Glenn blog #7 The top ten sporting fails of the last decade

O hey there sports fans long time no see, hows it going.  The last Decade was big for sport and there were some Epic wins but with every epic win comes an epic fail. In this blog i will look at the 10 biggest sporting fails of the last decade enjoy.

10# Tim Henman
At number 10 is every one’s favourite failure Tim Henman.  Tim never did manage to win Wimbledon all though he reached the semi finals a few times, and came agonisingly close to the final he just couldn’t manage to get his hands on the trophy.  If he did win he would have been on the biggest sporting wins of the last decade but it was not meant to be and  he is number 10 on my list.

Henman takes an ass whooping from Hewitt in the 2002 Wimbledon semi-final

9# Zinedine Zidane

Picture the scene you are in the world cup final you are captaining your country in your final ever match

and some Italian insults your mum what would you do Zidane? would you:
A: Ignore him
B: Knut him
What’s that Zidane you would do what?  You would do B, you idiot.  That’s what he did he Knuted the defender got sent off and France lost on penalties.

There are two ways to look at this it is either the best way to end your career or the worst (i Personally think it is awesome).

8# New England Patriots in the 2008 Super bowl
I understand some of you may not know what this is (it is American football) and has to be up here because it was one of the biggest upsets in sporting history. The New England Patriots were about to make history by being the first team to go unbeaten for a whole season in the history of the NFL.  All they had to do was beat the New York Giants.  Every single expert said the giants wouldn’t only lose but would be destroyed by the Patriots. It was a surprise that the Giants even got to the super bowl.  The Giants upset the odds thought  and instead of the Patriots going into the history books for one of the greatest sporting achievements ever they got into the history books for one of the greatest sporting fails ever and the only reason this is number 8 and not number 1 is that not enough of you actually care about the NFL.

I Promise not to have any more American football fails on the list because i know none of you care now onto number 7 (England fans i would advise you to look away now this next one is Embarrassing.)

7# England losing 1-0 to N.Ireland in the 2006 world cup qualification round.

England came to Belfast needing only one point to qualify for the world cup finals in Germany and having already defeated Northern Ireland 4-0 earlier in the campaign it was fair to say England were confident.  Northern Ireland couldn’t qualify for the world cup and were only playing for pride and they threw up one of the greatest moments in Northern Irelands footballing history when David Healy scored 10 minuets from time putting Sven and England under the microscope again. England did still qualify for the world cup but this was an embarrassing moment for English football.

The best thing about this is the manager didn’t even celebrate he obviously knows it’s just another England fail.

6# Czech republic being knocked out of the first round of world cup 2006.

It doesn’t seem like a big deal now because the Czech Republic are not very good at the moment but in 2006 they were ranked second in the world.  they were technically the best team in there group which was made up of Italy, the USA and Ghana should have been an easy group for the worlds second best team but it wasn’t and after an easy 3-0 win against the USA the Czechs lost 2-0 to Italy and 2-0 to Ghana needless to say they weren’t second in the world once the world cup had finished.

there were no pictures to illustrate this fail so on to number 5.

5# Massa when he Hamilton won the F1 world championship

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa needed to come 1st and for McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton to finish below 5th to win the Drivers Championship. Massa did win the final race and it looked like Hamilton was going to come 6th when Ferrari told Massa he had won the Drivers Championship. As Massa started celebrating Hamilton overtook Glock to finish in 5th winning the Drivers Championship. (Massa was not pleased when he found out.)

4# Leeds United

At the start of the decade Leeds were one of England’s top teams and the pride of Yorkshire they even  played and lost Valencia in a champions league semi-final and from then on things got bad they lost all there money got relegated twice and lost 2 playoff finals. Leeds united are one of England’s biggest footballing fail’s of the last decade and some may say they should be higher on my list but they did survive administration (just) and managed to still reach the league one playoff final in 2007/08 season when they had a 15 point deduction at the start of the year which is pretty impressive.

ah Leeds united i remember them.

3# Thierry Henry’s Handball against Republic of Ireland
Pretty much everyone knows about this Thierry Henry set up France’s goal against Ireland with his hand and now everyone inn Ireland wants to kill him. There was even a reported case that Irish fans attacked a Henry’s hovers store.  Henry’s Wikipedia page also had to be locked due to constant vandalism.

Henrys Wikipedia page.

Henrys handball in a video (made by an Irish fan)

2# France Being knocked out of World cup 2002 in the first round
France entered the 2002 World cup Strong favourites after winning the 98 world cup and the 2000 European championship.  But in 2002 France got Eliminated in the first round of the cup without a single win or goal. France’s results:
Senegal 1 France 0
France 0 Uruguay 0
Denmark 2 France 0
France’s defeat to Senegal was one of the biggest surprises in world cup history.

1# England not qualifying for the 2008 European Championship
I will openly admit i cried when this happened.  England failed to qualify for Euro 2008 by finishing 3rd in there qualifying group behind Russia and Croatia. England’s results in the group are shown below:
England 5 Andorra 0
Macedonia 0 England 1
England 0 Macedonia 0
Croatia 2 England 0
Israel 0 England 0
Andorra 0 England 3
Estonia 0 England 3
England 3 Israel 0
England 3 Russia 0
England 3 Estonia 0
Russia 2 England 1
England 2 Croatia 3
The two results which stand out for me the most are the Draw to Israel and the Home draw against Macedonia.  Both results were pretty embarrassing for England mainly because Israel have only ever qualified for 1 world cup and never won a world cup game they have also never qualified for a European championship.  Although the Draw against Macedonia at home was by far the biggest fail of the campaign who had never qualified for a world cup or European championship.

After England’s Defeat to Croatia in the final game of the campaign England manager (at the time) Steve McLaren was named the Wally with the brolly by the Daily Mail.

I am sure many of you will totally disagree with my choices, which is fine i hope you still enjoyed the blog.  Thanks for reading I’ll leave you with a couple of songs about Steve McLaren.

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