Since I watch a lot of soccer, and there was another round of Euro 2008 qualifiers today, I thought that I should post this, as it will tie in with what I was gonna blog today.

Borat joy at Serbia shock

 

ALMATY, Kazakhstan, March 24 (Reuters) - Kazakhstan registered their first competitive win in European football, claiming a shock 2-1 victory over Serbia in their Euro 2008 Group A qualifier on Saturday.

 

It was also the first time they had scored at home in a European qualifier since joining UEFA in 2002, Kairat Ashirbekov and Nurbol Zhumaskaliyev giving them a 2-0 lead before Nikola Zigic pulled one back for the Serbs.

 

The result left Serbia second in the eight-team group with 10 points from five matches.

 

Kazakhstan are sixth with five points ahead of the day's other two matches, Poland against Azerbaijan and Portugal against Belgium.

 

Ashirbekov fired Kazakhstan ahead in the 47th minute when his fierce shot from 12 metres took a wicked deflection off Serbia centre back Milan Stepanov and left keeper Vladimir Stojkovic stranded.

 

The unmarked Zhumaskaliyev sent the home crowd into raptures when he headed the second at the far post from a Ruslan Baltiev corner.

 

Zigic set up a dramatic finish after beating the excellent David Loria in goal with a close-range header and missed two good chances to equalise before he was sent off in injury time for elbowing an opponent.

Now, as someone that's followed the beautiful game (fuck you guys that dissent or call that a faggot name, it is) for a while, this came as a shock. Serbia and Montenegro qualified for the World Cup that took place last year in Germany. However, after the World Cup, the football federations peacefully split, just as the countries had months before. Even though the countries split, only one of the players that played for the unified team during the World Cup was of Montenegrin origin, thus the Serbian team was at full strength.

The Borats (it's much easier for me to type this instead of Kazakhs, even though I prefer not to refer to them as Borats) are ranked 143rd in the world, and the likes of Eritrea, Antigua and Barbuda, Palestine, and Equatorial Guinea are ranked ahead of them. The Serbs are ranked 28th, and for comparison, the US is ranked 30th (needless to say, this will change with the Serbian loss). The mere fact that the Borat's were able to hold a 2-0 lead over the Serbs is astounding, and it's even more astounding that they were able to beat the Serbs. They haven't won a competitive game since entering European competition. I figured that they'd pick up their first win against Armenia, but I digress.

MOVING ON

I wish I could find this video of something I saw today. I was watching Norway-Bosnia earlier, and the fans peppered the field with fireworks and flares. The Bosnians were protesting some shit that their FA did, so they decided that they wanted to throw fireworks and flares at their own players. The odd thing was that the game was in Oslo, so the only way the Bosnian fans could get the flares in was by sticking them in their assholes. It didn't even happen in Bosnia. Go figure that one out.

The US plays Ecuador tomorrow, at a comfortable 12:00 EDT start time, on ESPN2. Big transition period for the US, as we're getting guys like McBride, Pope and Reyna out of the picture, and getting some of the youngin's like Jay Demerit, Taylor Twellman (PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD) and after the U-21 World Cup, Freddy Adu into the picture. I'm jazzed, I think we'll handle the Ecuadorians with a score of 1-0. Ecuador struggles when they have to come down out of altitude, so considering that this game's in Tampa, now's the time to get some confidence going into this summer's Gold Cup and Copa America.

That's it for now, I'll talk about how the above game went tomorrow.