Jenni's Page

I'm a bit rushed doing this but haven't been able to be online that much the last few days.

Today is the first semi-final between Portugal and Spain. While I think Spain will probably win, I would not mind at all seeing this revitalized Portugal team go through to the final. Last night I listened to four different football experts give their opinions on the upcoming match. One of them upset me because he talked about how great Spain is even when they have not used their forwards that much, because of their width, blah, blah, blah, and how Spain should be able to exploit the Portuguese defense because the Portuguese central defenders are (a) old, and (b) slow, or don't like to move around that much. And that while the three midfielders, Meireles, Moutinho and Veloso link up well and have had a great tournament so far, they play too centrally, and again, the Spanish wide players will decimate them.

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I always like to feel good. I hate that feeling of being down when it comes to my teams' losses. I always like to have a lot of teams around me. I don't know - my feeling has always been that if I had only ONE team and they lost and made me feel bad, then I would have no other teams I could watch that might be able to cheer me up. Therefore I have always watched a lot of matches from a lot of different leagues with a view to finding teams that interest me and are fun to watch and get involved with.

And this year, at season's end for most leagues, I've decided that I am no longer going to cheer for the biggest teams. In the beginning I think I, like most people, got sucked in to thinking I had to get behind teams like Real Madrid or Manchester United because they were the ones I could see the most on TV. Or Barcelona. Or Liverpool, or Chelsea. AC Milan. Etc., etc. But once I got Pay TV and discovered streaming, there was no excuse NOT to follow other, 'lesser' teams. And once I got started doing that, what did I discover? That these teams are much more fun to follow. Their players are not the big headed 'superstars' that the BIG teams seem to swallow up like so many jelly beans until some of the disappear into what seem like black holes, never to be seen again.

It seems that these superstars are usually too 'professional' for me to like them very much. It's like they are playing only for the money and the stardom, to see how many goals they can rack up in a season, as if that is the only reason they are playing, certainly not for the team that hired them. They tend to change teams a lot as well, maybe because it's a way of staving off boredom. I don't know. To each his own, I guess. I am not knocking these teams or players, but just writing about what's interesting for me and what isn't.

So, okay. The teams I REALLY, really like based on what I've seen during the past season, are:

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EDIT: I forgot to mention CONCACAF! I love the Mexico NT with all my heart, and I like Costa Rica. I also like the Venezuela NT. Forgot to mention them as well. ;)

Germany is in Group D with Serbia, Australia and Ghana. And Germany is really the only team I care about in this group!

Here is a picspam of the called-up players.

The Goalkeepers

Tim Wiese



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