The UEFA Champions League semi-finals kick off tonight with Bayern Munich hosting Real Madrid at the Allianz Arena. The Germans, currently sitting 2nd in the Bundesliga and with little chance of catching leaders Borussia Dortmund, will be hoping for a good result tonight as the trip to Spain for the second leg might not be too pretty. Real have scored an average of 3.6 goals per game in all competitions at home this season, so any hope of Bayern keeping the likes of Ronaldo, Higuain and Benzema out is a little slim. Ronaldo alone has hit 41 goals in just 33 games this season.

Tomorrow night will bring us the second semi-final in the shape of Chelsea vs. Barcelona. The Catalan giants, and current holders of the Champions League trophy, have beaten Chelsea at this stage before, and very recently too. The 2009 semi-finals saw Chelsea hold onto a goalless draw at the Nou Camp before Barcelona snuck through on away goals after a 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge. The Blues have a relatively good home record against Barcelona though, winning three of five games and losing just once. If they can recreate their 3-1 victory from 2000, then they might just have a chance.

Personally, I see an El Clásico final, but I was wrong about the FA Cup and I may be wrong again…

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Name: Ashley Simon Young
Club: Manchester United
Nation: England (19 Caps, 5 Goals)

Few can say they are a regular for both club and country, especially when your club is Manchester United, one of the most successful teams on the planet. But Ashley Simon Young, the twenty-six year old winger from Stevenage can. Young has risen even further in status since his move from underachieving Aston Villa last Summer. So, how does a kid who made his debut for Watford less than ten years ago become one of the most exciting attacking players the Premier League has seen these last few seasons?

Making his Watford debut in September 2003, Ashley Young later won Watford’s Young Player of the Season award in his second season at the club. After rejecting a move to West Ham United, Young opted to sign for Aston Villa in January 2007 and made an immediate impact scoring on his debut. Later that year he made his England debut in a friendly against Austria.

After four good years at Villa Park, Young was snapped up by Manchester United, who beat rivals Liverpool to his signature in the 2011/12 pre-season. He’s shined at Manchester United and proved to be one of the buys of the transfer window. England caps have become almost second nature now and he’s sure to be one of the stars of England’s Euro 2012 campaign, providing the Three Lions don’t go out with a whimper like at the 2010 World Cup.

How long can Young sustain his form at the highest level? Well, he’s proved himself by emerging from a Championship side to be playing in the Champions League with the most successful English team of all time. The likes of Giggs and Beckham are still going strong so hopefully we will be continuing to see Young for some time to come.

Buy the Manchester United home shirt with ‘Young 18′ hero printing here, and buy the Manchester United away shirt with ‘Young 18′ hero printing here. You can also get hold of ‘Young 9′ printing on the new England home shirt here.

We are the online football shirt stores in the world, stocking +1000 products from national and club teams from every continent. Including football shirts, replica shirts, football accessories, football shirt printing and football t-shirts. We are exporter, wholesaler for soccer jersey and football shirt.

With the 84th Academy Award Oscar nominations recently announced, we’ve decided to do our own Thefootballshirt9 OSKA’s (Official Soccer Thefootballshirt9 Awards). Each week we’ll bring you a category and provide you with our nominations. You choose the winner. Tell us below, or either on our Facebook page or Twitter timeline.

In our first category we bring you:

Best Performance in a Foreign Language Film

Ekanga Amia (Equatorial Guinea)

Kaj Ennigarð (ÍF Fuglafjørður)

Bryan Carrasco (Chile under 20′s)

Oleksandr Aliyev (Dynamo Kyiv)

Rivaldo (Brazil)

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With the 84th Academy Awards on Sunday, I bring you the final few categories in the Thefootballshirt9.com OSKA’s. Over the next three days I will announce the nominees for the three remaining categories: Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Music and Best Picture. Remember, you choose the winner and you can do this below, or on our social media pages; Facebook and Twitter.

Best Actor in a Leading Role
In this category, we have the nominees for the Best Actor in a Leading Role or in more simple terms, the footballer who either single-handedly made a game or is best remembered as the star of the show.

Diego Maradona (Argentina vs. England)

Bryan Robson (Manchester United vs. Barcelona)

Jan Tomaszewski (Poland vs. England)

Zinedine Zidane (France vs. Brazil)

Ronaldo (Real Madrid vs. Manchester United)

- Ryan

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Football is a strange sport sometimes. Take a look at some of these hilarious clips from around the world as proof:

Laurent Robert accidentally knocks out team-mate Olivier Bernard

Chris Brass own goal

Celebration fail

Mick McCarthy gets frightened by nothing

Rivaldo gets ball to his ‘face‘

Referee back-heel fall

Steven Gerard pranked by boy

Thierry Henry pranks little kid

Mario Balotelli struggles with bib

Referee elbows Robbie Savage, Shearer sends him off

We are the online football shirt stores in the world, stocking +1000 products from national and club teams from every continent. Including football shirts, replica shirts, football accessories, football shirt printing and football t-shirts. We are exporter, wholesaler for soccer jersey and football shirt.

Today’s Champions League draw comes at a time when suspicions of match-fixing in the final round of the group stage have been published in various publications and on numerous websites. One game in particular which has been discussed more than any other is the Olympique Lyonnais tie at Dynamo Zagreb, the current Croatian Prva HNL Champions, where Lyon ran out 7-1 winners.

Coming into the match Lyon were three points behind Ajax Amsterdam with a minus four goal difference to Ajax’s plus three. Lyon not only needed to win and for Ajax to lose, but by a huge margin too. Dynamo is the same team that managed to hold Real Madrid to just a one-goal win at the same ground only three months earlier, but in the space of thirty minutes Lyon scored seven goals, including three in seven minutes.

Perhaps it’s not too crazy to be suspicious with the recent match-fixing scandals in Italy’s Serie A; it’s not unheard of for top-class football to be embroiled in such activity. However, UEFA have dismissed the allegations concerning the Dynamo/Lyon match and football does produce some very unpredictable results on occasion (see the recent Manchester derby for example).

In any case, Lyon are through to face APOEL and Ajax are out. Ajax may bemoan a possible ‘easy’ route into the quarter finals for Lyon and may have saw themselves worthy of defeating the Cypriots themselves. But the real concern should lie with Ajax who, knowing only a point would suffice for the next round, succumbed to Real three times at home. Suspicious activity? Forget the allegations and concentrate on playing great football until some real evidence surfaces (if, that is, it ever does). Highlights.

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Despite winning every game in their group at last year’s World Cup, England limped out in the quarter finals to France but, much the same as the England national football team, optimism will be high for the England rugby union squad going into tomorrow’s Six Nations tournament. But, as we have seen in the past, optimism doesn’t necessarily translate into success and with a new-look England and new captain Chris Robshaw only having one cap to his name, success this time around may be hard to come by.

England, the current holders of the Six Nations Championship trophy, face Scotland tomorrow at Murrayfield in their opening game and will be looking to retain the trophy over bookies favourites France, who themselves open the tournament tomorrow afternoon at home to Italy.

Scotland and Italy have yet to pick up the Six Nations Championship since it’s inception at the turn of the millennium and their last World Cup and Six Nations campaigns haven’t done anything to inspire confidence – they’ve shared the bottom two places at the Six Nations for six of the last eight years – so it would be a brave man who puts his house on either of those taking the title.

We are the online football shirt stores in the world, stocking +1000 products from national and club teams from every continent. Including football shirts, replica shirts, football accessories, football shirt printing and football t-shirts. We are exporter, wholesaler for soccer jersey and football shirt.