Hold on Magnolia to that great highway moon…

Allsvenskan 2007

I've got my cable television upgraded a couple of days ago to digital tv, complete with a decoder and stuff and now in the beginning I've been able to watch every damn channel that @home had in their network. Pretty nice to be able to watch the Spanish Primera Division and the English Premier League for a change.However, those two leagues, or any other league for that matter, is nothing compared to the Swedish Allsvenskan for me. And that league just started this Friday when debutants Brommapojkarna - who never have been in the top flight before - beat the apes from skansen one-nil. Hard to imagine the league starting any better, at least so far until it starts for real tomorrow when Hammarby travels to Göteborg to entertain Gais at Ullevi.

It's been a very turbulent spring for Hammarby with a new coach and no more than thirteen new (or almost new) players while ten players from last years squad left the club, for good or worse.

Various so called journalists at different news papers and web sites have been on a personal crusade against Hammarby, taking every chance to put the club, it's fans and the coac down in the dirt. They've lied their way through articles, looked the other way at facts and turned around stories to fit their purpose. It seems like those "journalists" have bet a lot of money on Hammabrys coach Tony Gustavsson being the one who gets booted first, and won't stop at anything to help with that.

As a Hammarby fan you're quite used to "journalists" making up their own stories to sell more papers, but this winter/spring has broken every record. No other club sells so much as Hammarby and especially when the articles are all about how much of a crisis there is at the club.

One critisism of the 2007 edition of Hammarby is pretty accurate however,you just have to look at what players left the club after last year to see there are a lack of routine in this years squad. There's been quite a few good signings though, and Hammarby has a very young and talented squad and at least a few of those talents will probably break through big this year. If they do that this year might even be better than last year which started out amazing until the the World Cup came.

Speaking of football, I was at De Kuip in Rotterdam for the first time a few weeks ago. This year might not be the best year to watch Feyenoord but the standard of the game we saw, 0-0 against Willem II, was amazingly bad. It was like a swedish third division game but played in front of 40,000 people in an amazing stadium. Thanks to Micc there's a few pictures of it below.

From the top level of the stairs leading up to the upper level of the stadium where we sat. Hadn't been watching football live sitting down for maybe five years before this.

The nice little bridge for the away fans. Guess they don't want people throwing stuff at the Ajacieds.

From inside De Kuip

Het Legoien.

The away cage at the top in the middle.

The teams lined up before the start of the game.