Thursday, June 07, 2007

Back on track

Michael Owen spent practically the entire football season trying to recover from injury. He barely played for Newcastle during the recently completed Premiere league and I was worried that his career was practically over.

So I am absolutely delighted that Owen scored a goal in England's 3-0 triumph over Estonia in their European Championships qualifying match earlier today. He still displayed some of the quickness he used to be known for, and a lot of the instincts. Hopefully, with more matchplay, he can resume his place as the top goal-scorer of England in international competition (although he is only the 4th highest goal-scorer for the England team, he holds the record for most goals - 23 - in England team competitive matches: World Cup and European Championship games including the qualifiers). Of course, I am also pleased that England won. Especially since they are only 4th in their table, behind Croatia, Israel, and Russia. The point difference isn't too big so there's time to play catch up. But this 3-0 win definitely helps their cause.

Kudos as well to Sweden for absolutely trouncing Iceland, 5-0. They are now sitting atop their table, ahead of Spain, Northern Ireland, and Denmark. Speaking of Denmark, they actually played their qualifying match against Sweden in Copenhagen last Saturday, the day before I visited. And it was a very controversial match. The score apparently was tied 3-3 at the 89th minute - one minute of regulation time left - when one of the Danish supporters came down onto the pitch and threatened to punch the referee. The match was promptly abandoned and the referee declared Sweden the winners of that match with a score of 3-0. This is not the final result, however, as UEFA will investigate this matter and come to a decision on what the official outcome of this match should be. In any case, Sweden should remain on top of their group and that gives them a good chance of making it through to the European Championships.

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