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A 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia clinched the Asia Cup for Iraq. It’s ironic that they beat their free-spending Saudi neighbors in the final who leave no financial stone unturned when it comes to preparing for football tournaments. Add to it Saudi Arabia’s involvement in 911 which lead to the Iraq War and we see that this is the closest thing to revenge the Iraqis will ever taste.

After the victory you didn’t read the normal, “We’re so happy and lets get drunk” quotes, instead we get Iraqi captain, Younis Mahmoud, saying stuff like:

“I want America to go out. Today, tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, but out. I wish the American people didn’t invade Iraq and, hopefully, it will be over soon.”

Fair enough I guess, in the only airtime the guy will probably ever receive he calls for political change. How often do you see that in America? You think if Terrell Owens wins the Super Bowl he’ll call for Medicare reform? If that wasn’t out of place, how about this:

“I don’t want the Iraqi people to be angry with me. If I go back with the team, anybody could kill me or try to hurt me.”

Now why anybody would want to kill the guy for winning Asia’s premier football tournament is beyond the scope of most people’s imagination. Maybe because he partook in a team which had both Shias and Sunis? The football team is probably a microcosm of what Iraq should be and this is probably one of those cases where politics can learn from sport. And to put things in perspective the victory came only a day after 30 Iraqis were killed in bomb attacks.

This is an Arsenal/TFC blog but I thought this deserved its own post.

Sorry for not getting all excited after hearing stories like Wenger and Dein eating lunch and possibly reuniting to bring back the good ‘ol Arsenal days where the Board of Directors were so friendly with the players that when one of the suits left, the player followed. The only funny thing about the article is Wenger’s remarks on Anelka:

Why is everyone so obsessed with Anelka?

I know. Why is everyone so obsessed with Anelka? The article also claims that Wenger is “sweating” because Dein isn’t in the boardroom. Believe that if you want but I think Wenger is a little more mature than Henry and won’t quit just because his favorite exec isn’t there.

According to SkySports we’re targeting Lassana Diara who Wenger is apparently a “big fan” of. I don’t know if this is a Freddie Ljunberg replacement or just stacking up another midfielder to make things a little competitive for Flamini and Co. Diara isn’t getting any playing time at Chelsea so he’s trash to them so it’s only natural that we pick him up ; )

More confidence talk, this time for Rosicky who’s confident of a Premiership challenge and understands his job isn’t safe and needs to play for it ever week. If Diara moves over I’d say that task gets even tougher but competition is always good. Here’s another article titled Sagna at ease at Arsenal where Bakari admits his father was a broom. Actually it’s more to do with him having other defensive backs that speak French.

One final note on the Angel Di Maria situation: he’s snubbed us for Benfica and the only reason I can think of (and I’m never wrong) is because of language problems. If you’re sick of hearing Reyes’ name by now I have some good news, he’s going to Atletico Madrid and even Lyon is admitting that they won’t be signing him.

Oh yeah, we also won the Emirates Cup (big yawn) by beating Inter Milan 2-1, I posted highlights yesterday. The Gunnerblog’s got a report and he’s also saying he’s trusting Arsenal to bring in more players in August. You can also see what a guy who went to the game thought. I tried to do live blogging last year, it was pretty good but I don’t know why Arsenal News is doing it for a preseason game.

Pardon the creative title but that’s the only excitement I got out of today’s slaughter of our beloved Toronto FC at the hands of the lowly Chicago Fire which dealt a serious blow to our playoff hopes. A return to the friendly and very reddish confines of BMO Field didn’t help much and there was nothing U-Sector or the Red Patch Boys (join those two already) could do to prevent a drubbing that brought back memories of Ali knocking down Sonny Liston and then staring at him while he was down. TFC being Liston of course.

Now that I’ve had a chance to stomach this loss I can get a better perspective of why we lost and the reasons are quite simple. We played bad. It sounds trivial enough but those words are entrenched with profound meaning and do the best to describe our efforts. But there was one bright spot, two really. Srdjan Djankovic didn’t play which meant we might’ve had a chance to win this game but neither did Jeff Cunningham, Ronnie O’Brien, Sam Reynolds and the enigmatic Marvelle Wynne. So that was that. But we got to see U-20 Canadian goalie David Monsalve come in and do his best to stop a Chicago attack that was only being helped by the TFC defense’s tendency not to defend and just kinda wave at the ball as it goes past them. Monslave was impressive early but the Fire attack wore him and our defense down where letting in only three goals was a good thing.

But the news gets worse, Cunningham and O’Brien are probably going to have surgery and will be out 4-6 weeks which means say goodbye to our playoff chances. This probably starts the phase of the season where you at least start looking forward to next year. To quote Kramer, Stick a fork in me Jerry, I’m done. Even so, despite the missing players it was surprising to see the lack of tenacity shown by TFC in what was a six-point game against the team directly below us in the standings.

Best not to think about this game anymore. I’ll just say that it was really sad to see Ivan Guerrero outrun Chris Pozniak so easily for the first goal. Let’s look ahead to David Beckham’s debut in the MLS which is scheduled to happen this Sunday at BMO Field.

Thanks for reading.

Alexander Hleb 1-1 - Poor old Hleb blows the initial shot but makes up for it by a cheeky seeing-eye shot.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e6e_1185728429

Robin van Persie 2-1 - This is a brilliant goal, notice how he reverses the ball before firing it.

There’s also a DailyMotion video with 11 minutes of highlights. Or maybe you prefer a hot chick giving you the Arsenal highlights. The Gunnerblog and A Cultured Left Foot have excellent game reports.

Here’s some nice Arsenal moments from the game:

Subscribe to the Arsenal feed for highlights throughout the upcoming season and other Arsenal talk.

So we’re told Wenger has some money to spend and he’s just waiting to sign the “right” player. The Boss exudes the confidence he has in his youth and dismisses any claims of old farts like Anelka reappearing at Arsenal. Now that’s fine with me but Wenger doesn’t really elaborate on what kind of player he wants to sign. He’s being vague as saying:

“If I find the right player, I will take him. If I find two, I will do it.”

Fair enough but what the “right player” is only God knows because it sure isn’t Tevez, Anelka, Babel or any of that sort. Unwinding this thread a little more we learn that Kaka is being chased by Real Madrid with great zeal. Now if there is a right player by any categorization or criteria it’s Ricardo Kaka who can be considered the greatest player in football. Any amount of money being spent here would be well spent. I can’t think of a better replacement for Henry than Kaka who has continuously rivaled the Frenchman as the best player on the planet. Or we could get Anelka. The Gunnerblog has a great post on the media’s fascination with an Anelka signing and suggests Wenger’s using Anelka as a smokescreen.

There’s finally some indication that sun-worshipper Jose Antonio Reyes is finally out of Arsenal, his destination? Not the glamorous Santiago Bernabeu but the industrial wasteland that is Atletico Madrid. £9.3 million is the quoted price which I remember reading was far less than what Wenger wanted for him. Either way it’s money we can use to sure up our shot at a title run which Cesc Fabregas thinks is a realistic and quite achievable goal. Reading his comments I’m thinking he’s ready to put his hat in for the Arsenal captaincy sweepstakes:

“I have matured very much over the last two years and I am prepared to be the leader of the team.”

As this is the only Arsenal blog with an MLS flavour I’m happy to report that Freddy “Who?” Adu looks to be heading out of the MLS to Benfica. For those of you living on the Eastern side of the Atlantic, Freddy Adu is the most hyped up and under-performing player of his generation, he seems like a nice enough guy but the expectations and performances never quite added up.

Goals from Emirates Cup. Arsenal beat PSG 2-1 and have a good shot at winning the cup dedicated to their chief sponsor.   Match report.

Matthieu Flamini 1-0 ‘46

Nicklas Bendtner 2-0 ‘68

Luyindula 2-1 ‘80

The Arsenal captaincy is up for grabs! Arsene Wenger says William Gallas has the ingredients of being a captain, one of those ingredients is that he hasn’t bitched about the club in oh I don’t know say two weeks! Gallas’ attitude towards the club is as mercurial as mercury and I have no faith in him actually keeping his mouth shut and continuing to perform on the pitch if we hit tough times. If Gallas is actually given the captaincy over Toure or Gilberto it’ll be the biggest snub since Vieira not shaking hands with RVN.

So we lost to FC Salzburg, big f***ing whoop. If anybody watched that game they’ll know that it was a much better performance than Gencerblwhatsitsname. Eduardo “don’t call me Dudu” da Silva had a game where he looked to be a threat every time he touched the ball. It’s no joke, check out the highlights. Even Arsene Wenger was generous in praising the Crozilian as he summarized the game:

Eduardo pourrait avoir marqué quatre buts. Il a regardé très dangereux et il a montré qu’il est qualité supérieure. Ils étaient très défensifs, est qui à ce que nous faisons face dans notre ligue et nous avons créé l’abondance des chances. Je suis heureux avec la façon dont nous avons joué et avec l’esprit montré. Le résultat n’était pas important. Nous avons su que les 20 dernières minutes seraient difficiles mais nous devrions avoir marqué cinq avant qu’elles aient marqué.

Turns out we won’t be getting Angel Di Maria, looks like Benfica has nabbed him. You heard it here first: we missed a chance to sign somebody who can be great. Will somebody take Reyes off our hands? Anybody? Whats this I hear about Arsenal rejecting a £10 million offer for the sun-loving son of a bitch? It’s rumored that Wenger’s valuing Reyes at around £20 million, I will eat my keyboard if anybody offers close to that.

That retarded mongrel Darren Bent thinks the Spurs wil be in the top four. Doesn’t he watch football? Doesn’t he have cable TV? Doesn’t he read newspapers? Doesn’t he know that we own the scum and will continue to own the scum until God decides he’s had enough of the world? “There’s no reason why we can’t catch the likes of Arsenal and Liverpool” said the brain-dead man. Yes there’s a reason: It’s because you suck rotten tomatoes. I’m going to take special enjoyment when we beat their scummy asses this year.

Even though I love the Gunnerblog for linking to this blog last week and almost taking me to the top of WordPress, I still can’t understand why he just won’t accept that we’re not signing anymore strikers. I’m proposing that we might even have a bit of a “logjam” at the striker spot or at least we don’t need any more forwards. Walcott, Adebayor, RVP, Bendtner and Eduardo are more than enough and barring any injury some of them will be exclusively relegated to cup duties.

Thierry Henry just scored the winner for Barcelona in the 90th minute for those who were wondering if he’d “lost it”.

Hungry? Eat this.

Manchester United lost to Port Vale, Chelsea drew with Feyenoord, West Ham lost to Milton Keynes so everybody calm down.  It’s just a friendly.

Bright spot from this game: Eduardo da Silva.  He should’ve had a penalty early on but the ref was blind in one eye.

A couple weeks ago Norma Wick was let go (fired) from Raptors TV. After two weeks of serious thinking, soul searching and staring into the lake at my reflection I’ve concluded that it was probably long overdue. Norma Wick is a fine lady, a gentlewoman, an articulate hard-working reporter that can also be considered easy on the eyes by some, but what she is not is a basketball analyst. It’s not really her fault that we had to listen to her ramblings in the Raptors TV studio for an entire season causing many of us great discomfort. The blame should be on the people running Raptors TV who thought us basketball fans were naive enough to not see through Norma and her “insight”.

Now Norma didn’t help herself either with her “he was great tonight” lines after every game and probably never deserves to see an inside of a basketball studio ever again. But bad as she was in the studio, she was a passable sideline reporter who at least knew how to ask the cliche post-game questions like “How does the win feel?”. And of course who can forget Norma maintaining a 2 inch distance from the players when doing those interviews - it was almost romantic. I’d put her on par with the flamboyant, possibly-homosexual Craig Sager when it comes to reporting talent, I’d even go so far and say I’d rather have Norma interview Duncan after winning the title than Sager. So since Norma’s out of work I encourage her to go to wordpress.com and start a blog about the Raptors, I’ll guarantee it’ll be popular.

As with anything in life, RealGM has a take on who should replace Norma and the list consists of nothing but half-decent eye candy disguised as sports fans. I say enough of hiring female objects to do sports reporting. If I wanted to see hot girls having something to do with sports I’d go watch reruns of those Best Damn Sports Show specials but that’s not really what I’m looking for after a nerve-racking loss or a euphoric win. Here’s hoping Raptors TV gives Jack Armstrong about 50% more work, hires a real anchor man in the studio (more like Ernie Johnson, less like Suneel Joshi), lightens the colors in the studio and stops treating the audience like they don’t know what a back-court violation is. If you look at their Talent Roster you’ll realize that there are maybe three people there that you wouldn’t slam the door on if they started talking basketball. One of those guys, Brian Heaney, just ditched them for a real job at Acadia University so the talent on that “roster” just got even sparser.

Did I just mention Suneel Joshi in the previous paragraph? I did, didn’t I? Well how do you like that. That’s the man who completely destroyed any chance of brown people ever having a shot at those kinds of jobs. While we’re at it let’s also thank Farhan Lalji and his donut-eating, milk-shake-guzzling ass for ruining it for brown people in Vancouver. The only brown guy (at least I think he’s brown) still holding a decent sports job is Adnan Virk over at The Score.

Not much to discuss in Raptor land these days unless you want to speculate on how Tim Donaghy might’ve screwed us in Game 6.

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