{"id":716,"date":"2006-08-04T06:40:49","date_gmt":"2006-08-04T14:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/giornale\/index.php?op=ViewArticle&amp;articleId=622&amp;blogId=1"},"modified":"2006-08-04T06:40:49","modified_gmt":"2006-08-04T14:40:49","slug":"summer-footy-sum-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/2006\/08\/04\/summer-footy-sum-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Footy Sum Up."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was the best of times, it was the worst of times&#8230; Since I haven&#039;t posted as much as my life has been consumed by two things during the summer (work and the World Cup) I decided to sum up what I did in-between sifting through lines of code and version control and all that geeky crap. <\/p>\n<p>\n<b>The World Cup<\/b><br \/>\nMost anticipated by me because of what I saw as a strong England squad. Yes, I support ze English (C&#039;mon ENGLAND) and it&#039;s a long story how I came about to support them (which encompasses living in 3 countries on 3 different continents.) My Chelsea boys, JT, Lamps and Coley were all on the squad, along with other &#8220;big&#8221; names like Ashley Cole, Peter Crouch, Rio Ferdinand, Michael Owen, David Beckham, Steven Gerard, Wayne Rooney, and so on&#8230; Anyway, little did I know that at a crucial moment, our manager (the now-fired Sven Goran-Ericsson) would not deliver. My favorite player, Frank Lampard was not playing at a level that he normally plays whilst Joe Cole shone at the opportune moment. The summer was filled with pints, however, and friendship &#8212; so it&#039;s not at all a loss. Here are some photos from the experience:<\/p>\n<p>Ye Olde Kings Head<br \/>\nA wonderful place. The servers rock (thanks Tibby!) and thinking about the place now makes me crave for a pint at 8AM again. Photos: Restaurant shot with a camera person from a local news station capturing the event. Me and Gary Richards, former-QPR footballer and co-host of the *best* Footy programme on radio <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the2gs.com\/\">The 2Gs<\/a>.<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P6151267.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P6151269.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\"><\/p>\n<p>\nBen J. and me; Sarah, Ben (both Londoners) and me &#8212; all England supporters. Ben works for the same company where I do contract work<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P6151270.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P6151272.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\"><\/p>\n<p>\nMe and Graham Bell (former FA official and co-host of the *best* Footy programme on radio <a href=\"http:\/\/www.the2gs.com\/\">The 2Gs<\/a>.<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P6151275.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\"><\/p>\n<p>Fox and Hounds<br \/>\nMe and Andy &#8211; it&#039;s the only time you&#039;ll see me hanging out with a Leeds fan!<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P6171276.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\"><\/p>\n<p>\nThe Underground<br \/>\nThe place was ok and had England not lost, I&#039;d definitely return there again. As you can see, the photo of me, Ben and Sarah was taken before England lost to Portugal in penalties.<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P7011286.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\">&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/wc2006\/P7011284.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\"><\/p>\n<p><p>\n<b>Chelsea FC Off Season<\/b><br \/>\nThe club I support (if you didn&#039;t know by now), Chelsea Football Club, are here in the United States for a friendly against the MLS All-Stars (August 5th @ 3:30PM if you have ESPN!). Anyway, if you have been keeping up with my minimalist posts, you might have noticed some photos from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/giornale\/index.php?op=ViewArticle&#038;articleId=621&#038;blogId=1\">ChelseaFC signing fiasco over @ the Adidas store<\/a>. The manager of that store was obviously lacked in event-preparation skills. Here are some friends I made that morning:<br \/>\n<img src=\"http:\/\/www.radragon.com\/images\/cfc2006\/bPost\/P1060129.jpg\" style=\"border:#000000 1px solid\"><\/p>\n<p>\nTwo days after that, I went to UCLA and watched my Blues train! I received several tips from the friends I&#039;ve made on their training schedule and decided to just go and it paid off! Who cares if I was 2 hours late for work! Who cares if I sounded like a complete idiot when I told Joe Cole something like (I love you&#8230; as a player) &#8212; I MET MY BOYS IN BLUE AND IT WAS FANTASTIC. Surreal, fantastic, brilliant, and so on. I&#039;m still in disbelief and as disappointed as I am that I cannot see them play in person @ Chicago (that&#039;s where the friendly match will be held), I&#039;m so grateful that I was able to say &#8220;Obrigado&#8221; to the manager, Jos<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was the best of times, it was the worst of times&#8230; Since I haven&#039;t posted as much as my life has been consumed by two things during the summer (work and the World Cup) I decided to sum up what I did in-between sifting through lines of code and version control and all that  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/2006\/08\/04\/summer-footy-sum-up\/\"> read more <span class=\"meta-nav\">&raquo;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radragon.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}