It’s been a while since I wrote anything on the blog but in all honesty, nothing much has happened from an Arsenal perspective. My last article was about some predictions for the European Championships Round of 16 and I didn’t do pretty bad as I guessed six out of eight predictions right. We are reaching the semifinal phase with Portugal edging out Poland on penalties and it must have been painful for the Poles. Unlike the Croats that put Portugal in the back foot throughout the game, Poland didn’t have that cutting edge bar the first goal from Robert Lewandowski.
Renato Sanches did well to get himself a goal via a deflation but it was down to penalties to decide the winner and Lukasz Fabianski was beaten on five occasions as Jakub Blaszczykowski missed the crucial penalty to send the Poles home. They had definitely exceeded all expectations to go this far in the tournament and they can be proud of their achievements.
Today Wales takes on Belgium in what proves to be an interesting encounter. Both sides were in the same group during the qualifying phase but the Welsh took four points off Belgium, sharing the spoils in Brussels and Gareth Bale inspired the team to a narrow win in Cardiff. The game would have an intense feel about it and we can only hope for a great game of football.
Elsewhere, Arsenal has been linked with one Takuma Asano from Japan. We know how Asian imports bring their large fan bases and can be commercial successes in terms of sales from merchandise, but when it’s down to the real football, Arsenal’s Far Eastern imports have been very poor.
In 2001, Arsenal signed Junichi Inamoto but he failed to make any impact with the club before he was shipped out. Two Asians joined the club in 2011 in the forms of Park Chu-Young and Ryo Miyaichi and we saw how their Arsenal careers panned out. Park scored that beautiful goal against Bolton in the League Cup and that was all about it for his Arsenal career. Miyaichi, on the other hand, couldn’t even break into the first team and he finds himself in second tier Bundesliga football.
I know nothing about this Asano chap and have checked out some YouTube clips but as we already know, YouTube can make Yaya Sanogo look like Lionel Messi. They call him the ‘Jaguar’ in Asian football because he is known to have feline-like reserves of pace. Another Theo Walcott perhaps? He has also won a couple of titles in the J-League but in 50 league games for Sanfreece Hiroshima, he has scored 10 goals.,
I don’t have much optimism about this and I hope its just one of those rumors we hear everyday
Sayonara.
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