From Hazard To Oldham, What a Week For Football !

1) AFCON

African Cup Of Nations continued to have it’s fare share of thrills and spills. With the final round of matches still to be played, South Africa, Ivory Coast and Cape Verde have already qualified for the knock out stages. Ghana, Burkina Faso and Togo can still make it to the final stages with the defending Champion Zambia still struggling with only 2 points from the 2 games they have played.

Burkina Faso have recorded the highest win in the competition after beating Ethiopia 4-0. The knock out stage starts from February 2nd.

 

2) La Liga

 

 

With an El Classico lurking around the corner in Spain, there was certainly no calm before the storm. Hat trick heroes, Messi and Ronaldo scored 4 and 3 times yesterday against Osasuna and Getafe respectively to lead their sides to easy victories. Messi took his league tally to an incredible 33 goals from 21 games and his overall tally to 200 while Ronaldo marched passed his 300th club goal for the Galacticos.

Messi is now the 1st player to score in 11 consecutive La Liga matches and the youngest player to have scored 200 or more goals in the Spanish top flight beating the record set by Telmo Zarra. Falcao was absent from the action as Atletico Madrid were crushed by Bilbao 3-0. The Catalans have now opened up a 11 point lead over second placed Atletico and a 15 point lead over rivals Real Madrid.

3) FA Cup

 

One of the World’s oldest competition has yet again proved why it has survived so many years. There was some brilliant matches across the Country and while the Manchester clubs progressed to the next stage with ease, Arsenal scraped through courtesy of a deflected goal by Theo Walcott in the 85th minute. Chelsea travelled to face Brentford and were given a run for their money as the hosts almost pulled off a miracle only to be disheartened by a Fernando Torres equaliser at the very end of the game ending the match 2-2. They will have another chance at Stamford Bridge next week.

However Liverpool and Spurs were in for a shock. Liverpool went down to Oldham and Spurs were knocked out by a spirited Leeds United side. The next round of fixtures will be played on the weekend of Feb 16-17. Arsenal will face BlackBurn, United to face Reading while Leeds will face Manchester City.

4) Capital One Cup

It is a proud moment in the history of Bradford City football club as they will play on Wembley Stadium after so much hard work. They de-throned several Premier league clubs including Arsenal, New Castle and Aston Villa on their road to Wembley.

Bradford will face Swansea, who beat Chelsea in their replay match in the liberty stadium. The match also saw saw Eden Hazard being sent-off after reportedly kicking a ball boy in his ribs while trying to collect the ball from the “time-wasting” boy (Charlie Morgan). Hazard faces a three match ban with  the prospect of further being charged  by FA.

Here is a hilarious video about the incident

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5) Transfer Window

As the winter transfer window looms closer to an end, transfers continued with Wilfred Zaha joining Manchester United,

Kevin Constant heading to Milan,  Diego Lopez leaves Sevilla for Madrid, Anelka moved to Italian giants Juventus, Sneidjer ended his transfer saga by joining Turkish club to Galatasaray and Coutinho moved to Liverpool.