oh woe is england

england lost 0-1 to north ireland. hahahahhahahahahahahahahhaha
hahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhaha
hahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahaha
hhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahaha
hahahahahahahahhahahahaha!

i hope you don't even make the world cup. if you fools can't figure out that eriksson sucks you deserve what you get.

brad's world cup qualifier wrap-up

i saw four of the world cup qualifiers this weekend. one was a joy to watch, one made me smile despite its mundanity, one was a fun surprise, and one was a total pile of shit. can you guess which was which? let's go in order:

joy -- watching sweden pound the hell out of bulgaria was a blast. it was a three-nil drubbing, but even that scoreline doesn't tell the whole story.bulgaria were on the ropes from the opening whistle. larsson, back from his leg trouble, scored a killer opener in the fourth minute. a whistling header that was called back for offside (a good call), but that was only the beginning. sweden had all the possession, they had all the control, they had all the chances and all the shots. yet, somehow (mostly due to stilian petrov and the bulgaria keeper) bulgaria kept them off the scoreboard until the second half.

that's when freddie decided to turn it up, and his first goal was dazzling. larsson took an ibrahimavich pass, tucked between the legs of a defender, then freddie pulled it away from one tackle with his right toe, the next tackle with his left, and deftly fired it home. the floodgates opened after that. mellberg, the captain, scored an awesome header, then the "holy trinity" of ibrahimavich, larsson and ljungberg connected for the best goal of this round of qualifiers. freddie chased the ball, stopping it just shy of the goal line to the keeper's right. he waited patiently then flicked a patented freddie cross right to the head of larsson, whose 5'9" frame was above everyone with his baldness waiting for the ball. bam! straight off of larsson's head and into the foot of a bicycling zlatan who buried the ball into the twine. fucking beautiful. sweden dominated and played like champs. it was a great game to watch.

mundane smiles -- watching france made me happy. les bleus were not playing their best (like the lions, from what i hear) but they did what they should have done to the lowly faroe islands (unlike the lions against wales). even playing poorly -- particularly henry (it pains me to say it, but it's true) -- les bleus were able to score a few (including a faroe island's own goal from olsen). yep, france won three-nil, just like sweden, even if they didn't dominate. cisse (kiki's boy from liverpool) delivered a great header and a lighting strike near the end of the match and those two goals gave les bleus a good strong win over shabby competition. should they have scored more? yes. but they did score enough. and this is the way france should be. even playing poorly they should thrash crap teams. let's just hope that they have their shit together come republic of ireland time. i think they will. they fucking better. we need the three points against the irish if we're going to qualify.

fun surprise -- watching coke head adrian mutu take it to the czech republic and that chelski fuck peter cech was a hoot. i expected a czech thrashing of romania, but mutu proved why teams want him even with his drug issues (hell, i'd take him. to me the real fucker is rio ferdinand, not mutu. if you wanna snort coke in your spare time, snort away, but if you're going to enhance your performance through drugs and hide you can fuck off.) two excellent goals, and for once the czechs couldn't come back from being down. that was a joy. i was pretty sick of that shit in last years euros and it is a relief to see that they are not as mighty as they seemed. it was also nice to see that part of cech's success is his staunch defence. when terry gets hurt and stays hurt you can count on a series of chelski failures. i can't wait.

total pile of shit -- italy and scotland had to be one of the worst matches i have ever seen. italy sucks and scotland sucks even more. i don't care about the latter, and the former is certainly not a bad thing. i think it is hilarious that italy blows. they really believe they are the best, but they continue to suck almost as bad as the english. they are too old (vieri & totti), they are too sloppy (gattuso), they can't finish to save their lives, and they spend more time bitching about calls than playing the game. there's no doubt they'll qualify, they're italy, but they aren't even going to make the group of sixteen in germany. mark my words. it's going to be euro 2004 all over again. and i'm not going to watch another crappy italy game until the world cup. so i promise you won't read me bitching about them until then.