Football’s Back With Tottenham and The Women’s European Championships

Football’s back – Tottenham’s first signing of the summer, the kit launch, missed Villa but new opportunities come along and then there’s the Women’s European Championships.

Summer Diary 12

Tuesday 9 July

Gareth Bale – looking for Champions League finish. [Photo: Alan Hill]This is more like it. After a barren few weeks, things are moving again on the Spurs and football front. A few days ago we had the official confirmation of Paulinho’s signing. Then yesterday there was the launch of the new kit. Then the news that after rumours of us being after him for years David Villa has signed for Atletico Madrid. I can understand that it must be a more comfortable move for him than the cultural change involved in uprooting to London. At least that one has finally been put to bed. Christian Benteke puts in a transfer request at Aston Villa. I wonder if these two events are connected. He doesn’t go on their pre-season tour.

Not only do Tottenham launch their 2013-14 kit with the return of Hewlett Packard as sponsors (I have used HP PCs and printers for years and they have all been great. My blogs are typed on my beloved HP Envy 17 Notebook. It copes easily with simultaneously recording the Rod Stewart concert on the TV whilst Facebook is open and I’m typing this in Word. My backup is an older HP Pavilion Entertainment laptop – any freebies gratefully accepted if you are looking, the boys at HP marketing!) but the photo shoot includes Gareth Bale in the new kit and he says in the interview broadcast on Sky how much he is looking forward to achieving at least 4th place with Spurs next season. Hooray!

Is it me, or does it strike anybody else that Manchester United choosing Aeroflot as their latest sponsors seems, how can I put it, a little naïve or short sighted? £40million is a lot of money, especially when you are up to your eyes in debt but there are plenty of unpleasant internet troll types who I can see playing merry hell with it. I won’t go into detail as to why as I think it’s pretty obvious but I sincerely hope my concerns are misplaced.

Wednesday 10 July

Following my comment yesterday, the Sun’s transfer gossip feature suggests Daniel Levy and Randy Lerner will slug it out over Benteke. Real Madrid also apparently interested though, so that’s probably that then.

Women’s Football

Looky! Lykke saves Danish bacon.

[Photo: Alan Hill]

I’ve had a bit of a tough week and slumped down in front of the TV last night and the day immediately picked up. My wife had tuned in to the second match of the Women’s European Championship live on BBC3. Another first for me – I have now seen a female goalkeeper save a penalty – two in one match actually. No. they weren’t missed, they were saved. The Danish goalie is called Petersen according to the BBC website, so why she has Lykke on the back of her shirt, I don’t know. She certainly lykked Sweden’s penalty taker into shape though!

[Photo: Alan Hill]

[Photo: Alan Hill]Her ball handling skills were magnificent.  The wife certainly picked the right match to start with. Sweden vs. Denmark. She also made a very accurate observation; all of their hairstyles are more sensible than many Premiership footballers! Are you listening Benoit? Tom? 22 Scandinavian beauties running around playing quality football. What’s that Brian Adams song? “Thought I‘d died and gone to heaven”. This competition looks like it has the potential to be nearly as much fun as the Confederations Cup.

[Photo: Alan Hill]England apparently have a good chance of doing well. Can’t remember the last time I was able to say that about our prospects in a major football competition.

Here’s a pic of some spectators on the edge of their seats during a really tense period of play. I Lykked it all very much and went to bed in a much better frame of mind than when I started watching.