School Yard Lessons
Last week I started going through the boxes that contain my personal library. There are a lot of books to unpack, along with papers and past writing projects. And, there are some bits of personal memorabilia, such as old school books. It was fun to look though books from Grade 3. In that year I [...]
RIP Seve
The golf world is in mourning today over the passing of Seve Ballesteros, one of the greatest and most loved players in the modern game. Seve won five majors; the Open Championship (the British Open for those in the US) in 1979, 1984, 1988 (he was the first continental European golfer to win the Open [...]
More Mundial
It’s been a great world cup from my perspective. I’ve managed to see a lot of games and am simply loving that fully half of the quarter finalists are from South America. Wouldn’t it be nice to see all South American semi-finalists? A few weeks ago I made some predictions about who would make up [...]
Mundial 2010
In case you hadn’t heard, the FIFA World Cup begins tonight. Eight years ago I ran a small world cup blog, which looking back on it now, was not too shabby. I’m not doing that this time around, relying instead on others (like the excellent tactical blog, Zonal Marking) to wrap some detail, humour and [...]
What Exactly Were You Looking For?
Blog stats are a funny thing. Some people obsess over them, others avoid them and the clueless (like me) wonder what to do with them. I used to like to highlight the blogs that drove traffic to this site, the top referrers, because they played an essential role in blogreading – back when trackbacks were [...]
When Low Self-Esteem Is Not What It Seems
Self-esteem issues are a common complaint for my generation and used as an excuse for all sorts of relational and occupational problems. It’s one of those subjects we all encounter and, to be frank, one that I understand less and less well as the years pass. Part of the problem, for me, is that some [...]
OK, That Was A Good Game
As a kid, I loved American Football and especially loved the SuperBowl. As a teenager I got into the habit of inviting friends around and having a SuperBowl party. By early adulthood, that had grown into a serious social event, complete with Hot Dogs, American beer and far too many corn chips. However, in recent [...]
10+5+2= Change?
Two years ago today we left Delhi and arrived in Hong Kong to start a new chapter of our life. Five years ago, on the same date, we left London for Delhi, with a mix of anticipation, excitement and not a little sorrow. Ten years ago, at this time of year we were living in [...]
Racism’s Edge, Or A Strategy For Not Listening
It’s an ugly spectacle; watching your football team collapsing under the weight of public rancour and outcry. Chelsea’s home performance against Fulham on Saturday was not the worst I’ve ever seen from the boys in blue, but they were clearly bereft of ideas – playing a simplistic brand of football. What brought back dark memories [...]
Goodbye Jose, Thank You!
Sadly, the news this morning is that Jose Mourinho has quit as manager of Chelsea FC. I’ll add more details as news reports come in… ‘Tears, hugs and two icy handshakes’ Mourinho has a bright future, impatient Roman only the past Technorati Tags: Chelsea, Blues, Jose Mourinho
Swing And A Hit
Enough is enough. It was not only over a year since I had played a round of golf, it was almost a year since I had hit a golf ball! I was beyond withdrawal and longing madly for the days when the course and practice range was a short(ish) drive away. So, I decided to [...]
FA Cup Final Ticketing
What a joke! Each club gets 25,000; but, the allocation to suits, prawn sandwich eaters and hangers-on (i.e., sponsors) comes from within that allocation. 17,000 tickets go to debenture holders and the remaining 23,000 goes out on the whim of the FA. No wonder the Blues saw fit to make the following statement, ‘At a [...]
True Footballing Genius
Thanks to Spanish newspaper, AS, we have a head to head comparision of Lionel Messi’s stunning goal against Getafe and Maradona’s breathtaking goal against Inglaterra in M?©xico ’86. Technorati Tags: Messi, Maradona
English Sport’s Eight Deadly Sins
In the wake of England’s catastrophic failure to regain the Ashes, there has been a lot of introspection and analysis in the British press. The best I’ve read so far is this piece on the BBC, looking at eight suggestions from “Humphrey Walters, who was part of Clive Woodward’s backroom staff during their 2003 World [...]
Girls And Football
Yesterday, C (aged 5.5) asked me if girls play football. I said, “of course, they can be very good at it too.” She wasn’t convinced, replying – “but you only ever see boys playing football on television.” Touche. Technorati Tags: Womens Sport
When Your Kid Starts To Excel Beyond Your Abilities
Originally uploaded by fernandogros. When C was getting golf lessons in India, her pro turned me to after one spectacular drive (for a 4 year old) and said, “She’ll be beating you soon.” If soon streches out to five to ten years and she retains an interest in golf then that is a distinct possibility. [...]
Blatter Gets It Right Twice In One Day
I’m not a fan of Sepp Blatter (head of FIFA, the world governing body for football, or soccer as it is called in one or two countries). I don’t like the way the World Cup has evolved during his reign (including the awarding of the last tournament to Germany instead of South Africa and South [...]
Let’s Get This Match Started…
The Ryder Cup is about to tee off in a few hours and I can’t wait! Technorati Tags: Ryder Cup
The Cultural Significance Of Global Sports
Interesting post over at WorldChanging from David Hsu entitled, Do Global Sports Matter? He tries to examine the positives and negatives of global sports, especially in the light of recent controversies. “The interesting thing is that many of these criticisms of sport do reflect many of our other concerns about the contradictions and conflicts inherent [...]
11 Links For A Sunday
I have been adding a lot of stuff to my del.icio.us pages and there is a lot of interesting content I wanted to highlight, but haven’t have time to blog about. So here are a few, semi-contextless links for you, Springspotters (also check out the related site, Trendwatching) – Yes, I have signed up. ThisOneNext [...]
Remembering Zidane
Bumping this one up from the comments. Kris has created a cool Zidane website with some excellent clips and links. Technorati Tags: Zidane
Golf As A Spiritual Activity?
I like golf and I like martial arts movies. I like watching tiger woods hit drives and I like watching sword fights. I wish I could chip a ball like Phil Mickleson and putt like Retief Goosen and I also wish I could do those cool Samurai sword flicks and those slow rehearsed moves on [...]
No World Cup Blog?
Recently I had an email from a friend who asked why I did not run a blog for this world cup like a I did for the last one. For those who don’t know, or do not remember, I ran a small blog for the last world cup, which may well have been the most [...]
Fernando Gros is a musician, photographer & writer based in Singapore. Born in Santiago de Chile, Fernando grew up in Sydney and has also lived in London, Delhi and Hong Kong.