With 145 goals scored, and more than 5760 minutes of football played across 10 different venues, the world’s biggest sporting spectacle came to an end last night at Jo’burgs Soccer city Stadium with the crowning of a new champion.
Spain beat the Netherlands by a single Andres Iniesta goal deep in the second half of extra time to hand his side their maiden World Cup victory. As celebrations continues the world over, attention is gradually shifting towards the new European season scheduled to start in a couple of weeks.
In that respect, i would like to keep you up to date with some very important dates that every die hard Serie A fan should mark on their calendars.
The FIGC (Italian FA) announced earlier last month that the 2010/2011 Serie A season will begin on the weekend of August 28th and 29th and end on Sunday May 22nd 2011.
In addition to that, there will be 4 mid week rounds scheduled for 10th November, 2nd February and 2nd March. Next season’s winter break will run for 3 weeks from December 19th to January 6th.
A week before the league officially begins, that is on August 21st, AS Roma and treble winners Inter Milan will lock horns in the SuperCoppa Italiana 2010 or the Italian Super Cup 2010. The match will be played in Inter’s famous San Siro stadium.
This match will precede the Uefa Super Cup fixture between Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid that will be played on Friday August 27th at the Stade Louis-II in Monaco. This another very important date to mark.
Now to some other pre-season fixtures that are equally exciting. Inter’s arch rivals AC Milan travel to London to take on EPL outfit Arsenal on July 31st in the Emirates Cup. Just in case you do not know, Milan’s longstanding shirt sponsorship deal with European betting site bwin ended last season and as you would guess, the Rossoneri will now have the Gulf Based airline Emirates very famous brand name Fly Emirates printed on their shirts. This match will be played in Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. The following day, Milan play Olympique Lyon at the same venue.
While Arsenal and Milan will be battling it out in the Emirates 60,000 seater capacity stadium, some thousands of miles away, Inter Milan will play another EPL club-Manchester City in Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium.
The Nerazzurri will wrap up their North American tour with a game against the LA Galaxy at the Home Depot Center in Carson on August 7th.
These are definitely some fixtures to get you excited about the new season which i know will be very competitive.
Photo credit: from norvegia2005sara
