Soccer Fan Club

Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, nicknamed “The Black Panther”, or “The Black Pearl”, is popularly known as Eusébio. He was born on 25th January, 1942 in Lourenço Marques (now its known as Maputo), Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique).

In 1961, Eusébio joined Benfica when he was just 19 years old. He played for Benfica for almost 15 years. And he is the club’s all time top scorer. In 1962 Benfica defeated Real Madrid CF (5-3) in European Cup’s Final. In that final Eusébio scored 2 superb goals. Not only that, in 1963, 1965 and 1968 Benfica finished as the runners-up.

In the year 1965, he was honored with the European Footballer of the Year award. He was the seven times Portuguese First Division’s top scorer (from 1964 to 1973). This is not all, there are many more achievement like,

1) 9th best footballer of the 20th century - A poll was conduted by IFFHS (International Federation of Football History & Statistics) and Eusébio was elected.

2) Golden Boot Award - In 1968 he received the Golden Boot Award as Europe’s leading scorer.

3) Golden Player of Portugal - On November 2003 in UEFA’s Jubilee celebration, he was selected as Golden Player of Portugal by the Portuguese Football Federation as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years.

Its true that a team is not complete without 11 players but Eusébio’s outstading performance not only helped Benfica to gain 11 league championships (1961, 1963-65, 1967-69, 1971-73, 1975) but also won 5 cups (1962, 1964, 1969, 1970, 1972).

Attractions:
Kaka is an exciting player. He combines speed and endurance with his dazzling skills, also has an eye for goals. Kaka has been picked as the FIFA player of the year for 2007.

On the hand, Cristiano Ronaldo astonishes spectators with his fancied footwork and skills. He has become a popular soccer player in the world within a very short span of time.

Sending tiding of joy

your way….

To wish you

a holiday season

filled with

Love & Happiness !

AC Milan’s kaka, 25 year old has been officially announced as the outstanding footballer of 2007 and this was confirmed through his wining the FIFA Player of the Year award on Monday to add to his European Footballer of the Year honour.

He played his first World Cup for World’s Dream Team - Brazil when he was just 20 years old. With him Brazil won the title for the 5th time as well. Kaka is the highest paid soccer player in Italy. You would find him on the field wearing the classic number 10 mantle amongst soccer greats such as Pele, Diego Maradona, Michel Platini and Zinedine Zidane.

Yeh there is nothing in the world which is impossible. If you are determined then there is no one who can stop you to reach your goal. In the year 1969, Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) presented a special gold medal for former Brazilian soccerstar Pele, who was the 1st and foremost player to reach 1000 goals in his career. And today history repeats again, Romario, 41 year-old, reached the 1,000 goals-mark in his soccer career. And the CBF awarded exactly the same medal to him. “The Federation is honoured to be able to pay homage to a player of such importance as Romario, a player of vital importance in the history of Brazilian football” said CBF President Teixeira. Alongwith the medal, Romario also received a special jersey with the number 1,000 stamped on the back.

Alan Ball 61, died of a heart attack yesterday. In the World Cup 1966, he was the youngest player from the England side. They won the cup by defeating West Germany 4-2 at Wembley.

Ball was part of Everton’s 1970 league championship-winning side and also played in the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico.

He used to play in midfielder position and was found very industrious at his position. He began his career at Blackpool and before moving to Everton in August 1966 for a British record transfer fee of £110,000. Eighteen months later, Ball was sold to Arsenal for £220,000. He spent five years at Arsenal before joining Southampton where he had two spells, interrupted by a brief period in North American soccer, before finishing his playing career at Bristol Rovers in 1983.

He scored eight international goals.

Ball then went in to management, taking charge of Portsmouth (twice), Manchester City, Southampton, Blackpool, Stoke City and Exeter. But his managerial career was significantly less successful than his time as a player.

Ball was awarded an MBE in 2000 for his services to football.

Surely this is going to keep the football field fair and clean. I guess, from now onwards players would be afraid of involving themselves in any kind of argument on the ground. And try to show their skills to win the match and spectators heart too.

Yeh, I am talking about the League Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff between Chelsea and Arsenal. It was played on 25th February 2007. And there was only few minutes left to final whistle. Chelsea was leading by 2-1. But suddenly an argument between Chelsea’s Jon Obi Mikel and Arsenal captain Kolo Toure, caused an bitter end of the match.

On Tuesday the FA’s disciplinary commission clearly stated that they viewed the incident as “serious, unacceptable and damaging to the image of the game.” So, both the clubs have been slapped with a 100,000-pound fine each for the behavior of players and backroom staff during the match.

After an entertaining clash between Manchester United vs. a star studded Europe XI side, ManU came out trumps to defeat the Euro XI (4-3). Certainly the 74,343 crowd enjoyed the exciting match at Old Trafford on Tuesday that raised £1.25m for charity but they also missed the likes of Ronaldinho, Maldini and the original Ronaldo.

Manchester United is ready to fight with the star-studded Europe XI today at Old Trafford to celebrate the upcoming 50th anniversary of the European Union. Match will start from 1930 GMT.

Zidane was also invited to join Europe XI squad along with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Steven Gerrard, and Marco Materazzi but Zidane refused to join the squad.
Former England star David Beckham was earlier named to face his former club but is currently out with a knee injury.

List of the full squad of European XI :

Goalkeepers: Oliver Kahn (Bayern Munich/GER), Gregory Coupet (Lyon/FRA), Iker Casillas (Real Madrid/ESP).

Defenders: Paolo Maldini (AC Milan/ITA), Jamie Carragher (Liverpool/ENG), Eric Abidal (Lyon/FRA), Lilian Thuram (Barcelona/ESP), Carles Puyol (Barcelona/ESP), Marco Materazzi (Inter Milan/ITA), Fabio Grosso (Inter Milan/ITA), Gianluca Zambrotta (Barcelona/ESP).

Midfielders: Steven Gerrard (Liverpool/ENG), Juninho (Lyon/FRA), Florent Malouda (Lyon/FRA), Luis Miguel (Valencia/ESP), Gennaro Gattuso (AC Milan/ITA), Andrea Pirlo (AC Milan/ITA).

Strikers: Ronaldinho (Barcelona/ESP), Ronaldo (AC Milan/ITA), Alessandro Mancini (AS Roma/ITA), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Inter Milan/ITA), Henrik Larsson (Helsingborg/SWE).

The Arsenal captain and France Striker, Thiery Henry will not be playing in rest of the matches of this season because of injuries. He was already suffering from a foot injury but hurt his groin and stomach muscles during Arsenal’s match against Dutch side PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League. He will miss three qualifying games for Euro 2008 as well.

Henry scored 27 goals in the Premiership last season and was voted player of the year in England. He has 12 goals this season.

But fans do not loose your heart as Henry has vouched to get back to full fitness soon.