The recent matchday of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Champions League, played on March 6-7, saw the Korean side Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma host the Japanese team Nagoya Grampus in an exciting game that ended 2-2. Trailing until the very last second of stoppage time, the home team tied the game in the 93rd minute with a spectacular double-bicycle-kick play in which Brazilian forward Everton Santos assisted Brazilian midfielder Héverton Durães Coutinho for the goal that sent the home fans nuts and the Japanese ones into silent desperation.
Orlando Pirates striker Benni McCarthy scored the winning goal against Maritzburg United with a spectacular bicycle kick in the 75th minute. The game, played at Orlando Stadium on Sunday, February 25, saw Pirates prevail 1-0. The win placed Pirates level with second-placed Kaizer Chiefs on 33 points, just three behind leaders Sundowns in the Premier Soccer League of South Africa. McCarthy dedicated his fabulous goal to ailing former president Nelson Mandela.
Uruguayan striker Gaston Ramirez scores the second goal in Bologna’s 2-0 victory against Fiorentina in a Serie A match on February 21. Ramirez finishes the cross from teammate Marco Di Vaio with a heel strike that leaves no chance to the “viola” goalkeeper, capping a classic, well-executed fastbreak.
In the Lebanese Premier League, Al Nejmeh forward Hassan Al Mohammad controls the ball right outside of his team’s box, sprints across the field, and scores the winning goal with a superb long shot from midfield in the 89th minute. Al Ahed goalkeeper can only watch the football flying into the net, settling the score at 3-2, and sending the home fans into a craze. February 15, 2012.
The room was tense. Zambia and Ivory Coast had played their hearts out in a goalless draw over 120+ minutes and now it came down to penalties. With me, watching a good stream on the big screen at work (on a Sunday), were three Zambians, a Kenyan, two American soccer aficionados, and my family.
Drogba had missed a penalty in regulation so the momentum seemed ever so slightly to favor the underdog Zambians. Chipolopolo prayed and prayed on the pitch, one of our Zambian friends commented wryly: “I didn’t know Zambians were so religious!”
As Zambia’s French coach Herve Renard would tell the media after the game, “I know we’re not the best, but we have a strength and force that animated our team.”
With the score tied at 7-7 in the shootout, Arsenal’s Gervinho shot wide and Sunzu stepped up for Zambia’s second chance to win.
Gooooooool!!!! The Zambians roared.
“I can’t believe it happened in my lifetime,” one of the Chipolopolo supporters exclaimed. We saluted the champions of Africa. Cell phones came out in an attempt to reach Lusaka.
The day after, not many people are at work, or so it seems . . . the Lusaka Times reports that “a thunderous welcome awaits the newly crowned Champions of African football” at Kaunda airport today.
With eight of the Zambian players based in South Africa, a national anthem based on Nkosi Sikelel’, and venerable liberation struggle ties, some of us delight in the fiction that a little piece of South Africa won as well.
That Chipolopolo became champions of Africa in Libreville, where the 1993 air crash killed the greatest Zambian team ever, made this triumph all the more special.
Alexandre Oliveira of Londrina displays his superb skills scoring the go-ahead goal against Iraty with a state-of-the-art bicycle kick in the Brazilian Campeonato Paranaense, the football league of the state of Paraná. Iraty then tied the game at 1, which was the final score of the game.
Egypt’s worst-ever soccer disaster: at least 73 people died at a match in Port Said on Wednesday. “This tragedy is not simply a story of a match gone horribly awry,” writes James Dorsey at The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccerblog. “It will have important and wide-ranging political ramifications.” (Full post here.) The causes for the tragedy are unclear.
According to the New York Times, “Politicians, fans and Egyptian soccer officials all faulted the police as failing to conduct the standard gate searches to prevent fans from bringing knives, clubs or other weapons into the match.” Did the ultras — hard-core supporters — of home side El Masry and Cairo heavyweights Al Ahly walk into a trap?
“People here are dying, and no one is doing a thing. It’s like a war,” said Al Ahly star midfielder Mohamed Aboutrika; “Is life this cheap?” He then promptly announced his retirement from the professional game.
“The ultras whether they walked into a trap or initiated the Port Said violence have no doubt again dug themselves into a hole,” Dorsey observes (full post here). “This time round it will be a lot tougher to dig themselves out. They have played into the hands of the military and the police in dealing a lethal blow [to] contentious street politics as opposed to electoral politics and the horse trading associated with it.”
We at Footballiscominghome extend our condolences to the families of the victims.
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Additional coverage of the Port Said disaster and its aftermath here.
This just in from Alex Galarza: NPR’s Andy Carvin is curating tweets live from Cairo @acarvin. Osama Diab at The Guardian also has a worthwhile story.
Read David Goldblatt’s “Egypt’s Political Football” here.
