World Cup Qualifying

Ok now all the 32 teams for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany have been decided…check out the official website for the list of teams…top of the news was Australia qualifying after a 32 year hiatus…kudos to the whole team…the third and fifth photos are of them…nice jersey isn’t it…I love the design of the nike total 90 kits…second picture is of the top view of the stadium…spectacular aint it

The fourth picture is obviously that of me…I cant put it into the profile so I placed it here…this picture is very good to use…hehe…and I was very tanned after volunteering for the osim triathlon at east coast…this is on my friendster too…

The first picture is that of what spain wore for their world cup playoffs with slovakia…the most weird thing is the colour scheme…red and yellow top with blue short sand blue socks?they used to have very dark blue shorts and it was very nice…now?…seems weird really…but one unique point is that adidas changed their design…adidas logo in the middle…number on the right and the crest on the left…quite cool…

Anyway most of my jc friends have known that I dyed my hair…I love it…there are people who said its not nice…or who said the dying was rather patchy…either they were more well versed in these stuff or they had a higher degree of taste…as for me…I find most things nice…

That day when watching the premiere of the live your dreams video by kit chan…I almost cried…by the way live your dreams is the theme song for the 23rd sea games in manila…penned specially to spur the athletes on…I have always been touched when I see videos of our national athletes winning medals for Singapore…for example I got touched even when I saw the aussie football team so happy that they qualified and everybody cheering for them… but when watching the video, I don’t know why I am especially touched…the tears were welling up in my eyes…and the only thing that stopped them from flowing down was that my mom was sitting behind me…

Talk about sports…I used to feel that I have wasted 3¾ years during my secondary school life (the other ¼ was for settling into the new school environment)…I was so slack physically…to persuade myself to run will take a very tough mental struggle…but upon thinking again…I realised that perhaps it was a blessing not to have started training so early…because sports in itself requires a lot of hard work…and a lack of maturity can easily cause one to give it up, thinking it is just self-torture…and last time I didn’t realise I had such a fervent love for sport…so if I had pushed myself younger…it may have turned me off…having an interest in something somehow relieves the pain that you experience in the course of it all…and this is exactly the situation now…

Anyway heres a notice…I have removed the tagboard due to the reason of neatness…so if my readers have any comments feel free to write them using the comments link!…it shouldn’t be too inconvenient I guess…

For this time round…this should be all folks!

Learning From My Mistakes

Seems that if I blog…it will be about soccer training…haha…hmm today had to report to college at 8.15 am…for track training…and also to submit I and r…went to track training first to put my bag…then guess what I saw…I saw people carrying goal posts…

So there was soccer training today…nobody told me haha…then had to explain to mr. Nordin…hopefully he didn’t mind…after explaining I went back to submit I and r…couldn’t find mdm aslindah…just caught her luckily outside the general office…she said she went to the washroom…and so with the submission of that…it brings an end to pw…to have something that you have been working on for so long suddenly gone…I think it feels weird…hehe

Then went back to track training…weison qixiang hairianto and I came…for girls crystal kesther and pratibha came…for guys Andrew and Reagan didn’t come…for girls I don’t know…3 more I guess…is one of them ming fei?…

Proceeded to do stretching…they had actually done 400 m of warm-up…mr. Yazid asked them to show me how to stretch…haha…who doesn’t know how to stretch?…haha…then went for 6 km run…approximate…6 rounds around the school…I thought it was okay…although it will be the farthest that I will have run…I thought it will be okay if I paced myself…but I was wrong…in the end I was panting like don’t know what…I think I ran too fast in the first 2 rounds…

After running we still had to do 20 sit-ups and push-ups each…after track training finished I went to soccer…without any gear…mr. Nordin told me to take a break as I didn’t have boots and he was worried that I will slip on the wet ground…but I said I will stay behind to look on…I had to cool down anyway…

In the end he told me to play in the training match…one goalkeeper each side…eugene the other side…I just wonder why after so long already I will still feel nervous…and to think its during training only…what if its during match…can anybody teach me how to cope with that…maybe I will just try to treat it as a fun game always…maybe that will help…

Anyway conceded three goals…eugene conceded 2…first goal was from my left byline…I got the angle covered but syed rifled in a shot…and I deflected in with my leg…did I get down too fast…don’t know…was it my mistake?

Second goal…I distributed the ball like some 5 year old kid (my distribution sucked for the whole match) passed the ball to an opponent…he sent in a long shot when I was still tracking back…and I fluffed my save…mr. Nordin said it was a routine catch…yes I should always try to catch the ball then if cannot, parry…I tried to parry when it was a ball that I can catch

Last goal also my blunder…once again I fluffed an attempt to catch a low shot to my right…dropped the ball…syed came in to fire in the rebound

With every goal conceded my team had to do physical punishment…20 of sit-ups and stuff like that…I feel so sorry to them…they can scold me as long as they like it

I think the most important thing is to learn things after every training session…that’s what life is about right…haha

And yes my rushing out still needs improvement…whenever I see the through pass in… I think there is no need to look at my defenders already…just go out straightaway and get the ball!…hehe

just saw an article on soccernet that is very relevant to my blog today!...the link is http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=348833&cc=4716
it was an interview with my idol goalkeeper...paul robinson of tottenham and current england no. 1....

some quotes from that article:
...strong enough character not to be affected by any hiccups...
...You just have to try and make sure mistakes don't happen. Nobody means to do it but you expect the criticism that will follow if you make an error and you have got to be a very strong person...
...You have to be your own biggest critic. I take every goal against me very personally even if there is nothing you can do about it. A keeper will always find something he could have done. A good keeper is always his biggest critic...
...But the day you start listening to people, apart from your coaches and managers, is when you have got a problem....
...You also can't go into games thinking you are going to make a mistake or 'what happens if I do this or that?' because you are finished before you are started...
...Every game has got to be positive and I'm confident enough in my own ability and know that I'm good enough to be able to cope with things...
...I have worked very hard to get here with England but it is even more important that I work even harder to stay there. Things can change very quickly in football and no-one knows that more than me. I'm going to work very hard to keep hold of what I've worked a long time for, It is up to me to keep the spot. I've worked very hard to get there but nothing is taken for granted. ..