Naija Sport

29.6.08

Ahead of Germany v Spain

Germany will have mixed feelings regarding referee Roberto Rosetti. The Italian was in charge on 28 April 2004, when Germany suffered one of their biggest defeats in recent memory in a friendly against Romania (1-5). Rosetti was also the referee in Germany's 2-1 away win against the Czech Republic in the 2008 European Championship qualification.

Spain have also had changing fortunes when Roberto Rosetti was the referee. At the 2006 World Cup, Spain lost 3-1 against France in the round of the last 16. In the 2008 European Championship qualification, Rosetti was also the referee when Spain beat Sweden 3-0 at home

Germany and Spain have met each other 19 times and Germany have won eight of these contests, while Spain proved the strongest on five occasions.

At the World Cup and European Championship, the two teams have played each other five times, with Germany winning three times and Spain having the upper hand only once.

Spain's only victory in the Europeans was a 1-0 group phase triumph in 1984. Antonio Maceda's legendary injury time header eliminated West Germany, marking the only time until 2000 that (West) Germany were stranded in the group phase of a European Championship finals.

The last time these two met was a friendly in February 2003, which Spain won 3-1

NowPublic

Record-breaking serve at Wimbledon by Venus Williams

Venus Williams records the fastest serve ever by a woman at Wimbledon with the scoreboard also had Williams winning 6-1, 7-5 Saturday over qualifier

One swing from completing her week’s work, Venus Williams toed the baseline, dribbled the ball, gave it a toss and delivered yet another thunderclap serve at sun-kissed Wimbledon.

The ace bounced off the Court 1 backstop as Williams trotted to the net to bid another foe farewell.

The scoreboard said 127 mph, the fastest women’s serve ever recorded at Wimbledon

NowPublic

28.6.08

NBC: Beijing Olympics Online Video Available Only After TV Broadcast

Sports fans in the world over had started rejoicing that finally we could do away with the lame soft-focus athlete stories and parochial commentary from NBCU with this Olympics: Yes, the company will have 2,200 hours of live competition from Beijing available online on NBCOlympics.com, but such hope is now gone with some heavy restrictions...we mentioned some of this heavy handedness earlier about Olympic trials

Other TV networks have a limited window in which to show Olympics highlights, but no video of Olympic events is permitted to be shown on any website besides NBCOlympics.com
-- No events that are scheduled to be televised (on NBCU’s six TV channels) will be available online until after they are seen on TV. If this is the case, what’s this about 2,200 hours of live coverage online? Is it only on-demand later