Eduardo is looking to return by the end of the calendar year

Here is news all football fans should be happy to read.

Arsenal attacker Eduardo da Silva, whose horrific injury was one of the unfortunate memorable scenes from last season’s Premier League, has said he hoped to return to the Gunners by Christmas.  The Brazilian-turned-Croatian has been out since last February since suffering a broken leg and dislocated ankle in a match against Birmingham.

Reports during the preseason had Eduardo on a time line to reach the pitch in November, though those claims have been downplayed since.

The 25-year-old forward, who was in his first season with Arsenal after being acquired from Dinamo Zagreb, had scored 12 goals in 29 competitions before his injury.  His absence was one of a series of injuries that contributed to Arsenal’s late-season fall from Premiership leaders to third place.

He also missed this summer’s Euro 2008, where his Croatia team reached the quarterfinals.  In the run-up to the European Championships, Eduardo had 10 goals in qualifying, firepower Slaven Bilic has a difficult time replacing during the championships.

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France international Samir Nasri has been ruled out of today’s World Cup Qualifier against Serbia.  France, coming off a shocking 3-1 loss in their first qualifying match (against Austria), was to start Nasri in central midfield, but the Arsenal star has had a recurrence to the knee injury which kept him out of last month’s international friendlies.

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Kevin Keegan, today, made it official.  He has resigned as manager of Newcastle United FC.  This comes after a week of speculation as to whether he was still with the club.  Word had leaked on Monday that he had been fired, a rumor the club later refused.  With news outlets monitoring the team’s facility, noting Keegan’s parking spot had been empty all week, there w ere only so many secrets that could be kept.  After releasing a statement through the League Manager’s Association today, Keegan made it official.  Newcastle has lost their manager.
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Cesc Fabregas may not have directly contributed to any of Arsenal’s goals, but it is no coincidence that the Gunners played their best match of the season on the day the Spanish midfielder returned to the lineup.  With Fabregas out for the first two matches of the season, Arsenal scored one goal in two games, had a 186 minute scoreless streak, and split matches against clubs expected to finish near the bottom of the table.  On Saturday, Arsenal handed a quality Newcastle United team their first lost of the season, posting a 3-0 scoreline that did not do the Gunners’ form justice.

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The European Match of the Week is in Serie A, where Juventus starts their march towards recapturing the Scudetto against an Adrian Mutu-less Fiorentina side.  We’ve seen examples in the Bundesliga (Diego, Werder Bremen) and the Premiership (Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal) of what one player can mean to a team, but Mutu’s meaning to Fiorentina might prove to be just as large.  Continue Reading »

One of the more exciting days of the European club football season is the day the Champions League group stage is drawn.

The 32 teams that have qualified for the group stage are drawn into eight, four-team groups.  Before that happens, all teams are broken into four pots, labeled A through D, where they are grouped according to a team’s strength (as determined by a formula called a coefficient).  Each of the eight groups can have no more than one team from each pot, no more than one team from a country.  The eight groups end up pretty even.

The draw is fun because you end up with a series of matches which, in addition to being high profile based on the quality of the teams involved, are rare.  In the days before the draw, you start considering the possibilities and potential story lines:  Chelsea and Fiorentina in a group, forcing Adrian Mutu to play the club he owes £14 million; Marseille being slotted with Arsenal months after having sold them Samir Nasri, and potentially getting Bayern Munich in the group, so they would have to face Franck Ribery; Barcelona being slotted with a Zenit St. Petersburg team whose star, Andrei Arshavin, so badly wanted to play at Camp Nou; FC Porto being grouped with Inter Milan and facing Jose Mourinho.

Here’s how the eight groups ended up being drawn, with the clubs listed in order of the group they were drawn from:  A to D.  Continue Reading »

The story coming out of the first week of Portugal’s season could have been the continued excellent of FC Porto or Sporting Club of Portugal, but as they did last year with their turnstile coaching position and curious roster management, the storied Benfica club making themselves into a curiosity is the most interesting headline in the Superliga.

Benfica finished a shocking fourth last season despite having a much better goal differential than third place finishing Vitoria de Guimaraes. This relegated them to the UEFA Cup, which undoubtedly gave them a nice taste in their mouth was they saw Guimares bow out of Champions League before the group stage. Benfica may be right to believe they would have beaten FC Basel.

Benfica is a club that’s been European Champions twice. They’ve been to the final of the Champions League seven times and are part of Portugal’s big three clubs along with Porto and Sporting CP, and in bringing in Pablo Aimar and Jose Antonio Reyes from the Spanish league looked ready to challenge Sporting, if not Porto.

That challenge will have to wait until Benfica can prove able to manage Rio Ave. You know Rio Ave? The club that finished second in the Liga de Honra last season? They, apparently, are capable of competing with Benfica, drawing with the Portuguese giants 1-1 on Sunday. For Benfica, tackling Porto and Sporting CP will have to wait.

In the interim, the other top teams handled their business against opening weekend speed bumps. Sporting Lisbon gave Trofense, last season’s second division champions, a rude introduction to the top tier, defeating them 3-1 in Lisbon. Sporting CP scored their three goals within the first 28 minutes and cruised the rest of the way.

Porto looked to be slightly more bothered in the absence of start Ricardo Quaresma, whose continues to try and recovery from an injury which sidelined him throughout the preseason. For Inter Milan fans this means he will be at the San Siro by the end of the week. If that’s the case, Porto may have shown themselves capable of surviving, with a 2-0 final score belying a lop-sided match. Porto was able to consistent pressure Belenenses goaltender Julio Cesar, who got a rude introduction to Portuguese football, playing his first game after coming over from Brazil’s Botafogo. The 21-year-old will see better days, though if Quaresma stays at Porto, last week’s match may prove to be a blessing. Porto again looks the league’s class.

Whether that class will extend beyond Portugal was the question today as both Porto and Sporting were drawn into their Champions League groups. With both teams in Pot B (the second level), they will be expected to make it into the knock-out stage. Porto faces a tough draw, grouped with Arsenal, Fenerbahce, and Dinamo Kiev. Fenerbahce advances to last season’s Champions League quarterfinals, while Dinamo Kiev destroyed Spartak Moscow in qualifying to get to the group stage. You will see Porto picked anywhere from first to fourth.

Sporting CP was drawn into the thinnest group, with Barcelona being the clear class of a quartet that also includes FC Basel and Shakhtar Donetsk. Though both Basel and Shakhtar proved themselves tough in qualifying, Sporting will not have Porto’s excuse of a tough group should they fail to reach the knock-out phase of the tournament.

Today (Friday), five Portuguese teams will be draw into the UEFA Cup first round. Vitoria de Guimaraes, eliminated from the Champions League by Basel, will be joined by Benfica, Vitoria de Setubal, Maritimo, and Sporting Braga. In theory, Benfica is one of the tournament’s five or six top teams, but does that mean, were they in the UEFA Cup, Rio Ave would also be favorites?

WFP Portuguese Superliga Club Rankings

	Rank	Last Week	Club
	1	N/A	Porto This spot will be theirs until shown they don’t deserve it. It’s just the respect they deserve. Hulk got his first goal.
	2	N/A	Sporting CP Like Porto, started this season where they left off the last.
	3	N/A	Nacional Two goal win on the road to kick off the season gets them an early, lofty rankings.
	4	N/A	Naval Strong showing against Maritimo was a mild surpise, but a second minute goal is often all you need in the Portuguese Liga.
	5	N/A	Vitoria de Setubal Guimaraes my not have shown well in Champions League qualifying, but a point on the road against last season’s third place finisher gets a decent rankings.
	6	N/A	Sporting de Braga Authors of one of the four victories by at least two goals. They will have the chance to show themselves on Monday when they host Sporting CP.
	7	N/A	Vitoria de Guimaraes It my not be fair given these rankings are domestic affairs, but I can’t help but remember their Champions League qualifier against FC Basel when making this list.
	8	N/A	Belenenses They were the sacrifical lambs for Porto on the opening weekend, and while they probably were farther from the champions than the 2-0 score indicated, they won’t be judged too harshly. It was not a match any team would in this league would have been expected to win.
	9	N/A	Estrela da Amadora They got three points at home in a match against two of the lower finishers from last season. It’s the type of win that should help distinguish them at the end of the season, should things go poorly.
	10	N/A	Benfica Made me look absolutely foolish. Just days after I said they could threaten Porto at the top of the league, they draw against the team I predicted to finish last. Nuno Gomes got their goal.
	11	N/A	Rio Ave Congratulations to one of the promoted teams on getting a piont from Benfica.
	12	N/A	Academica Held off the scoreboard in their visit to Amadora.
	13	N/A	Maritimo A disappointing first weekend for last year’s fifth place finisher saw them give a lower rankign team three points. They trailed for 88 minutes of their match.
	14	N/A	Trofense Another of the promoted clubs, were sacrificed to Sporting CP. Is this a Portuguese tradition? To sacrifice the promoted clubs to the Champions League qualifiers on week one? How tribal.
	15	N/A	Leixoes Gave up three goals to Nacional and looks to again be battling relegation. Only the referee bribery scandal saved them last season.
	16	N/A	Pacos de Ferreira Failed to score in their home opener and, like Leixoes, looks destined to struggle to keep their place in the Liga.

Liverpool may be one of the eight teams in the top pool for tomorrow’s Champions League group stage draw, but they were the closest of the thirty-two teams to being out of the tournament after the final round of qualifying finished today.

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Like Armand Traore loan to Portsmouth last week, Philipe Senderos has become a happy casualty of Arsene Wenger’s mysterious fascination with Mikael Silvestre. The 23-year-old Swiss center back has been loaned out to Milan for the year after falling to sixth on the Arsenal depth chart.   At Milan, Senderos will have a chance a meaningful playing time, as a combination of injury, age, and lack of quality will put him into the mix.  He has to be encouraged by the move.

For Arsenal, getting Senderos a year’s playing time at an elite club while retaining his rights is good development for what’s still a young player. I am not a big fan of Senderos, but he has all the physical skills, even if he does seems to rarely use them. He had a horrible game in the second match of the Champions League quarterfinals, an unforgettable match which saw Ryan Babel draw that miracle penalty (oh, how I wish I had this blog back then) which put the Gunners out. He immediately lost his spot at the back to Alexander Song and looks unlikely to regain Arsene Wenger’s confidence.

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Arsenal spent Saturday’s visit to Craven Cottage showing why so many were reluctant to pick their talented side to improve upon last year’s third place finish, because although they were playing without their best player (Cesc Fabregas), they still had by far the most talented side on the field when they took on Fulham in one of their London derbyies.  Yet Arsenal were rendered impotent by what is expected to be a relegation-embattled club, rarely challenging Fulham goalie Mark Schwarzer and allowing a team that spent last week recovering from wounds inflicted by a promoted club to beat a team what is supposed to be one of the best and deepest sides in the world.  If that sounds melodramatic, it is nowhere near as theatrical as these three words:  Fulham beat Arsenal.

It was their second win over Arsenal in the forty-three years.

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