CZECHO’S SOCCER CORNER
Another high profile European club was dumped out of the Champions League competition. Belarus Club BATE Borisov overcame 10-man Anderlecht in 2-2 draw on Wednesday. Yesterday the Glagow Rangers, this year’s UEFA Cup finalist, were defeated by the weaker FBK Kaunas from Lithuania. Rapid Vienna met the same fate, losing to unknown Cypriot’s Anorthosis Famagusta on 4-3 aggregate. Champions League will continue with a third qualifying round from August 12 to 27. The 16 winners of the third qualifying round ties join a similar number of automatic entrants in the 32-team group stage.
US Women’s soccer team lost their opening match at the Olympic Games to Norway by a score of 2-0. Norway scored two quick goals in the first four minutes Wednesday and never lost control of the match. The U.S. team, without injured leading scorer Abby Wambach, was sluggish and out of sync. They have two more games to go, facing Japan and New Zealand. The U.S. men’s team will face Japan on Thursday and you can watch the match on MSNBC at 4:55 EST.
The latest news from Cristiano Ronaldo’s camp confirmed his pledge Wednesday to stay with Manchester United for the coming season. But Ronaldo expressed his desire to join Real Madrid in future. Ronaldo said. “For some time what I wanted was for Manchester to have agreed to my transfer to Madrid,” “Saying otherwise I would be fooling myself and others.” Alex Ferguson blames the Spanish club for too aggressive approach to the matter.
Despite a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, upholding an appeal from top European clubs, Liverpool said that they have no intention of recalling their players from China. Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano, Ryan Babel and Lucas Leiva are at the Olympic Games in Beijing to compete for their country. Rafa Benitez knows that taking them out of the tournament would probably make them upset and unhappy. It’s not known at this moment what other clubs will do.
FC Barcelona won an easy match on Wednesday night beating the NY Red Bulls 6-2 at a friendly in front of 38,152 fans at Giants Stadium. Barca coming out of Sunday’s 5-2 victory against Chivas de Guadalajara opened the scoring in the 17th minute from Hernandez. Eto’o added two goals and Rafael Alverz Marquez, Jeffren Suarez, Pedro scored one each. Seth Stammler and Jorge Rojas scored for the Red Bulls. Barca coach Josep Guardiola made 8 substitutions compared to 5 by New York coach Juan Carlos Osorio. It was the last friendly match for Barcelona on their North American tour.
The latest world soccer rankings published by FIFA on Wednesday showed Spain still holding top spot. Germany climbed from third into second changing places with Italy. Brazil meanwhile fell to number six, their lowest ranking in 15 years. Argentina is seventh, France twelfth and England fourteenth. USA occupied thirty first spot, second lowest ranking since being thirty fifth in 1997.
