararat in Soviet era came in 1973. This was simply amazing year for Armenian team. Despite fact, that Dynamo Kiev leader Oleg Blokhin had great season and he became top scorer of league, Ukrainians couldn’t win the league. Dynamo Kiev was beaten twice by Ararat. They lost gold medals to Armenian team and also they lost in Soviet Cup final. Two major titles in single season remained best achieve-ment for Ararat till Soviet league was folded in 1991. This title was won by such key players, like Alyosha Abrahamyan, Eduard Markarov, Levon Ishtoyan, Arkady Andreasyan, Oganes Zanazanyan and others. Same squad played fantastic in 1974/75 European Cup. They won Norvegian Viking and Irish Cork City. Ararat made it to the quarter finals. There they faced

17

Misery, fai lure and resurrection

Zambia wins the ACN 2012 and writes it 's name in the history

of tournament

18

Interesting and exciting as always, the African Cup of Na-tions 2012 has ended. Some of people will say it got by no

surprises, others - that whole campaign was one big surprise.

In reality truth is somewhere between. Would be wrong to claim there were no un-expected results because in every tourna-ment they come more or less. However, two things are clear – this African Cup of Nations was very unlucky for few teams which goals were much higher than final result and for one team it can be called as a saying „dreams come true”.

We knew it and we believed!

First time in its history team Zambia became champions of this tournament. In the final match they played against the biggest favourite, team which many people already before this Cup of Nations claimed as a win-ner because of the strong squad – Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire). Basic time ended in a 0:0 draw, however in 70th minute Ivorian, „Chelsea” striker” Didier Drogba got a chance to score the goal from penalty spot... If he would score, now we probably could talk about different champion, but he didn’t. Later also extra time ended without goals scored, so everything about to be or not to be was decided in after game shootout series. There with the score 8:7 better was Zambia, in that way taking its first trophy. This is not just an usual big win for Zambians. Zambia won the tournament for the first time amid emotional scenes. On 27 April 1993, a Zambian Air Force Buffalo DHC-5D which was carrying the team to Senegal for a 1994 World Cup qualification match crashed, killing all 30 passengers, including 18 players and a number of coaches. So no doubt – this team is like a resurrection from that team. That also admits Zambian goalkeeper, one of tournament heros and especially in final game, where he was one of those who scored after game’s shootout: „Our generation is the first to win the competition. I don’t even know what is happening back home but people have been waiting so long for this to happen. So, thank God that we were the first team to win this and hopefully we won’t be the last.”

Hevre Renard did a great job

and he's one of the main

reasons, why Zambia won

this title.

The team can be strong in all ways but it needs also smart coach. Now Zambians can be happy they signed Frenchman Hervé Re-nard as a head coach for them. He did a lot of tactic work to make this dream come true. After the final game he said team spirit was at the heart of his side’s historic Africa Cup of Nations victory over the Ivory Coast.

„I don’t think that we are the best team but we had a great team spirit during the tourna-ment and that made the diference. We were lucky as well but I really feel that to win an Africa Cup of Nations you need some luck.

Everything went all right for us. It means so much. What we’ve achieved here was look-ing unrealistic before the competition started. But during the preparation and days into the competition, we realised that we needed to believe in ourselves.

We wanted to honour the dead players and that strengthened us. Our first game was against Senegal and the team was on its way to Senegal for a match when the plane crashed. The plane crashed in Gabon and we won the final in Gabon. It is a sign of destiny,” revealed Renard.

Misery once again

If Zambia was delighted after this suc-cess, then for Ivory Coast a loss in the final game was very tough. In 1992 they first won


African Cup of Nations, winning in shootouts 11:10 against Ghana but in 2006 they again got into the final, only this time it was unlucky – again shootout series and a loss to Egypt 2:4. Now history made this bad joke again for Ivorians. Tears after the game explains how important this tournament was for this team. And it is understandable. Squad was close to the best or even the best of all time. Kolo Toure and Yaya Toure (both Manchester City), Salomon Kalou and Didier Drogba (both Chelsea), Gervinho (Arsenal) and many other players from strong European clubs. Such team would be a terror for many TOP Euro-pean teams. This occasion shows once again it has no matter how strong you are on the paper, how loud is your name – everything decides on the pitch. Ivory Coast made some tactical mistakes, also some lack of luck and, of course, that Drogba’s failed to score penalty shot.

It was simply a disaster for Didier Drogba. He had great chance to bring his team win in the fi-nal game, but he failed to score penalty and everything went wrong for Cote d'Ivoire. Such a great player, but no titles with

national team.

For all that Ivory Coast coach Francois Zahoui after the game said his team can re-turn home with their heads held high despite their defeat: „We didn’t expect such a chal-lenging final. We go back to Abidjan with not too much shame. I think we played a good game. I congratulate Zambia. Of course, it’s difficult when you take part in a competition and you don’t concede any goals and score nine goals.” Zahoui also said that any deci-sion on the future of some of his team mem-bers - with Drogba now 33 and Kolo Toure 30 - would be taken after his return to Abidjan. „We have a lot of disappointment, but we’re not going to be moving players [out] because of that [defeat]. We’ll have to see what has to be done. If we have to change some players, we’ll see,” he said.

Black line

With a terrible start and real failure this African Cup of Nations ended, or for real even didn’t start for team Senegal. In group A against Libya, Equatorial Guinea and cham-pions Zambia Senegal suffered three loses in three games, scoring three goals. This team is on the real black line for last several years. Since 2002, when they came into final in the African Cup of Nations and in the same year managed to get 7th place in the World Cup in South Korea and Japan, results have slowly dropped. In 2006 Senegal still got 4th place in

Probably, there's no comments needed here

20

African Cup of Nations but after that: 2008 – round 1, 2010 – did not qualify and now again – round 1. During these years team had some problems inside, also coach replacing but any-way – it is not an excuse. Team is very strong, many players play football in TOP leagues and for such tournament they must be ready to fight hard no matter problems or other mess-ing factors. No doubt level for other teams has grown as well but also that is not an excuse. Three quite unconditional loses says this team has very low will of power. In such case black line can stay for long and failures follow one after the other. Logical step is also coach firing. Sen-egal’s football federation confirmed that coach Amara Traore has been fired following a disappointing showing by the team at the African Cup of Nations. „The responsibility of the coach for these results is incontestable,” the federation said in a statement afterwards. How else - Senegal entered the competi-tion as one of the favorites with a roster that boasted players like Demba Ba, Papiss Cisse and captain Mamadou Niang but results were way too poor and weak, if not say – tragic. Next time Senegal’s football federation needs to think hard to hire new coach. They could take an example from Zambia who hired Eu-ropean coach, who understands football more from tactical side and it gave fruits. Because, let’s be honest – African coaches sometimes make such decisions which are... strange. In that way such golden generations get ru-ined. Surely, with precies tactical play such squad teams could do things much better and achieve much higher successes.

Disappointment

Not happy about this tournament are also Ghana football team. In group stage eve-rything was fine but already from quarterfinals problems started to appear. If against Tunisia in quarterfinal thanks to goalkeepers mistake Ghana scored in extra time and went through to semi final, then there suffered loss from a champions Zambia. It would be nothing unless Ghana not have several opportunities to score goal and even penalty shot. Bronze match was even more worse – bigger loss and also game was very bad. Players apparently had some problems with psychology. Ghana’s head coach Goran Stevanovic was in the lack of

understanding also about the amount of red cards.

„I don’t know why in every game we had one sending off. Maybe I didn’t know my play-ers very well. I don’t know what’s happened. During the competition we had a lot of prob-lems with injury, with red cards, two yellows for John Boye, maybe this is the problem. We need to make an analysis, calmly. I leave everything in the hands of the Ghana Football Asociation. I have more time on my contract. I

feel good here and I want to continue, be-cause we’re building a strong team for the future. I’m sure that the people are not satis-fied with fourth position, but I’m sure they are satisfied with the way we played. We domi-nated,” thinks Stevanovic.

Of course, Ghana has very good young play-ers and if in next tournaments everything will be done right tactically and players will be ready mentally, results will come and not so bad.

African Cup of Nations in future?

This 2012 African Cup of Nations showed that football level in Africa is growing from day to day and many teams, which be-fore were underdogs, now have reached very high level. Who knows, maybe one day some African team could face semi finals or even more in World Cup? Ghana played great in WC 2010 and they were just one penalty away from the semis. And they are just one of those African teams, who has international stars in their squad. So at this moment and with this tendency... why not?

ZAMBIA COTE D’IVOIRE

0 08 7

ZAMBIA: K.Mweene, D.Nkausu, S.Sunzu, H.Himoonde, J.Musonda, C.Lungu, I.Chansa, N.Sinkala, R.Kalaba, C.Katongo (c), E.Mayuka, N.Mulenga, F.Katongo

COTE D’IVOIRE: B.Barry, J.J.Gosso, K.Toure, S.Bamba, S.Tiene, D.Zokora, Y.Toure, C.Tiote, Gervinho, S.Kalou, D.Drogba (c), M.Gradel, D.Ya Konan, W.Bony


European Top Scorer 2011

goes to MaltaLatvian footballer Aleksandrs Cekulajevs has found new

club where to prove his scoring abilities once again.

Have you heard about Aleksandrs Čekulajevs? If you are from Latvia or Estonia, then this name is seen somewhere in news-papers or television. For those, who doesn’t know this footballer, I can say that he’s best scoring player in Europe in 2011. He is 26 years old footballer from Lat-via. Not a very talented, but very hard work-ing. If some players get everything because of their talent, Aleksandrs Čekulajevs is example of footballer, who achieved everything be-cause of hard work. He started his career in Riga, Latvia. Local club gave chance to prove himself on national level. In Latvian highest division Čekulajevs wasn’t very successful, but in second division he made a record - 51 goals in single season. Soon after that he again got chance to play in highest division and later Čekulajevs got his first abroad experience. Czech third division club, season later Icelan-dic third division. After abroad experience, Čekulajevs improved his game and in 2011 he joined Estonian club Narva Trans, playing in country top division. While playing in Estonia, Čekulajevs gained international fame and. From the be-ginning of season, he was scoring goal after goal and at the end of season, Čekulajevs set a Estonian league record with 46 goals in 35 games! Sure, there were many critics, who made comments, like: “Estonia? They don’t know how to play football there. It’s even worse level than in Latvia.” In some way I can agree, but still we need to give a credit to Čekulajevs. Scoring 46 goals in single season is very good performance, no matter in which league you play. Čekulajevs name was soon well know because he was leader for a long time in 2011–12 edition of the European Gold-en Shoe. Now he has already lost his leading position to Portuguese superstar Cristiano

Ronaldo, but it’s clear that he will have solid position in this top scorers ranking. After success in Estonia, he got a lots of offers. From Germany, Turkey, Poland and many other countries. Čekulajevs had some trials too, but no one was successful. In the end, he landed one of the Maltese top clubs Valleta. Čekulajevs expressed, that he was hoping to join a bit stronger club and it was agent fault, that he’s in Malta now. Still, that can be considered as step forward, because level could be the same, but location and climate is much better, than in Estonia. If he will be good enough and scoring at least 20+ goals per season, we could see him in even better club in 2013. Maybe in Italy? What’s interesting about Čekulajevs, that he has not been called to Latvia national team even for a single time. And that’s re-ally strange, because Latvia isn’t very strong football nation. There’s not much quality play-ers coming from Latvia. I don’t want to say, that Čekulajevs would be same quality scorer as he was in Estonia, but why don’t give a chance? At least to train with national team and try him in at least one friendly game. Who would lose anything in such situation? Can’t really understand such attitude from Aleksan-drs Starkovs. It’s possible that he sees, that Čekulajevs isn’t a good enough for national team, but those could be just a thoughts with-out real basis. Give him a chance and we will see what’s worth Aleksandrs Čekulajevs. No matter how his career will go onwards, but in 2011 he gave good reason for a lots of discus-sions. We will follow to his performance in next season in Malta and who knows, maybe he will climb even higher and score even more goals than last season.

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23

K indergarten?Does such acting

makes footbal l better?Disqual if ications now

are given for nothing?

24

Suarez payback to Evra - the right step?

Scandal between two top footballers has already created a saga. Racist Suarez against poor, insulted Evra. Who's

right in this situation? Saga between Liverpool striker Luis Suarez and Manchester United defender Patrice Evra started already in October 15, 2011, when in English Premierleague match between these 2 teams started to happen not ordinary conflict. After the game, which ended in a draw, Patrice Evra claimed he was racially abused by Liverpool’s Luis Suarez. Evra was quoted as telling French TV station Canal Plus : “There are cameras, you can see him [Suarez] say a certain word to me at least 10 times.” The English Football Asociation (FA) began making enquiries into the matter. Few months later it came with sensational announcement: Luis Suarez gets banned for eight matches and fined £40,000 for racially abusing Patrice Evra... No need to say that Liverpool was very furious with such decision while FA were iron-handed and didn’t change the status of their accomplished enquiry. On february 11, it was another Liverpool-Manchester United duo, only this time – at Old Trafford. Luis Suarez was back on stage after disqualification and... he made payback to Evra. Before the game both team coaches Kenny Dalglish and Sir Alex Ferguson said it is just usual game, accidents before are no issue anymore, everyone is Professional, concen-trating on the game. Nice, gallant words, how-ever Suarez was on different thoughts. How could he forget this rough-spoken punishment on his side? So, he reacted accordingly – in pre match formalities Suarez refused to shake hands with Evra. He completely ignored Evra’s extended arm. Evra attempted to grab Su-arez’s arm as he walked past, with Rio Ferdi-nand then refusing to shake hands with the Liverpool striker as the situation threatened to descend into complete farce. After the game again came comment sea. This time clearly more intensive reacted

reacted Manchester United side. First started Ferguson: „Suarez is a disgrace to Liverpool Football Club, he should not be allowed to play for Liverpool again. He could have caused a riot.” The same thinking way was for de-fender Rio Ferdinand: „After seeing what happened, I decided not to shake his hand ... I lost all respect for the guy.” Darren Fletcher added: „Credit to Patrice Evra, I think he’s come out (and) he’s the bigger man.” After this not-giving-handshake back from Suarez came even more critics to him than before months in that called „racism” ac-cident. Even many former professional football players and clearly neutral persons were on Evra’s side. Suarez after this was found guilty very depply. Logical comes question – why? Racism on the football pitch is not something new. Nowadays it can be found in very common way. Fans and people get very angry fast if hears or even more – sees something about that. It is agreeable that in general racism is not good. But lets make some comparisons. In this case many sees this incident as a typical demonstration lesson of racism – one is the poor one, other – the only one with guilt. Situation is not so clear as it looks... Many negative examples come from Russia. On the June 24, 2011, famous Brazil-ian defender Roberto Carlos, playing for An-zhi Mahachkala, got a banana thrown at him during a match between his side and Krylya Sovetov. Later he has said he considered retir-ing after a banana was thrown at him during a match. Already before some months he got such reaction from Russian fans, that time – from Zenit Saint Petersburg. Such happened not in Russia only. For example, On April 2009 Internazionale’s Mario Balotelli, an Italian foot-baller of Ghanaian descent, was subjected to racial abuse from Juventus fans. They were


handed a one game home fan ban as a result. Such occasions have been many and they are bad, punishable, finable and more and more. But don’t people see difference from such very popular occasions and this one’s Evra vs Suarez? In usual times racism happens to a concrete person from many individuāls – in football mostly from fans. And it is disgusting because everyone is a human and especially on the pitch you first rate player’s playing abilities and skills, not his look. But that, what happened between Patrice Evra and Luis Suarez, is... lets say – kindergarten. Evra just made such announcement and finally most of society went on his side. But does someone other except Suarez and Evra knows the real reason for such reaction, if it was though? During the game players wish just one thing – score a goal and win the game. Emotions, strange decisions – it goes within game. To punish a player who quasi abused other player for racism, giving for that disqualification of eight games and not so little money fine? It is too much. FA once again showed they are fluctuant and sometimes too loyal for some players, who are very long playing in English Premierleague. This time Evra – oh, how else we gonna act if he is playing 6th season for

Manchester United? If it was serious offence or something close to that then Suarez must have gotten red card already during the game. If nothing such was fixed, then depend on such sayings later after the game is just silly. And second part – Suarez’s rejection to answer with hand-shake. Oh, what a shame, that is so bad, he is not Professional etc. Oh dear, how else then for him to react? Of course, no doubt he felt insulted after such decision from Football Aso-ciation, where the only one guilty was found Suarez. In every incident there can’t be such situation when one person is completely in-nocent but other one is pure evil. Such never happens. The best thing for Evra, if he is real man, would be at least personal apology to Suarez. Send shits and make guilty only one player – it is too much. Hard to imagine what goes around in Evra’s brains. Maybe he feels satisfied with what he made through. In that case he is not a good person. Every time he goes for scandals and sees himself the only one poor. In this case they both are guilty but not only Suarez. Racism in reality is much more harder thing with more serious conse-quence than such childish behaviour.

Evra&United can win games, but they won't earn any respect with such childish behaviour after games.

/futbols24magazine

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Mirandes - once in a 109 years...

Some say that Spain is country, where plays only 2 teams - Real Madrid and Barcelona, but there's also another teams,

who can bring a lots of surprises for footall fans.

For a first time in 109 years, team from Segunda B made it to the semi finals of Copa del Rey. That’s almost an miracle and in same time, that wasn’t just a lucky performance from underdog team. Spanish cup system is made such way, where only strongest teams can reach finals. If team is weak, there is no chance to achieve something in Copa del Rey. First stages are made for teams playing in lowest divisions and only few from them can advance to the next rounds. Later teams from Segunda and La Liga joins them. Mirandes made trough all those rounds and they faced 4 La Liga teams. They got past three of them and lost only to Athletic Bilbao in semi finals. Team from Miranda de Ebro was just one step away from participating in European competitions. In this town lives around 40 000 inhabitants and they show love and support to their local football team, which was founded back in 1927. Mirandes never really had any achievements or famous players playing there. Seven years ago they played quite well in Copa del Rey, reachind Round of 16 and that was best performance in the history of club. Mirandes have played mostly in Tercera divi-sion (4th level) and in last few seasons they have went back to Segunda B (3rd level). Overall, it’s team who has mostly footballers, who plays for fun and adrenaline. Just few of them has professional status. Others has usual jobs, as drivers, managers and other profes-sions. It’s quite usual Spanish team, where people come together and share their love to football. But it’s Spain and there’s a huge love for a football. It’s national sport, so teams has chance to participate in semi professional or professional leagues. Mirandes faced teams, who has budget 50 times bigger, than they has and footballers who earn millions per

C D M i r a n d e sFounded - 1927League - Segunda BFrom - Miranda de EbroNicknamed - Rojil losWebsite - cdmirandes.com

season. That’s not a problem. Even bank managers can play football on great level. Look at Pablo Infante. He’s 31 years old di-rector of bank and because of his job, he declined many good offers from professional and serious teams. But he’s happy enough in his native province, where he plays for many years. With Mirandes, he’s since 2005 and he has scored more than 100 goals for this club. Football isn’t his main job, but does it makes him worse as footballer? He scored 7 goals in 2011/2012 Copa del Rey edition and he prob-ably will maintain top scorer honor. Only man, who can beat him is Fernando Llorente, who has 5 goals. But that means that he needs to score at least 2 goals in final against Bar-celona. Hard task, isn’t it? After such per-formance, Infante probably got some good offers again and probably some La Liga teams showed their interest too. But he’s remaining footballer of CD Mirandes. In some way looks a bit silly, because why not take a chance to play in highest level and try yourself against football superstars? From the other side, you need to respect such decision. If Pablo Infante can do two jobs and be happy about both of them, why not? It’s his choice. He respects his homeland, town where he plays and I think he’s not less loved than Ronaldo in Madrid or Messi in Barcelona. Sure, it’s different levels, but still, people love such players, who bring joy and positive emotions.

http://www.cdmirandes.com/

28

Pablo Infante and his team-mates have written brightest story in history of CD Mirandes.

Surprises began in Round of 32, where Mirandes faced struggling La Liga side Villar-real. First game at home ended by a draw, but in away game they shocked Villarreal. Pablo Infante scored two goals in second half and brought sensational win! In next round there was another opponent from La Liga - Racing Santander. There was same scenario as in games against Villarreal. Inspired and with support behind, Mirandes got win 2-0 at home, thanks to goals by Infante and Martins. Team was confident in second game in San-tander and they secured draw 1-1. Quarter finals against Espanyol was something unreal. Especially, the first game in Barcelona. Mi-randes again showed great football and got lead 2-0. There was left less than 10 minutes to play and Espanyol made comeback. They scored 3 goals in 4 minutes! That’s something unbelievable and you can’t see such situations in football often. Despite a loss 2-3 in first game, Mirandes didn’t gave up and they were looking for revenge after such an dramatic loss. At home they were well supported again and fans got another spectacle to enjoy. In 47th minute Espanyol got lead 1-0, but soon captain of Mirandes Infante scored equaliser. Draw wasn’t good enough for advancing to the next round and Mirandes needed to score at least one goal more to get a win. They at-tacked, they tried but everything went wrong till 92th minute, when 33 years old veteran Cesar Caneda scored a winning goal! Mirandes got win in last seconds of game and they were in semis! People from Miranda de Ebro had great chance to celebrate all night long their favorites success. Hard to say what hopes Mirandes footballers and fans had before games against Athletic Bilbao, but these two games ended beautiful cinderella story of this team. First game gave a bit of hope for another suprise, but away game in Bilbao showed which team deserves to play in final. Athletic crushed Mirandes at home 6-2 and main scorer was Fernando Llorente, who scored 4 goals in two games. Were Mirandes fans sad about losing? Sure they weren’t! No one probably could im-agine, that Mirandes would go so far and beat three La Liga teams on their way. And maybe it’s good, that they ended up in semi finals, because in final they would face Barcelona and I have doubts, that they could be good

enough match up for Catalan grands. I can’t say for sure, that Mirandes would lose 0-8 or 0-10 to Barcelona, but probably that would be one sided game with a lots of goals and no intrigue. Mirandes already did more, than they were supposed to do. Mirandes showed themselves, that they can make surprises and achieve good results. That’s a good inspiration for future. Sure, that there will be no huge changes in this club and they will not buy expensive players or build new stadium. They will remain a small club, who play in third divison and hope to get into Segunda, where club never had played. This season is quite good for them and Mirandes has chances to achieve such result. Maybe some of players will find new club soon and after such performance, they will have bit

more confidence and appetite to achieve new goals. There will be new story for local fans to remember and tell their childrens. They all simply can be proud, that simple team from province can achieve a lot. With luck, with hard work and with support from everyone around this team. I doubt that Mirandes will achieve such heights in next few seasons, as they did this year, but I wish all the best to this team. Football isn’t only about teams, like Barcelona or Real Madrid. There’s sometimes bright stars born and raised in such teams, like Mirandes. Without such cinderella stories, football wouldn’t be so interesting and there would be no reason to write such inspirational and interesting stories, like this.


Interview with Ser Alex Ferguson

''We would play in the final, if not misfortune in the group stage''

Manchester United head coach Ser Alex Ferguson on the interview told about rivalry in the English Premier League, his team’s failure in the UEFA Champions League and history of Javier Hernandez’s transfer. There is no doubt Ferguson goes into the area of the best football managers in the world. Even more – he is one of those coaches, who have worked very long – many decades. Already 37 years this Scottish man is coach on the highest level and quarter of an era – at the wheel for one of the strongest football teams in the world. In whole career Ferguson has won 48 titles, including 2 Champions League trophies, 20 Premierleague titles and 5 English Cup victories.

How do you think, fight in the English Premierleague has become more tough-er?It was always such. Now only difference is there that before some time all was about „Big 4” – with us also Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea. Now this quartet has added 2 more teams – Tottenham, who finally is able to give some fight and Manchester City, who spent very big money. These teams made the way to title much more harder.

Unexpected bad luck in the Champions League still sets pressure to your side?It was very hard disappointment. I feel that if we would manage to go through the group stage, later we play in final then. In my opinion, the main problem was home match against Basel. We were leading 2:0 and wast-ed some 4-5 great chances to score goals. It lead to lack of concentration and with big problems we stood on the draw. It was very bad result. It forced us to get at least a point in guest match. Despite we had dominance,

we could not score. When it happens, you don’t deserve a win.

But Basel also made problems to you...Yes, it is true. The main thing is that you need to dominate whole playing time if you are big club like we are. Teams who are competing in the Champions League have improved very much in the last time. Few years ago oppo-nent put 2-3 footballers in front. Now are go-ing 5-6 to attack. I think mostly some impact makes this change.

Last season in the final you lost to Bar-celona. If you get another chance, what would you change in that evening?Nothing, they were just much better team. First two goals we could not let them to score, and maybe if we would have some more luck, then win be real. However, when your op-ponent is stronger, there are not much things what you can do to change the game.

So, Barcelona and Real Madrid are now the strongest teams in world?I still think Barcelona is the strongest team in Europe. Real is not far away from them. Lead-ing in Spanish championship proves it. Soon they can get equal, but for now Barcelona is continuing to show the game, unreachable for other clubs. When Messi, Xavi and Iniesta are in the best shape, noone can stop them.

Ser Alex, you train Manchester United for 25 years. What makes you as a coach who works much longer than others with one club? Where is the key of suc-cess?

Much depends on club. I had a chance to work in this club with aim to change the fu-ture, change events how I want. I can set

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plans for 2, 3 years ahead which is almost unreal in other teams. Now everything de-pends on result: you lose 4-5 games in a row, and your chair is starting to jiggle. In United such scenario is not possible. I am responsible for all system of football, including scouts and youth teams. I am very lucky since I can make very quick decision for what player to take in the team for its strenghtening and where to find it.

What is your role for signing players out-side England?Ok, let’s take as example a transfer of Javier Hernandez. Our head of scouting system has a contact in Mexico, he first let us know about such player, it was first step. They found video records of a game of Hernandez, then showed them to me. When we watched them, first thought was that this guy is perspective. However, you can’t make a decision just on what you have seen in the monitor basis. So I sent our head of scouting system for a month to Mexico. He had to watch Hernandez in the game and out of the game as well. In that way we got to know that his father and grand

grandfather played in World championships but Hernandez is in team Mexico squad. After this it was an easy one to make decision. We did all what was needed and signed contract till World Cup in South Africa which increased his price.

What is the most memorable moment in your long year training career?Victory over Bayern in 1999, without doubt. It was something what I didn’t achieve earlier and team didn’t get this title since 1968. Un-forgettable that also the game was fantastic.

How long do you plan to stay on the coaching line?My philosophy hides there that how long I get happiness from the game and health will allow me to do this job, I will continue. I don’t think that you need to set some limitations to your-self but also not necessary to plan something for several years ahead because you never know what will happen tomorrow. Sooner or later my time will come, of course. But now I don’t think about that.


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Rising talent from KrasnodarHe is 20 years old, born in Abijan, Cote d'Ivoire. His height is 203 centimeters, making him one of the tallest footballers in the world. His name is Lacina Traore and he's rising talent

from Russian Premier League club Kuban Krasnodar.

It’s very successful season for Ivoirian footballer Seydou Doumbia, who’s top scorer in Russian league. But he’s not the only player from Cote d’Ivoire, who’s writing successful story in Russia. There’s also Lacina Traore, 20 years old giant from Abijan, who plays for Kuban Krasnodar and does that success-fully. He’s quickly making progress and there’s already some attention from top clubs. Traore began his career in his home-town Abijan. He played season with Stade Abijan, scoring 6 goals in 27 appearances. Being just 18 years old, he went to Europe and got signed by Romanian club Cluj. There he played for three seasons and it was good period for Ivorian footballer. Traore got Euro-pean competition experience, playing in Eu-ropa League and in UEFA Champions League group stage. Striker helped Cluj win Romanian title in 2010 and cup in 2009. After scoring 14 goals in 44 league games, Traore gained some attention from many European clubs. Biggest interest came from Kuban Krasnodar, who paid around €6 millions for striker and con-tract was signed for 4.5 years. In Russia, Traore faced another level of football. Local league was much stronger, than in Romania and he got chance to play against such Russian teams, like CSKA, Zenit, Spartak and others. New country and level of teams didn’t confused footballer and he quickly started to show his talent. In 27 games, he has scored 15 goals and that’s one of the best scoring performances in Russian league. Such performance is slowly rising his value and there’s some interest from European teams again. For now, Traore is still a player of Kuban and he will end this season in Russia. Team probably will not sell him, if only some-one will put generous offer. Traore is very im-portant for Kuban. He’s main player in team. Despite fact, that he’s quite slim and weights

only 87 kilograms, which isn’t much for player such height, Traore can play well not only with his head. He has good speed, plastic body and he’s quite an hard worker on pitch, who doesn’t gives up in any situations. Ivorian mostly scores with his left foot and he can do various tricks. Right foot is weaker and he’s scored only once with it in Russia. Still, that’s not a problem for Traore. He shows great versatily and that’s the main reason, why he’s leader in Kuban. There’s always variations for Traore, when he gets ball. He can try to run away from defenders, give quick pass to teammate or simply hold a ball, while partners are coming to help. Sometimes he makes mis-takes and gives ball away in quite silly situa-tions, but that’s because he’s still very young footballer, who not always know how to get past experienced defenders. Combining skills together, helped Traore to become one of the best strikers in Russia. For 20 years old youngster, that’s not a bad result. It gives hopes, that he could have a very bright future. Russian league isn’t strong-est one in Europe, but that’s still very solid level, probably losing only to Top 5 leagues. That requires some very good skill, to score against teams, like Zenit, Spartak and Dyna-mo. Traore scored against those three grands of Russian football. Ivorian is confident about himself and that doesn’t affects him much, if he needs to play against strongest oppo-nents in league. Even more, that creates some challenge for himself. His ambitions are high enough and he has everything to become a top class striker. If he will stay for one more season in Russia, there could be first indi-vidual award for this talent. Maybe he will be main opponent in race for league top scorer award to Doumbia. But maybe they will be-come teammates? Who knows, it wouldn’t be any surprise if CSKA would try to buy Ivorian striker. Gentlemans, please, make your bids...


Three chances to survive for Starkovs...

Career of Latvia national team and Azerbaijani club Baku manager Aleksandrs Starkovs is in difficult situation. Is that

time to change something?

It is quite common in nowadays foot-ball that good and famous football player at his youth later becomes worse or even bad coach. And conversely – man, who was one of many thousands on football pitch in play-ing level area, let’s say average, or didn’t play football professionally at all, turns to very smart and successful coach. Unfortunately, head coach of National team of Latvia and Azerbaijani football club FK Baku Aleksandrs Starkovs goes into first group. It is not base-less anger or critique – it is reality, based on facts. As a player, Aleksandrs Starkovs was really good, at least over average. Starkovs started playing football in Madona where he played for the local Olimpija Madona playing for which he was selected the best forward of the 1969 Latvia Leather ball tournament. In 1975 Starkovs joined FK Daugava Rīga. In 1978 Starkovs went to FC Dynamo Moscow but it wasn’t the right team for him, so soon Starkovs was back in Riga. However his best years were still to come - in 1980s Starkovs was one of the best snipers of the Soviet first league, scoring over a hundred goals for Dau-gava. As a team manager Starkovs made his name with Skonto FC which he brought to innumerable Latvian championships. He also worked with Latvia national under-21 foot-ball team and in 2001 he was appointed the general manager of Latvian national team. He took over the Latvian national team after its disastrous performance in 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifiers and lead the team to its biggest success ever, qualifying for Euro 2004 with a victory over World Cup bronze medalist Tur-key. Now let’s go back to 2004 a bit. That success was something from miracle that hap-pened with Starkovs, no doubt about it. But if

we look now to that situation with a clear head, quite obviously at least 50% from that was luck. Many can appeal to this saying but luck doesn’t mean only something one – in this case one lucky game. Luck for such long qualifying tournaments can follow in many occasions. Injuries, mood, squad and many other circumstances affects.

In 2003, Aleksandrs Starkovs was selected as the Golden player of Latvia by the Latvian Football Federation as their most outstanding player in the last 50 years. Such title was desevred, because Starkovs was leading scorer of Daugava Riga for many years. This club was best Latvian club in Soviet

period.

Of course, no need to deny that some strategy also it was though more likely it was because of players. At that time (2002-2004) Latvia had probably best generation in football. All best players were in good shape, includ-ing that time’s scorer and unstoppable Maris Verpakovskis. Starkovs? Yes, he was ahead of this team but his tactic didn’t change. It was clearly defensive which worked only at that period of time. He has never changed his tac-tic and now he is there where he is... FK Baku fans wants him to leave the post. After his success as the national team coach, he joined Spartak Moscow winning the silver medal of the Russian league in 2005, but in April 2006 he was forced to quit due to total obstruction from the team’s fans and a

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conflict with former team captain Dmitri Alen-ichev. At Spartak things didn’t go so bad at the beginning but later started to appear problems again. Hard to know for sure why Starkovs was forced to leave this team. Of-ficial version is conflict, unofficial rumours are about his nature that was too hard for the rest of the team’s players. Actually, at this moment it is not so important. Starkovs had great chance to move up and if things would go well, now we might see him as a coach for one of TOP league teams. Destiny was not that kind to him. The present for Starkovs is even more mean to him. Things don’t go well with Baku – in reality they are tragic. Last two league games ended in a loss 0:3 and during the last game fans made catchwords for Starkovs to go away. It says something. Also less and less satisfied fans are in Latvia. Clear shock for them was announcement Starkovs makes comeback as a head coach for Latvia. Because they remember how bad at the end of his earlier training period everything was. They understand that this coach will not be able to repeat that exploit. It is history. Now most of other teams have recognized Starkovs playing style and his tactical solutions (actually – one solution) doesn’t work. In this whole situation, when for moment the light in the end of the tunnel isn’t seen, are only three chances for Starkovs to make things better.

THREE CHANCES OF STARKOVS...

1. The hardest one – change his football phi-losophy. Change tactics, change all his view to football as a game – both from coaching and playing side. At his age this step is quite hard because for every human to change his routine so suddenly is the hardest thing to do ever in life. To achieve something more (if Starkovs still wants to get some titles), he must think hard about this.

2. Train some other football team as a second coach (coach assistant). In this post Starkovs could be valuable because no matter results he has solid experience and can give signifi-cant advices. Head coach can be more tended to tactical side, Starkovs can help him with advices and mental side as well.

Here is one „against” for this though. Very unlikely Starkovs would accept such situation. He is used to be head coach for many years, he wants to set everything by his mind. And it is hard point. It means he can’t analyse his mistakes so well as if he would be standing from side.

3. Retire from professional football. From all these the hardest choice. No matter results, Starkovs loves this game, he has claimed it not once. From other side, even now he could go away from all this and be remembered later as one of the best Latvian football coach-es that ever managed National team. But does he care about that? Does he care to retire memorable in good or bad way? Such ques-tion must be asked him indeed.

Maybe Starkovs finds clearly differ-ent solution? Or maybe he doesn’t even need to search for it because he will always get a board with text „Welcome home, Petrovich” from Latvia, Latvian Football Federation? In that case many can be jealous of him. Hard to imagine how many coaches of same or even bit lower level managing teams would get so big credit of loyality. The more if it is not usual team but National team. Here comes another theme for opening – what Football Federation expects from coach and what coach expects from team and its players...


Chelsea in a search for new breeze

After a poor performance from the Chelsea team in long term in English Premierleague this season its head coach's

Andre Villas-Boas's chair has started to swing.

Team loses more and more points which quite surely seems that maximum what Chelsea can reach is 4th place in over-all standings. Leader trio (Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur) are quite far away and on 4th place (last place which allows to play in the Champions League) pretends also Arsenal, Newcastle and Liverpool. Such situation can’t make happy such level team like Chelsea wherewith seems Villas-Boas soon will must leave his post if nothing changes for 180 degrees. André Villas-Boas was accepted as the new Chelsea coach only from the beginning of this season mostly because of impressive 2010/2011 season with FC Porto. He was announced as new Porto manager on 2 June 2010. On 7 August 2010, he won his first tro-phy when Porto beat Benfica 2–0 in the Por-tuguese Supercup. He followed this with three more titles: the Portuguese Primeira Liga, the UEFA Europa League and the Portuguese Cup. Porto finished the league season undefeated, with 27 victories and 3 draws. He became the third youngest coach to win the Primeira Liga, behind Mihály Siska (1938–39), and Juca (1961–62) and the youngest manager ever to win a European competition, by winning the UEFA Europa League on 18 May 2011 at the age of 33 years and 213 days. On 21 June 2011 Villas-Boas tendered his resignation as manager of Porto. Chelsea confirmed the ap-pointment of Villas-Boas as their new manager on a three-year contract with immediate effect on 22 June 2011. They indirectly paid Porto €15 million (£13.3 million) compensation via Villas-Boas to activate his release clause and free him from his contract. Of course, club direction hoped he will be as much as successful with Chelsea man-aging too. But things goes not so easy.

Probably he is not ready yet for manag-ing such level team. No doubt he is talented coach, but needs more experience. Now tons of articles sends not less criticism to his side. And it is clear – he has very little time to save his head. Even more – some rumours say Chelsea already looking for new coach. Direc-tion – Spain...

As one of the candidates is named Mar-celo Bielsa – current manager of Spanish La Liga side Athletic Bilbao. Things with team for now goes very well – it really has a chance to get even 4th place which allows to play in the Champions League. Another big advantage for him is experience – he was manager of

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Argentina National team for 6 years and later took lead over Chile National team for 4 years. Very ambitious coach who could return Chelsea back to their real playing level. Some of Chelsea club representatives have already gone into talks with 56 years old Ar-gentinian. Another potential candidate for this post is named Unai Emery who currently is managing another La Liga club Valencia. He has not so great experience of coaching like Bielsa but in duration of many years have proved he is smart coach who is strong tac-tically. He started to work with Valencia in 2008. In his first season with the Valencia side, Emery led it to a sixth place-finish, with the subsequent UEFA Europa League qualifi-cation, in spite of the club’s serious financial problems. He led his team to the round of 32 in the UEFA Cup, a 3–3 aggregate loss against FC Dynamo Kyiv, and the quarter-finals of the domestic cup, exiting against Se-villa FC. In 2009–10, Emery led Valencia to the third place, with the club returning to the UEFA Champions League after two years. In the season’s season’s Europa League, the team lost in the quarter-finals to eventual win-ners Atlético Madrid, on the away goals rule,

and exited in the round of 16 in the season’s domestic cup against Deportivo de La Coruña, losing 3–4 on aggregate. These results overall are very good if we count that in Spain many steps ahead other teams are 2 giants – Bar-celona and Real Madrid. Such teams are very hard to beat them even for many European football grands. What would be the best choice for Chelsea? From one point of view they could allow Boas to continue work and wait will next season, like give him time in prepayment. But where is guarantee he will be able to put this team back on winning road? The more, if now goes such talks that some of players are not satisfied with his training methods and micro-climate is down and out? Rumours but they don’t arise from air. There’s probably some truth in all those rumours. So best possible choice for Chelsea anyway seems new head coach. Which one of these both above? Or maybe some other? Now we can’t say correct choice, we can only try to guess and predict.Time will show.

Andre Villas-Boas and Di-dier Drogba could leave Chelsea in near future.They both need some improvements, to maintain their place in Chelsea.


Champions League 1/8 finals first leg review

First leg of UEFA Champions League 1/8 finals brought some surprises. Here's some review about most interesting

games of first round.

CSKA stil l has some chance...

Champions League knockout stage always bring some great emotions for every-one. As for fans, as for footballers. 1/8 finals always gives chance for underdogs to surprise grands. And in this year edition, there were some interesting games and results in 1st leg. More about most interesting games and com-ments in this article.

Many football experts were quite pesi-mistic about CSKA Moscow chances against Primera leaders Real Madrid. Jose Mourinho has done great job and his team is slowly becoming ever more confident and consistent. CSKA had various problems with squad, be-cause some players had injuries and some are still injured. They had training camp in Spain recently and also they played in Marbella Cup, which I had chance to see. Leonid Slutsky gave chance to play for most of players and I

saw, that they got good addition, named Ahmed Musa. He played quite confidently and created good scoring opportunities for his teammates in this tournament. While there’s still pre season for Rus-sian teams, Spanish teams and Real Madrid didn’t had much time to relax. There’s some positive and negative moments in both cases. One team had some relax from competitions, while other played top level football all the time. There were some concerns about first game, because weather in Russia was quite cold, especially in the beginning of February, when there was -30 and a lots of snow all around. For Russian, such winter isn’t any-thing special, that’s quite an normal. But for footballer, who have spent most of his time in countries, when all winter long weather is quite sunny and temperature isn’t less than +10, such winter could be real test. Lucky for everyone, weather wasn’t so cold, as it could

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Moment of joy for CSKA team was probably even more sweet, than for their oppo-nents from Madrid, when Cris-tiano Ronaldo scored a goal. CSKA got good result.


be. Still, such weather made problems for one of the leading Real strikers - Karim Benzema, who got quite silly injury. In such weather it’s hard to keep muscles warm and that can lead to various injuries. Benzema experienced not the best emotions after shot to the goal and after few moments he was replaced. In beginning of the game, CSKA gave chance to take iniciative to Real. Spanish grand controlled the ball, but CSKA tried to create dangerous moments in counter attacks. They got one moment, but it wasn’t good enough to score. You can say for sure, that it was very good match for CSKA keeper Sergei Chepchugov, who made some fantastic saves. Without him, Russian side would probably lose this game. It’s fantastic jump to another level for 26 years old goalkeeper, who not so long time again played in lowest divisions. Such chance to play against Real, he got thanks to injured Igor Akinfeev. In some ways, this

'' I'm not happy but I'm not all that sad. Tonight's result means we must step up for the second leg. We need to improve our

game till next meeting''Jose Mourinho

injury of Akinfeev wasn’t so bad for CSKA. Sure, they lost their main goalkeeper, but in same time, they now can try their reserve goalkeepers. For them, it’s very valuable ex-perience. Leonid Slutsky can be quite calm till Akinfeev will return. Soon after Benzema was replaced, Gonzalo Higuain striked a powerful shot, Chepchugov didn’t catched the ball well and it bounced to Sami Khedira, who tried to cor-rect situation, but keeper was great again. For CSKA such moments were very nervous, because they knew, that Real will use every mistake and punish them. On 28th minute, after mistake in own side, CSKA players lost the ball and Fabio Coentrao quickly got it and crossed into penalty area, where Cristiano Ronaldo scored opener with a powerful shot. Jose Mourinho probably was hoping for sec-ond goal, which could close all talks about advancing to the next round, but all created chances were wasted. Ronaldo had great chance to score again, but luck wasn’t on his

CSKA MOSCOW REAL MADRID

1 1CSKA MOSCOW: S.Chepchugov, P.Wernbloom, S.Ignashevich (c), A.Berezutski, S.Doumbia, A.Dzagoev, A.Musa, Z.Tošic, E.Aldonin, V.Berezutski, G.Schennikov, S.Oliseh, K.Honda, Tomaš NecidYellow cards: P.Verbloom 67’Goals: P.Verbloom 90+3’

REAL MADRID: I.Casillas (c), Pepe, S.Ramos, S.Khedira, C.Ronaldo, K.Benzema, M.Ozil, X.Alonso, F.Coentrao, A.Arbeloa, J.Callejon, G.Higuain, Kaka, R.AlbiolYellow cards: X.Alonso 46’, S.Ramos 72’,

F.Coentrao 82’Goals: C.Ronaldo 28’

'' Today he played even longer than he actually can physically. I hope he will be ready for 90 minutes in Madrid. We are under-dogs, but we hope for good re-

sult in away game.''Leonid Slutsky

side. Portuguese striker can hope that home game will bring more fortune and goals. Everything looked fine for Real till extra time, when Pontus Wernbloom scored equal-iser and brought draw to Russian side. If Real defenders would have better communication and teamwork at this episode, there would be

no goal in this episode. It’s not the first time in this season, when Real lose goal in similar situation. There’s still things to improve on defense. Overall, CSKA has nothing to lose and with such attitude they can go and play in Ma-drid. Sure, Real are favorites and there’s not much chances that they could lose at home, but still wonders happen sometimes. Real should be aware. Confidence is good attribute and without it there’s no chances to win any-thing, but still there should be awareness and respect to opponent.

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After the game...''Im very happy, that I played my first match in Champions League. I tried to show my best skills in this game. It was huge match and draw is quite a good result for CSKA. I think we can

win Real in second game.''Ahmed Musa, CSKA Moscow

''I think that many of our ideas in this game, were wasted and we couldn't show the best per-formance we could. We had mis-takes in passing and our at-

tacking game was too slow.

I think Real came to Moscow thinking, that this will be easy game for them. At home they always are playing great and scoring a lots of goals. They scored goal what they needed

and that's all.

There's always a chance. We will try to achieve best form for that game and show solid per-

formance against Madrid.''Sergei Ignashevich, CSKA Moscow

''My dream came true. Sure, I would like to play in Real, but that will never happen. They played better, so we should be

happy about such result.Pontus Wernbloom, CSKA Moscow

''We deserved win in this game, but still we have need to play another game with CSKA. Our team showed, that we can give all we can for winning. Win in this game would be more fair result, but draw also isn't so bad, be-cause we faced strong team

today.''Pepe, Real Madrid

''I'm a bit dissapointed, that we couldn't secure the win. Our op-ponent didn't really deserved that goal. Overall, if we take all aspects, which supported this game, I can agree that this re-sult isn't so bad. This game can be valuable lesson for us, be-cause sometimes course of game can be changed just

with little effort.Sergio Ramos, Real Madrid

''We achieved quite good result, but we feel that we could win this game. We had chances to score second goal, but in last minutes opponents scored equaliser and got draw. Despite that, we believe in our victory in second game and we hope to advance to the next round. We need to analyse our mistakes

and learn from them.Xabi Alonso, Real Madrid


N ightmare in M i lan for Wenger & co

Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal from London first UEFA Champions League 1/8 play-off game played against AC Milan at the San Siro stadium. If for other teams nothing came clear in first game, then here for 90% team, who will go through to next stage is obviously seen. It is AC Milan, who crushed Arsenal 4:0. Milan were the better team on the night and deserved their win. On 15th minute Kevin -Prince Boateng scored after Antonio Nocerino’s pass. Later, less than 10 minutes to the end of the second half Robinho made dou-ble lead for hosts. For guests a role of savyer couldn’t accomplish even Thierry Henry, who came up on the pitch right at the start of 2nd half, going on the sub for Theo Walcott. Even more – things for Arsenal just went worse and worse. 49th minute and 3:0, after Robinho’s another goal cooperating with Zlatan Ibrahi-movic. Final result was set nearly 10 minutes to the end of the 2nd half, when Johan Djour-ou set a penalty shot to his team’s net. Zlatan Ibrahimovic used this chance to score 4th goal for Milan.Arsenal had their moments and home side’s goalkeeper Christian Abbiati made two fine saves from Robin van Persie. However, the visitors could not find that crucial away goal. Apparently it was because of a lack of key player – leader in midfield or attacking line who could set opportunities to score goals like it was when Cesc Fabregas played for Gun-ners. No talk can be about luck, this game showed how big problems Arsenal has when other team, in this case Milan, play strong passing game and shows real team play.

Thierry Henry had wonder-ful comeback in English Pre-mier League, scoring twice, but his comeback in Champions League wasn't the best. Such result wasn't very pleasing for Arsenal legend. Home game will be just formality and Arsenal can hope only for a little reabili-

tation after such disaster.

This was a sombre night for Wenger’s men and an entirely unfitting finale for Thierry Henry’s brief sojourn. The Frenchman will be about to start his MLS campaign by the time the second leg comes around. The self-con-fessed Arsenal fan will surely be hoping and praying that his old side can pull off some-thing incredible.

AC MILAN ARSENAL

4 0AC MILAN: C.Abbiati, M.van Bommel, P.Mexes, C.Seedorf (c), Z.Ibrahimovič, I.Abate, A.Nocerino, K.Prince-Boateng, T.Silva, Robinho, L.Antonini, U.Emanuelson, M.Ambrosini, PatoYellow cards: L.Antonini 45+3’, P.Mexes 62’, M.Ambrosini 81’Goals: K.Prince-Boateng 15’, Robinho 38’, 49’, Z.Ibrahimovič (p) 79’

ARSENAL: V.Szczesny, B.Sagna, T.Vermaelen, L.Koscielny, T.Rosicky, M.Arteta, R.van Persie (c), T.Walcott, A.Ramsey, A.Song, K.Gibbs, J.Djourou, T.Henry, A.Oxled-ChamberlainYellow cards: A.Song 72’, J.Djourou 78’,

After the game...AC Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri claimed his team could win with a more impressive result, like 6:0.

''In this game we had many chances to score, especially after 4:0. We could have won also with 6:0. We need to use our chances, in Eurocups even more. Yes, Milan ahieved good result but we are not in the 1/4

final yet.

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''We had to score couple of goals more to completely de-stroy Arsenal hopes on posi-tive result in the sum of 2 games. Now we need to score one goal in guests and relax after that.''

Massimiliano Allegri

Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who took big part in 3 of his team’s scored 4 goals, after the game was more delighted about his partner Rob-inho.

'' Our team played very well, we showed we are big club. Very significant we set such game result. I am happy about Rob-inho, who scored 2 goals, now he needs to keep his level up and continue to score. For our coach in such case will appear more variations how to contruct

attacks.''

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger revealed this loss hurts for him as it was the hardest for Gunners in Champions League histroy. Noone was able to abase Arsenal so much. Despite that, Wenger found lustiness to analyze the reasons of such game.

''Handicap which we gave to Mi-lan is too huge to win it back but we will struggle and try to make it. Of course, it is very difficult. I think we didn't deserve such loss but I can't deny we made many mis-takes. We lost ball in situations, in which at such level playing it is unexcusable. We were with-out defence. No sense to make some more explanations, we were punished and we will try to be stronger all circumstances.''

Wenger later added he is hoping to bounce back from his team’s 4:0 thrashing away to AC Milan with an FA Cup victory over Sunderland. However, it was not the thing to happen. At that game Arsenal lost to Sunderland 0:2 and also this campaign is over for the team.More optimistic was Arsenal goalkeeper Wo-jciech Szczesny.

'' It's not impossible to come back but it's going to be very difficult. Milan showed how good they are tonight and it's going to be very difficult. We have qual-ity attacking players and we can score goals so why not? But we have to realise that it's going to be really, really difficult. We're full of belief that we can still have a successful season. It's a big blow for us tonight but I'm confident we'll pick ourselves up and do our best in all the

games we have coming up.''There were some pleasing comments from Mi-lan defender Philippe Mexes about Thierry Henry.

'' We've all paid the best compli-ments possible. I was the first to congratulate him. He is an example for everyone. He is an idol for Arsenal. He had to have the courage to come back and make his contribution to Arsenal He is a fabulous player. It's a little sad for his exit. I don't think he'll regret what has happened. The fans, his Arsenal team-mates and his coach can congratu-

late him. It's magical.''

Second game both teams will play on March 6th at Emirates Stadium in London.

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Was that last game in Champions league for Thierry Henry?

Will Arsenal fans forgive Arsene Wenger and his team for such an awful exit in Champions League?

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Chelsea can't wake up in Naples

Other English Premierleague side Chel-sea also had a bad first game of Champions League play-off. In guests against SSC Napoli many people expected not so hard game for Villas-Boas’s managed team but they were wrong. Nevertheless, beginning was good for Chelsea. On 27th minute Juan Mata made 1:0 to Chelsea using his great shooting abilities. Home team after such incident tried to get goal back and they managed to do it. Just 10 minutes later Ezequiel Lavezzi scored and 1:1 on the result table. After this much better started to play Napoli and on 1st half’s ad-ditional time teams last season’s best striker Edison Cavani took lead for home side. After the break game went on much faster. Chances to score got both Napoli and Chelsea but an-other goal scored home team. On 65th minute Lavezzi scored second goal for him in this match, setting 3:1. Napoli did not stay on this but continued to attack. Chelsea were lucky not to see a fourth go past them when, with 10 minutes to go, Cavani held the ball up on the edge of the Blues’ area before laying it off to Marek Ham-sik, who controlled and swivelled past a de-fender before playing it across for the wait-ing Christian Maggio. The right-back tried to sweep it in but Cole kept it out on the line, though the Italian should have done better. Chelsea laboured late in search of another away goal, with Lampard hitting a testing long shot into Morgan De Sanctis’ arms in stoppage time, but it ended with Napoli in control of the tie.

''Another loss for Andre Villas-Boas. Is Roman Abramovich a patient person? Because Chelsea isn't getting any bet-ter and this looks like one very dissapointing season. Once an unbeatable juggernaut, now jaded and struggling aris-

tocrate looking for saviour.

NAPOLI CHELSEA

3 1NAPOLI: M.De Sanctis, S.Aronica, E.Cavani, C.Maggio, H.Campagnaro, M.Hamšik, J.Zuniga, E.Lavezzi, W.Gargano, P.Cannavaro (c), G.Inler, B.Dzemaili, G.PandevYellow cards: E.Cavani 39’Goals: E.Lavezzi 39’, 65’, E.Cavani 45+2’

CHELSEA: P.Čech, B.Ivanovič, D.Luiz, Ramires, J.Mata, D.Drogba (c), F.Malouda, R.Meireles, J.Bosingwa, D.Sturridge, G.Cahill, A.Cole, M.Essien, F.LampardYellow cards: R.Meireles 41’, G.Cahill 56’Goals: J.Mata 27’

Chelsea is close to early and not very pleasing exit from Champions League knock-out stage. They still have chances advance to the next round, but there will be needed much better performance, than in first game. Everyone in Chelsea needs reabilitation. For some of them, there’s no other way to get back at lest some trust and respect from fans.

After the game...Andre Villas-Boas insisted Chelsea can still progress to the Champions League quarter-finals despite their heavy defeat at Napoli on Tuesday. He was overall positive, just not satisfied with work from team’s defenders.

'' After the first goal I think we had a big chance to go 2-0 up - big missed opportunities. Then we should have done better de-fending. We made a couple of mistakes which, against Napoli, with their attacking strength, are going to get punished. I think that the third goal was

perfectly avoidable.''


''If it had been a one-goal ad-vantage at home, it would have been better, but the third one is more difficult to recover - not impossible, of course, because of the amount of chances that we get and the environment that we must get at the Bridge

to turn this tie around''Andre Villas-Boas

Napoli coach Walter Mazzarri was delight-ed with the win, but was slightly disappointed that Christian Maggio squandered a chance to make it 4-1 late on, when his shot was cleared off the line by Ashley Cole.

''We could have scored the fourth goal but we were unlucky with the Maggio shot in the fi-nal minutes, It's a pity because we would have been calmer with a three-goal lead. Chelsea are very strong at home so we need another great perfor-mance there. We are fully aware that we are not in the quarter-finals yet. This team keeps on surprising me. After starting well we did fantastically to react af-ter conceding like that. It's nor-mal to not always be at 100 per-cent but we have never failed in the big games this season.''

Edison Cavani, who scored second goal for his team in this match, said his team beated one of the greatest clubs in the world.

'' Napoli have beaten a power-house of world football. Now we have an additional awareness

of our strength.''

The forward played a key role in his side’s triumph, scoring one goal before then set-ting Ezequiel Lavezzi up for his second, and Napoli’s third. However, Cavani was reluctant to accept too much praise for his perfor-mance.

'' It was an extraordinary match by all, not just me. We prepared to perfection and we saw the

results tonight.''Edison Cavani

Captain of Chelsea - Didier Drogba expressed, that he never had so hard season together with Chelsea. Ivorian striker also admitted, that manager Villas-Boas has quite an unique philosophy of football.

'' We are having a difficult sea-son - not only at this moment It's not always easy when you change manager, when there's new players to fit in the team. It is the hardest season I've known

since I've been at Chelsea.

You want to be in a better posi-tion in the league. We are used to being in the first two or three.

It's different.

He came with his philosophy which is playing a bit more foot-ball than the other managers, That's how he succeeded in Porto so he wanted to do the

same at Chelsea.''

Second game both teams will play on March 14th at Stamford Bridge in London.

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You can't play like this in such important games!

Neapolitan Grand Trio celebrating another goal!


Mission impossible for Bayer

Hard way to go through to quarterfinal was set for Bayer Leverkusen. Draw was not kind – in opponents Barcelona. How optimistic German club fans would be, very unlikely Bayer will beat Barcelona in sum of 2 games because in first game it suffered loss at home – 1:3. Alexis Sanchez opened the score for Spanish champions but later Michal Kadlec gave some little hope for fans, making 1:1. However, defence was not able to stay clean since then – 2 goals again from Alexis and Lionel Messi and cheerless feeling for Bayer now when going to Camp Nou.

Cyprus against France - who beats who?

One of the most interesting duo in the Cham-pions League 1/8 final – Lyon from France against APOEL from Cyprus. For many peo-ple APOEL is big surprise in this season. No doubt team is strong with good legionary but anyway very few expected its successful performance at the group stage games and admittance for 1/8 finals. And APOEL shows it was not just luck. First game in guests against Lyon. A loss but only with quite comfortable 0:1. Alexandre Lacazette was a goal scorer for home team. Next game in Cyprus. Will APOEL manage to beat many time French champions and score more than 1 goal?

5 goals in Saint Petersburg

Very interesting game was seen in Saint Petersburg where home team Zenit played against Benfica from Lisbon. Guests took the lead first when Maximiliano Pereira scored. But short after that Roman Shirokov gave goal back for Zenit. Quite time after this Sergey Semak put already Zenit in the lead but not for long – few minutes till stoppage time Os-car Cardozo scored for Benfica and 2:2! Zenit was not satisfied with such, so just 1 minute later Shirokov scored his 2nd goal and brang victory for Zenit 3:2. Seems Russian team is eager to make big things also at the Cham-pions League (in 2008 they won UEFA Cup). Maybe history will be promoted to Champions League?

The others...Shock in Basel

This duo before was put in the category „everything is clear here”. How else – Basel from Switzerland plays against Bayern Munich from Germany – club, whose history is incred-ible. First game in Switzerland and many just asked: how many goals will score Bayern, are there gonna to stay some intrigue for 2nd game? Their thinking was absolutely wrong. Home team showed great performance and was able to shock football world – they won this game 1:0. Late goal from Valentin Stocker made home side fans joy. It is clear Bayern team is angry now. Will there be enough anger for the second game in Munich to beat Basel in overall?

Marseille is eager for victories

Strong performance was seen in Marseille, France, where home team Olympique de Mar-seille entertained Inter from Milan, Italy. Game was tough for both teams and each of them wanted to win. But it was hard to score goals because of good defending from both teams. So, all playing time noone of teams was able to score. Finally some luck came for home side Marseille at stoppage time, when Andre Ayew kicked ball to the net of Inter. Small win for Marseille 1:0, which might help very much in the 2nd game in Milan.

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Russian Gunner returning home.. .


Andrei Arshavin returns to home

After huge amount of criticism in England, Russia national team captain Andrei Arshavin is returning to his hometown

Saint Petersburg.

Fans are booing, everyone makes harsh comments on you and trust of manager is quickly decreasing. In the final, you’re moved to reserve squad and there’re not much chances to regain respect from fans. Such situation was faced by Russian forward Andrei Arshavin, who has returned to his hometown team Zenit St. Petersburg. Arshavin is coming home, to the place, where he rised and became well known foot-baller. Zenit was There were speculations, that he could join Anzhi, but that would be quite silly move. Not take chance to come back home and join another club just because of money? Sure, there’s a lots of examples choosing such way, but Arshavin made smart-er move. For Zenit fans, it’s like hero is coming back to town! Remember Thierry Henry come-back and his story, what we told in this edi-tion? It’s almost same story for Arshavin. He also was very important person for St. Peters-burg and he still has some chances to con-tinue his success at home. Every comeback has two sides - humane and sporty sides. In both ways, Arshavin is making everything only better. Let’s forget Arsenal and England. He wasn’t so bad there at all. Even superstars sometimes can’t please English football fan, look at Fernando Torres. Arshavin wasn’t a boy anymore, when he joined Arsenal, he was already a footballer, who has achieved a lot and he was on peak. There was some good and some very good games with Arsenal. Af-ter Euro 2008, where Arshavin was one of the best players of tournament, many top teams remembered, that there’re some good foot-ballers available in Russia too. Arsene Wenger imagined Arshavin as one of key players in Ar-senal. He wasn’t supposed to be a savior, who will bring titles season after season. Arshavin scored goals, gave away assists and overall, played quite good. Russian football fans can

remember some memorable matches, where Arshavin done everything single handed and brought important victories to Gunners. An-other was this season. Arshavin was less successful and Arsenal overall plays quite inconsistent. There’s huge pressure on Arsene Wenger, who can’t lead Arsenal to titles they once had. He told that Arshavin won’t be sold or loaned recenlty, but reality looks different.

''It was the best solution for me at this moment, because I didn't had much chances to play. Was there any other options? I think no, because there were no problems between teams to

deal .''Andrei Arshavin

Returning to two sides of this come-back... It’s always nice to see an old (Arshavin will turn 31, so he’s not so old) hero coming back home. It’s always an emotional moment for footballer himself and fans love such mo-ments. So it’s + for Zenit. If we take sporty side, it’s also quite a strong + for Zenit, be-cause Arshavin is quality player, no matter what English fans say or boo. Russian Premier League will soon take restart and final stage of season will be very interesting. Zenit has one of it’s leaders - Danny injured and Ar-shavin is perfect replacement. Maybe even better than Danny, if he would be healthy. It’s good chance for Arshavin to win a title again. Four seasons with Arsenal didn’t brought even a single one. In final stage of season Zenit will face all teams from top 8 - so teams will face only strong opponents and there will be no easy walk for anyone. Arshavin can raise to hero status again, helping Zenit winning title.

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Russia national team will par-ticipate in Euro 2012 this summer. Arshavin will have great opportunity to gain top form till European major tournament. Russians played great in Euro 2008 and they hope to achieve at least same heights this year. Arshavin was one of the best players in 2008, can he perform on same level again?

futbols24 magazine - march 2012 #1

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