Monday, April 26, 2010

Jeunesse Esch (Luxembourg)

Formed as the rather more cumbersome sounding Jeunesse la Frontière d'Esch back in 1907, Jeunesse Esch are the most successful single club in Luxembourgian history with a whopping 27 title wins. Rivals Racing Football Club Union Lëtzebuerg (they don't do snappy club names round their way, it seems) claim they've won more, but as they're the result of the gradual merging of at least nine different clubs, we don't think that really counts. Based in the glorious South Western city of Esch-sur-Alzette - the country's second biggest city with a population of 27,146 - they have also won the Luxembourg Cup twelve times, and the double on an impressive eight occasions.

Their original, slightly lumpy name was in reference to their proximity to their border with France. They kept this name until 1918, when they dropped the Frontière bit. This they retained until the Second World War when the occupying Nazis forced them to rename as Schwarz-Weiß 07 Esch, as well as making them play in the Gauliga Mittelrhein - the highest league in the Prussian Rhine Province - alongside some Belgian clubs, where despite everything they managed to finish as runners-up in the 1943-44 season. They reverted to their pre-war name upon the liberation of Luxembourg, which they have kept ever since.

The club is considered one of their country's big three, alongside F91 Dudelange and FC Etzella Ettelbruck. However, the mid 2000s saw them take an uncharacteristic dip in fortunes, finishing as low as ninth in 2006 - only just missing out on a relegation play-off.

They also have a proud history in European competition. They've taken part in the three main competitions on an impressive 30 occasions, debuting in the old European Cup in 1958. The following year they pulled off a massive shock by beating Polish club ŁKS Łódź 6-2 on aggregate. The next round saw them up against a little team you may have heard of called Real Madrid. Despite being hammered 7-0 at the Bernabéu, they races to a shock two goal lead in the return leg, before a full strength Real side including Puskás and  Di Stéfano banged another five past them.

Then 1963 they pulled off one heck of a comeback, where despite going 4-1 down to Finns FC Haka in the first leg, they managed to nip them in the last minute in the home leg. This saw them up against fellow stripes Partizan Belgrade for a place in the quarter final, confounding all expectations by beating them 2-1 in the first leg, before being sadly hammered 6-2 by the Serbs at the return. Even more notably they held Liverpool to a 1-1 draw in their home leg back in 1973.

For many years they were managed by the English football journeyman George Berry. A player at Charlton, Crystal Palace, Gillingham and Brentford in the 20s and 30s, he won titles in France as a manager with Lille and Nice, before moving to clubs in first Tunisia then Luxembourg.

Current stars include the exciting 22 year old prospect Claudio Lombardelli, Bosnians Ernad Sabotić, Almin Babačić and Meris Ramdedović, and the much capped Luxembourgish international René Peters. Currently they sit at the top of the Luxembourg league with only a couple of games to play. Good luck to the brothers in stripes!

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Friday, April 23, 2010

Heracles Almelo (The Netherlands)

Herecles are a top flight team from Almelo on the Easternmost edge of The Netherlands. They were formed back in 1903, and are named after the heroic figure of Heracles, the demigod son of the Greek god Zeus. They have twice won the Dutch national title, in 1927 and in the war time tournament in 1941. Since that time though they had spent much time in the second tier, reclaiming their rightful place in the Eredivisie in the 2005/6 season, where they finished 13th at their first stab back.

In all they have spent ten seasons in the Eredivisie since its inception as a fully professional league in 1956, including their current five season stretch, which has seen them become a respectable and very watchable mid-table team. Their astroturfed Polman Stadion ground has a cosy capacity of 8,500, which it has come close to filling in most games since their elevation back to the top table of Dutch football.

The club are perhaps most notable for being the first in The Netherlands to employ a black player. South African Steve Mokone was beloved to Heracles fans as The Black Meteor when he arrived in 1958, after a short spell at Coventry City. He was a lively character, who also saw service at Cardiff City, Barcelona, Torino and Valencia, as well as being a regular star in the South African national squad for many years. He sadly also spent a spell in prison for knocking his wife about, and is the subject of a Dutch novel and film called De Zwarte Meteoor.

Other notable former Heracles players include the popular Dutch journeyman Ricky van den Bergh, the promising Japanese international Sōta Hirayama, solid Estonian defender Ragnar Klavan, much capped Canadian Rob Friend and the legendary Rudy Degenaar, a member of the Surinamese exhibition team the Colouful 11 who were all but wiped out in the worst plane crash in Dutch aviation history in 1989 - a plane that famous Dutch names like Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Aron Winter were all due to catch.

Of their current squad, Qays Shayesteh is thought to be the only Afghani currently playing in a major European league, and keeper Martin Pieckenhagen was Hamburg's first choice custodian for many years. For team team from such a rural location, they have a refreshingly cosomopolitan feel to them. All hail to the Heraclieden!


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Thursday, April 22, 2010

Seoul United (South Korea)

Possibly the youngest team on our list, Seoul United formed as recently as 2007, by a loose collection of  fans from the capital bemoaning the fact that the K-League had moved all of the city's former top flight football clubs out of the city. The battle began as far back as 2001, but suffered a setback when Sponsors LG moved the Anyang LG Cheetahs club to Seoul, renaming them FC Seoul.

Despite this spanner in the works, the foundation of the new third tier league, K3, in 2007 meant that there was now a chance of a fan-led club being established. To that effect, two local amateur sides, Good Bu and Bu and Youngseo FC were merged and a slot in K3 was found for the newly formed club. Initially they played in the immense 70,000 seat Olympic Stadium, but thankfully they moved to the much more manageable 15,194 Hyochang Stadium early in 2010.

Their first ever match was a 2-2 draw against Changwon Dudae FC on 21 April 2007, but they went on to take the innaugral title with a 3-0 aggregate win over Hwasung Sinwoo Electronics in a two game title play-off. But sadly, because of the commercial vaguaries of the Korean league system they didn't win promotion to the second level, and came a disapointing fifth in 2008, and a distant thirteenth in 2009. There's hope on the horizon though, with the United currently sitting in fourth after the first few games of the new season.

Last season they found themselves with a Seoul derby in K3, as a new team, Seoul FC Martyrs joined the league - although they finished plumb last after winning only two of their 32 games. Quite how long the club will last in a country whose league has such a controlling hand in the location of their clubs, but as long as this cheery, fan-led mob keep kicking a ball in black and white stripes, I'll be keeping an eye on their results.

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Elements Cefn Druids AFC (Wales)

Cefn Druids have a direct lineage from the historic old Welsh team Druids FC, who founded in the 1860s. As such they claim to be the oldest club in Wales, which also makes them the world's oldest club outside of England. The present day Cefn Druids, though, were formed in 1992 after a merger between Cefn Albion and Druids United. Their name since then has depended on who is sponsoring them. Initially they were Flexsys Cefen Druids, then NEWI Cefn Druids (after the initials of the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education), and most recently Elements Cefn Druids.

They are a Welsh Premier League team from the village of Cefn Mawr on the outskirts of Wrexham, and ply their trade at the splendidly named Plaskynaston Lane ground in the village, which can hold 2000 punters at a push, 300 of them seated. But there's is a long and nomadic history.

The original Druids FC, formed in 1869, hailed from the nearby village of Ruabon, but were briefly known as Plasmadoc FC, before adopting the Druidic mantle in 1872. They were the first Welsh Club to enter the English FA Cup, and have won the Welsh Cup on eight occasions. They originally played on a ground in the Wynnstay Estate, but after WWI merged with Rhosymedre FC to become Rhosymedre Druids, moving their ground to Rhosymedre village. This was a good arrangement for a small number of years until, fearing insolvency in 1923, they merged with Acrefair United FC to form Druids United - the club that lasted until 1992.

Back to the nineties, and the newly club took the bold step of applying to join the second tier of Welsh Football - the Cymru Alliance, and in 1999 were promoted to the Welsh Premier League, where they have played ever since. They nearly took the dive back to the Alliance after finishing in the bottom two in 2005, but were reprieved when the winners of the second flight Buckley Town chose not to take up their promotion.

Briefly managed by former Wrexham manager Dixie McNeil, The Ancients achieved a string of respectable league positions, but after he left to concentrate on TV punditry, their fortunes have dived, and at the time of writing sit plumb last in the Welsh top flight. Let hope this historic club survive though and soon bounce back to the top table - whatever name they happen to go under next year!

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Armee Patriotique Rwandaise FC (Rwanda)

Armee Patriotique Rwandaise FC, thankfully otherwise known as APR FC, are based in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and despite only being formed in June 1993, have quickly become the most successful club in their nation's history, winning the Rwandan Premier League on ten occasions, and the Rwandan Cup four times in their short but eventful 17 year history.

The club was formed during a peace talks in the the civil war in the early 1990s, and was the team of the Rwandan Patriotic Front - a group formed by Tutsi refugees in Uganda. After the genocide in 1994, the RPF liberated the country and its leader Paul Kagame became president, and normal football business could resume. Instantly APR FC sprang to the forefront of the region's football, and there are now few trophies in the region that doesn't have their name on it.

The team play at the 10,000 capacity Amahoro Stadium in the East of the city, a location symbolic for Tutsis as it was one of the few places that they could hide from the genocidal massacre, as the UN had their headquarters in a hotel directly behind the stadium. Anywhere up to 12,000 refugees from the city were living there at any one time, so the site has a special significance for the locals. They are still ostensibly the official club of the RPF, although have a small number of players from other African nations on their books, and are managed by Dutchman Eric te Paske, a fringe player for AZ Alkmaar in the 1990s.

They've also made seven appearances in the CAF Champions League, but have never got further than the third round, back in 2004. They did however make the heights of the semi-finals of the African Cup Winner's Cup in 2003, losing to eventual winners Étoile Sportive du Sahel of Tunisia in the last ever running of the tournament. It does though have a good track record in the CECAFA Club Cup, a tournament for East and Central African teams, winning the tournament in 2004 and 2007.

Notable former players include Jimmy Gatete, known locally as The God of Goals, and believed to the most prolific goalscorer in Rwandan history, Olivier Karekezi, who went on to play for Helsingborgs IF and Östers IF in Sweden, Jimmy Mulisa, who has done the rounds in Belgium, and Ugandan Abubaker Tabula, also currently plying his trade in Sweden.

And if you pay a visit to their website, try tracking down their team song, because it's a right blaster!

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Beşiktaş JK (Turkey)

Beşiktaş JK are considered outside of Turkey to be their nation's third club, in terms of both results and support. But you try telling their fans that. Followers of the Black Eagles are among the most passionate anywhere, holding as they do the world record for the loudest supporters on the planet - weighing in at a whopping 132 decibels.

But here also is a club steeped with as much myth and confused history as the city of Istanbul itself. Formed as a general sports club in the late Ottoman era in 1903, it's not clear when the playing of football actually began - although it is known to have been frowned upon by the secret police at the time. The first official sports club in Turkey, the Bereket Jimnastik Kulübü as it was then known (hence the JK in the club's name), often supplied many national squads in a range of sports in those early days, making it the only club in the country allowed to have the national flag as part of its badge.

In the early days they played in red and white stripes, but their change to the glorious black and white is a cause of much debate. Some say they changed to commiserate of the loss of territory in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13. Others state that the switch commemorates the loss of the whole team in WWI, while another school of thought suggests it has more to do with the school colours of the French-educated first preseident of the club, Mehmet Şamil Bey. But whatever the origin, they've not been afraid to be creative with the strip, on occasions playing in a near white strip with only the faintest of black pin stripes, and this season offering up a bizarre black and white harlequin affair for their European away trips.

Their stadium, the BJK İnönü is a cauldron of sound and beauty, and ranked as the fourth best in the world by The Sunday Times. Nestled in a slope on a leafy bank on the banks of the Bosphoros with the beautiful Dolmabahçe Palace, at its foot, it is the only ground in the world from which you can see two continents - Asia peaking out across the water as it does. To this end it Beşiktaş are a club with supporters from both side of the bridge. While Galatasaray's fans are predominantly from the more afluent Gala neighbourhood on the European side, and Fenerbahçe play on the Asiatic quarter of the city, BJK's punters are a more citywide crew, with many of the Asian fans crossing the water on a flotilla of ferries on match days.

As is the case in many of the clubs in the South Eastern corner of Europe, the fans are divided into many different factions, but the over-arching element among them all over the last 30 years have been the Çarşı - a socially and politically sussed aggregation that ignores many of the cultural barriers that divide much of Turkish football, and the Istanbul game in particular. In fact many fans don't even consider the Çarşı as a fan club - more an ethos in the way the club is followed. So it was a surprise then when a high profile fan declared them disbanded in 2008, when it was decided that they were becoming bigger than the club itself. Despite this, many loyal fans still wear the anarchistic Çarşı loco to games.

So if you ever find yourself in Istanbul and feel brave enough to go to a game, don't go to the apparently more Rolls Royce grounds of Fener or Gala - although you'll undoubtedly have a lot of fun. Instead drag yourself down to the water's edge and immerse yourselves in what is probably one of the five most passionate bunch of fans on the globe.






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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Lo mejor fue la victoria pero...


* Sufrido triunfo verde * Felicidades al Pequeño Gigante Estrada! * Darwin...hay Darwin como nos hace sufrir. * Baloy, se le fue la lengua * Con alfileres la victoria.

Antes que nada, una gran disculpa por la tardanza, es solo que a veces se cuestiones que no hacen posible publicar el resumen en tiempo.

El juego vs San Luis no debió haber sido tan sufridoy es que es verdaderamente desesperante las opciones que se estan fallando ( no desde este juego, ojo, ya tiene bastante) si bien Darwin Quintero fue casi casi la figura del juego, tambien y por un minuto, pudo haber sido el villano del mismo al fallar de forma tan lamentable las opciones que tuvo.
Santos salió y jugo como debía hacerlo, en el campo se veía realmente quién era el equipo 5to lugar general y quien el colero, los guerreros realmente demostraron el poder ofensivo del equipo llegando por todos los lados posibles, abriendo la cancha y tirando balones a fondo, desgraciadamente, Darwin se cansó de fallar una tras otra como decía Paco Stanley.

Sin embargo, alguna tenía que caer ( si no, era demasiada mala suerte ) y Darwin metio una de las tantos balones filtrados para el 1-0, aunque para ese momento, era ese o la rechifla por parte del respetable y con justificada razon, algo se tiene que hacer en liguilla pues todos sabemos que se gana en base a goles y las oportunidades se las estan creando, solo que ya las concrete, me cae que si metiera la mitad de las que tiene, hubiera quedado campeón de goleo.

Aún siendo bailado y con gol en contra San Luis no bajó los brazos, venían por el empate y lo conseguirían con un sendo trallazo del Chango Moreno ante la pasiva y lenta marca de Lacerda que nomas le faltó aplaudirle y felicitar el gol 100 del chango.

Así se irian a medio tiempo, con la gente enojada y con justa razon pues no era posible que un cuadro que sólo habia llegado una sola ocasion le bastara para empatarte ante la displiscencia de tus delanteros que pensaban que podían resover todo en un parpadeo.
Y casi lo logran los tuneros, porque en la segunda mitad, se metieron al bunker y de ahi no salían mas que para lo necesario, como un ostion, Ambriz mandaba a sus jugadores que destruyeran todo lo que llegara, simplemente venían por el empate, lo tenían y no lo dejarían ir.

hasta la chilindrina metieron atras los del San Luis...

Cuando el partido expiraba, ultimo minuto, chiquimarco casi a punto de pitar, Darwin realizo una gran jugada personal, para luego ser compartido y darla a la llegada del pequeño gigante Guti Estrada que ni tardo ni perezoso enviaría al fondo de las redes para alegría de todos los asistentes al TSM y sobre todo alegría a un jugador que se ha ganado en base a entrega, valor, pundonor y sobre todo amor a la camiseta un reconocimiento con toda la aficion, al grado de adoptarlo ya como un elemento crucial en el equipo.


Desgraciadamente, Baloy echó a perder el momento y le quitó algo de los reflectores al Guti al hacerse expulsar tontamente gracias a que se le fue la lengua vs un sanluisino a menos de 2 metros de Marco Rdgz. quien dijo "de aquí soy" y se anotó la roja de costumbre a costillas del defensor lagunero.

Así, Santos se anota un triunfo que lo mete de lleno a la liguilla, que lo hace renacer, pero sobre todo que le corta esa racha tan mala que ya parecía extenderse gracias a la poca contundencia de los delanteros.
No fue un triunfo facil, fue difícil, pero porque ellos mismos así lo quisieron, Santos durante el primer tiempo, demostró el potencial que tiene, es cuestión que ese nivel sea mantenido y sobre todo, hacer entender a sus delanteros que las opciones generadas por sus compañeros deben ser aprovechadas en todo momento.
Ahora y cerrando la temporada, visitamos nada mas y nada menos que al America, teniendo en sus manos su calificacion. Santos DEBE IR POR LA VICTORIA, así, sin mas, nada de que "llevaré cuadros alternativos" ni "voy a experimentar" ni ocho cuartos, Sr. Romano, ese ultimo juego, CUENTA DE SOBREMANERA, con una combinación de resultados, se puede -incluso- hasta un segundo lugar general ese que tantas satisfacciones nos ha regalado.

Sr. Romano, vaya por la victoria, la liguilla empezara UNA SEMANA después, lo mejor es ir con el equipo afiladito y no tener que levantarlo en caso de un resultado adverso por ir con miedo al DF.
Pumas va vs Indios que se despiden de la primera, se querran ir con una victoria, pues es lo unico que les queda, mientras que Chivas irá vs Cruz Azul que requiere la victoria a toda costa si quiere quedar en buena posicion, America tiene que abrirse pues la victoria es lo unico que le resta, aproveche la velocidad de Darwin, NO SE ECHE PARA ATRAS, juegue a ganar...este equipo sabe atacar, mas no defender.

Sale!!.

PD. Resultados de la penultima jornada de futbol virtual
la proxima semana, publicaremos al ganador.