18 - Dirk Kuyt

I wanted to put up on fb photos of my little niece's baptism, then i read that kuyt has left Liverpool.

that made me sad.

so i put up my old photos of him instead, because he felt like family to me - the little niece can wait.

a red geordie

we're swapping torres for carroll and left with 10m for bak kwa.
this is historic.

m for million, in pounds. all 35 million of it.

i'm feeling really really sick.

3v2

played soccer today after months and months and it felt so good, despite being only 3 v 2, or playing with complete strangers, or the rain...

and despite the fact that i lao sai 3 times today, or that i've had the shits for almost 3 weeks now. 3 weeks!!! wtf...

Multimedia 4 - 7 uFO

For the first time in 2 months, today's game felt more like the soccer that we used to know than the rigid and laborious motions that we have been going through since the league's inception.

Well, from a personal point of view at least.

Zijing, ANg and I started on the bench against the team whom we set our hearts on beating right at the start of the season, the team whose last season's stats read: 18 played, 18 lost, points 0. If we can muster only two wins for the whole of this season, tonight has to be that night; the other being the return leg in weeks to come.

Edwin finally broke his scoring duck in the early minutes with the first goal courtesy of a heavy deflection which he nonetheless celebrated with both arms raised like a champion along with a whooping celebratory cry which stunned east coast park for a moment.

Multimedia equalized. 1-1.

Edwin then swiftly followed up with a second goal and a similar celebratory routine. Having just recovered from the earlier shock, the star studded bench of Zijing, ANg and I managed to politely applaud his committed celebrations while we were also impressed with how generous the opponent's defence was.

A hat-trick was completed and a fourth scored by someone but i shall skip the details for i want to quickly get to the crux of this match report which is basically about me. HT 1-4.

Following my demand to the uFO team captain Sean, i started the second half as a striker for the first time and what a season changing demand it turned out to be. Our keeper Xianming also strangely got ordered to take off his gloves and be my strike partner. Our combined weight is about 1/3 that of the opponent's imported defender. note the word, defender, in its singular form.

Anyway I scored. Little XM managed to squeeze the ball out of the jungle of ang moh legs to me and I thumped it, though a little less emphatically than i would have liked, into the top right corner, giving the keeper No Chance at all.

The best moment - there were many from me, if u haven't realised - came when we broke away in an attack. I received the ball at the halfway line with my back to the goal, made a half turn to my right where i spotted gay Brian running for once.

At this crucial, split second moment, Alex if it had been him, would have fumbled the ball into the sideline. Edwin would have stopped, turn for 3 seconds and shoot the empty space where the ball used to be 2.79 seconds ago. But me, no. Because I am Tricky Toh, my legs instinctively made some semblance of a fake (by dropping my right shoulder - turning my body - yet not committing my center of gravity in that direction) to my right, hence drawing my marker away from me, while I nearly simultaneously pulled the ball with my left leg to the opposite direction, and in one fluid motion, swiveled and made an Awesome through ball down the center, straight into gay Brian's path for a one-on-one with the keeper and he managed not to miss.

I thought a humble hi-ten will do but gay Brian insisted on giving me a bear hug much to my disgust and i refused to kiss him. I also gave our gay captain Sean a hi-ten through the netting after he insisted on it for ten minutes.

I did a few more brilliant moves, such as flicking the ball in one touch for Zijing to take a pot shot, another fake to create space for myself to shoot, making countless runs in and out of their defence etc etc. you get an idea of the amount of brilliance on display.

Unsurprisingly, I scored a second goal thanks to my intelligent reading of ANg's movement and anticipation of his cheeky back heel, which i admit is equally brilliant, before killing the ball with one touch, bringing it into the opponent's D, held off the onrushing defender and placed my shot low and sharp into the keeper's far corner. All on my useless left foot no less.

quite brilliant, even for my usual brilliant self.

We conceded a couple more silly goals along the way though i had absolutely no recollections of how those goals went in, apart from stand-in keeper Alex's imitation of Paul Robinson/Robert Green when he caught a tame shot but let it trickle across the line somehow. good stuff.

Final score: Multimedia 4 - 7 uFO with me playing a hand in all our 3 second half goals.

We all play for the team of course, unless your name starts with gay, but it's such brilliant moments sometimes that make the game special and leave lasting memories in your heart - I still remember the first goal I scored in AHS' basketball courts some 13 years ago, a series of one-twos with Jizheng on the right of the court before i slotted it pass the last man. these are the memories and unbridled joy that make you want to play the game till the day you no longer can walk.

Bid me sweet dreams in my saccharine sweat tonight

Yup i haven't showered.

The reason to live

My life is in disarray.

No sunday soccer for 3-4 weeks now. I can't function anymore.

Sleep at 5, wake at 1. The day is over before i know it.

Why?

Because there's no reason to wake up at 8am for the last few sunday mornings, and the week just follows suit.

Somebody help me.

The Kallang Swansong

Ahh, I've got photos.
Or here, if reading does't make your head spin.

National Stadium - Closing Ceremony

Farewell Kallong Roar

On a more constructive note, I spent the afternoon of Day 3 posting an entry on my recent National Stadium tour trip.

Not the best of photos, but it could have been far worse. All comments are welcome.

In case you're really blind, click here u fool

Athens Here We Come

Anfield '05 we kicked their ass
Anfield '06 we kicked their ass
Anfield '07 we kicked chelsea's ass once more

Istanbul '05 we went and won
'06 (who cares where) we took a break
Athens '07 HERE WE COME
WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

the entire defence had a great game. Carragher, Agger, Finnan, Riise, Reina. Mascherano was excellent, bar a mistake in the first half. Pennant was good, as was the workhorse Kuyt who ran down every single ball. Even Zenden had a much improved game whereas Gerrard, sad to say, was far from his best yet again, though he could do no worse than Crouch who had an awful game in my opinion..

ahh whatever, we won.. reina's penalty saves were superb.. the least that i can say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

on a sour note, I seriously can't stand watching any matches at the hall tv lounge. why must there always be a bunch of idiots who gets on my nerves?? is it just Hall One, particularly block 16? to support Liverpool is a good choice. but to call yourself fans, you should at least get the names of the players right. these 4 morons came in 15 minutes late and talked nonstop without any consideration for the person who's quietly enjoying the game, namely me.

people who don't know a shit about what they are talking about should just shut the fuck up. so disgusted and irritated was i, that i couldn't bear to look at their faces even once, lest i spit and scorn at them should i chance upon them in school.

At the start, they made fun of all the black chelsea players.. makelele, drogba, essien, kalou.. all of them. a little pre-match excitement, i can live with that. "why is he so black?", "did he go for a sun tan?", "did he take an injection?", "they all look alike" .. blah blah .. but if by the 70th minute of the game they were still discussing how black essien is, then surely i can't be faulted for getting pissed.

incessant unintelligent unfunny senseless boastful LOUD crap talk throughout the 90min + half time + extra time + injury time + penalty kicks. fucking pests really. these are the fans i detest, those who watch one game a year and boast to everyone that THEIR team won last night.

if you are or know anyone like that, there should be plenty out there, kindly tell them to sit back, watch and learn, stop reading NewPaper, think before they talk and not to talk like they are playing Championship Manager. They can't even pronounce Steve Finnan correctly!! fuckin retards.. and I nearly groan when they mentioned Kuyt's name.. OMFG really.

I'm glad this is the last liverpool game that I'm forced to watch in hall. and thankfully we won. it makes everything slightly more bearable.

Athens Here We Come...

Color blind

PFA Premier League Team of the Year 2007 - Edwin van der Sar, Gary Neville, Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, Patrice Evra (all Man Utd); Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Cristiano Ronaldo (all Man Utd) & Steven Gerrard (Liverpool); Didier Drogba (Chelsea) & Dimitar Berbatov (Tottenham)

PFA is a bunch of nuts.

the keeper and 4 defenders come from a team whose defence isn't even 2nd best in the league. good defenders don't toe-poke the ball into his own net while his keeper is running in the opposite direction, and this is just one of the many blunders we've witnessed. what a joke.

carragher has been immense for liverpool the whole season, and last season and last last season if anyone bothers. so was carvalho for chelsea. and fabregas for arsenal. gerrard wasn't even close to his best for ages.

they must have picked half the team before the first ball was kicked last august.

The Proper Shade of Red

I am half a manchester united fan. I stay up past 2am watching livescore.com, waiting for middlesbrough to kick their ass.

And my half of a man u fan is twice greater than that of my room-mate's, who is a man u fan, like half of those red devil fans claim they are. i can't believe he has watched more than one out of their last 10 games.

In fact, I'm quite sure I've celebrated more goals that man u had conceded than he did for goals that they scored.

I am a Liverpool fan, and this is why
http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/lfc_story/quotes.htm