Becks's Double Vindication

I wasn't worried, if you can call it that, when Real Madrid went down to Mallorca goal in the early stages of their title decider. The closing stages of the season saw an incredible effort on the part of Madrid, producing multiple last-gasp efforts to procure additional points typified by Roberto Carlos's (of all people) 90th minute winner against "bogey" team Recreativo. This was precluded by Gonzalo Higuain's 89th minute goal which completed a comeback from 2 goals down to defeat a Pandiani-inspired Espanyol. The culmination was the almost-simultaneous salvaging of a point by Madrid against Zaragoza, with yet another last-minute goal this time by RVN.

Its probably no secret that I'm not Real Madrid's biggest fan; however I do hold a soft spot for Becks and RVN, the Devils that they were, and it does seem rather cruel for Becks to be leaving the Bernabeu empty-handed; I'm sure many other fans hold that view. Add to that the ignominy of being dropped by Capello once his LA Galaxy deal was confirmed, and you just wanted him to answer the Coach in the best way possible, with his performances on the field. If ol' Funky Specs had watched Man Utd during the '99~ish seasons, he would have known that sub-100%performances just simply weren't a part of Becks's game; no matter how hard the going, he always gave it his all (though in mitigation, Capello later publicly acknowledged and apologised for his oversight).

So it was that Ruud, top scorer for Real this season, found himself limping off with a done hamstring, with Real 1-0 down. The stage was simply set for Becks to complete his personal triumph with a goal on the night, which he almost did if the post and crossbar had not conspired to keep his acute-angle freekick out. Perhaps the Footballing Gods had decided there was a limit to their sensationalisation of this season.

True to the plot, however, substitute Reyes equalised with a well-worked goal, but Real still needed to find the winner. It came via the head of the much maligned Diarra, albeit the back of his head, and it forced a wonderful save out of keeper Miguel Moya; however the ball flew into the bum of the defender unfortunately guarding the post. Reyes, to borrow a timeless football cliché, put the icing on the cake with an excellent sidefooted effort from distance that flew past Moya's desparing dive. And so it was that Real ended a season where many doomed them to fail; indeed I suspect the players themselves weren't really expecting anything to come out of it, not in a season when your bad spells are marked by a 3-0 home defeat to Recreativo Huelva. But I got that tiny spark I had been looking for when I saw Ruud and Becks celebrating together.

In the close-season, Samuel Eto'o finds himself the subject of much transfer speculation, though he can give himself a pat on the back for it. The Cameroonian international has been doing his best impression of a serial flirter, enticing first Arsenal, Liverpool, then Man Utd with a series of "XXX club has a great footballing tradition.. I would dearly love to play there if given a chance" type of comments.

FootieReng

Introduction/disclaimer:

As you can guess, the title of this blog suggests that this blog shall contain all things Footie of my life. I shall alternate between writing formal-ish articles abt professional football on the world stage, matches in my life, and random musings on the Beautiful Game in general. The question of whether to write in proper English or slang is a dilemma that has furrowed my brows for some time; but I decided that I shall just take to whatever holds my fancy at that point in time. As this blog shall be somewhat public, I hope that you, my friend, will not take offense in the event that you suffer a scathing criticism of your performance, from me, of whichever match we were involved in together, haha. I guess my only regret is not having started on this blog earlier, and thus not being able to capture some of the earlier experiences in my life which I found throughly enjoyable.