Sports weekend, Saturday Sport, Sport Sunday...
Here at SR we like to keep you updated each weekend on World Sport. Sometimes we don't. Usually, that means that we have something else to do with the Friday or Saturday night when the update is published. Sometimes that includes sports, sometimes it involves much more interesting activities. Following world sport can be a big task, in addition to proving minimally adequate coverage of American Sports, wanted by many of our US readers (try to avoid talking about baseball for a couple of months and feel the backlash I once did). Also, we have never found any sort of comprehensive calendar of all pro or major sporting events in the world day by day, or even weekend by weekend. It can be a bigger job than you might think, trying to track down and makes sense of Cricket matches in India, the AFL from Australia, Soccer from Spain and England, and the NFL on a given night. The entire world probably already knows the results of the Club World Cup. We usually report on upcoming matches in a given day, not so often on the results. The Club World Cup finals were held on December 22nd, and around here got lost in the shuffle. "Home team" Al Ain, surprised worldwide soccer and Argentina's River Plate by beating them in a 2-2 tie (with a 5-4 shootout) to reach the finals. River Plate took third place in the tournament, beating Japan's Kashima Antlers 4-0. Al Ain did not fare so well in the finals. Real Madrid completed a hat-trick of FIFA Club World Cup triumphs by winning 4-1 in the final. This was no surprise to Real Madrid fans, but might have been a surprise to Cristiano Ronaldo, no longer with the Blancos, and to Barca fans everywhere. Luka Modric opened the scoring for Real in the first half, before goals from Marcos Llorente and Sergio Ramos made the game safe after the break. Tsukasa Shiotani scored a consolation goal four minutes from the end, but an own goal from Yahia Nader in the last few seconds restored Real's three-goal advantage to ensure they are club champions of the world once again. The result marks the third Club World Cup triumph in a row for Los Blancos after winning three straight Champions League trophies during a golden era under former coach Zinedine Zidane. The outlook for the season, which has been uncertain without Zidane or Ronaldo, has been improved by this third win in the Club World Cup. In the United States of America, the divisional round of the National Football League playoffs took place this weekend. Winners in the four games will play each other in next week's Conference Championships, with those winners advancing to the Super Bowl on February 3rd. In the weekends AFC games, the New England Patriots beat the Los Angeles (formerly of San Diego) Chargers 41-28. Meanwhile in the AFC, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-13. In the National Football Conference, the Rams (still of Los Angeles) beat the Dallas Cowboys (still of Texas) by a score of 30-22. In the other competition, the New Orleans Saints beat the Philadelphia Eagles 20-14. This sets up the Conference Championships, to be held next Sunday. In the first game, the Rams will travel to New Orleans, to take on the Saints just after dinner. The suppertime game will see the New England Patriots leave the safe and rousing confines of their Foxboro home, to travel to Kansas City to meet the Chiefs. More on those games next week, if we at the blog have nothing better going... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "omnisport" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/omnisport. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
