Bye bye Big Phil

Luiz Felipe Scolari

After a 0-0 draw against Hull City, it looked like BPL title hopes of Chelsea are gone. But Luiz Felipe Scolari wouldn't have thought, it will be his last match as Chelsea Manager. Just two days after the game, the news of Scolari's exit came and everyone was shocked. It was really sad that a world class manager like Scolari was not even given one full season to prove himself by the impatient Chelsea Owner Roman Abramovich, who wants to buy everything with his money.
Ever since Abramovich has bought the club he has poured big money on players and managers only to win the UEFA Champions' League. When we had Jose Mourinho at Chelsea Abramovich bought many big players. But like every good manager Mourinho was more interested in building the team. Although he won 5 major trophies including 2 Premier League, 2 League Cups and 1 FA Cup for Chelsea in the golden era of the club, he frequently had clashes with Abramovich. These clashes and failure in Europe resulted in Mourinho's exit in 2007.
Avram Grant took over after him. But Abramovich wanted only the best at his club. So Grant had to leave at the end of the season even after guiding Chelsea to the finals of Champions' League. Scolari took over at the start of this season. It looked like Chelsea have found their man. but he couldn't even last for a season.
I wonder when these owners will understand that every manager needs some time to deliver. it's not that you put the best manager and the best players and ask for all the trophies. Even Sir Alex Ferguson, the best manager in the world, took 5 years to win first title for Manchester United and took 14 years to win UEFA Champions' League.
If Abramovich doesn't accept this fact, future looks dark for Chelsea. Even the new manager will feel insecure while taking Chelsea job (even if he is Guus Hiddink :P). Also the players like Deco and Quaresma who were brought in by Scolari will definitely think of moving at the end of the season.
For me this decision has not produced any good for Chelsea. At least this season is over for Chelsea.

CR7 : FIFA player of the year....

Cristiano Ronaldo	Marta

CR7 a.k.a. Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro, has been rewarded as the Men's FIFA player of the year 2008 for his impressive performance last year. The high-flying Portuguese and Manchester United winger overcame his closest rivals Lionel Messi (Argentina and Barcelona), Fernando Torres (Spain and Liverpool), Kaka (Brazil and AC Milan) and Xavi (Spain and Barcelona) comprehensively. Click Here for official results. Ronaldo, who scored 42 goals last season, played a central role in Manchester United's triple success of Premier League, UEFA Champions' League and FIFA Club World Cup.
For Player of the year the performance at national level is kept at the first place. Although Portugal couldn't make a significant impact on football world, it was the premium performance at club level helped Ronaldo to overcome Messi's Olympic Gold and Torres and Xavi's Euro win. This just goes to show the level of performance delivered by Ronaldo.
FIFA Women's player of the year was awarded to Brazilian maestro Marta who won it for the third time in a row! Her outstanding performance could only win Olympic Silver for Brazil, but was good enough to win her the Player of the year award.
Congratulation to CR7 and Marta....

The structure of football club competitions

These days so much of football is being played. Many people get confused with many matches and many teams. Especially those who have just started following. I hope that this post will help you in understanding the structure of football competitions.

The League & Cup Structure:
Most of the nations around the world follow a league and cup structure. In the League all the clubs play twice against each other, and the club with highest points wins. The Cup is a knockout competition. The losers get eliminated and the survivor wins.
English league is arguably the most famous league (at least in India), so I will start with that. The football league structure, also called as Football Pyramid, contains around 150 leagues. Since we are not supposed to do a Doctorate, we will restrict the scope only to the top four levels of the league. These leagues feature "the full-time professional clubs". The system works on promotion and relegation, in which the best teams from lower leagues are promoted to higher leagues and worst teams from higher leagues are relegated to lower leagues. For more on this click here. Below is the list of first 4 levels in Football Pyramid.

Level	League	Clubs	Promotion	Relegation
1	Barclays Premier League	20 clubs	-	Last 3
2	Coca-Cola Football League Championship	24 clubs	3 clubs	Last 3
3	Coca-Cola Football League 1	24 clubs	3 clubs	Last 4
4	Coca-Cola Football League 2	24 clubs	4 clubs	Last 2

Besides this there are two major Cup Competitions in England.
1. The FA Cup (league levels 1-11) : One of the oldest football competition in the World
2. The League Cup or Carling Cup (levels 1-4)

Similar league structure exists in rest of the European (and other) countries. Here's a table of topmost leagues in some of the European countries.

Country	League	Major clubs
England	Barclays Premier League	Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Manchester City
Spain	Spanish la Liga	Real Madrid, Barcelona, Athletico Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Villareal
Italy	Italian Serie A	AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus, AS Roma
Germany	German Bundesliga	Bayern Munich, Werder Bremen, FC Schalke 04
France	French League 1	Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux
Netherlands	The Eredivisie	Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord
Portugal	Liga Sagres	FC Porto, SL Benfica, Sporting (Lisbon)
Scotland	Clydesdale Bank Premier League	Celtic, Rangers

The Confederation Trophies:
UEFA is one of the six confederations of FIFA which governs the European Football. UEFA runs two main club competitions,
1. The UEFA Champions League - The biggest football trophy in Europe. Some consider it to be the most prestigious club trophy in sports. All the so called big clubs in Europe compete in the competition.
2. The UEFA Cup - This is the second biggest trophy in Europe.
In some later posts I will discuss these competitions in detail.

The major trophy and area of all the confederations is listed below,

Confederation	Competition	Continents
AFC	Champions League	Asia, Australia
CAF	Champions League	Africa
CONCACAF	Champions League	North America, Central America
CONMEBOL	Copa Libertadores	South America
OFC	Champions League	Oceania
UEFA	Champions League	Europe

The FIFA Club World Cup:
As discussed earlier, there are six confederations of FIFA. The champion of each confederation along with champion of host country compete with each other to be the World Champion. This competition is held in knockout rounds. Discussion on this competition can go very long, so I'll discuss it in later posts.

I think this much information is enough to clear the confusion. Any suggestions welcome...

Absolute Farce of an ODI at Kanpur...

What an absolute farce of a One-day match we had at Kanpur in the 3rd ODI between India and England. Even though lights are available, you start the match late because of bad light. Then reduce just a single over and in the end with 9 overs to go you declare India as winners by Duckworth-Lewis Rule... I know that crowd wanted to see India win but I'm sure no one liked the way match finished which would have been very different otherwise.

I'll consider two issues which ruined the match. Firstly ICC has a very strange rule regarding the meet of two captains to decide certain rules to be followed in the series. One of the points captains decide is 'whether lights will be used in a day game if game stops due to bad light'. And I don't know for what strange reason Dhoni and KP agreed on 'not using lights' in such situation. And this has not happened for the first time in India. If you remember the third test of Indo-Pak series last year (view scorecard), because lights were not used, match stopped about an hour earlier and India missed a golden chance to win the test. Ravi Shastri hit the nail in the post match comments. He said, "ICC should 'make it compulsory to use lights if they are available' and not to leave it to the two captains. This will help to avoid such matches and controversies it creates about the D-L rule."

The second issue is about the Officials. If the match is starting 45 minutes late due to bad light, you don't need any astrologer to tell that light will get bad in the evening. As Indians knew it, they just wasted as much time as possible and made sure that they were well ahead of the winning score according to D-L method. In India in this season light really becomes bad around 4:30. So why the officials didn’t reduce the match to 45 overs instead of 49 to ensure that it will complete before it gets dark? What is the point of having 'more overs' if they can never be bowled given the conditions.

Although the match was in the favor of India, imagine had it been 55 to win of 9 overs and if they had declared India as winners it would had been really unfair. In the end no one likes to win the way India won the match. Just a small change in rule or one wise decision of officials could have given better match or at least a better end to the match...

Vishwanathan Anand : The king of 64 Squares

I know this post should have come earlier, but since I was to busy solving the 8-Queens problem (For those who don't know it is a very famous Computer Science problem of 'placing 8 queens on a chess board' :P) I didn't get the time...

Anyways, last month India's Vishwanathan Anand won the World Chess Championship against Russia's Vladimir Kramnik (very awkward to spell :P) to successfully retain his title. The Indian won the best of 12 match 6.5-4.5 with one round to go. (You get 1 point for a win, 0.5 for a draw and 0 for a defeat.)



Before going further I would like to go in the history of the championships. Before 1993, the World Championship used to be a straight fight between the Defending Champion and the Challenger. In 1993 the world of chess split into PCA and FIDE. In 2005 PCA's championship was won by Kramnik (Classical Champion) while FIDE's championship (this one was a 8 player round robin event held for the first time in the history of the game) was won by Veselin Topalov. The FIDE's next championship was scheduled in 2007 with Topalov as defending champion. But PCA and FIDE reunited in 2006. Thus there had to be a match between Kramnik and Topalov to decide the world champion, which was won by Kramnik. So Kramnik replaced Topalov as defending champion in 2007 world championships. It followed same round robin format as 2005, V. Anand emerging as a winner. But because the controversies due to non-inclusion of Topalov and Kramnik being unhappy with the round robin format, Kramnik was allowed to challenge Anand in 2008 and Topalov will get 'special privileges' in 2009's world championship. After this the World Chess Championship will be held after every 2 years since 2011.

Now come back to the Vishy and Kramnik. After retirement of Kasparov, this rivalry was always on the cards. But Kramnik was a bit disappointing being 3 points down after 6 matches (4.5-1.5). He later won the 10th match to delay his defeat, but Anand kept a draw in next match and made sure to win comfortably with one game to go. No more talking points, the 6.5-4.5 scoreline tells it all. For those who are interested in actual games visit this wikipedia link

For a few years now Anand has been making a mark of India on this Russia dominated game and has again proved that he is the real King of 64 squares. Congrats to this great man....