France is going up against Ireland as we speak for one of the World Cup Qualifiers. The winner between these two teams will be on their way to South Africa in the summer. France has better odds of winning being the 1998 world cup champions and finalists in 2006 while Ireland is a bit of an underdog and has never won to France in four attempts on French territory. Though as of right now the score is tied at 1 to 1 with only fifteen minutes left in the game. How do I know this? A cool little live play by play feed coming from soccer.fanhouse.com. I would attach it but I don’t think I would get it working until after the game. It’s pretty cool though. I get to read about the hand balls and the penalties every few minutes and keep up with the game. Hopefully Ireland can come out with a win and find their way to the finals.
Out of all the games to miss when I’ve been to all the others so far. Last Thursday Brigham Young University hosted the Mountain West Conference semifinals for soccer where Junior Elizabeth Lambert from the New Mexico team was captured on video being extremely violent on the field.
Videos show her pulling a BYU player to the ground by her ponytail, clearly tripping players with the ball, kicking violently and dangerously close to the heads of BYU girls who had been knocked down, kicking into them, even punching one girl in the back!
Lambert has been suspended from the team and rumors have spread that the coaches from New Mexico as well as one of the referees from that game may lose their jobs for not taking the girl off the field sooner. (Though, like I said that is only what I have heard word of mouth) Though I wouldn’t doubt it if it was true. Lambert was given a yellow card in the 77th minute after colliding with a BYU player who was going for the goal but from what I have heard she was never given a red card, which it seems she very much deserved. These were not casual gestures of a normal competitive soccer game when things start to get too rough, these were truly irrational displays of violence.
Aggression came from both sides of the field however. Lambert’s punch to the back, for example was brought on by an elbow to her ribs by one of the BYU soccer players during a dead ball. From what you see in the video however, and maybe this is just personal bias, it didn’t look as though anything BYU did should have brought on half of what Lambert did. Her take down of Kassidy Shumway by grabbing onto her ponytail was totally uncalled for and was completely un-sportsman of her.
The game was won by BYU 1-0 after a header goal by Carlee Payne in the 31st minute and Lambert has since made a formal apology for her actions towards the BYU players as well as to her fellow players from New Mexico and to her coaches for her behavior.
The 2010 World Cup tournament is drawing ever closer. Today, the qualifying play-off teams were learned for the European zone.
Republic of Ireland-France
Portugal-Bosnia-Herzegovina
Greece-Ukraine
Russia-Slovenia
These teams are set to play the 14th and 18th of November. Whoever wins the matches will qualify to play in the 2010 World Cup South Africa this summer. As of the 14th of October 23 of the 32 teams have already qualified. Among them are the defending champions Italy and the the top three ranked FIFA teams Brazil, Spain and Netherlands.
No one is all that sure how these next few qualifying matches will turn out. Between the French and the Republic of Ireland the french have the advantage but not by much. Portugal and Bosnia-Herzegovina have never meet before. Ukraine ranks only six places below Greece and only three matches have ever been placed between Russia and Slovenia though Russia did win 2 of the 3.
The first game of the World cup will start on June 11 in Johannesburg, South Africa at the FNB Stadium, also known as Soccer City. The Stadium is the third largest in Africa and holds a capacity of 78,000 people.
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