An unexamined life is not worth living.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Zenit wins UEFA cup - is soccer just like chess?

Zenit from Saint Petersburg won the UEFA cup in great style (or so it seems from looking at the goals from their last two games). 4:0 against Bayern Munich and 2:0 against Glasgo Rangers - those are really impressive results, but the 2 goals from the final match are even more impressive. The main childhood memory I had from Russian soccer was "clumsy". I guess the dutch coaches have had something to do with changing things for the better.

I find that in a long chess match opponents seem to be of equal strength, but at some point one of them makes a mistake and if the other player is really stronger - he should punish such a mistake and make it look easy. I find that Arshavin's pass that perfectly went through the Rangers' defence and found the Zenit attacker is in many ways similar to how in Kasparov - Anand match (1995) Kasparov's rook travelled across the board and found its target - the c2 pawn. In both cases the opponent could never recover after a killer shot ...

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