Man, The chelsea game for arsenal was absolutely it. It was insane, ridiculous. I wish i still had the tape of it. I actually bothered to watch him play for arsenal cos of the Nigerian in me. All the arsenal players at that time, Ashley, Dennis et al, were enamored by his skill. He would do stuff in training apparently that was quite sick.
yup i will always remember that game too. our whole team played great but kanu and ray parlour(MOM) put in a titanic performance . oh and pires skinning gerrard(who didnt pires skin bak then) was just sublime as it lead up to the goal for ljunberg. it was sweet revenge for the fa cup loss from the previous season.
I was at the tournament in Athens, too. (One of many, it seems ) My family attended all the games at UGA's stadium. My cousin even called Nigeria over Brazil, too. It was sort of funny, because we were teenagers and pretty green to world soccer, but she had this feeling about the Nigerian team... told some know-it-alls sitting behind us to watch out because Nigeria was going to take the Brazilians down. And so it was. In truth, we kind of adopted the Nigerian team as our own. We felt personally attached because, as luck would have it, after the team left the Olympic Village due to some conflict with the Argentinian squad (iirc), there were no rooms in the area to house them.., except for at the cheap motel where my family stayed! Yowza! (This turn of events was seen as disgraceful for the organizers. I remember the paper called the motel a "flop-house." It may have been, as it was cheap and near the outskirts of Athens, GA.) Nigeria beat Argentina 3-2 in the final. "Argentina is good," Nigerian forward Nwankwo Kanu said. "Nigeria is gold." (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/olympics/daily/soccer/aug/03/soccer.htm) The best part: The celebration afterward in the motel parking lot. Some players taking part, others being scarce. My cousin and I each got a pair of game worn (and washed) socks from a player. (Hers were even signed. I want to say by #13, which would have been Garba Lawal. At least mine could have belonged to someone we know. haha) O man, that takes me back. Good times.
They really couldn't. 86,000 spectators for the men's final, and what? >90,000 for the women's? Impressive. Great games in each tournament.
Great post. Yeah that was a really fun tournament and it was even more cool that it was being held on the campus of my alma mater. I remember hanging out downtown before and after the matches and just being amazed at the "World Cup-like" atmosphere that had taken over a town that I thought really only would get excited about the Dawgs. It was incredible.