Shocking World Cup

Posted by Syazwan Hakim on July 7, 2010

“Tragically, in the knockout stage, the English were hammered 4-1 by Germany. It was painful to watch.”

Syazwan Hakim shares his take on the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Syazwan is the Biggest Football Fan at Stampede.

The FIFA World Cup, arguably the most globally-celebrated event on this planet, had begun in South Africa on June 11, 2010 and will end this coming July 11. It is an event worth 4-years of wait. Only this time, it is chocked-full of shocking outcomes.

Since the very first game till last night’s semi-final (at time of writing), the event is marred by surprises and controversies. Big talents in football didn’t play half as good as they did in club level. Names such as Christiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messy, Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Kaka are well known across the globe. But their appearance on the field is simply disappointing compared to their colourful club track record.

What Happened to the Superstars?

Christiano Ronaldo, the most valuable footballer on Earth – he’s worth €94 million euros – only scored one goal in 2010 World Cup. And it only happened during the Portuguese 7-nil rampage against Korea DPR. It’s almost like wearing the captain armband wasn’t motivation enough to play well for one’s own country. It was a totally different Ronaldo, a far-flung from the Real Madrid star with plenty of skills, trick and astoundingly fast acceleration. For the most expensive player in the world, South Africa didn’t see much from him.

Same goes to Lionel Messi, winner of the Best Player of The Year award. Nobody expected a footballer like him, with 34 goals for Barcelona under his belt, to not even score one goal for Argentina in this World Cup. As predicted, the opposing team’s defense marked Messi so tight that he couldn’t formulate a goal. But that’s a given – if you don’t keep Messi on a leash, he will demolish your team.

The Favourites’ Early Flight Home

Favourite teams such as England, France, Brazil, and Argentina, coming to South Africa expecting to be crowned as the World Cup Champion are just too weak. I can say that France is the worst team in 2010 World Cup. Contrary to the glorious era of Zidane, The French started with such poor performance. They only managed to get a 0-0 draw against Uruguay, then lost 0-2 to Mexico before ending their World Cup campaign by losing 1-2 to South Africa. They also sent home Nicholas Anelka just after tournament day 9 because of some spats between him and the head coach, Raymond Domenech. It gets worse after that. The remaining French squad protested by not attending their training. As the result of the protest, their skipper, Patrice Evra was ultimately dropped from the last game against South Africa and his armband was stripped.

Another favourite team everyone thought has the goods was England. Unfortunately, the star-studded English team was just lucky to survive in Group Stage. Poor performance by Capello’s lads nearly cost them an early exit, but with draw against USA and Algeria and a lucky goal by Jermain Defoe against Slovenia, they earned a sad place into the next round. Tragically, in the knockout stage, they were hammered 4-1 by Germany. It was painful to watch.

Germany once again displayed their real capabilities by showing the way out to Argentina in the most humiliating way, beating the Argentine 4-nil. Excellent performance by Thomas Müller and Mesut Ozil made it terribly difficult for Argentina defense system the entire match. Losing only once to Serbia during group stage,the Germans are now the favourite team to win this World Cup. Up to this moment, they have already scored 13 goals. That’s enough to show how deadly their attack form can get.

The Ghanaian

One team that caught my attention was Ghana. No one expected them to advance from group stage, let alone quarter-final. They nearly made it to semi-final, but Uruguay striker, Luis Suarez denied their chance with a game-saving handball few minutes before the game expired. Suarez was red-carded and penalty given to Ghana. It was an extremely bad luck for their penalty taker, Asamoah Gyan, who only managed to hit the crossbar despite scoring twice from the same spot. The game ended with 1-1 and extended to penalty shootout. Uruguay won 4-2.

Referees

Like any other football tournaments around the world, the World Cup is not free from judging controversies. The most famous controversy involving referees happened in England’s game against Germany. Referee Jorge Larrionda denied Frank Lampard’s 38-minute shot eventhough the video replay had clearly shown that the ball crossed the goal line for approximately 1 yard. Some people claimed that the disallowed goal changed the entire element of that game. If England were not denied of the goal, they probably would have fared better, in spirit and form, during the second half. This incident will ultimately ignite debates over goal-line technology since FIFA president Sepp Blatter has steadfastly refused to consider the possibility of goal-line technology.

Another refereeing controversy surrounded Luis Fabiano’s goal for Brazil against Ivory Coast. After the match, Luis Fabiano himself admitted that he handled the ball in the build-up to his second goal. Mexico also suffered a partial referee decision during their match against Argentina. Referee, Roberto Rosetti awarded Argentina a goal despite Carlos Tevez clearly being offside. Consequentially, both referees Jorge Larrionda and Roberto Rosetti were sent home.

The Final Two

Now, at this very moment, all eyes are set on Germany, Spain, Uruguay and the Netherlands. The Dutch already booked their ticket into the final match after they beat Uruguay 3-2. They will face either Spain or Germany this July 11th at Soccer City Stadium, Johannesburg.

(photo by gitfo)

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Kicking Off the Finals

Posted by Shaiful Borhan on July 1, 2010

“I was a France supporter back in ’98 and Zizou was and is my favourite player.”

Shaiful takes a break from the webby stuff to talk about the greatest sporting event on the planet. Shaiful Borhan is the Web Analyst and Developer at Stampede.

It’s down to the last eight in the FIFA World Cup 2010. In less than 2 weeks someone will be crowned the champion of the world. It has been a different viewing experience for me because this time I was pretty much a neutral fan. Being a neutral fan, the only thing I expect from the matches that I watched is good end-to-end football.

Quick background check, I’m not an all-time neutral though. I was a France supporter back in ’98 and Zizou was and is my favourite player. After he retired however, I tried but wasn’t able to really feel the excitement supporting the Blues anymore. Yes I’m talking about the excitement of WC ’98, Euro 2000, his injury in WC ’02 that saw the French team failed to go through and how he came out of retirement to bring them all the way to the finale of WC ’06 (and not to forget the iconic headbutt).

Back to 2010, I have to admit the team that caught my attention the most is Germany and the instrumental match they played against the English is my favourite match of the tournament so far. Not mainly because it’s a high-profile encounter, what impressed me a lot was the brilliant display of fluid playing by the German team of fresh faces with little international experience. Such a contrast than the line-up back then when the rest of the team were veterans in the likes of Kahn, Klinsmann and company.

Undeniably the match of the QF is Argentina vs. Germany. It is a historical clash, took place once in 1990 and recently four years ago and got very physical. Well this is the match I will look forward to in the QF. Somehow it felt like the finale came early with this one. I reckon it’s going to be good end-to-end football.

(photo by Grant Johnson)

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What I Like About Webcamp KL

Posted by Shaza Hakim on May 28, 2010

“Where you finally associate faces to names you often hear blogging and follow, maybe even stalk, on Twitter.”

Shaza Hakim thinks WebCamp KL has the goods and gets the maddening itch to tell people about it. Shaza is the Creative Lead at Stampede.

So yesterday was Stampede’s second time attending the Kuala Lumpur chapter of WebCamp, hosted by MindValley. Webcamp, to borrow the term, is a series of free events in the spirit of BarCamp with specific focus on topics related to “working” on the internet. It’s a great place to catch up with the Malaysian web community and finally associate faces to names you often hear blogging and follow, maybe even stalk, on Twitter.

On to the reasons why I dig Webcamp KL…

The Gathering of Stampede

We’re working remotely, all of us. Dov and I in Langkawi, Shaiful in KL, Syazwan in Ipoh and Anita in Banda Aceh. Sometimes we gather in Langkawi for some little island time, sometimes we meet in the city to welcome new team members and chat with potential partnering prospects – idylic but nothing consistent. So WebCamp is about as frequent as it gets for us to meet each other every month. It’s also convenient excuse to sound all-important (and ridiculously pompous) “Oh sorry I won’t be around this week, heading to Kay-Eyl for a web development conference”.

Above all, any opportunity to meet and hang out with the team, having good time screaming at each other’s ears at the “after-party” (read: high-decible char kuey tiaw stalls) is a must-go. No exclusion.

Meeting Smart Malaysian Webheads

I don’t know who coined the term “webheads” but if it means being part of the “web eco-system” (who coined that one now?), count me in.

I meet heavyweight Malaysian web developers who talk about intriguing things like the mathematics of social web interaction, how minute tweakings dictate your online sales conversion and how determining the good side of your profile shot is crucial for an effective social branding. These are perhaps things that start to grow on you after 10-15 hours of exclusive Googling, but it brings substance when you listen to the condensed summary of it delivered by a next-door geek unlike yourself, born and bred in Malaysia, who probably enjoys a frothy cup of teh tarik too afterwards.

High-Profile, Schmo-Profile

There are a few celebrated figures in Malaysian web industry who are yet to grace the event, but I’m more than happy to meet the real deals – people who do amazing web work yet remain relatively low profile by choice.

Most who attend are active web people, professionals of their turf. And by professional I don’t mean the ubiquitous aesthetic quality but rather the fact that this is a full time commitment. That and the responsibility of getting damn good at it.

There’s a different type of camaraderie – that silent nod you give each other to acknowledge whatever war stories you have. Working webheads make a different group altogether. You are not college students making extra bucks doing safe design for mass purchase. You have clients to plan great things with, schedules to manage, team members to rally around and devise devilish things.

You also have bills to pay, spouses who worry you’re not doing much else besides switching from one screen to the next, parents having touble explaining what you do to curious neighbours. There is no other safety net, no try-outs but damn it if you don’t love every minute of it.

Gizmo Parade

Alright, at the peril of sounding like an insufferable out-of-towner, I saw the first iPads (two of ‘em) and Nexus One on a Webcamp. With MacBooks and iPhones, it’s almost like walking into an Apple-sponsored affair. And let’s not forget the Wonder Woman life-size model and statuette in every corner. Make no mistake, the web is a boys’ club and no place is more prevalent in its dude-ness than a web event. Though strangely, it’s nice to be one of the girls who play with boys too.

The Tweets

Like most web-related events, Twitter is heavily bombarded with #wckl hashtags as the event unfolds. We have livestreaming and if you’re stucked in traffic jam, chances are your fellow webbers will be wondering out kindly with a tweet.

I’ve always been a passive participant – I like to listen and make notes. You’ll see me nod occassionally when a topic validates – that’s as vocal as I get.

Now Twitter allows me to absorb the content and timeline of an event at my convenience. I can go back to and scan through everybody’s hashtags and say “yeah I thought what that dude said was spot on too!”.

You can probably tell by now that I don’t go to many events if trivial things like this makes me excited. You’re right. I don’t. But I sure go to the right event if I were to check on the tweets afterwards.

Wu Han

Finally, I think I speak for everyone when I say Ngeow Wu Han is the star of the show. The resident creative director at MindValley, he is the main driving force behind the conception of WebCamp KL and probably the Jay Z among Malaysian web designers. Working for a company geared towards the more lucrative American and international segment of the market, he’s quite the visionary to look back into the scarce inner circle of working webbers in Malaysia. It gives many of us a rare but clear glimpse that we have something really special brewing here.

Web Baby FTW

WebcampKL 4 was super special because four hours later, a baby Ngeow was born into the web world. Congratulations to proud parents @ngeow and @salameander. Now if we can get more webbers to procreate, we can introduce some hope to the population and usher in Malaysia’s Vision 2020 goal (sheesh am I really writing this?) in full tech gear and style.

(photos from WebcampKL on facebook by the multi-talented @dannyfoo)

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