There’s Always a Silver Lining

This is a true story. Not too long ago, there lived a footballer, who played for a very famous team. The footballer is Claude Makélélé and the club is Real Madrid.

Claude Makélélé

The problem was the management of team didn’t rate him highly. Despite his value to the team, Makélelé was one of its most (relatively) under-paid members. Then came a time when he asked for pay hike and the management promptly decided to sell him.

The president of the club Florentino Pérez was so arrogant that he went on to say.

We will not miss Makélelé. His technique is average, he lacks the speed and skill to take the ball past opponents, and ninety percent of his distribution either goes backwards or sideways. He wasn’t a header of the ball and he rarely passed the ball more than three metres. Younger players will arrive who will cause Makélelé to be forgotten.

But some of his teammates were highly appreciative of him.

Zinedine Zidane remarked the following after Makélelé was sold and Beckham was bought.

Why put another layer of gold paint on the Bentley when you are losing the entire engine?

Former Real Madrid player and captain Fernando Hierro also criticised Pérez for both Makélélé’s departure and the manner of his departure, saying:

I think Claude has this kind of gift – he’s been the best player in the team for years but people just don’t notice him, don’t notice what he does. But you ask anyone at Real Madrid during the years we were talking about and they will tell you he was the best player at Real. We all knew, the players all knew he was the most important. The loss of Makélelé was the beginning of the end for Los Galacticos… You can see that it was also the beginning of a new dawn for Chelsea. He was the base, the key and I think he is the same to Chelsea now.

While Makélelé moved to Chelsea and achieved huge success the same can’t be told about Real Madrid. After Makélelé’s departure, Real Madrid have failed to progress past the quarter-finals of the Champions League till date.

Moral of the story is simple: You will face hurdles in life as long as you pick yourself up and continue the journey things will work out just right. Remember “There’s Always a Silver Lining”

The story and the quotes are picked up from Claude Makélélé’s wikipedia page.

England sprinkler celebration

English team celebrating the fact that they have retained the Ashes. From this video it looks like no English celebration is complete without the sprinkler dance. I guess it’s the final part of the sprinkler dance series. Hope am wrong! Congratulations to the English team.

 

 

Since I am dealing with cricket in this post. Let me share this image. This photography really impressed me a lot. Jacques Kallis tries to avoid a Sreesanth bouncer. The entire thing lasted few milliseconds and yet the photographer managed to get such a clean shot. Hats off to him and hats off to Indian cricket team for squaring the series at 1 all.

Jacques Kallis

Cricket pitch or a tent?

I had never seen a structure like this on a cricket pitch. This was one of the nice spots of an otherwise horrible day for Indian cricket.

Ground staff had built this structure to protect the pitch from rain at Centurion stadium in South Africa

Well, It is snowing on my page and raining in South Africa!

Cristiano Ronaldo Disallowed Goal

This is from a friendly match between Spain and Portugal.

I still can’t believe Nani(Luís Carlos Almeida da Cunha) can be that stupid. Ball was almost inside the goal when he headed it! I won’t blame Cristiano Ronaldo for his reaction. That goal would have gone down as a classic. He must have felt cheated.

Samir Nasri’s wonder goal

Samir Nasri scored two goals to help Arsenal beat Fulham 2-1 and send Arsene Wenger’s side to the top of the Premier League. Here are the goals.

In one of the goal Nasri, when you expect him to shoot, dragged the ball past goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer and going at pace, it looked as though he may well have lost the chance to shoot.

But after rounding Schwarzer, Nasri spun 180 degrees to fire in from the tightest of angles. One of the top goals of this season.