Having been away for a few days, I have decided to do a round up of recent news.

Edwin van de Sar’s Holland were knocked out of the World Cup by Portugal at the weekend. Edwin was celebrating a record 113 appearances for Holland. A record that surpasses Frank de Boer’s previous all-time record of 112 international caps. To mark the occasion, he was given a special pair of Adidas football boots with Van der Sar 113, written on the boots.

Reuters report that experts from Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital described two cases of TSS (TSS is blood poisoning that makes people feel severely ill) in children after playing in new football boots.

The condition is a rare but can be a serious illness, that can develop quickly in anyone. In both instances, the children developed friction blisters over their Achilles tendons, caused by the boots.

Expatica talk about Pele’s football boots that are being exhibited in a German museum. They claim the football boots were worn by Pele whilst playing for Santos FC, and that he scored 431 goals in them. I can’t see a modern day football boot lasting that long.

Finally, my favourite story of the moment regards the Portuguese players claiming that they will be targeting Paul Robinson, the English goalkeeper, in Saturdays World Cup quarter final. Football 365 said “Portugal intend to target the opposition’s goalkeeper, presumably thus deciding to bombard his goal with shots and crosses whenever possible, trenchant proof that Luis Scolari is a tactical genius? Not even Gary Lineker’s granny could have stumbled across such a cunning and brilliant idea”.