Soccer News at LinesMaker

Spain Claims World Cup

FIFA World Cup 2010 has come to an end and the team which is on top of the world is the 2008 Euro cham­pi­ons Spain. Claim­ing their first FIFA World Cup, Spain becomes the eighth dif­fer­ent nation to win the World Cup. Spain started the bat­tle as favorites in the bet­ting action, while the under­dogs, Hol­land, did their utmost but just came up short. The per­son who had the max­i­mum impact on the game was the ref­eree Howard Webb, bran­dish­ing the yel­low card left, right and cen­ter. The match was an edgy affair with hard fouls and cyn­i­cal dives; a record num­ber... 

Spain Plays Holland in Title Showdown for World Cup 2010

After almost a month of nail bit­ing, scream­ing and cheer­ing, the FIFA World Cup 2010 is down to its last two teams. Spain and the Nether­lands face each other on the 11th of this month to decide who is going to win the most pres­ti­gious tro­phy in the foot­ball world. Spain, who was the favorite at the begin­ning of the World Cup, passed through a rough route to the finals, while their coun­ter­part, the Dutch have sailed through with impres­sive per­for­mances through­out. The Dutch dis­patched Uruguay on Tues­day to earn their spot in the cham­pi­onship game. Lines­Maker... 

FIFA World Cup Enters Semi-Final Stage: Germany Set to Play Spain

FIFA World Cup 2010 is down to its last legs and the semi-final matches are set. The semi-final lineup high­lights a repeat of the Euro 2008 Finals, as Spain goes against the Ger­mans and the Nether­lands will try to get past Uruguay. In the last match, Ger­many ran riot against Argentina, by hand­ing them a 4–0 drub­bing. Klose scored 2 goals for the Ger­mans, car­ry­ing on his impres­sive run in all World Cup matches. Thomas Muller a ris­ing young star put in another great per­for­mance for the Ger­mans; how­ever he will miss the next match against Spain. Spain did not make it... 

World Cup Quarterfinals Line-up Set

In the final matches of the round of 16 in the FIFA World Cup 2010, Paraguay beat Asian giants Japan in a penalty shootout, while Euro­pean cham­pi­ons Spain beat Portugal. In the first match of the day, Paraguay squeezed through to the quar­ter­fi­nal stage for the first time in their his­tory, as they beat Japan 5–3 on penal­ties. Dur­ing the penal­ties, Yuichi Komano stepped up to make it 3–3 but struck the ball against the cross­bar as Japan’s dream run ended. In the day’s final match, pre-tournament favorites Spain sent their neighbor’s Por­tu­gal crash­ing out of... 

Demand for Technology at World Cup

The debate of the use of tech­nol­ogy in foot­ball has cropped up its ugly head again. It is now fiercer and more intense than last time, as last night’s matches were marred by wrong deci­sions by the ref­er­ees at cru­cial stages. In England’s match with Ger­many a shot from Lam­pard struck the under­side of the bar and clearly crossed the line and was not given. While in the Argentina-Mexico game, a goal was per­mit­ted in spite of replays being shown inside the sta­dium that showed that Tevez was clearly offside. Eng­land were thrashed 4–1 by Ger­many in the round of 16... 

Do-or-Die Time for Teams in World Cup

FIFA World Cup 2010 saw another day filled with drama in Group C. The deci­sion to drop Emile Hes­key and start Jer­main Defoe proved to be a mas­ter­stroke by Fabio Capello against Slove­nia as the striker volleyed home to seal England’s progress with a 1–0 win in Port Eliz­a­beth. The USA topped Group C as Lan­don Dono­van hit a late win­ner against Alge­ria to give them a 1–0 win. Dono­van struck after Dempsey’s shot was par­ried away by the goalie, with sec­onds left to leapfrog England. Aus­tralia beat Ser­bia 2–1 as both teams exited this year’s World Cup. The... 

Group Stages Coming to an End

The last round of the FIFA World Cup 2010 started on Tues­day with Uruguay secur­ing the top spot in Group A. With hosts, South Africa unable to change the goal dif­fer­ence too much in their 2–1 vic­tory over France, the out­come of this match in Rusten­burg also put the ner­vous Mex­i­cans through. France exited the World Cup at the first round stage with­out even a sin­gle win and with barely a whim­per after this hum­bling defeat at the hands of Bafana Bafana. Mar­tin Demiche­lis and sub­sti­tute Mar­tin Palermo scored for the Argen­tineans. South Korea drew with Nige­ria... 

Big Teams Back on Track

Por­tu­gal ran riot at Green Point Sta­dium thrash­ing Korea DPR 7–0 and tak­ing a huge step towards a place in the Round of 16. A Raul Meire­les goal sep­a­rated the two teams after a closely con­tested first half, while Por­tu­gal lay siege at the Korean goal in the sec­ond half and dev­as­tated their defense with three goals within eight min­utes from Simao, Hugo Almeida and Tiago. FIFA World Cup 2010 favorites Spain got their cam­paign back on track with a win against Hon­duras. The 2–0 score line does not do jus­tice to the way Spain played, the Cen­tral Amer­i­cans... 

Super Sunday — FIFA 2010 World Cup

Paraguay dom­i­nated Slo­va­kia in an impor­tant Group F encounter, a first-half strike from winger Enrique Vera and a late strike from Cris­t­ian Riveros sealed the game for Paraguay who now tops their Group. Paraguay has odds of 33–1, while Slo­va­kia has no chance with odds of 1000–1 The All Whites went ahead early as New Zealand drew 1–1 against the 2006 FIFA World Cup cham­pi­ons. Shane Smeltz scored in the sev­enth minute, before Vin­cenzo Iaquinta equal­ized for the Ital­ians with a penalty, but the min­nows held on bravely to claim an his­toric point. New Zealand,... 

Big Names Fail to Impress

FIFA World Cup 2010 saw another big team fal­ter as Milan Jovanovic and Vladimir Sto­jkovic teamed up to bring Serbia’s World Cup cam­paign back on track and derail  Germany’s quest to win the FIFA World Cup for the fourth time. Jovanovic scored from close range in the 38th-minute just min­utes after Ger­many striker Miroslav Klose was shown his sec­ond yel­low card. The Ger­mans started the match aggres­sively, play­ing some attrac­tive foot­ball and looked set to hand out another crush­ing defeat, but Klose’s dis­missal changed every­thing. Ser­bia beat all odds when they...