Friday 21 August 2009

Summer action


During the summer break Brazil won the Confederations Cup as expected by coming from behind to beat unexpected finalists USA who later reached the Gold Cup final on home soil but were demolished 5-0 by Mexico.

Several youth cups took place in Europe with England reaching 3 of the finals. The English girls picked up the under 19 trophy, but their male compatriots lost to hosts Ukraine at the same age and to Germany in the under 21 final in Sweden.

In the transfer market Christiano Ronaldo finally moved from Manchester United to Real Madrid while injury prone Michael Owen joined the English champions on a free transfer.

Manchester City splashed out on Adebayor, Tevez, Santa Cruz, Kolo Toure and Gareth Barry.

In Europe Kaka, Karim Benzema and Xabi Alonso joined Ronaldo at Real Madrid who sold Klaas Jan Huntelaar to AC Milan while Barcelona acquired the services of Zlatan Ibrahimovic from Inter Milan in exchange for Samuel Eto’o and loan-to-buy Aliaksandr Hleb.

After a host of pre-season friendly matches the Community Shield, in which Chelsea defeated Man Utd on penalties, signalled the start of the new season in England.(Petr Cech saves Giggs penalty in picture above)

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