The Beautiful Game

  Jurgen Klopp, the man that saved Borussia Dortmund's blushes from the brink of extinction and had them living the dream. Had them playing at the biggest stage in club football. Saw having one hand on the Champions league trophy. And since the March of 2012, the Footbonaut played a massive role in helping him achieve this success. A futuristic approach towards training. An approach to help improve the most basic albeit vital aspects of being a footballer; Passing. The Footbonaut is a 4 sided machine that has shooters on either side. One of the 4 shooters, randomly shoots the ball towards the player who assumeshis position in the centre of the box. The player is required to control theball, look around for one of the 64 highlighted targets and pass the ball accurately anddirectly into it. This whole process is carried out and aperformance score is obtained based on the speed and accuracy of the player andthat is used as a benchmark for further sessions. The Footbonaut help

Reus : Injury Struck Joachim must quite truly be feeling Low. In spite of watching his ruthless, well-oiled German machine put Armenia to the sword and skewer them with six of the best, the Germany coach’s primary concern was quite obviously the ankle injury to the most vital of cogs in his machine.   Marco Reus . The Dortmund man, a swashbuckling genius capable of magic, or as much magic as German efficiency can permit, saw his World Cup dream shatter to pieces a heart-wrenching 6 days before the grand event. Germany fans all over the world, and the gaffer himself, must be ruing the fact that the man with quite possibly the most immaculate hair in all of football was not quite as careful with his ankle. This brings us to an interesting, if rather unhappy, turn of events in the build up to this world cup. Several players, each fantastic talents in their own right, will be absent from the sojourn in Brazil and won’t be giving us a chance to sashay to their samba. World C

     Amidst all the furore over a certain contract extension at Manchester United, lost in all the lines devoted to money exchanging hands has been the news that the rock on which Sir Alex Ferguson built his most recent successes is all set to leave the club. And for someone so committed to the side of football we so rarely appreciate, it seems only fitting that Nemanja Vidic leaves the Red Devils sans any fuss whatsoever, just a man who feels his incredible work at Old Trafford has well and truly come to an end. Football has two very different sides to it, the pleasing spectacle that the likes of Lionel Messi typify, and the hard-fought, battle-like approach that truly great defenders like Vidic bring to their game. If there was ever a man who epitomised the ugly side of football, the determination necessary to restore a certain order to the sheer chaos of defending, it has been the tall Serbian. Fundamental to United’s success for the better part of the last decade, Vidi

Alen Halilović, remember this name. You are going to hear this name a lot in coming years in the football world. You might have already heard about this Croatian wonderkid that plays as an attacking midfielder for Dinamo Zagreb, the most successful club in the Croatian football world. The Dinamo Zagreb’s youth academy player is also considered as one of the greatest young talents of European football. The Croatian starlet already has a stack of records to his name, though he is just 17 years old, after having an impressive youth career. He is his team’s youngest player. He is the youngest debutant and the youngest goal scorer of the Croatian league (just 16 years). He is also the youngest debutant of Croatian national team. He is the second youngest player to feature in Champions league. He has already made 44 appearances for his club as a senior player and has 3 senior international caps despite being just 17. But majority of his appearances are from substitutes’ benc

Manuel Pellegrini took over from Roberto Mancini only a season after the Italian managed to win the Premier League title ahead of local rivals Manchester United. An unsuccessful 2012-13 season saw the blue side of Manchester lose their title to Sir Alex Fergusson, knocked out from the Champions League group stages and also lose the FA cup final to Roberto Martinez’s Wigan Athletic owing to a late Ben Watson header. It seemed the investment put into the club and the return was not something the owners appreciated and it seemed inevitable that Mancini would make way. Manuel Pellegrini played his entire career at Chilean side Universidad De Chile. He retired early at the age of 33 as he believed his skill at Civil Engineering would be essential in rebuilding after the earthquakes that had just taken place.  After managerial stints in Chile and Argentina, Pellegrini was recruited by the yellow submarine. He led them to their record 3rd and 2nd place finishes in the