I hate friendly matches, but that Ibra goal!

I, like Mourinho and Ferguson, but don’t see the essence of playing friendly games in-between competitive club football seasons. It’s during these pointless games that players get injured and cost clubs that spent fortunes to acquire their services.

Friday, November 16, 2012
Ivan R. Mugisha

I, like Mourinho and Ferguson, but don’t see the essence of playing friendly games in-between competitive club football seasons. It’s during these pointless games that players get injured and cost clubs that spent fortunes to acquire their services.Only this round of international friendly matches did we get their value-which came from a brilliant moment from one of the greatest ball caressers of our time, Zlatan Ibrahimovich.Tall, swanky and with a Balotelli-like attitude, Ibrahimovich punished England on Wednesday by scoring all four of Sweden’s goals in the 4-2 win. The icing on the cake was his wonder strike against the hapless Joey Hart with an overhead kick outside the goal keeper’s box that could arguably go down in history books as probably the best goal ever.Talking of worst penalty kicks-think Neymar!For the Arsenal fans who bought ropes and poison last weekend after Mikel Arteta’s penalty miss, take heart. Missing penalties is part of the game and when a player tries to at least fix it in the corner, like Arteta did; he shouldn’t be blamed when the keeper guesses the right direction.Players who should be beaten to pulp are those who don’t even try to shoot the ball on target, like Neymar did! Brazil was one-all with Colombia and luckily for the Samba, they won a penalty in the 80th minute and we all thought it was game over. We were wrong.What Neymar did to that ball is beyond what I can describe. All I can say is that even if the goal posts were as high as those in a rugby game, that penalty kick would never had gone in.Milan is seconds from disasterAC Milan management must be wondering what they did to annoy God or fate because, no matter what they do, they seem to be in reverse gear at negative 100km per hour.They have become the easiest of the traditionally strong clubs to beat under Massimiliano Allegri, losing six out of their 14 fixtures so far. They have become a shadow of that great team that was mastered by Kaka, Andrea Pirlo and Clarence Seedorf.  That team played great football and I remember Kaka being more than once a menace to Manchester United’s Champion’s League day dreams.I don’t know if speculation has anything it adds, but from their performance, one is tempted to think that Silvio Berlusconi’s four year jail term has everything to do with AC Milan’s currently confusing status.FFP could mean the end of Man City, Chelsea and PSGLiving within your means has been the gospel being preached by Michel Platini, the head of UEFA, and through the financial Fair Play Regulations that were adopted by leagues in Europe, big and sudden spending are bound to be made history.I only wonder what will become of clubs like Man City, PSG and Chelsea, who only became successful because of over spending way beyond what they had. They are operating in negatives and only depend on injections from their owners. No wonder Wenger seems too confident about Arsenal’s future.