Tuesday, July 29, 2003  

I saw the amazing Finding Nemo today, and to celebrate made some Nemo (and one Incredibles) phone wallpaper. Get 'em while they're hot!

What was also amazing was packing the Hong Kong Stadium on Sunday with 40,000 other people to watch my beloved Liverpool play a friendly match in HK for the first time in 20 years. I've seen Liverpool live before (up at Anfield, no less), but it's still a special occasion and gave me the opportunity to see players I haven't seen before. And it was my first time to see the club in person for my little brother, another avid-Liverpool-fan-in-the-making.



Of course, that's all friendly matches are good for, really, since they're rarely exciting matches. The visiting team is always vastly superior to the local opposition and usually are way short of match practice (friendlies tend to be scheduled well before the season), and that combined with the fact that the match really doesn't matter in the end means that you don't see the sort of proper, cohesive and motivated performance you're used to seeing on TV from the visiting team. But again, it's the only chance people out here will have to see star names like Michael Owen, so it's worth it in the end.



Still, with the oppressive heat (36 degrees Celcius) and talk of Liverpool not adjusting well to the conditions, I expected a more lax performance even by the remarkably low standards of Hong Kong friendlies -- the nadir of which was when the England national team came out to beat a local club by the score of 1-0. I didn't expect Liverpool to beat that score by too much, despite the Hong Kong Select XI's best player being the overrated 36-year-old winger Lee Kin-wo, famous for once picking up a corner flag and throwing it as a spear towards another player.



Instead, Liverpool took to the weather better than their LOCAL opponents and it was a decent performance. French youngsters Florent Sinama-Pongolle and Anthony Le Tallec (who scored) really impressed me and overall the team played well. They probably weren't worth the 6-0 scoreline in the end but I'm not going to complain. Next up, Real Madrid (Beckham, Ronaldo, Zidane, Figo, Roberto Carlos, Raul et al), due on August 8th for a huge, huge game. Can't wait!

Posted at 11:50 PM

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