Archive for March, 2012

Euro 2012: Laying Odds for the Azzurri’s Success

Friday, March 30th, 2012

Even more than a Real Madrid-Barcelona Champions League final, EURO 2012 is what every European and football enthusiast is waiting for in the coming months. We are now exactly 10 weeks away from this Summer’s 2nd-greatest sporting event (for all the love I have for soccer, even I have to admit that the Olympics come before the Euros) and on paper, Italy’s path to qualification has been nothing short of excellent. The Azzurri finished top of their qualifying group with 26 points (8 wins and 2 draws), the third-highest point total across all divisions: only Germany and Holland have fared better (though in fairness Spain, who won all their games and finished with 24 points, played two less). Italy’s press has an idiomatic expression however: gli Azzurri hanno vinto, ma non convinto. This stands for “the Azzurri have won, but not convinced”, and their outright Euro 2012 betting odds seem to agree.

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Are We Back? Yes. No. Maybe…

Friday, March 30th, 2012

Dear Readers,

“August 30th, 2009″… that is how long ago the last post of mCalcio was published. Did almost three years really just fly by?

Many things have happened since then. For those who have been following mCalcio since its inception (or who joined along the way), you already know that a few months before that last post things weren’t going well for me personally. You may scroll down for a full explanation here, but suffice to say I had reached a certain saturation level. I just couldn’t take the day-to-day blogging routine than my life had become, and thus decided to take a long break. I thought I had subsequently “recovered”, but that was only an illusion. Following that post at the end of August, I decided to pull the plug permanently and move on to other things, all the while maintaining mCalcio online… “just in case”.

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