2010 June at LinesMaker

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... 

McDowell Captures US Open at Pebble Beach

The US Open saw a new cham­pion this year as Graeme McDow­ell fin­ished with a 3-over-par 74 on Sun­day. It finally fin­ished with a one-shot win over French­man Gre­gory Havret at Peb­ble Beach. With this vic­tory, McDow­ell, who hails from North­ern Ire­land, became the first Euro­pean to win a U.S. Open in 40 years and wins his first major championship. While the big names in golf had a very ordi­nary day on Sun­day; McDow­ell took full advan­tage of this and ben­e­fited from their misfortunes. It was a dra­matic final round as Dustin John­son; the overnight leader started... 

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... 

Lakers Win Their Sixteenth NBA Title

The NBA sea­son ended on Thurs­day with the Boston Celtics and Los Ange­les Lak­ers play­ing the sev­enth game of the cham­pi­onship series. The final quar­ter was played at a fran­tic pace with hits and misses from both sides and finally the Lak­ers came out stronger and in the process won their sec­ond straight NBA title with an 83–79 deci­sion over Boston. Bryant cap­tured his fifth title and the Lak­ers their sixteenth. The Celtics most def­i­nitely missed their cen­ter Kendrick Perkins, who sat out the game after sprain­ing his knee in Game 6, though Paul Pierce had a... 

Tournament of Upsets So Far

The group stages have not even ended in the FIFA World Cup 2010, and already we have seen two big teams going down to rel­a­tive min­nows. After Spain’s defeat to Switzer­land, it was the1998 World cup champion’s France’s turn to face the music. France who had drawn their first match against Uruguay came back with a vengeance against a very impres­sive Mex­ico side, but could not make it last for long. Soon the Mex­i­cans set­tled down and laid siege at Lloris’s goal, they finally breached the French defense when Man­ches­ter United bound striker Javier Her­nan­dez drib­bled... 

Phillies Overpower the Yankees

MLB saw a fairy­tale story come true with an age-defying feat, Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer threw eight innings of two-run ball and Shane Vic­torino hit a three-run triple as Philadel­phia destroyed the New York Yan­kees 6–3 on Wednesday. The 47-year-old Moyer made his major league debut exactly 24 years ago to this day and became the old­est pitcher ever to beat the Yan­kees. Moyer (7–6) gave up nine runs in one inning in his last start, but came back with vengeance and com­pletely shut down the dynamic Yan­kees offense, while the Phillies took a lik­ing to Yan­kees start­ing pitcher... 

FIFA 2010 World Cup Favorites Suffer a Setback

World No.2 Spain started their World Cup cam­paign on a dis­ap­point­ing note, when it suf­fered a shock­ing defeat to Switzer­land. The loss ended Spain’s amaz­ing run of 12 straight wins and handed the Span­ish just their sec­ond loss in 50 games. It was also the first time that a Swiss team beat the Span­ish although they played each other 18 times previously. The cur­rent Euro­pean cham­pi­ons, Spain, dom­i­nated the match with 72% pos­ses­sion and had 24 shots at goal, out of which eight were on tar­get. Amidst this bar­rage of shots, the Swiss goalie Diego Benaglio... 

FIFA World Cup 2010: Brazil 2–1 North Korea

With all the odds stacked against them North Korea started their FIFA World Cup 2010 Cam­paign on an impres­sive note, hold­ing 5 time FIFA champs Brazil till the 55th min. It took a maraud­ing Maicon to put Brazil 1 nil up and restore some nor­malcy to the pro­ceed­ings. When Elano scored in the 72nd min, Dunga would have thought the game was dead and buried, but there was another twist to the game when Ji Yun-Nam scored in the 89th min, still the Brazil­ians were able to hold on till the end and with this cru­cial win go to the top of the table in Group G. Brazil started the match at... 

Los Angeles Lakers send the NBA Finals to Game 7

The Los Ange­les Lak­ers claimed a 28–18 lead in the first quar­ter, rout­ing the Boston Celtics Tues­day to force a decid­ing Game 7 in the NBA Finals. Kobe Bryant pulled 26 points and 11 rebounds Tues­day, while the Lak­ers got con­tri­bu­tions from all over the court to take a 28–18 lead in the open­ing frame. Bryant bounced back from a 92–86 loss in Game 5. Pau Gasol added 17 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists for the Lak­ers, nar­rowly miss­ing a triple-double. Ron Artest fin­ished with 15 points. Pre­cious for cov­er­ing against the big Lak­ers lineup, Celtics...