The Iraq national football team, who won 2007 Asian Cup, yesterday hired a new coach. Egil "Drillo" Olsen, who was coach for the Norwegian national footbal team 1990 - 1998. He refused to live in Bagdad, for obvious reasons, staying in the northern Kurd area.

So, why did they hire him? He had some good results with Norway, getting the team to the World Cup twice, having our team ranked as number 2 by FIFA once. But he introduced a very unattractive way of "playing" the game. Very defencive, primitive, many long balls up the field, calculating that sometimes by chance we would get lucky, getting some 1-0 victories. Awful to watch the games. He got results, but also helped by a talented generation of players at the time.

In 1999 he was coach for the english team Wimbledon, also known for boring play. "If I am to watch Wimbledon, I prefer to do it on TV text" - Gary Lineker. Total fiasco for Olsen, named "the mad professor", and the team was relegated, and is now forgotten.

So, going to be interesting to see what Olsen can achive with Iraq. He is strong on organizing a team, but what about cultural differences, language barrier? I predict more hardship for the Irapi people, unfortunately.


On another note, today is the starting round of the Champions League. Norway's Rosenborg going to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea. Rosenborg have played badly in the national league this season, being in the middle of the league. Which means that our vikings are going to get slaughtered by Chelsea. Odds at Betsson are 1.13 for home victory, and the odds is playable (but possible underestimation by Chelsea and the chanche factor tells against big bets).

It's already a nice achievement for Rosenborg to qualify for the Champions League, that's getting harder and harder for the clubs from smaller countries. Austrian champion Salzburg failed badly in spite of Red Bull sponsor millions and star coach Trapattoni. It's actually slightly scary to imagine the Austrian national team at the European championship next year (which Austria will host together with Switzerland), as it looks now they'll be badly crushed. On the Champions League, Real-Werder should be fun to watch today in case there are too many Petroffs in Mexico. I've entered a Champions League fantasy game and picked mostly players from Italian and English clubs, so I hope they'll do well. Forza Inter, forza Roma!

Currently I'm more closely following the Women\'s World Cup , though. Have to root for the Brazilians with my favourite player Rosana, who's playing for an Austrian club - no idea why, the Austrian women's league is a joke, but I once went to see a game, and it was fun to see a Brazilian samba group at a tiny football pitch in a suburb of Vienna. An article on the FIFA page even calls her, perhaps with some hyperbole, "the left-footed Ronaldinho". Brazil looks very strong, they've swept the improving Chinese team 4-0 and might well pose a challenge to the previous world champions from Germany and the US. Too bad that my other favourites Sweden were already eliminated.

Real-Werder did turn into a fun game - thought I could safely switch my attention to Mexico after the 1-0 for Real, but Werder promptly equalized. I see Rosenborg leads against Chelsea at halftime, Akselborg must be thrilled!

I just watched highlights of the soccer on British TV - Chelsea have such an expensive team that they should thrash Rosenborg but it was a 1-1 draw. Shakhtar Donetsk created lots of chances against Celtic - I wonder if they'll do well in the tournament. Apparently, they've spent a lot of money on players recently.

Good news for me is that Shevchenko, the captain of my fantasy team, scored the goal for Chelsea. Donetsk eliminated Salzburg in the qualifying round, although it was a pretty close fight the Ukrainians would have deserved a much clearer win. They have quite an impressive offense with a couple of Brazilians and Italian striker Lucarelli. Their defense seemed a bit erroneous against Salzburg, though, so I'm not sure they'll hold up against the top teams.

So, what do any of you think are the chances of the United States team winning this 2007 Women's World Cup Tournament?


Chess Fan

I haven't really been following the qualifiers, so I don't know that much about their current teams, but the US and Germany have pretty consistently been the top nations in women's soccer recently. I'd say these two must be the top favourites, maybe together with the Brazilians, who are somewhat harder to assess. Both Germany and the US weren't that impressive in the group stage, but both qualified for the quarterfinals quite safely. The US team did score a fairly convincing 2-0 against the potentially strongest opponent Sweden, who made it to the final last time. Next for them is England, who got a 0-0 against Germany in the group stage, but nevertheless should be the outsider against the US. Check out the FIFA website if you want to know more, there's a lot of information on the teams and players.

Yes, Littlefish, it sure was exciting when Rosenborg took the lead against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. The end result 1-1 is very uplifting. Chelsea had about 17 chances to score, compared to Rosenborg's 3 chances, so quite a bit of luck, but also excellent fighting spirit by the team.

Before the match Swedish Glenn Hysen, former Liverpool player, said the following:
"If Chelsea doesen't beat Rosenborg, I am going to crawl 120 kilometers. Rosenborg should be happy if they get one point from the six matches from the group play in the Champions League."
He has now agreed to fly to Trondheim at the next round of Champions League. He will then crawl from the hotel to the stadion, about 3 kilometers


In the Womens WC our ladies are doing OK. 2-1 over Canada, 1-1 draw with Australia. I hear that Brazil seem to have a very strong team this year. USA only 1-0 against Nigeria, and our TV commentators thought that the USA team perhaps was not as strong as in previous championships.

Yes, I am glad that the USA team drew England instead of Germany for their Quarterfinal match!


Chess Fan

Well, the US and Germany both won their groups, so they'll automatically play the second-place finishers of the other group, and in fact can't face each other before the final now. The US might get Brazil in the semis, though. The Brazilians struggled a bit for the first time at their 1-0 against Denmark today, but were already almost certain of first place before this game. Norway looks quite strong, they won the hardest-fought group ahead of the Australians (who needed a last-minute goal against Canada to advance).

Incidentally, there's an Austrian-Norwegian duel in the UEFA Cup today, Austria Vienna-Valerenga Oslo. Don't know anything about Valerenga, but since Rosenborg has qualified for the Champions League several times in the last few years I suppose the Norwegian league is probably slightly stronger than the Austrian one.