Dream Team 2009

For no particular reason, here is a team from amongst players in the European league...

System : 4-3-3



Substitutes :

1) Gianluigi Buffon (GK)
2) Maicon (DF)
3) Rio Ferninand (DF)
4) Marcos Senna (MF)
5) Cesc Fabregas (MF)
6) Andrei Arshavin (FW)
7) David Villa (FW)

Manager :

Pep Guardiola

Comments:

Among the goalkeepers, i really like Petr Cech, but since he has not been the safest pair of hands recently, maybe he can make it next year (if the blog is still alive then) ... Also, the team is predominantly from the English premier league and the Spanish Primera Liga, since those are the two I watch the most. I wish I knew a bit more about the Italian league, so that this could be more representative. The only names from the Italian league are Buffon and Maicon, although I had a hard time leaving out Zlatan Ibrahimovic, maybe he should be up there instead of David Villa.... As far as the Bundesliga is concerned, the only person to come in might be Franck Ribery, but unfortunately he is not good enough to displace the guys currently in the flanks. I also thought about Rooney, his bulldozing gung-ho-ism can be useful sometimes, but after all this squad is designed around a different spirit, so no place for him either. In defence, although Carvalho is still coming out of injury, I just couldn't leave him out of my team. What a man!! And Vidic has been simply monumental for MU this season. At right back, it was a close call between Maicon and Alves, but Alves being at Barca and his understanding with Messi finally wins out. Left-back was quite problematic, and I had to make do with Evra, although I am not his greatest fan. Essien at midfield is possibly one of the easiest entries, the closest to a perpetual-motion machine that one can get in this Physics-rule-bound world of ours. Xavi and Iniesta are wizards on the ball .PERIOD. To watch them both in full flow is one of the most sublime moments in football. Messi is the best player of the football on the planet at the moment, and Ronaldo, when he is playing instead of falling over, is quite a handfull too.. Torres is simply clinical, the way he scored at the Arsenal game yesterday with two defenders on him was beyond belief. As far as the substitutes go, Fabregas is one of my favourite players, but as in the spanish team, Xavi and Iniesta keep him on the bench to start with.. Marcos Senna at defensive midfield has been immense for Spain and Villareal, although it meant no place for Mascherano (who being Argentinian, was hard to leave out). Arshavin scored 4 yesterday :), enough for a spot on the bench. The strange thing about this team is that I notice there are no Dutch players in it, which is pretty sad. Van persie came the closest, but he is injured so often, that one does not get to see him in full bloom for any length of time (he is an immense player though..). Robben is good, but not good enough; Van der Vaart is good, but Madrid don't play him enough; Huntelaar still needs to prove himself.

As far as the manager goes, as much as I like Wenger, the way Guardiola has got Barca to play this season means he deserves to be the manager of this team. So all in all, this is it. I have wasted a perfectly good hour, so back to work..

P.S.:
THIS TEAM ROCKS.. :-)

Eats, shoots & leaves

Currently sitting at the MBM reading a particularly amusing book on English grammar by Lynne Truss, when the time should have been spent more productively working out the Rouse dynamics of a polymer melt....

Anyway, the basic premise of the books revolves around the misuse of punctuation in modern english usage, as illustrated by this short story of a panda:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

'Well, I'm a panda', he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'

The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'

This had me thinking a bit about punctuation in the Bengali language. However, we bongs are a clever lot, or at least, we used to be until people started importing western punctuation into the Bengali script, a fairly modern trend. We make do with just the daanri (|), the equivalent of the full stop. The rest is all handled by the language itself. Pretty neat!