Recent Offside Calls
Feb 08, 2010

FIFA February 2010 Rankings: No Respect For Second Place.

By: chris | Comments 2 comments

Russia FIFA PresidentFor most of the world, January was a lost international outside of Japan lowering World Cup expectations to "France in 2002 would be a blinding success" and Diego Maradona continuing his one-man crusade to give every single Argentine footballer, professional or otherwise, a senior cap.

But for Africa, everything happened.

As you may have heard, Egypt won it again. And with that, they were handed the second-highest FIFA ranking ever for an African team - the best since 1994 - and a spot in the top ten. Which is pretty curious for a team that didn't make the World Cup.

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Category Category: World Football

February 8th, 2010

Robinho’s Second Santos Debut, and Neymar’s Paradinha Penalty

By: Daryl | Comments 3 Comments

Robinho didn’t disappoint on his second Santos debut, coming off the bench to score a Zola-esque near post flick of a winner vs São Paulo. Whatever you might think of the man who rides the Pelécopter, it’s good to see such an entertaining footballer looking happy again.

But don’t worry, there’s more to this post than just Robinho’s pretty goal. There’s also Santos’ other big draw: 18 year old Neymar and his paradinha penalty. Don’t know what a “paradinha” is? Then read on.

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Category Category: South America
Feb 08, 2010

Japan Fans Boo China Draw; China Claim It Never Happened.

By: chris | Comments 1 comment

This game, like many before, has made Japanese fans furious. Japan have embarked on their World Cup run up with a number of disappointing results, resulting in a chorus of boos with the Japanese higher-ups leading the charge. The officially unofficial East Asian Championships gives them a chance to get back on track, but a scoreless draw was all they could muster. They'd probably love to pretend it simply never happened.

China are doing just that.

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Category Category: World Football
February 8th, 2010

Charge Your Cell Phone With a Soccer Ball

By: Daryl | Comments 6 Comments

soccket-ed01I don’t know much about green technology, but I know what I like. So when I heard about the sOccket – a soccer ball that stores the energy generated through playing the beautiful game – I wanted to know more.

The sOccket is the brainchild of four ladies at Harvard University. They saw that in certain developing countries, communities were using kerosene lamps for light. The fumes from kerosene lamps don’t do anyone’s health any favours, and they are also big CO2 producers. In short, they’re not good. But if you live somewhere that’s not connected to an electricity grid, then you don’t have a lot of choice. The Harvard ladies are aiming to change that with the sOccket.

It’s a regular shaped football, but with an “inductive coil mechanism” inside. Don’t worry, I didn’t know what an “inductive coil mechanism” was either, but according to Inhabitat it means there’s a magnet inside that’s drawn through a coil when the ball moves around, and the resulting kinetic energy is then stored in a battery. Once the game of football is over, the energy in the battery can then be used to power an LED lamp, as a replacement for the kerosene lamp.

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Category Category: World Football
Feb 07, 2010

How Sustainable is a World Cup?

By: Jan | Comments 2 comments

soccercity

...or European Championship for that matter?

I recently came across an article (Warning: Google Translate content) on a German website called Stadionwelt (Stadium World), that dealt with the rather grim reality in post Euro 2004 Portugal, or better the post Euro 2004 SuperLiga.

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Feb 07, 2010

Photo: Mohamed Zidan Loves Shrimp

By: Jan | Comments 11 comments

Mohamed Zidan

Egypt's striker Mohamed Zidan decided that his head is the perfect platform to declare his love for his favorite sea food.

Meanwhile, if you love Egyptian football: we are looking for someone to continue Tamim's work over at the Egypt Worldcupblog.

(Photo: Christof Koepsel/Bongarts/Getty Images)

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Feb 07, 2010

Euro 2012 Qualifying Draw

By: Jan | Comments 2 comments

uefaeuro2012logos

The biggest sporting event of 2010 will undoubtedly be the Euro 2012 qualifiers due to begin on September 3rd and 4th. At least for the alpine micro state of Liechtenstein, drawn into Group I together with Euro title holders, current cream of the crop of world football and by then potential World Cup winners Spain. If you are not a micro citizen you might want to stick to the World Cup in South Africa of course.

Here's the rest of today's draw for the qualifying stage of the European Championships 2012 in Poland and Ukraine (taken straight from uefa.com):

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Category Category: World Football
February 7th, 2010

Soccer and the Super Bowl, or: Football vs Football, or: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

By: Daryl | Comments 22 Comments

football-lg-new-mdAs I’m sure most of our American readers will know, today is Super Bowl XLIV (or Super Bowl 44, if you don’t speak Roman numeral). Super Bowl Sunday is an easy excuse for us soccer fans to indulge ourselves by bashing the “other” football, reminding fans of said sport that there’s only one beautiful game.

But as anyone who’s ever looked at the internets knows, the trading of football vs football jabs usually ends in a massive, unproductive flame war with a line drawn down the middle and no one keen to shake hands. So, because The Offside is a soccer blog with a sizeable percentage of US based readers, some of whom I’d wager are fans of both footballs, I thought maybe this was a good place to make the case for peaceful co-existence.

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Category Category: World Football
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We have a schedule!

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Portland! It's Portland! We're Playing Portland for Charity!

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