While it’s been a few weeks where the biggest incident in world football certainly in the last decade has taken place with everybody who’s involved in the game and others who don’t have a clue about our beautiful sport throwing their two cents in, I thought it be appropriate to talk about what happened at the Stade de France on November 18th.

Now going into this match, Ireland were up against it losing the first leg at Croke Park 1-0. However, captain Robbie Keane pulled the aggregate scores level in the second leg. After 90 minutes, there was little between the sides going into extra time. Now the most important thing to remember here is if the scores would still have stayed level, then penalties would have been no alternative. A lot of folks who don’t know anything about football that decide all of a sudden their experts didn’t realize this and that’s your usual radio talk show hosts who almost never talk about football. So when France’s second goal that should never have stood didn’t cost Ireland a shot at the world cup, only stopped the tie from going to penalties. Now, there are several talking points about this incident that happened in a split second: Continue Reading…

I meant to bring this up earlier in the day but nearly forgot. For those of you lucky bastards in the New York City area, there is an event that you need to be at tomorrow in Chinatown. What is it? The second annual Showdown in Chinatown featuring NBA stars and international soccer stars such as Steve Nash and Thierry Henry.

You may recall last year’s event in New York with Nash and company. It was a smashing success and this year’s lineup looks just as good:

Steve Nash, Claudio Reyna, Thierry Henry, Tony Parker, Javier Zanetti, Raja Bell, Adrian Mutu, Chris Bosh, Ivan Cordoba, Grant Hill, and Giovanni van Brockhurst

Also maybe..just maybe Yao Ming.

The second annual Showdown is set for Wednesday (Tomorrow) at 6pm at Sarah D. Roosevelt Park in lower Manhattan. This event is free to the public. Getting a seat for this thing will be extremely tough. So you will want to get there early…as in maybe today early.

The event is being held to help raise money for the Steve Nash Foundation and Claudio Reyna Foundation. You can go here for more information on the event and its charitable efforts.

And if you happen to make it to this event and are able to snap some photos or videos, feel free to pass them along to me (drew.epperley@gmail.com). I will be more than willing to post them for you here.

Oh what it would have been like to be in Chinatown yesterday in New York City. We all know of the event by now and I won’t go into the details of it too much since I wasn’t there to see it firsthand. I will share a couple items I got from reading about it and a few clips that I saw online about it.

Claudio Reyna and Steve Nash had a little event. Okay little doesn’t even start to describe it.

First off, the event was packed as packed can get. Hell even Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber and U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati were sitting on the turf to watch the game because every other inch of space inside the park was taken. Outside of the park, fans climbed trees and fences, others stood on a roof of an adjacent apartment building to catch a glimpse.

The scene was crazy, the game was crazy but in all it looked like one hell of a time. The collection of soccer and basketball stars was impressive.

Nash, the two-time NBA MVP, and Phoenix Suns guard Leandro Barbosa, were former Liverpool greats Robbie Fowler, Steve McManaman and Rob Jones.

Playing with Reyna, Jozy Altidore and Gregg Berhalter were Jason Kidd and Baron Davis and Chelsea’s Salomon Kalou.

Oh yeah, some guy named Thierry Henry was there as well.

Uh yeah, that’s just a nasty combination of stars folks. Continue Reading…