What was the result of Real Madrid vs Shamrock Rovers?

Today we had the debut of Cristiano Ronaldo playing with Real Madrid in Ireland. The match was against a very unknown Irish team: Shamrock Rovers.

The final result was 1-0. Real Madrid won the game, but it was close to finish with a tie. The only goal was scored at minute 87. The Irish team was only 3 minutes away of getting a surprising result.

The only goal was scored by Karim Benzema, the new french player of Real Madrid. Benzema played all 2nd half, he came into the game in substitution of Raul.


The whole world was waiting this game in order to witness the debut of this new Real Madrid, and especially the debut of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka.

As for Cristiano Ronaldo, he did play the 1st half of the match. However, Kaka didn´t. I guess Kaka was not ready for a debut, we will have to wait a future game in order to watch Kaka in action.

Cristiano Ronaldo only played the first 45 minutes, I guess it was not enough time in order to have a good conclusion about his performance. He was very participative though, his presence was notorious, and he played a good game in a general way, but he is still to show his real category in future games.

Gold Cup: ready for the semifinals

We are ready to watch the semifinal matches of the Gold Cup. The only four teams that remain in the competition are the favorite teams in Concacaf, it is not a surprise: USA, Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras.

We're looking forward to see 2 very interesting matches for the semifinals next thursday. USA vs Honduras, Mexico vs Costa Rica.

USA is by far the favorite team to win the competition, so far we have seen very good performance in USA team, even though they are not using their regular players, they are using substitute players but they still are a very good team.

Let´s remember that in the 1st round of this competition, USA and Honduras already played and USA defeated Honduras 2-0. This thursday in the semifinal we're going to have some type of revenge game, Honduras has a new opportunity to play against USA.

We're anticipating a very tough game for both teams, it´s not going to be easy. USA is the favorite team to win the match as we said before, but Honduras will be a very complicated rival

In the other match we will have Mexico vs Costa Rica. Both teams won their quarterfinal games in a very easy way. Mexico beat Haiti 4-0, Costa Rica beat Guadeloupe 5-1.

This is a very complicated match, and both teams are even, there is not a clear favorite. Anyone can win, it´s complicated really to guess who will win.

For both games, my forecast is that USA and Costa Rica will advance to the final game. Honduras and Mexico will have to wait for a future opportunity to win the Gold Cup.

That´s what I think, I could be wrong but let´s wait thursday and we will know if I´m right or not.

Lucio will join Inter Milan

The international brazilian soccer player Lucio, who currently plays with Bayern Munich in Germany, will get a new contract with Inter Milan in the next few days. He will sign a 3 years contract with his new team in Italy.

Inter Milan announced that they will pay Bayern Munich about 10 million Euros for the transfer of Lucio, who is 31 years old. He is at the peak of his soccer career, he is a mature player, and still has a few years of great things to show.

We all know Lucio is a great player, which is one of the reasons why he is the Captain of Brazil national team, that´s an honor reserved only for the best, and Lucio is one of the best.

We all remember Lucio for his great performance in the recent Confederations Cup when Brazil won the Cup in the final game against US team. That final game was very tough for Brazil, they had to overcome a partial victory 2-0 from US team, and Brazil finally won 3-2.

Do you remember who scored the 3rd and winning goal for Brazil?. I´m sure you do, that winning goal was scored by Lucio.

I'm sure Lucio will have a great season with Inter Milan, he will be able to show his category in a team where the objective is to win every competition they have. Inter Milan is one of the best teams in the world, there´s no doubt about it.

Estudiantes wins Libertadores Cup

Estudiantes de La Plata from Argentina is the new champion of Libertadores Cup. They had a great victory against Cruzeiro in their own stadium in Belo Horizonte.

Not only it was a great victory, but Estudiantes also had to come from behind in the match. Cruzeiro scored the first goal, but later in the game Estudiantes came back and scored two goals. The final result was 2-1.

The 1st half was very tight, none of the teams could score a goal, the result at halftime was 0-0, and everybody was expecting a thrilling 2nd half, and it was very exciting indeed.

The first goal of Cruzeiro (Henrique, 51 min) put things very complicated for Estudiantes. Cruzeiro fans in the stadium went crazy with that goal, and it looked very difficult for Estudiantes to do something about it.

But Estudiantes was able to level things up very quickly with a goal five minutes later (Gastón Fernandez, 56 min). The match turned out to be very interesting from that moment. The tie 1-1 was a very uncertain result for both teams. Anything could happen.

Later in the 2nd half Estudiantes scored the 2nd goal (Mauro Boselli, 72 min), and about 4000 Argentinian fans who attended the game went crazy.

From that moment, there were about 20 minutes left in the game. Cruzeiro tried to score and they came close, but Estudiantes was able to keep the victory which was very dramatic.

This is the 4th time in their history that Estudiantes is able to win the Libertadores Cup. They've got the Cup 3 times in a row about 40 years ago. That was back in 1968, 1969 & 1970. They had to wait 39 years in order to win the Cup again with this victory against Cruzeiro.

With this victory, Estudiantes has also made it to the Soccer Teams World Championship to be celebrated in December 2009 in Dubai. They will have to compete against other great teams, including Barcelona FC. We will be looking forward to this competition. We will see if Estudiantes is able to beat Barcelona, it´s going to be very interesting.

Good for Estudiantes, it was an amazing victory. They came from behind in the game in Belo Horizonte, the home of Cruzeiro, and we all know that Cruzeiro is almost unbeatable in their own stadium.

David Villa to Barcelona FC?

David Villa, the international spanish soccer player, is being mentioned as a possibility for moving to Barcelona FC. However, his current team, Valencia FC, has set a minimum price for him.

Do you know what is the minimum price for Villa? I´m sure you know we´re talking about a few millions, but how many millions is that?

Well, that minimum price is "only" 50 million Euros, and that is the minimum. Barcelona knows about this minimum price, but they are trying to negotiate with Valencia FC anyway.

David Villa used to be a possibility for joining Real Madrid over the last few weeks, but we all know that Real Madrid has already signed Karim Benzema who plays in the same position of Villa. The interest Real Madrid had in Villa has to wait for some time in the future.

This is a good opportunity for Barcelona if they really want Villa on their team, they don´t have the competition from Real Madrid anymore.

But Barcelona FC is not going to invest giant amounts of money for new players. They know David Villa is a player that they would want in their team, but they also said that they can't afford to pay more than they consider as a fair amount.

Joan Laporta, Barcelona FC president, said that they are interested in David Villa, they really want him on their team, but only if they get a fair price from Valencia FC. I guess Laporta doesn´t think 50 million Euros is a fair amount.

How much is a fair amount according to Barcelona?. We really don´t know, but it must be quite a lot of money anyway.

If David Villa finally joins Barcelona, even if Valencia doesn´t get the 50 million, I´m sure they would get something very close to that amount, that´s for sure.

Cruzeiro vs Estudiantes for Libertadores Cup

Today is the day we will have a new champion of the Libertadores Cup. The final match will be played tonight in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Last week in Buenos Aires we had the 1st game of this final series, the result was a draw 0-0. In theory, Cruzeiro is the favorite team to win the Libertadores Cup because they will play as host team in this final and definite game.

Cruzeiro is a very tough rival when playing in Belo Horizonte. If Estudiantes wants to win the Cup they will have to beat Cruzeiro in their own stadium. The pressure will be very strong for both teams, but Cruzeiro has the advantage of having fans in the stadium on their favor.

If the result is a tie, no matter how many goals, they will have to define the championship with penalty kicks.

I guess Estudiantes will be trying to reach the penalty kicks definition as part of their strategy, and they will probably are going to play most of the game in their defense.

On the other hand, Cruzeiro will have to push a lot of pressure on Estudiantes defense. Cruzeiro should play in an offensive manner, trying to get fans into the game as much as possible.

Every time there is a game between Argentina and Brazil teams, there is a lot of competition. These type of games have the tendency to be very rough, very difficult.

The referee is going to have a very tough challenge tonight in order to keep things under control. Let´s hope everything goes well, and red cards won´t be shown.

This is going to be a very interesting game. There is no tomorrow for both teams, everything is going to be defined today.

Getting ready for the World Football Challenge

We're getting ready for a very interesting soccer competition to be held in the USA in the next few days. This is a friendly tournament, where we will have the participation of four very popular soccer teams. The name of this competition is World Football Challenge. By the way, for the folks in USA, it is really a soccer competition, not a football competition.

The teams to participate in this competition are the following:


1. Chelsea (England)
2. AC Milan (Italy)
3. Inter Milan (Italy)
4. America (Mexico)

As you can see, 3 of these teams are definitely among the best soccer teams in the world. The only team I wouldn´t consider to be one of the best in the world is America from Mexico, which is one of the most popular soccer teams in Mexico, and has traditionally been one of the best in Mexico, but not in the last few seasons. America has had very bad performances lately in the Mexican League.

However, America is always a very popular soccer team, and it's always a very difficult rival for any other team. I think America will be up to the circumstances in this competition, let's hope they can play good games against the European teams.

As for the other 3 teams, Chelsea, AC Milan, Inter Milan, what can we say?. They are on top of the european soccer teams, and of top of the world as well.

We will be able to see some of the most known soccer players in the world. We will be able to watch players like the following:

- Frank Lampard and John Terry with Chelsea
- Ronaldinho, Pato, Gatusso, Pirlo with AC Milan
- Ibrahimovic, Julio Cesar, Zanetti with Inter Milan

They are only a few of the great players to be participating in this competition, which will begin this coming weekend.

The games are going to be played in several cities in USA. Let´s take a very quick look at the competition calendar:

Sunday, July 19th (4 pm, PST)
America vs Inter Milan
Stanford Stadium, Palo Alto, California

Tuesday, July 21st (8 pm, PST)
Chelsea vs Inter Milan
Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California

Wednesday, July 22nd (7 pm, EST)
AC Milan vs America
Georgia Dome, Atlanta, Georgia

Friday, July 24th (8 pm, EST)
AC Milan vs Chelsea
M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore, Maryland

Sunday, July 26th (5 pm, EST)
AC Milan vs Inter Milan
Gillette Stadium, Foxborough, Massachusetts

Sunday, July 26th (6 pm, CST)
Chelsea vs America
Cowboys Stadium, Arlington, Texas

As you can see, a very interesting series of games. I´m sure soccer fans in USA will be very happy to watch live some of the best soccer teams in the world, playing in America.

If you are a soccer fan, and have the chance to attend some of these games, I would suggest you do. This is something you can't afford to miss. It could be a one time in a life opportunity to witness live these famous teams in action.