Sporting Madness

First half : 30: Apologies for the late start here: some technical difficulties on my end delayed the launch. It's been a pretty good match so far. The Swedes are playing well, and they lead 1-0 off a nice 19th minute goal by Lotta Schelin, who broke right through the middle of the Canadian defence and fired home from close range. Canada's far from out of it, though. 32: It's nice to see striker Melissa Tancredi back from injury: she's a good complement to Christine Sinclair and Kara Lang up front. 38: A good chance for Canada, as both Lang and Emily Zurrer dive for a header in the opposing box, but neither can get much on the ball. 41: A Swedish striker breaks through, but is called offside. 43: Another decent Canadian chance after a long run by Sinclair, but it amounts to nothing. 45: Sweden breaks through again, but another offside call nullifies their advance. The whistle blows, and it's still 1-0 at the half. Halftime: Well, not a bad first half from the Canad...

A quick note that I'll be live-blogging Team Canada's final round-robin match in women's Olympic soccer tomorrow. Coverage starts at 4:34 A.M. Pacific (7:34 A.M. Eastern), so it will be a caffeine-fueled endeavour. The Canadian women, ranked ninth in the world entering the tournament, will face third-ranked Sweden, who lost to China but beat Argentina. Canada's draw against China Saturday means that they only need a draw to go through to the next round. Unfortunately, it looks like full coverage of the game may only be available on cbcsports.ca : bold is showing the equestrian events and the main network seems to be showing the Olympic morning show. It promises "full coverage" of the Canadian match, but that may just include extended look-ins between other segments. Hopefully, they'll show the whole match on the tube, but if not, I'll be watching it on the intertubes and providing updates. In any case, you can count on finding full coverage here (pro...

Photo: Dutch players celebrate a goal against France. (Photo from Unprofessional Foul ). Highlights and lowlights from Day Seven of the European Championships... Match XIII: Italy 1, Romania 1 Not a particularly inspiring performance from the Italians. I thought they'd bounce back harder after getting thumped by the Netherlands, but they didn't look fired up at all, even after the massive lineup changes manager Roberto Donadoni brought in at the start of the match. Full credit to Romania again: they played excellent defence, and could have taken all three points if Gianluigi Buffon hadn't made a brilliant save off of Adrian Mutu's penalty. Still, the tie was probably a fair result, as Italian striker Luca Toni had a goal called back due to an offside. Romania is now in prime position to qualify from the Group of Death, a result few (including myself) envisioned at the start. If they win their final match against the Netherlands (who will probably be resting their stars)...

Photo: David Villa celebrates with fellow Spain striker Fernando Torres after notching one of his three goals Tuesday in a 4-1 win over Russia. (Photo by Paul White, The Associated Press , via Slam! Sports ) Breaking down Day Four of the European Championships... Match VII: Spain 4, Russia 1 Well, the Spanish won in glorious style as usual, and their striking pair of David Villa (who recorded a hat trick) and Fernando Torres looks to be one of the best in the tournament. The Russians were a bit unlucky that the score wasn't closer, as they created several good chances and rang a few off the woodwork, but Spain certainly deserved the win. Don't read too much into this for the long-term, though: Spain has a long history of excellent play in the group stages and then sudden collapses in the elimination rounds. As Stephen Brunt writes , they've broken plenty of hearts before. "We have all been there, tempted by a car or a watch or another, sucked in by the magnificent aest...

Photo: Dutch striker Robin van Persie comes on for Ruud Van Nistlerooy (photo from The Malta Times ). Breaking down Day 3 of the Euro 2008 championships... Match V: France 0, Romania 0 I was expecting much better from this one. Instead of going for a win, both teams played not to lose and generated remarkably little in the way of offense. That's perhaps understandable from the Romanian side, as they were the underdogs, but it was disappointing to see from the French. There were some strong individual performances from the likes of Franck Ribery, Claude Makelele, Lilian Thuram and Karin Benzema, but on the whole, it wasn't a good day for the Tricolour (yes, there are more teams with that nickname than just Queen's). Consider these quotes from Makelele on the Euro website: "Claude Makelele conceded that France 'should have taken the three points' as he took the Carlsberg Man of the Match award following Monday's 0-0 draw with Romania in Zurich. The 35-year-ol...

Canada beat Sweden 3-2 in overtime to take home the World Junior Championships' gold medals. It was a solid performance from the juniors against the only team to beat them at these championships in their last 24 games. There were definitely worrisome moments, such as Sweden's tying goal with less than a minute to go (which brought back all the reasons I hate no-touch icing: in regular hockey, Matt Halischuck gets the puck Shaun Matthias shot down the ice and perhaps even scores an empty-netter to seal the victory, but under international rules, it's still icing even though there were no Swedes anywhere near the puck. For a while, it looked like the many posts and crossbars the Canadians hit might come back to haunt them, and Canadian fans with international hockey memories don't fancy shootouts in championships against Swedes (particularly when one of them is named Forsberg ). However, in the end, it was Canada's determination and grit that won them the victory. Th...