Fan Blog: Guardiola & Manchester City will bounce back

Pep Guardiola vs Barcelona

The honeymoon period is now over and reality has dawned. Pep Guardiola started out with a 10-match winning streak. Manchester City are winless in the last four. On Sunday, if they don’t snap the streak against Southampton, it will equal Pep’s worst. The last time this happened was over seven years ago. City have their defensive frailties, but things are not as bad as it looks for the Blues. Make no mistake, leaking four goals at the back is lousy. Eyebrows were raised by Sergio Agüero’s omission. But Manchester City sans the Argentine is still a strong team. I actually liked Guardiola’s approach in starting without his star striker. It wasn’t defensive. Purely tactical — he wanted an extra man in the middle

Netherlands vs Portugal – A game with 4 red cards and 16 yellow cards

In World Cup matches, the level of physicality tends to escalate when top teams face off against each other, but in the 2006 World Cup Round of 16 match in Germany, it escalated to an unprecedented level. What probably made this even more surprising was that it was Portugal and the Netherlands who were involved, not exactly the two sides are known for being very aggressive. But from the start of the game, Russian referee Valentin Ivanov had no control, as he was forced to hand out a record four Red Cards and an unprecedented 16 yellow cards, both of which are records in any FIFA tournament. The Netherlands entered the match as a strong favorite, having won all three of

Netherlands – Team to lose 3 World Cup finals

Netherlands is the only team in the World Cup to qualify for 3 finals and lose all 3. Details about their all 3 final defeats here.   1974 World Cup finals vs Germany West Germany was led by Franz Beckenbauer, while the Dutch had their star Johan Cruyff, and their Total Football system which had dazzled the competition. The start of the match was delayed as the ground staff at the stadium had removed the corner flags for the tournament's closing ceremony (which preceded the final) but then forgot to put them back. With just a minute gone on the clock, following a solo run, Cruijff was brought down by Uli Hoeneß in the German penalty area, and the Dutch took the lead from the ensuing penalty by Johan Neeskens before any German player

Sheikh ‘Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah’ disallows a goal in World Cup 1982

One of the most memorable controversies surrounding the FIFA World Cup was the match between Kuwait and France in the 1982 World Cup hosted by Spain. In their only ever World Cup appearance, Kuwait were put into a group with England, France and Czechoslovakia, and were not expected to win anything. But, after managing a 1-1 draw in their match against Czechoslovakia, Kuwait faced France. Sheikh Fahad Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, the then president of the Kuwait Football Association, left his seat from the stands and stormed onto the field, removing his players from the field in protest of a French goal that he believed had been scored only after his players had heard a whistle blown from the stands and stopped playing. The

Legends who won the World Cup as Player and Manager- Beckenbauer and Zagallo

Mario Zagallo  Mario Zagallo has a unique place in World Cup history - the only man to have been associated with four World Cup winning teams. In Brazil, he is a legend. During his time as a player he was part of the Brazilian team who lifted the World Cup in 1958 and 1962. Zagallo then coached the 1970 side to another glorious victory. He completed his unique achievement as assistant coach in 1994. The great Brazilian’s fingerprints are indelibly stamped across his country’s World Cup history, and therefore stamped across the finest World Cup history there is. His first winner’s medal came as part of the famous Brazil side of 1958. Pelé scored twice in the 5-2 victory over Sweden and Zagallo marked