FC Barcelona coach Frank Rijkaard is aiming to knock out Liverpool FC, the club he enjoyed watching as a boy, when the two heavyweights meet at Camp Nou.

Rijkaard is relishing the prospect of tackling the current Liverpool team as the last two winners of the competition go head to head in the opening leg of their last-16 encounter. But it was the team that lifted the European Champion Clubs‘ Cup three times in eight seasons, between 1977 and 1984, that really caught his imagination.

Despite his admiration for the Premiership outfit, Rijkaard is keen to ensure they do not add to their five wins in the tournament. So the holders cannot afford another defeat in this two-legged encounter, having slipped up against Chelsea FC in the group stage.

Samuel Eto’o will sit out the game, having missed Sunday’s 2-1 league defeat at Valencia CF in order to continue his recuperation following a knee problem. Lionel Messi is approaching full fitness having recovered from a broken toe and Rijkaard is pleased to have the Argentinian back.

Lilian Thuram is also available following a thigh complaint, but Edmílson, Santiago Ezquerro and Sylvinho have been omitted from the squad.

The last two champions come together at Camp Nou for what home president Joan Laporta predicted could be an ‘extraordinary tie’. Barcelona’s 13-match unbeaten run at home in the competition makes them clear favourites but spearheaded by Rafael Benítez, the Reds’ sizeable Spanish contingent will be keen to spring a surprise.

This heavyweight contest carries added appeal because of Liverpool’s Spanish contingent, spearheaded by a manager in Benítez who will aim to maintain his team’s unbeaten record at Barcelona.

Read More » Barcelona vs Liverpool: Champions League heavyweights collide at Camp Nou

Super Bowl XLI: The Chicago Bears won the coin toss. Hmmm, sounds like a good sign as rookie sensation Devin Hester awaits Adam Vinatieri’s kickoff.

Then suddenly. the Bears fans jumped out of their seats, opened their arms toward the big screens and yelled in unison as Hester caught a kickoff and sprinted 92 yards into the end zone.

And that was only the first 14 seconds of Super Bowl XLI. But a coronation was unavoidable, and the great Ringless One is ringless no more. Yes, Peyton Manning is a Super Bowl winner at last.

Without Rex Grossman, this could have been a pretty good Super Bowl. Don’t crown their you-know-whats. In the end, the Bears were what Dennis Green - and so many other critics - thought they were: REX is really GROSS, man!

For Chicago, it’s a case of déjà vu. Remember Tedd Ginn, Jr. and the so-called “Super Bowl coin toss curse”?

Hester’s runback matched Ginn’s feat in the Bowl Championship Series title game a month earlier. Ginn took the opening kick back 93 yards for a touchdown against Florida, but the Buckeyes wound up losing 41-14 to the Gators in college football’s national championship game.

Another bad sign for the Bears may have come before kickoff. Chicago won the coin toss; over the last 11 years, the coin-toss winner has lost the Super Bowl nine times.

Leaving the Miami stadium afterward, many Bears fans said the best team — with the best quarterback — had won.

It was a nice Super Bowl dream while it lasted.

In retrospect, maybe we should have seen it coming. Or maybe we did and didn’t want to admit it.

This is how I’ll remember the day.

Read More » Bears wallow in the what-might-have-been muck and mire of Super Bowl XLI

Fact: The Oscars yearly breed more losers than winners.

The 2007 Oscar Awards are that predictable. We knew it as sure as Helen Mirren and Leonardo DiCaprio were nominated recurrently at the 2007 Golden Globe Awards. We knew it as sure as Sacha Baron Cohen, of all people, repeated himself.

“I want to thank everyone in America who decided not to sue us,” quipped the Oscar-nominated Sacha more than once. Thankfully, redundancy is to the favor of proposition betting. Never mind the losers, we know how to win by betting at the 79th Academy Awards, to be held on February 25th, hosted by Ellen Degeneres.

Best Motion Picture of the Year is arguably the least foreseeable of the lot, based on trends seen at the year’s Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. At Bodog film betting, The Departed has 2/3 odds to win Oscar Best Picture while Letters from Iwo Jima has 7/2. Little Miss Sunshine has odds of 3/1, Babel has 4/1, The Queen has 10/1 odds.

As far as movie performance goes, note that Dreamgirls, while neither an Oscar Best Picture nor Best Director nominee, has garnered the most number of 2007 Oscar nominations, at eight. It is followed by Babel, with seven Oscar nominations, then Pan’s Labyrinth and The Queen, with six Oscar nominations each.

Best Achievement in Directing is also fobbing off the expected: After all, Marty has certainly never won an Oscar before. If he wins, we doubt he will be repeating any past impromptu speech, and we might even extend hopefulness the Oscar Best Supporting Actress curse will soon be broken.

Martin Scorsese for The Departed has 1/6 odds to win Oscar Best Director at Bodog online betting while Clint Eastwood for Letters from Iwo Jima has 4/1 odds, Alejandro González Iñárritu for Babel has 9/1 odds, Stephen Frears for The Queen has 13/1 odds, and…

Read More » Betting at Oscars 2007: So predictable you can’t lose? (2 of 2)

And the Oscar goes to… All over again…

The road to the 2007 Oscar Awards is so straight and narrow it might as well lead to heaven. Which it likely will for at least four people everyone’s expecting to win: Forest Whitaker, Helen Mirren, Eddie Murphy, and Jennifer Hudson.

Not only do we suspect they’ll win, we can practically see how they’ll take it. But if Oscar predictability is bad news for film buffs, it is good news for proposition betting. There is almost no losing money on the dead foreseeable turn-out of the 79th Academy Awards, to be held on February 25th, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres.

Below, find some Oscar predictables, er, Oscar predictions on who and what we ought to be ready for.

If Forest Whitaker wins Oscar Best Actor, prepare for Jamie Foxx meets the Rainman. His thank-you’s will be 50% fanatical thanking in stutters and broken sentences, 50% gasping for air in disbelief. “Wow… wow…” How many wins does Forest need to start believing his luck?

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role has Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland with 2/13 odds to win at Bodog film betting online. Peter O’Toole for Venus has odds of 4/1, a record 44 years apart from the last time he earned any Oscar nomination.

Will Smith for The Pursuit of Happyness has 9/1 odds to win, and will simply have to try harder by cutting his romantic comedies down to half. Leonardo DiCaprio for Blood Diamond has 14/1 odds, but who knows how much harder he can try after multiple nominations at the 2007 Golden Globes? Ryan Gosling for Half Nelson has 20/1, which is okay as he had won MTV Movie Awards‘ Best Kiss already.

If Helen Mirren wins Oscar Best Actress, prepare to shout, ‘Long Live the Queen!’, regardless of which queen you mean. But you’d be ill-advised to refer to 2007 Razzie queen Sharon Stone, who can take the cue from Helen, Judi, Cate, and Jeremy Irons: If you want…

Read More » Betting at Oscars 2007: So predictable you can’t lose? (1 of 2)

We all know that British soccer superstar David Beckham and his fashionista wife, the never-seen-eating Victoria Beckham are on their way to Los Angeles.

Yes, the uber-trendy couple is reportedly shopping for a new home in the vicinity of the Cruises, Pitts and other Hollywood celebs.

Before announcing his plans to leave Spanish Primera Liga side Real Madrid and sign a $250 million contract with Major League Soccer in LA, Beckham called Tom Cruise ask his advice. Beckham considers Cruise a “wise man and very good friend” who was able to explain to the soon-to-be Californians what life in LA is really like.

Since Katie Holmes and Victoria Beckham are already good shopping buddies, Posh should make an easy transition onto Rodeo Drive. Katie has reportedly even lined up meetings with movers and shakers in Hollywood to get Posh some acting gigs.

There were rumors TomKat had cast Posh as an alien bride in a Scientology-based film, The Thetan, but Cruise’s people put that “rubbish” report in the bin.

Do you think the Beckhams will convert to Scientology this year? Bet on it!

Aside from getting settled in Tinsel Town, Beckham’s goal is to spark some more interest in soccer in the US. The sport’s popularity lags far behind baseball, football and basketball. Beckham hopes that bending it for the MLS’s Galaxy will generate some more soccer fans and players.

Read More » Make way Hollywood, MLS: the Beckhams are coming!

She can’t act decently, she can’t act her age, she can’t even really act at all.

She, in this case, pertains to four of six actresses nominated for the 2006 Razzie Award for Worst Actress. They are Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Hilary and Haylie Duff. They always get in trouble for behaving badly offscreen but now it turns out they act just as badly onscreen.

At Bodog prop betting, Lindsay Lohan for Just My Luck has 2/1 odds of winning Worst Actress while Hilary and Haylie Duff for Material Girls share a nomination with 3/2 odds. Jessica Simpson for Employee of the Month has 30/1 odds whereas Kristanna Loken for BloodRayne has 13/2 odds.

Sadly if not surprisingly, Sharon Stone for Basic Instinct 2 has 2/5 odds of being named Worst Actress.

From the Duff sisters, we move to the Wayans brothers. Shawn and Marlon Wayans share 1/2 odds of winning the 2006 Razzie Award for Worst Actor. Rob Schneider, for Benchwarmers and Little Man both, has 1/1 odds, and Larry the Cable Guy for Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector has 7/1 odds.

The Santa Clause 3, The Shaggy Dog, and Zoom all conspired to get Tim Allen odds of 11/5. Oscar regular Nicholas Cage for Wicker Man, though, has 30/1 odds at Bodog betting to win Worst Actor. …Sure, but where the heck is Tom Hanks?

If the above are any indication, here are the…

Read More » Lohan, Simpson, Duff vie for Razzie Awards Worst Actress

For Andy Roddick, coming close to beating Roger Federer can feel like an accomplishment. Roddick was 1-12 against Federer, the world’s top-ranked player, entering their semifinal match at the 2006 Australian Open.

For Roddick, and perhaps an entire generation of players who would like to add their name to the tennis honour roll, Federer has become the source of intense frustration. Not only can they not beat the Swiss maestro, they can’t even hate him.

The only way I can see the other top men’s players beating the Federer is if they gang up on him three-against-one, but I don’t think the rules allow for that kind of competition.

But that doesn’t mean the other players and Roddick can give up on trying to beat Federer.

The only way to get to Federer is to be aggressive and attack, but that’s not easy because that’s just not the way players are thinking these days. Roddick has to try and crowd him and make him try and pass.

There’s always the hope that Federer has an off day, but that’s a tough strategy to bank for the other men trying to win majors.

No matter what progress the American makes, however, barring injury or an unlikely loss of form, Federer, one year the older of the two, will always be there to block him at his two favourite tournaments, Wimbledon and the US Open.

Roddick though feels that inch by inch he is getting closer to working out how to match the sport’s supreme talent.

Read More » Aussie Open semis odds: Can Roddick beat Federer?

Greener pastures were the compelling reason that Mexicans crossed the border to America. To newer generation Latinos, the reason might simply be to go get a pizza.

In a move that would leave Eva Longoria torn between patriotism and weight control, a US pizza chain is accepting Mexican pesos starting next week. Come Monday, Dallas-based Pizza Patron will allow all of its 59 pizza parlors to perform sale transactions using the foreign currency, wooing Hispanic Americans over.

The marketing ploy is arguably a first for a US business save for the currency crossovers that have been going on in border towns for a time now. It is hoped to attract what TIME Magazine reported in 2005 as “the country’s largest ethnic minority” — 41.3 million Hispanics commanding close to $600 billion in buying power.

“Spanish has become the U.S.’s de facto second language, Nuevo Latino has taken its rightful place in haute cuisine, the sounds of rock en Español and reggaeton have filtered up the charts, and Latinos not only star on but own and manage major league baseball teams”, according to TIME Magazine.

The Pizza Patron franchise operates business in five US states: Texas, Nevada, California, Arizona, and Colorado. Most of its customers, to begin with, belong to the Hispanic communities, so that “”unlike many other businesses, for us, [the decision] makes sense”, says brand development director Andrew Gamm.

The peso pizza welcomes 2007 in the wake of a year when racially fueled movie Crash won the Oscar, and reality TV show Survivor’s ethnic grouping of tribes so much as made it to Bodog betting props. Also, the offer comes in the midst of an America struggling to reserve for its people jobs across tiers that are potentially handed to some 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants instead.

Not everyone is charmed. Wrote a…

Read More » Texan Pizza Accepts Mexican Peso, a Nod to Latinos

“The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Thus was quoted televangelist Pat Robertson as saying, in regard to a recent conversation he had with God, in which the Absolute Supreme Being sounded off about an upcoming massacre albeit not categorically. Pat went public with it Tuesday, declaring God informed him of a mass killing by way of a terrorist attack on the United States in 2007.

Verily, in the 1400s, it was Joan of Arc who was a messenger of God in sparing the French people of mass murder.

Come the 2000s, it is Pat of The 700 Club: televangelist, Republican, founder of the Christian Coalition and Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), among others, and a messenger of God for the American people.

How tight are Pat and God, really, that they should be in speaking terms? Is this the first time God communicated with man in care of Pat to deliver an admonitory memo? Has Pat ever misread his pal God before, or has he always been spot-on that we should all pack our bags and move to Sweden? Will Pat be excellent in sports handicapping, and ought he be a bettor or the bet in Bodog betting propositions?

Marion Gordon ‘Pat’ Robertson is a Southern Baptist. He opposes abortion and gay rights. He was not always a televangelist: he held an authentic position in church when, in 1961, he was ordained as a minister of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pat resigned as…

Read More » From God c/o Pat Robertson: US Mass Killing in 2007

Only at Bodog Sportsbook can you bet on what you think the sex of Tiger Woods’ first baby will be!

The world’s no. 1 golfer turned 31 on Saturday and surprised friends and family by sharing some pretty big news: his wife, Elin Nordegren, is expecting their first child this summer.

“Obviously, we couldn’t be happier and our families are thrilled,” Woods said on his Web site. “I have always wanted to be a dad. I just wish my father could be around to share the experience.”

Woods and Nordegren of Sweden married in October 2004, and although he did not say when in the summer the baby is due, simple math tells us it will likely happen sometime between the US Open and British Open.

Will Tiger Woods & Elin Nordegren deliver their baby closer to the US Open or the British Open? Get your Tiger Woods baby bets at Bodog!

So, that means the world’s No. 1 player will skip the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship next week on Maui.

“I’m going to stick close to home for the next few weeks,” he said. Woods will start his 2007 season playing in…

Read More » Bet on Tiger Woods’ new baby at Bodog Sportsbook