World Football Special Review Of The Last Decade (2000-2010)

Decade in football can be long and short period, depending from which points we observe.

Decade is a period of a great professional player.

In decade it is possible to change 15 coaches or keep only one.

In decade some countries will build few beautiful stadiums.

This is my special football review on the last decade!

I hope you will enjoy reading it.

Right at the beginning of a new century it became evident that the reverse of football, but sport in general, irreversible changes.

Real Madrid megalomaniac project called "Los Galacticos", which gathered the world's best footballers (individuality, but not as a collective), forever shifted the boundaries of football.

However, the most spectacular team in the world was  proof that even results can not buy money.

Figo, Zidane, Beckham and Ronaldo didn't justify the investment.

In 2002, for the first time Lyon won the French league and in the years to come they will become the only club from league 5 (England,Germany,France,Italy,Spain) who won the domestic crown for 7 times in  a row.

They also did solid reults in Europe (3x quarter finals of the champions league).

Lyon earned a lot  by selling their players, but from their own academy and continuously produced.

Players like Malouda, Essien, Abidal, M.Diarra, Benzema all ended up in football giants like: Chelsea, Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Led by a fascinating attacking trio, popularly called "three R" (Ronaldo,Ronaldinho & Rivaldo), Brazil on world cup in Japan and Korea became the world champion for the fifth time and also confirmed the status of the best team of all time.

Ronaldo was the best goalscorer as he scored 8 goals!

World Cup in 2002 will also be remembered for the sensation called South Korea (4th place), whose players became very interesting for European clubs.

However, there was a large number of the judge's failure which were often influenced on the final result.

Russian multimillionaire arrived in London. In years that will follow, with his money he lifted Chelsea on football map.

His presence in one of the English football institution has shown primarily to the ownership of the club ceased to bind with the city, party, patriotism and similar categories.

Abramovic fortune today is estimated at 18 billion € which makes him the richest Russian.

Due to the fact that with Chelsea and CSKA owner or co-owner a few powerful companies, it is clear what kind of inflow arrives at Chelsea.

Club in 2005. , after half a century without a trophy, won the Premiership, and later added two more domestic titles and three FA Cup.

In Champions League they failed to go the end but that trophy  would be  in his collection if John Terry didn't  slipped in the famous final against Manchester United in 2008

Football world was shocked after Cameroon star collapsed during a Confederations Cup semifinal against Colombia and died.

Foes death caused a profound shock. Numerous tributes to his joyous personality and infectious humor were expressed in the media.

Former Manchester City manager Kevin Keegan announced that the club would no longer use the number 23 shirt Foe wore during his successful season there.

Football club Lens also retired his number 17.

Lyon also also decided to withdraw the number 17 shirt that Foé wore a year before when he played in Stade de Gerland with the Lyon team.

However since the transfer of fellow Cameroonian Jean II Makoun to Lyon, the number 17 shirt will be used by Makoun, who stated on wearing the number: "In memory of Marc, for me and for the whole Cameroon, this will be for something."

Prior to the kick-off of the 2009 FIFA Confederation Cup final final between the USA and Brazil, his son, now fourteen years old, gave a brief speech in memory of his father.

British Sky Broadcasting kept  rights to Premiership matches after a huge battle with the BBC and ITV.

The television rights for three seasons, they paid 510 million euros, which  broke the magical barrier of half a billion.

Sky  exclusive lost rights  two years ago, after the European Commission argued that such a principle is opposed to healthy competition.

After the controversy over the ownership structure of one of the world's biggest clubs, the majority owner of Manchester United became  Malcolm Glazer.

The trend of internationalization that has continued, only this time the money came from America, not from Russia.

However, the Glazer family has disposed of much smaller funds than Abramovic.

Fans were against the Glazer family. They began to write banners, compose an "anti Glazer" songs and wear the golden-green color as a sign of "original" Manchester United. David Beckham also supported them.

Even they established the new, protest club - F.C. United of Manchester. Only, that club did not have Ronaldo and Rooney.

FIFA Politics of rotation  by continent has led the World Cup  in Africa. Although Sepp Blatter quickly dropped this rotation, Africa got their five minutes.

At the beginning of the project  South Africa received a little bit  disbelief and almost humorous, but skeptics have gradually disappeared as the World Cup was coming closer.

Among the fiercest opponents of this decision was Franz Beckenbauer.

In South Africa was a long time struggled with the terms of construction, financing and assured potential visitors that their crime rate do not need to worry.

Just a reminder, South Africans got 14 votes, while Morocco went to ten, and Egypt none.

In 2003-2004 Arsenal went unbeaten throughout the league season - a rare feat.

Some of the goals and plays from that season are simply breath taking.

The team was called the "Invincibles" and consisted of Arsenal and football greats like Henry, Viera, Bergkamp, Toure and Pires.

Their final record for the 2003-2004 league campaign stood at 26 wins, 12 draws and 0 losses, out of 38 games total, an unbeaten run not matched in any single season by any team in an English league division

Arsenal ended the run 49 league games unbeaten, also a national record, the sequence coming to an end with a controversial defeat to Manchester United.

The Premier League commissioned a special gold version of the Premiership trophy to commemorate Arsenal's unbeaten season.

The world was introduced by eloquent, often arrogant, but highly successful coach by the name of Jose Mourinho.

Portuguese coach made almost unimaginable feat with Porto and took him to the title in the Champions League, otherwise reserved only for the giants.

The victory over Manchester United in the Champions League British public has focused attention on Mourinho , and although he wanted in Liverpool, after he was hired by Roman Abramovich.

He will forever be remembered when he gave himself a nickname "The Special One".

Am I proud that I came to Chelsea?

You should be happy and proud, because you get a European champion for coach.

Snapped on familiarization with the English journalists.

Mourinho soon became the best-paid coach in the world with an annual salary of more than 5 million pounds

Greece prepared the biggest surprise in the history of European football championships.

While many will still say that the Greeks until the end came with a lot of luck and close wins, but ten, fifty and one hundred years later the majority will remember only the title.

The tournament in Portugal has shown that powerful European leagues due to the large number of foreigners does not necessarily guarantee a strong team.

Greece has announced and upcoming events confirmed a definitive sunset once powerful team, whose league, meanwhile, completely transformed. Germany, for example is one of the few teams that has resisted such a change (it is enough to observe the constant borrowing backbone of Bayern). Later, Spain thanks to Barcelona will join them.

Although individual cases were before the German case is the strongest and echoed demonstrated that organized crime is embroiled in football.

Referee Robert Hoyzer admitted getting bribes for rigging matches in 2.Bundesliga and in Cup, and his associates, most of them Croats, thanks to that earn large sums on betting (around 2 million €).

All this happened before the World Cup and the controversy has thus received more public attention.

Referee Hoyzer was  sentenced to two and half years in prison, and justice has caught up with a lot of other referees, players and officials who were involved in the match fixing.

CSKA Moscow won the UEFA Cup, and it was only the beginning of the good results of Russian clubs and national team.

Football in the biggest country in the world broke out among the most popular sports, primarily due to high marketing potential.

These are teams with strong financial support, excellent logistics and ambitions that were planned in accordance with the possibilities.

Football fans are well aware that the success of CSKA, Zenit, Shakhtar and in the end the Russian national team and other quality teams are not created overnight.

These clubs are not among the elite broke thanks to stupid purchases and real appetites of their power.

Although it is indisputable that  behind the powerful lobby  hides filled  rich people but for years working hard and patiently working to establish their own professional drive, creating a brand renewal infrastructure, networks scouts and similar essential things.

Shopping wisely confirmed by numerous players such as: Jo, Vagner Love, Srna, Willian, Willian, Ilsinho, Fernandinho, Jadson, Olić, Krasić, Honda, Škrtel, Danny.......

Champions League final in Istanbul was one of the most exciting in the history of the competition.

Liverpool against AC Milan turned  0:3 and then celebrated after the penalty, although the Italians after the first half, had three goals and started to dream of the seventh Champions League trophy.

We will never know, but we can assume what one and the other coach, Carlo Ancelotti and Rafael Benitez, said to their players at halftime.

However, for sure  will be remembered,   rarely seen perseverance and hope that   Steven Gerrard showed when  seemingly elusive behind his team turned to the crowd and forced them to fiercely support Liverpool.

My only problem is that I currently can not find words to describe what has just happened - famous Benitez words after the final match.

Million of fans greeted their heroes in Liverpool, and studies have shown that every fifth Englishman took a vacation.

Liverpool will, unfortunately, shortly afterwards sunk in a results and financial crisis.

The scandal of massive proportions, much higher than that in Germany a year ago, broke out in the Apennines.

Italian police uncovered a network of corruption and complicity between the biggest clubs (without Inter and Roma) and judicial organizations.

The main operative in the dishonorable actions was the Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi, who, in addition to being banned from football for life, still awaiting a final verdict.

During the punishment for match fixing  the worst has passed Juventus. Kicked in the Serie B and deducted his titles in 2005 and 2006. The others (Milan,Fiorentina,Lazio,Reggina) lost some points.

After such a drastic drop, Juventus as the most successful Italian club is no longer able to return to the old paths of glory, while Inter  skillfully used the resulting situation and dominated domestic football. From 2006 until now, they have won five consecutive national titles.

World Cup 2006 in Germany was among the most watched events in television history.

As the competition drew the end, so the records fell, and the final picture has been watched by 715 million people.

World Cup in Germany will be remembered by a lot of exciting moments and unpredictable results.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Italy became the World Champion.  Already worn Team Marcelo Lippi expertly prepared and demonstrated to the world  how to achieve success on this tournament.

Whenever in the future to talk about this event, it will be impossible to miss the departure of Zinedine Zidane.

Great Zizou did a farewell on unexpected way -  losing his temper on Marco Materazzi provocation by hitting  him in the chest which earned him a red card in overtime final.

David Beckham is a person who, with Landon Donovan and some more, mostly contributed to the promotion of football in the most powerful global force.

His departure in the MLS gained enormous media attention.

The five-year contract with LA Galaxy earned him a total of 32 and a half million dollars, but it is only a small piece of the pie that is Beckham going to get hold in the USA. In addition to LA Galaxy suddenly turned into a genuine factory money, Becks is according to some estimates, the sponsorship contracts received about 200 million U.S. dollars.

Should we even mention that the club without any problems sold all their tickets a year?

In the first season they sold 250,000 Beckham jerseys with the name.

After 16 years there has been a change at the helm of the European football federation.

Frenchman Michel Platini succeeded Lennart Johansson as president of UEFA, and immediately began to change.

For starter he announced that he  wants to reduce the number of participants from Europe's strongest league in the Champions League. The project is, of course, liked by the second and third grade of Europe, but when it was supposed to achieve, there have been pressures from the powerful clubs.

A compromise solution is achieved in the modified form of the Champions League qualifying round, which allows weaker teams, but a little easier breakthrough in the group.

After suddenly withdrew an investor from Dubai, the American duo Tom Hicks and George Gillett took over Liverpool.

Liverpool after United and Aston Villa became the third team in full or majority owned by Americans.

It soon became obvious that the duo is not sufficiently capable of restructuring the debts that they suddenly found themselves by the neck.

Recently, they both raised their hands of everything and went looking for new owners, who so far has not yielded fruit.

In Cardiff they choose the host country for EURO 2012.

During the latest round for the first time was Croatia, but the joint candidature with Hungary ended infamous - with zero votes. Italians were also dissapointed when UEFA gave EURO 2012 to Poland and Ukraine. Soon problems occurred.

For a few months later, Michel Platini has threatened the tandem of the East that they will take them EURO because of slowness. 

Due to the lack of resources the process of restoring the stadium construction of necessary infrastructure in Ukraine ran very slowly, and Poland are found on thin ice because of the decision of the government to suspend the domestic football league.

After much negotiation about possible host cities, in December last year it was confirmed that the matches will be played in Poland in Warsaw, Poznan, Wroclaw and Gdansk, and in Ukraine in Donetsk, Kharkov, Kiev and Lviv.

England national team left for the first time after 24 years without a placement on Euro 2008.

It was a shock on the island, whose football league  is perhaps the best in the world, but is also full of foreigners.

Points have been spilled on all sides, and especially against the Croatians, who beat the England at Wembley thanks to goals from Kranjcar, Olic and Petric and the  doors for the final were closed for  England national team.

English players simply were no longer competing so much as once. Only a few of them, like Gerrard, Rooney, Lampard and Terry, in their clubs played major roles.

A good part of the team is due to surge of quality foreign staff in the club was in second place. The same scenario we saw in South Africa.

Due to the failure  Steve McClaren has been sacked immediately. England media with pleasure wrote about "bad" manager Steve McClaren, but later, he proved not to be so bad when he led Twente.

Gentleman who had claimed for himself as the only one in the history of a thousand goals scored, ended up playing career.

Although his statistics were greeted with a smile, because  Romario was writing down the goals in junior, informal and friendly matches.

Romario was once scoring for PSV, Barcelona, Flamengo, Vasco da Gama, and several clubs, and officially he is congratulated from the top of FIFA on his "thousands".

Otherwise, his statistic for scoring goals was impressive! (0.8 per game)

A few months after the withdrawal briefly returned to football with the remark that  meets his father's wishes, and boots were definitely saved in the cabinet in late 2009.

On EURO 2008 in Austria and Switzerland the winner became Spain for the first time after 44 years.

Spain led by Luis Aragones took over the combination that Brazil globally presented.

The best EURO 2008 Team of the tournament had 9 Spanish players.

This EURO will specially be remembered by dramatic quarter finals match between Turkey and Croatia.

Slowly but surely, the English teams went into the hands of foreigners. Manchester City under the supervision of the Arab sheiks in the past two years turned into a powerful European club.

City bought all his players and  currently  on one hand can be counted players who spented junior career in Manchester City.

You do not have a player? The City knows the formula: find, ask if he is available, buy.  It is simple when you got the money.

When they bought Baloteli number of foreigners have gone to 18!  How many languages are spoken in City locker room?

And with such a multi-national team coach Mancini last season managed to get up to 5 place in the Premiership but this season goal is higher.

Diego Maradona returned to football, as the coach of Argentina.

Maradona failed to make the team with whom he would have succeeded at least to the semi finals World Cup, although he announced the title. Nobody took his predictions seriously.

He didn't manage to build the game around Messi, and said that any ball over his cross will enter the goal.

Powerless coach whose team against stronger  at times looked funny, and archived with a smooth 4-0 loss to Germany.

He was sacked after the World Cup, after the association realized that they do not need circus man, but serious coach.

We haven’t had a retirement this big since Zinedine Zidane in 2006.

Over 25 years, over 1000 games, countless inspirational performances, endless football… Paolo Maldini finally said goodbye to AC Milan, bringing down the curtain on a glorious and glittering career.

Paolo Maldini has been playing for Milan since 1985, which is nothing short of remarkable. But what’s downright flabbergasting is that Paolo Maldini has been playing at a high level for Milan since 1985. No drop off, no letdown, very few's signs of that career killer known as “age”. For two and a half decades, nothing but class.

Maldini has always played with a rare combination of athleticism and style. Time and again he has bombed up and down the channels, crossing deep or driving forward, displaying dribbling skills and a light touch worthy of any top-level midfielder.

Long defined as the symbol of Milan, the world’s premiere defender and the man with a trophy cabinet enough to make all but a few clubs in the world jealous.

But it’s perhaps his dignity and class which have seen him become the favorite of so many without ties to Milan or those who don’t even follow Serie A on a regular basis. Always the gentleman with a bounty of gifts from God.

Whomever Milan turn too, they have cavernous boots to fill. Who, really, could give us the style, grace and beauty that Maldini has? Don't waste your time thinking of an answer to that question… just watch the great man in action.

After re-election as president of Real Madrid, Fiorentina Perez threw to create new Galacticos.

He immediately broke the records: Cristiano Ronaldo was bought for 94 million euros, the biggest transfer in football history. Kaka arrived from Milan for 68 million euros. More than 160 million euros for two players.

All international media agreed that the football market touched unimaginable  limits.

There were also several large transfers, but they quickly fell into shadow because of Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka.

Real's administration again showed great when it comes to business, but bad in the transfer policy.

Some players left Real such as Sneijder and Robben, who Inter and Bayern, led to the title or the Champions League final.

UEFA introduced a new format of the second strength  European club competition.

UEFA Cup has been replaced by an expanded European league, but increased public and the sponsors were not observed.

On the other hand, this move was definitely closed the doors of Champions League for  poor and less organized teams.

In this way the European football will be forever divided by an invisible "Berlin Wall".

Ireland faced with unbelievable injustice.

Thanks to Henry's hand France went on World Cup, but very soon punished themselves, with a complete disaster in South Africa.

There was a lot of discussion about implementing video technology in Football.

Barcelona became the first club in history of football that won all 6 titles in one year.

These are the Domestic Championship, Cup and Super Cup, Champions League, European Supercup and Clup World Cup.

Behind the success of Barcelona hides clear logistic policy. Their team is full of players from Barcelona academy such as Puyol, Pique, Xavi, Iniesta......

There is this big, substantial differences between today's Barcelona and Real Madrid. One is building, other is buying. Some win, others remain empty.

Inter didn't win Champions League since 1965, but it all changed in 2010 when they finally won the major title in club football. They also won the triple in 2009/2010 season.

Jose Mourinho became coach of Inter in 2008 and worked patiently to finally bring this title.

They bought Wesley Sneijder for 15 million euros, which everybody saw as the key player in Inter success.

But, most of the job was done by Jose Mourinho who was really smart when he  created "ultra" defense. Nobody couldn't break this amazing defensive wall. 

Surprisingly he moved to Real Madrid where he will try to bring them back on old winning track.

Exactly ten years after France, Spain has managed to combine the European and world crown.

The backbone of Spain was the team Barcelona.

And while France, Italy and England and even Brazil and Argentina tried to justify their failures by exhaustion of players, it is interesting that such problems did not have Uruguay,  Netherlands or Germany, whose players also perform a full and exhausting season in the top clubs.

Real Madrid in the last ten years spent  incredible  billion euros.

A total of 48 players arrived at the Santiago Bernabeu and the three most expensive were Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and Zinedine Zidane.

Barcelona (713 million euros) and Chelsea (650 million  euros)  approached Real Madrid. Manchester City also belongs to this rich company.

Please feel free to answer this few questions :)

1. What was your favorite moment of the last decade?

2. What team did impress you the most?

3. What manager did impress you the most?

4. Who should be the best team of the past decade?

5. Who is the best player of the last decade?

6. Did you enjoyed reading this slide show?