Euro 2004 Contd...

Had posted a rather strong entry about the quality of football in Euro 2004 a few days back. My oh my....have i been proved wrong...??most definitely yes....!!!the quality of football that the teams have displayed in the quarter-final stages has been quite outstanding to say the least....!!!

eng-portugal : as i had metioned earlier, england were my tournament favourites....but they were made to bite the dust by the hosts portugal by a display of awesome attacking football...england deserved to lose for having played so defensively....especially pulsating was the period during extra time when scolari went all out with about 8 strikers and ericksson played rather defensively. It was sheer luck that england survived to play the penalties...the one goal by rui costa was a demonstration of portugal's power play....the penalties were a separate chapter by themselves....beckham..beckham....3 penalty misses this year.....what more can u say....??reinforces my belief that he is a moderate talent coupled with a lot of media hype and good packaging....very debatable topic though...!!!

the rest of the matches were quite engrossing too...a complacent france losing to minnows greece......sweden and the dutch dishing out anohther pot-boiler....and the surprise package of the tournament, the czechs banishing the danes....

am hoping for a very intriguing end to the tournament....am placing my bets on the hosts.....just for the sheer atacking football they play, they deserve to win....!!

Euro 2004

The big european tournament....!!!..all the big guns of european football...!!!but the football has been anything but big...have been catching up with these late night matches offlate.....the time i reach hom from offcie oflate coincides with the mid-night matches.....!!!

i have been thoroughly disappointed with the quality of football....purists say this is due to the kind of ball being used...!!!that sounds like an absurd arguement...one possible reason could be the tire factor on the players after a demanding league season......the biggest disappointement for me was Spain....with so much talent they have time and again proved to be big-scene chokers....

of the remaining lot Franceand England look good.....For England it is important that they are peaking at the right time....so my money now is one them....but could never rule our a zizou showdown at the finals.....!!!!

P.S: they have put up an awseome site at Eoro 2004...it has text to speech conversion codecs, multi-language support etc put in....

The Da Vinci Code

Juss finished "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown......found it very very interesting..considering that i'm not an avid reader.....!!!...Dan Brown lays down a very interesting treasure hunt which takes u thru differenct facets of symbolisms, art-histories, histories of civilizations, religion, science etc, ...everything inter-woven very neatly.......consider this...u have a Da Vinci connected to Isaac Newton....!!!..at the end of it there arouses a doubt in ur mind about the validity of the divinty of Christ..the new testament etc........

simply said..."superb"......!!! a must read......!!!

For ppl interested here's dan brown's site : Dan Brown's Site

Also visit this site :Uncover the Da Vinci Code
This actually has an online quest which can be solved if you read the book...the quest is filled with the same kind of mysteries which the book has.....a couple of places where you might have to call up a couple of numbers in the US....!!