Azkals-Global Football School

 Azkals-Global Football School is a summer football clinic that I joined last May 7. It is called Azkals-Global  Football School because it's being coached by the Azkals (the Philippine National Football team), and players from a club called Global FC.

 The schedule of the clinic was every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Every Monday we had physical training, which meant we did more activities that would build our stamina and our bodies for a game. During Wednesdays and Fridays we practiced our passing, shooting, and teamwork.

 On the first few days of the clinic I was constantly out of breath and my arms and legs would hurt after the session, but after a while my stamina increased and my arms and legs got used to the training.

 After the first week of training our team had a tournament,called the Kaya Cup, meaning we'd be playing a series of games (around four), and if we had the most wins or if we had a lot of goals we would advance to the semi finals, and after that the finals, where you might win the trophy or get a medal. But since our team had only three days to play with each other we didn't have good teamwork, resulting in lots of bad passes and bad communication. In that tournament we had three draws and one loss so we weren't able to go to the next round. 

 Several weeks after that we had another tournament, but this time our team had better passing and better teamwork. During elimination round we had two draws and two wins, therefore we got to go to the semi finals. In that game we drew against the opposing team, since this was the semi finals we had to do a penalty shootout, which is one player vs the goalkeeper. I volunteered to be one of the three players who'll shoot against the opposing goalkeeper. My shot went in and so did the shot of my teammate, so the over all score of the penalty shootout was 2-0 in our favor, which meant we moved on to the final round. Sad to say we lost against our opponent in the final round, but anyway we got a silver medal (the first medal I ever received).

Soccer/Football

From Google

  The Origin of soccer is something no one really knows about, although it has been played for over 3,000 years in England, South America, and Europe, people still have different views on where exactly was the origin was. Some people think the Greeks or Romans came up with the game, while others think the Chinese because the Chinese have the earliest record of people shooting a ball into a goal, so that might have been where soccer originated. But the most information about soccer comes from England, so lots of people believe that's where it originated from.

  The Game that was played in England wasn't the same game that we watch now a days. Since it didn't have any rules you could hold the ball and even punch other players, this caused lots of fights to occur during the games. An interesting fact about the game being played then was that the ball they used was just a pig's bladder because leather was too expensive for a lowly and extremely rowdy game. The games started getting too rowdy and violent that King Edward III banned anyone from playing them, while Queen Elizabeth I even jailed a person for one week if caught playing the game. But no matter what the kings or queens did the people kept playing the game, because by now it had already become a famous game. Although the games became legal in 1681 when the British Parliament gave it a sanction, the games still didn't have rules causing lots of injuries and fights.

  The Rules of soccer was made by a famous collage known as Eton Collage, they made this rules in order to use when they fought against other collages, this set of rules were call the Cambridge Rules. This rules are what the games use now a days. There was only one rule that some people, at that time, thought wasn't right, that rule was: a player couldn't hold the ball. To settle this dispute eleven school met at a place called the Freemason's Tavern, where they discussed the rules that they would use when they played against each other. By the end of the meeting they had created two groups, Rugby Football and the Football Association, the difference between this two groups was that in Rugby Football you could hold the ball,  while in the Football Association you couldn't.

  The Name football is the original name for this kind of game because the main part a player uses to move the ball is with his feet.The term 'soccer' was first used in the 18th century by Charles Wreford Brown, a student from Oxford University. The students from Oxford were known for shortening words and adding 'er'. Instead of 'rugby' they'd call it 'rugger', while instead of calling it 'association' the called it 'soccer'.

Real Madrid Update

 In the past week Real Madrid C.F. has played three games, one in La Liga (the Spnanish League) and two in the Champions League (where the best clubs in Europe compete).
 In their La Liga game they played against FC Barcelona, their rival Spanish club, in which they won 2-1, making a break away from their constant losing against their rival.

From Real Madrid

 In their Champions League game they played against Bayern Munich (a German club) twice, the first one in the home stadium of Bayern and the other in Santiago Bernabeu, the stadium of Real Madrid. In their first game Real Madrid lost to Bayern 2-1, while in their second game they scored 2-1 making both teams have a even score in terms of goals and wins, but since this is already the semi-finals of the Champions League, a penalty shootout was necessary. In the penalty shootout Bayern scored 3, while Real Madrid scored 1. It would have been a tie, but a Real Madrid player's shot went over the goal. Bayern wasn't able to score more than two goals in the penalty shootout because Real Madrid's goalkeeper (Iker Casillas) saved the rest of the shots and that's one of the reasons why he is considered the world's best goalkeeper.

From Real Madrid

 Bayern Munich will proceed to the finals, and will play against Chelsea on May 19.Chelsea is an English club that defeated FC Barcelona recently and is a top club in the English Premier League.

'El Clàsico'

  'El Clàsico' is a Spanish phrase meaning 'The Classic', it's now the title given to the matches between the two top clubs in Spain. The two rival  teams that participate in this matches are Real Madrid C.F. and F.C. Barcelona. The rivalry is said to have started around the 1930's, and starting from then until now many people have watched their games, since their rivalry has lasted for such a long time it has been given a name-'El Clàsico'.They have both fought and won many leagues and cups, although they don't meet often, when they do, more than a hundred million people watch there games worldwide. What makes the games even more exciting is that each team has one of the top strikers of the Spanish leagues, Real Madrid has Cristiano Ronaldo, while Barcelona has Lionel Messi. All in all they have played 218 matches against each other, each one with different winners. I found the statistics in Wikipedia so I posted it here:

Real Madrid wins	86
Draws	46
FC Barcelona wins	85
Real Madrid goals	364
FC Barcelona goals	351
Total matches	218

  There will be an 'El Clàsico' game this coming April 21 at 8:00 p.m. CET. It will be held at Camp Nou, the stadium of F.C. Barcelona.

Although I'm trying to make this an unbiased post, the team I'll be cheering for is Real Madrid, so if your cheering for Barcelona, no hard feelings even if Barcelona wins.

Ronaldo vs Messi

Dear readers, while I'm thinking of something interesting to write about, I'll be posting a video of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, just so you know how good they both are.

(If you don't know which one is Cristiano Ronaldo and which one is Lionel Messi go to http://abieltheathlete.blogspot.com/p/my-favorite-athletes_09.html )

Vocal Christian Athletes

From Wikipedia

From Google

  Not all athletes are vocal about their beliefs, some of them wouldn't even mention it, but there are a few who are very vocal about it, like Ricardo Kaka and Tim Tebow.   Ricardo Kaka is a soccer player for Real Madrid and is part of the Brazilian national team.He once wore shoes with the words, Jesus in first place, to a game.  Tim Tebow is a football player(american football).He is currently the quarterback for the Denver Broncos.Whenever he goes into the field to play or when his team wins he prays, he also wears Bible verses under his eyes.At one game he wore John 3:16 under his eyes and that day around 9 million people searched on Google what John 3:16 meant. Being Christians we should show the world that we love God, and we shouldn't be afraid to let the world know that we are the children of God.

My First Blog Post

Since this is my first blog post so it's going to be short.  You probably can already guess what I'm going to write about just looking at the template,I won't be always writing  about soccer though,I'll probably write about other stuff too,but for now I'll be writing about my favorite sport,soccer. Today I shall write about my favorite soccer player,Cristiano Ronaldo.

From Google Images

To those of you who like Lionel Messi better,let's not get into an argument about who's better,because everyone has there own opinions,but in my opinion Ronaldo and Messi are even in terms of skill.Although Messi is a good foward,I still prefer Ronaldo.Cristiano Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid,which is a Spanish soccer team,he is their top striker and currently has the most goals in La
Liga (which is the most popular league in Spain).