For fans of American Sports, even at the college level, there is usually only one prize.
The players and teams in the major leagues may win their division and their conference but it means nothing if they don’t win the ultimate prize and lift the Championship trophy. In England the phrase ‘We can concentrate on the league’ is a very familiar one and can be used in one of two ways.
Good news for England fans today as UEFA has reduced Wayne Rooney’s three match suspension has been reduced to two matches after a successful appeal by the FA.
The reduction means that Rooney , 26,will now be available for England’s third Group D game, against Ukraine, but will miss the fixtures against France and Sweden.
The third match of his ban has been suspended for four years. A Uefa spokesman told BBC Sport the third game ban would kick in only if he is sent off for violent conduct in another European Championship match.
Terrible night for Manchester United and City as both clubs crashed out of the Champions League tonight.
The bigger shock was Man United losing 2-1 to Basel on a night that saw United captain Nemanja Vidic carried off with a bad knee injury.
United only needed a draw to progress but went behind after only nine minutes when Marco Streller fired home after Xherdan Shaqiri’s cross was kicked out by David De Gea.Unietd created chances but Wayne Rooney squandered several opportunities to equalise as he scuffed two chances.
Dimitar Berbatov has been ruled out of Manchester United‘s massive Champions League trip to Basle leaving Sir Alex Ferguson with limited options up front.
After Javier Hernandez suffered an ankle injury at Aston Villa on Saturday that is set to rule him out for a month, Ferguson expressed the hope Berbatov would have recovered from his own ankle problem to make the flight to Switzerland.
But the Bulgarian was again absent on Tuesday morning, meaning Ferguson can only count on Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck, who has made just one substitute appearance since suffering a muscular problem on England duty last month.
Picking up another defeat against Liverpool at the Carling Cup in the midweek, simply made things tougher for Chelsea especially their manager, Andre Villas-Boas, who got intensive criticism recently.
Trying to calm things down, one of the Blues’ main player, David Luiz, believed that his team is not actually in crisis but simply just having a string of bad results, which they’re eagerly want to end in their two upcoming matches.
England national team got themselves a pretty good draw in their Euro 2012 campaign, considering all the worse possibilities, being paired with Ukraine, France and Sweden obviously isn’t the toughest group on paper.
This drawing result apparently gave confidence to the Union Jack’s manager, Fabio Capello, who revealed that his team obviously got a pretty comfortable group on paper especially compared to Group B which consist the likes of Holland, Germany, Portugal and Denmark.
Fantastic result for Stoke City last night as a Kenwyne Jones’ header ensured Stoke drew with Dynamo Kiev and progressed to the next stage of the Europa League for the first time in their history. If Stoke get a point at Besiktas in their last game they will finish atop their group.
![[champions] Chelsea x Juventus : 8](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3603/3310824512_3fa9de86cb.jpg)
Chelsea‘s veteran striker, Didier Drogba, looked set to end his journey with Manchester City sometime soon as the striker rejected the one year extension that was being offered to the 33-years-old attacker.
Drogba’s refusal in signing the extension with Chelsea was revealed by the player’s agent, Thierno Seydi, who believes that minimum contract length isn’t something that his client seek in the twilight of the striker’s career.
Starting the season pretty poorly, many football viewers expects that Arsenal will struggle not only in the league but also dominating their Champions League group, but apparently the opposite occurred as the Gunners became the first English teams that qualified from the European club competition.
This achievement actually surprised Arsenal’s manager, Arsene Wenger, who can’t believe that no other premiership teams have qualified from their group, not only that the other three teams could actually go out from Europe.
Two opposite results occurred for London duo, Arsenal and Chelsea on their Champions League night as the former confirmed their passage into the next round while the Blues have to anxiously wait and battle hard until the final day of competition.
The Gunners picked up an important victory over Borussia Dortmund at home with Robin Van Persie once again act as the decider, while Andre Villas-Boas’ team got pinned back by Bayer Leverkusen despite taking an early lead.
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