The results are in, and Lionel Messi is the winner of the 2010 FIFA Ballon D’Or Award, over Spaniards and World Cup winners Andrés Iniesta and Xavi (with, apparently, 22%, 17% and 16% of the votes, respectively.).

There were SIX (six!) Spanish players in the 2010 Team of the Year: San Iker Casillas, Carles Puyol, Gerard [...]

“Uh-oh,” a tiny part of my brain thought on Monday evening, in the dying minutes of El Clásico, as the rest of my brain was engaged in going ‘wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!’; “I think I just saw Sergio Ramos push Puyol to the ground… and he’s just slapped away Xavi too… man, the next Spain call-up is going [...]

One piece of good news, one piece of bad news…
The bad first: Paul the Octopus has died. The psychic cephalopod to whom many think that Spain owes some of its World Cup success passed into the great ocean in the sky at the Oberhausen Sea Life Aquarium last night, while he slept and dreamt of [...]

Yes, really.
Players have gone back to their clubs, and international football prepares for a long period of hibernation (not this blog, though; this blog will just get really, really sleepy), but I had a little something saved for a time such as this…
The World Cup.

After the euphoria of victory comes the ecstasy of celebration… which, in Spain’s case, means getting drunk and clowning around in planes, buses, and a stage especially designed for the purpose of showing your drunk antics to a screaming crowd (also, putting your foot in your mouth).
So, come in and enjoy a few carefully selected [...]

It still feels like a dream… walking to work early on Monday morning, stopping at each newsstand on the way to look at the newspapers and grin like a fool.
Spain, World Cup Champions.
SPAIN, WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS!

¡Campeones, oé!
Finally, finally, we’ve conquered not only the ‘Quarterfinal Curse’, but the World Cup itself. We’ve showed the world where [...]

Paul was right. Huh. Who’d have trusted an octopus with this?
But he chose Spain and Spain won.

And, by all the octopi in the world, we deserved it!!! I know that victory doesn’t go always to the deserving, that pretty build-ups and incredible amounts of possession don’t always mean anything, but they did this time. Unlike [...]

Euphoria was last night’s game, and going to sleep with the beeping of car horns, fireworks and drunken voices singing “¡Illa, illa, illa, Villa maravilla!”.

Waking up this morning was running immediately to the papers to check that it was true, that Spain really were in the semi-finals, and finding a headline that Cristiano Ronaldo is [...]

The review, replays, grading, opinions and coherent thoughts will come later…
… now, it’s time to celebrate!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For the first time in their history, Spain makes it into the semifinals of a World Cup!
Spain, the team everyone was writing off after the match with Switzerland. Spain, the eternal underperformers. *Our* Spain.

¡VIVA ESPAÑA!

Quarter-finals, here we go!!!

While this match might not have been a gift to the eyes of neutral fans expecting super-sized servings of tiki-taka, it certainly was good enough for the Spain fans hoping to see a better showing than in our scrappy win against Chile.
Vicente Del Bosque, a stubborn man with an undying love for [...]