2000 marked the retirement of Dennis Bergkamp from int'l football.
2002 marked the retirement of Gabriel Omar Batistuta from int'l football.

2004 marks the possible retirement of Zinedine Zidane from int'l football.

sad. sad. sad. 2 of my fave soccer players gone. is it gonna be 3?
we're gonna miss out on more beautiful football on the international scene.

Dennis Bergkamp:
Signed for Arsenal by Bruce Rioch for £7.5million from Inter Milan in 1995, Bergkamp is one of the classiest strikers ever to grace the game. Touch, passing of incredible vision, sublime finishing, out of this world skills - he has everything. The Dutchman has brought a different dimension to Arsenal's game, weighing in with plenty of goals and creating innumerable chances for his fellow strikers.

Although he announced his retirement from international football after Euro 2000, he has provided more than enough magic moments to live in the memory - his winner against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup is up there with the greatest goals. He left the international game as the Dutch record scorer, overtaking Faas Wilkes, with 37 goals in only 79 games.

Bergkamp began his career at Ajax where he won a European Cup Winner's Cup medal and a UEFA Cup winners' medal before he moved to Inter Milan for £15million. He won another UEFA Cup with the Italians and then moved to the Premiership where he was voted Footballer of the Year and Players' Player of the Year in 1998 when Arsenal won the double. Although he missed the 1998 FA Cup win because of injury; he was a late substitute in the 2001 Final.

The player no longer makes the impact as when he first came to England - and is no longer an automatic first choice striker in Highbury's united nations front line - but can still be dubbed a 'match winner'.

His fear of flying, triggered by a near-accident while on international duty in 2000, means his appearances away from home in Europe are few and far between.

Not surprisingly, given his status and skills, there has been sporadic speculation as to his future. But in January 2001 he signed a contract to run until the summer of 2003 and declared: 'I'll be finishing my career at Highbury.' He added a second Double to his list of honours in 2002, to go with that won in 1998, and also picked up the Goal of the Season award in the Premiership for a sublime flick, turn and finish against Newcastle United.

But in the summer of 2003 his agent spoke of the player's disappointment over the contract he was offered, but in July he penned a new deal. By then he had scored 105 goals in 317 appearances for the club, 41 of those from the bench.



Gabriel Batistuta:
Even far from his native Argentinean shores, Gabriel Omar Batistuta – or "Batigol" for short – is recognised as one of the world's greatest strikers. And yet his career began surprisingly late in life. Born on 1 February, 1969, it wasn't until he reached the age of 17 that he switched from basketball to football. Yet only two years later, aged 19, he won the South American club championship – the Copa Libertadores - in his very first season at Argentinean club Newell's Old Boys.

A year later he moved to Buenos Aires and River Plate, with whom he won his first Argentinean championship in 1990. But his time there would prove short, and he abandoned them for local rivals Boca Juniors after just one season. At Boca Juniors he quickly earned himself a reputation as a goal-hungry striker, and won his first international cap in 1991. He finished top scorer at the 1991 Copa America, notching up no less than six goals in the competition, which Argentina won for the first time in 32 years.

Soon after the 1991 Copa Libertadores, Batistuta moved to Italy, joining Serie A side Fiorentina. Although he took time settling in during his first season at his new club, he was back to his best again in 1992, scoring 27 goals in 13 games. When Fiorentina were relegated in the 1992-3 season, Batistuta's contract tied him to the club as it languished in the Italian second division. But in the very first year after the side was promoted again, Batistuta became the Serie A's top scorer, with 26 goals to his name.

Batistuta was a pivotal force in the Argentinean national squad at the 1994 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, scoring five goals at France 98 alone. But although he was showered by offers from top clubs across Europe, he remained in Florence for another two years.

It was only in May 2000, after nine years in Tuscany, that AS Roma were able to prise Batistuta away for the princely sum of £22 million, the second-largest transfer fee in football history at the time. Just a year after the move, his new club won the Serie A for the first time since 1983, with Batistuta notching up 20 goals.

i would like to thank teo chee hean's son for letting me have 2 years of NS.

-from a fellow SJI boy named Kevin

How to make a kev

Ingredients: 5 parts friendliness 5 parts humour 1 part instinct

Method: Combine in a tall glass half filled with crushed ice. Add fitness to taste! Do not overindulge!

i would like to apologise to those who went for the dinner @ kenny roger's yesterday. for the following reasons:
1. for being late.
2. for not even going into the restaurant to join u all.
3. for not meeting u all after the dinner.

paiseh. don't know why. just felt kinda off. so i just walked off. i don't have a reason good enough to support my rude behaviour as of late. (during the famine camp AND for the dinner) i don't know why myself. but i'm realli sorry for whatever unhappiness/dissatisfaction/irritation u might feel for me. so yeah. i apologise once again.

hurhur. just came back from the 30 hours famine camp. not bad leh... i didn't feel hungry at all for the whole 30 hours.... hurhur.
the same ol' ppl, and with the addition of 3 new outsiders, whom we sadly ostracised unintentionally yet occasionally remembered their existence in my group. hurhur. fun :)

had 2 nice group leaders. daphne and shanise! woohoo. carol constantly insists tt daphne looks a picture, which i think she's more of a nice person than a pretty girl. ya. ain't often tt you have TWO group leaders that put up with 30 hours of ur nonsense, LET ALONE one. (not forgetting my class. hurhur) thx. yeah. sorry i kinda pissed off everyone in the morning, but an hour's worth of sleep is not enough for me. but nonetheless, i express my thanks, bcuz u guys made the camp fun. :)

malawi group 6:
daphne (leader)
shanise (leader)
carol
cheryl
pq
yian chyi
charlene
siting
alecia
benji
me!
hui yee (or something)
nadya (issit?)
fauziah (i'm sure i have this one rite)


"passer-by: I've read some of your entries and I don't understand why you dislike yixiang that much. Btw, he tells me the feeling's mutual. His first love is tennis and he's an ex-national player. Are you? He could have just went rjc or acjc and picked up a tennis medal, but he joined sa hockey. I hope that gives you some perspective."

finally something to write about. ha. feels good hiding behind the cover eh?

"His first love is tennis and he's an ex-national player. Are you?"
becoming an ex-national player gives u the holier than thou attitude huh. hah. i'll give it to u for being an EX NATIONAL TENNIS PLAYER then. but if my memory serves me right, u joined hockey. are u near the standards of those SAS boys in our team? i'll be the first to admit that i'm not. but hey, at least i'm playing hard. or i tried to.

"He could have just went rjc or acjc and picked up a tennis medal, BUT HE JOINED SA HOCKEY."
why fill himself/yourself with laments when u've already made a bloody choice. why choose SA hockey if it'll make u leave a life of denial. why didn't he/u go to rjc or acjc? what force of nature is so compelling to draw u to sajc hockey if it wouldn't "guarantee u of a gold medal with ur tennis prowess". turn back the clocks if it means that much to u.

u wanna noe why i hate yixiang so much? read his blog. then see him at training. i don't hate him for being what he is. i just hate him for not appreciating what he has earned by being in the team. deservedly or not.

and don't make it sound like i'm the only one who hates him. i've been trying hard not to. especially during training. u wanna hear sneering remarks and words with more malice? u should have heard it urself during training time when the rest of the team was around. that's perspective for u

"But it's a dumb game to me, really. 20 men on the field with a stick chasing after a ball that mocks them and cries, "come get me!"? And 2 goalkeepers wrapped up in cotton to the extent that they have difficulty running about?"