Lopez Blogs

The 2010 Tour de France ended last Sunday, as usual on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and as usual with an exciting sprint finish. The "Manx Missile" Mark Cavendish chalked up his fifth stage win this year, although that still wasn't enough for him to win the points classification. (This year's green jersey winner was Alessandro Petacchi). Former multiple winner and race legend Lance Armstrong meanwhile completed his final Tour and announced his (second) retirement after the race.

Above: Fifth time lucky for Cav. (photo courtesy of BBC Sport/Getty Images)

There were high hopes for the British riders this year, and a new British team (Team Sky) in the competition. Great things were expected from Bradley Wiggins, Team Sky's main man, however inevitable disappointment was to follow. Wiggins was philosophical about it all, and described it as a 'bad season'. Team Sky had another couple of promising young riders: Norway's Edvald Boasson Hagen, and the Welshman Geraint Thomas, and they both did well this year and showed great promise for the future.

Usually the early stages of the Tour are predictable and uneventful, all flat stages and sprint finishes. This year's Tour started in Holland, and then travelled down through Belgium, finally entering France. The organisers of 2010 clearly had, dare I say, a vicious streak?! It was cobbles, chaos and carnage in the opening days, with rough weather and rough roads. One major casualty of the cobblestones was Frank Schleck who had to retire through injury on Stage 3. The Schleck brothers, Frank and Andy, were serious contenders to prevent reigning champ Alberto Contador winning the race again: but it was left to Andy to soldier on.

Above: the Schleck brothers. (photo courtesy of BBC Sport/Getty Images)

By stage 15, Andy was in yellow, and all was going well. That was until the chain came off Andy's bike. Alberto Contador, sitting on Schleck's shoulder, then launched an attack and all hell broke loose. I know everyone has their own view on the situation, so here is mine: That was the point the Tour turned sour for me. Did Contador need to attack? Yes. Did he need to attack so fiercely? Definitely not. Andy Schleck deserved to be very, very angry. And all the YouTube apologies in the world didn't make it right.

Yes, the 2010 edition of the Tour de France was exciting, but Contador's inevitable eventual win left a bit of a bad taste for me. Fingers crossed that Andy Schleck's time will come!

So what will we remember about the 2010 World Cup which took place in South Africa between 11th June and 11th July 2010? The top quality football? The entertaining individual stars? Matches overflowing with goals?

NOPE!! The main thing I'll remember about this year's World Cup is..BZZZZZZZZZZ...the Vuvuzela!! To some it was an instrument of torture, to others it was music to their ears. Me? I loved it!!

South Africa did a fantastic job in staging the 2010 World Cup, despite the prophets of doom having written it off before it even started, with talk of delays and organisational nightmares. What we did see was a colourful and professionally staged event, although only time will tell whether the success of the event will have made any difference to the day to day lives of the real people of South Africa, not the politicians and the dignitaries in attendance at the various games.

As for the actual football, 2010 World Cup was one great big massive let-down. Having said that, I still watched almost all of it, but compared to those tournaments of the past which are still very special to me for various reasons, 2010 just seemed to sum up the state of world football at the moment. That is: full of overpaid prima donnas more interested in their next (obscenely huge)pay cheque than entertaining the world's football fans. I won't name any of them in particular, but those tipped to be the big stars just flopped. Even my team, Argentina, won't escape my criticism - despite Lionel Messi's undisputed talent, a combination of stifling man-marking and off-target shooting meant that he was one of the major disappointments of the tournament.

In fact that was my main criticism of most of the strikers on show - they should have gone to Specsavers as many of them definitely needed an eye test. Never mind introducing equipment to tell whether a ball was over the line or not (!) ...they just need to make the goalposts twice as high and twice as wide. Bigger goalposts = more goals. But even then, they'd still miss :)

Aah yes that brings us to England, tipped as usual by the droning pundit brigade prior to the tournament as potential winners...and in predictable style they failed to deliver. Perhaps the omens were in the World Cup song - 1990 had the best football anthem ever ("World In Motion") whilst 2010 had...."Shout for England" by Dizzee Rascal and the loathsome James Corden. As if this aural torture (gimme a vuvu anyday!) wasn't bad enough, ITV felt the need to give Corden screen time after every live match. A sign, not that we needed one, that Britain's biggest commercial TV channel is well and truly in deep s**t.

It was the year when France and Italy, both recent world-beaters, couldn't beat an egg and couldn't even make the second round. The French team took up the national pastime - going on strike - whilst Italy were sent home to rethink their style of play. Portugal (another one of my faves) also failed to impress me, with star man Cristiano Ronaldo probably off to check his reflection in a passing mirror or something. And as for Brazil - they were just a disgrace to the name.

The lack of goal-averages continued into the knockout stages and my frustration over the poor quality of the games continued...

One of the few teams to impress me though was Germany, who brought a mix of youth and experience to the tournament and by the time of the next World Cup they could be potential world-beaters. I was also impressed by Uruguay, so it was highly appropriate that my favourite match of the whole tournament was the normally meaningless 3rd place playoff between the two sides, which saw Germany triumph.

There were a number of new teams in the tournament, and some who hadn't played in a World Cup for a long time. I wonder what became of the North Korean side after their first round exit???

Before this year's World Cup, Spain were hotly tipped to do what they'd never managed to do before - to actually go on and win the World Cup. Although they had impressed me two years ago at Euro 2008, which they won of course, I was less impressed with their showing in South Africa. It was as if they were doing enough but no more, as if they were holding back, in an automatic-pilot run of victories on their way to the final.

By 11th July the only team that could stop them was Holland, who had enjoyed an unbeaten run and played some rather nice football along the way, even though I never really rated them as highly as the legendary 1974 'total football' side or my particular favourites, the 1988 European Championship winning side.

In this year's World Cup final, Holland abandoned total football for total wipeout, as they tried to take apart the Spain side one by one. In a tournament marked by many a questionable refereeing decision, the busiest man on the park was the ref, who struggled to contain the constant torrent of fouling and brutality by the Dutch team, who were completely unrecognisable from the skilled and promising outfit from earlier matches. Spain, already acclaimed as moral victors, struggled to score and had to wait until the second half of extra time for Andres Iniesta to finally find the net. Spain's lack of goal action was no surprise here, as they had the lowest goalscoring total of any World Cup winners - but the least goals against too. Perhaps that sums up everything that's wrong in the modern game?

However, I was very happy for Spain: they deserved their win as we would all have been pretty disgusted had Holland won, playing like that.

Above: the ref's seeing red. (picture courtesy of http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

Above: Spain celebrate being the world's best football team. (picture courtesy of http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

Only four years to go till the next World Cup!

• The fallout from Britain's Got Talent continues as the media is now giving us daily reports of Susan Boyle's meltdown on tour, resulting in her being unable to appear every night. I don't know whose idea it was for this lady to enter BGT in the first place - but whoever it was, they should share the blame for what has happened to her. Yes she has a very good singing voice, but it's very clear by now that the limelight is not the most appropriate place for her to be. For her own sake, she should take some time out, go home and chill with her cat. At which time the media should also leave her in peace.


• Wimbledon starts tomorrow, and as usual I won't be watching as I lost interest a long time ago, around the time of John McEnroe's retirement :( Anyway, expect Murray-mania, a bit like Henman all over again, the only difference being that Murray might have a realistic chance of winning.


• Summertime is in full swing, and despite our usual quota of rain I'd have to say that it's probably been better than the last couple of years. We should be booking my summer holiday within the next 4 weeks - we've made our decision about the destination. Can't reveal anything yet, but I'll tell you more when we're booked. (Clue: it's outwith our usual comfort zone!)


• It's Fete de la Musique in France today, which I always thought was a great idea - 21st June every year brings a national celebration of music across France. French TV usually broadcasts a big outdoor concert from Paris and this used to be televised on TV5 a few years ago then they stopped doing this for a couple of years. I checked TV5's website and it looks as if it's back on this year, so I'll set my video later tonight and will review the show on here in the next couple of weeks. This year's line-up of 30 French and international stars includes Calogero, Jason Mraz, Eros Ramazzotti, Milow, Christophe Willem, Seal, Alesha Dixon and James Morrison.


• Both Anders Lundin and Lotta Engberg are playing it down, but the Swedish tabloid press is enthusiastically talking-up the impending Allsång-war between "Lotta på Liseberg" (starting tomorrow night on TV4) and "Allsång på Skansen" (Tuesday on SVT1), Lotta is firing out of the blocks with Nanne Gronvall, Christer "I Love Yoo-rup" Sjogren and something which is more up my street - Brolle and Ola. As if that's not enough Swedish summer TV entertainment, "Sommarkrysset" is also back on TV4. Talking of Brolle, he appeared on last week's season-premiere of the show doing a tribute to Buddy Holly! Unfortunately - I've said this before and I'll say it again - TV4's webstream gives me internet-rage as it takes so long to get the video clips going (and this is with super-duper fast Broadband too!), unlike SVT Play which I never have any bother with. So get your act together TV4 because I want to watch Sommarkrysset and Lotta without any problems!!! Allsång kicks off its new season on Tuesday with special guests Tomas Ledin, Henrik Dorsin, Måns Zelmerlöw, Anna Maria Espinosa and Owe Thörnqvist. Not that we need a reason for a gratuitous pic of Måns of course....here he is in a publicity pic for this year's Allsång, picture courtesy of www.svt.se.

OK, I'll get this out of the way first: I didn't understand it at the time it was announced, and all these years later I still don't understand why the IOC awarded the 2008 Olympic Games to Beijing.

But they did, and there's not much we can do about it now. The knives are already out, with some critics branding it a flop before it's even started. Time will tell if they were right.

I've always loved the Olympic Games since I was a child - Munich 1972 was the first one I remember, (sadly for all the wrong reasons) and each four-yearly event after that has its own special memories for me, with only the Atlanta 1996 Games being the most forgettable for me. Maybe it's my age, I don't know, but two of the most special Games for me were Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984, despite both hit by retaliating boycotts, they still managed to produce some amazing sporting memories.

I said at the time that it would take a lot to top Sydney 2000, which (IMHO) put on the best opening and closing ceremonies I've ever seen, so Beijing's got a lot to live up to.

I'm not patriotic in any way, but it would be quite nice if Team GB could pick up the odd medal or two. I'll be cheering them on in the cycling and athletics anyway, although I'm not so keen on those equestrian and shooting things! It's been an incredibly low-key build up over here, with more media attention being focused on the political aspects of the Games, and the health hazards of the smog than how many medals we'll win. A far cry from the golden age of the 1980s and early 1990s when British athletes were never far from the medals podium. (My favourite event back then was the 400m individual and relay races, and that probably had everything to do with Roger Black...!)

Anyway - good luck to all the athletes from all the competing nations big and small, and hope that it will be a Games to remember. Over to you, Beijing...

It's all over now, so I suppose it's back to trying to remember what I did with my evenings before Euro 2008 started!

Well done to Spain for an emphatic victory over a strangely under-par Russia tonight. Now you know what you have to do - get out there and win this tournament, and shed that 'underachievers' tag for ever!

...you were robbed tonight. And I'm not happy :(((

Nothing personal against Germany, but tonight they were all luck and no skill, and a shadow of their once mighty selves.

Tomorrow: semi-final 2 - Russia vs Spain. Should be a cracker, hopefully: may the best team win - and whatever team that is, that will be the one that I will be supporting in the Euro 2008 final on Sunday.

Two weeks into the tournament and Euro 2008 is teaching us one thing: it's all about teamwork, rather than the 'star players'.

The quarter-final stage began tonight. I have always been a big fan of the Portuguese national team, but this time round they were just lacking the "oomph" needed to drive them on in this competition. The problem may have been that it was less Portugal, more "Team Ronaldo" if the TV commentators were anything to go by. Ronaldo is an extremely gifted and talented player, but in this tournament he left me cold. This time his lacklustre performance - well out of proportion to his ego - coupled with "Big Phil" Scolari's ill-timed 'bye bye Portugal, see ya, I'm off to Chelsea' announcement, may ultimately have hastened their demise.

There are some certainties in life: price rises, disappointing second albums and ...Germany will always make the last 8. At least. Again they don't quite play exciting enough football to thrill me, but I get the feeling that we have yet to see the best from them.


I'm ashamed to say this, but I haven't seen Croatia play yet - that will change tomorrow when I give their potentially exciting clash with Turkey my full attention. Turkey are a battling, spirited, never-say-die team and after their performance against the Czechs, we might just expect a further shock result.

No offence to reigning champions Greece, but I'm glad they're gone as they bored me. Ditto Austria, Switzerland, Poland. France...were just shocking. And Sweden...I love your country but this time round, I couldn't say the same for the lifeless performances by the national team. (Apart from the mighty Henrik Larsson, a true legend).

Quite appropriate that the tournament is taking place in (Austria and) Switzerland, as I'm feeling a major sense of neutrality now and can't decide whether to support Holland or Spain, both of whom have played great attacking football. That's what I really wanted from Euro 2008 and it has (mainly) delivered. I'm particularly impressed by Holland, who are playing a delightful passing game, as indeed are Russia - no surprise as they're managed by Guus Hiddink - it's a pity that both will meet as early as Saturday's quarter-final as I'd liked to have seen that tie at a later stage. I've got that feeling that Holland might just do it this year and repeat their triumph of 1988!