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Every now and again the world of sport throws up a name that is just too funny to ignore. Football is no different.

With over 200 playing nations to choose from, there has been no shortage of hysterical names over the years.

From toilet humour, to accidental swear words to sexual innuendo, our list contains all three! If it’s a dodgy name, the football world has it covered.

And to think that the likes of Stefan Kuntz, Rafael Scheidt, Segar Bastard, Ars Bandeet, Paul Dickov and Bernt Haas all missed out.

This week, TWG counts down the Top 10, starting with an Aussie who’s perhaps been a victim of slack pronunciation!

10. Danny Invincibile, Kilmarnock

It may not have the scatological quirk, be an uplifting superlative or the innuendo of some others but Invincibile, or rather the incorrect way it’s generally pronounced – ‘Invincible’ – is just unusual enough to qualify for this list. The fringe Socceroo has looked invincible at times during his 158-games with Kilmarnock in the Scottish Premier League.

9. Creedance Clearwater Couto, Lierse

All we can say for this Brazilian journeyman is that his parents must have been big John Fogerty fans. Either that or after a few too many Caipirinhas one evening, the Coutos decided to give their son the name of the US rock band for a laugh.

8. Excellent Walaza, Supersport United

The Walazas had big wraps on their new born son when they named him ‘Excellent’ – a worthy addition to the pantheon of unusual African footballer names. The South Africa striker, who is now on loan from Orlando Pirates, is joined by Zimbabwe players Energy Murambadoro and Pride Tafirenyika in the motivational name ranks.

7. Dean Windass, Oldham

This one speaks for itself. Suffice to say, the English hit-man – who has had no less than nice clubs – has copped his fair share of gags about his moniker. However, Windass reached deep into his bag of tricks to seal Hull’s promotion to the riches of the Premier League last year, and that’s nothing to laugh about.

6. Danny Shittu, Bolton

At six foot three inches, no-one’s going to be messing with imposing Nigerian Shittu in a hurry. Any sniggering at his name is best done when the burly Bolton central defender isn’t looking.

5. Andrei Arshavin, Arsenal

By no fault of his own, the Russian playmaker will be the butt of English press gags for some years to come. Just check out Special 1 TV to see how funny the Arsenal star’s name can be! Fortunately for him, Arshavin has talent to match his cheeky surname.

4. Milan Fukal, Kapfenburger SV

The veteran Czech defender first caught the eye at Euro 2000, where his performances for the national team attracted the attention of German Bundesliga club Hamburg. The press have had little trouble creating some memorable titter-inducing headlines thanks to the 33-year-old, who now plies his trade in Austria.

3. Climax Lawrence, Dempo

As Central Coast Mariners and Newcastle Jets fine tune their Asian Champions League preparations, unfortunately–titled Climax Lawrence and his mates from Indian hopefuls Dempo are vying for one of two remaining spots in the tournament. If they do make it, be ready for a glut of ‘Climax’ puns. We’re thinking something along the lines of: “Dempo reach Asian climax”.

2. Martin Amedick, Kaiserslautern

It’s fair to say – aside from a brief flirtation in the Bundesliga with Borussia Dortmund – that Amedick hasn’t really scaled the heights of European football. Although the 26-year-old defender’s sledge-provoking nickname has carved him a niche in our list.

1. Argelico Fucks

Here’s another Brazilian with a surname too good to ignore. Fucks, now 34, is at the end of a journeyman career that has seen him play for 10 clubs across three continents. Known as ‘Argel’, the central defender was the subject of countless humourous headlines, including the following corker by Eurosport: “Fucks off to Benfica”.

From www.theworldgame.com.au

Check out this cool website to have a chat to such a cranky and moody robot. His name is Splotchy. Feel free to say anything you want. Beware, he can feel the language you use. Check out this website to meet him in ‘person’: http://www.cooldictionary.com/splotchy.mpl
He didn’t say that he was a robot when I talked to him lately 🙂 .
Have Fun!

Blogging

A blog is a web application that displays a series of entries in reverse chronological order, with a time and date stamp for each entry. Blogs also include a facility to respond to blog posts using comments. Tags allow for topic-based searching, and tag clouds (a visual display of a blog’s tags) present a quick overview of a blogger’s interests. Early blogs were essentially link-driven websites, exclusive to those who had the requisite HTML skills (Blood, 2000). However, from around 1999, a number of free and easy-to-use blogging applications (such as Blogger, WordPress) appeared on the net, meaning anyone could write a blog. It was no longer restricted to the privileged and tech-savvy few.

Blogging encourages learner independence, empowerment, reflection and autonomy. For language learners, they provide an environment in which to reflect, comment, question and review progress outside the classroom in an authentic environment. (Pinkman, 2005). Blogging can be used either for writing practice in the target language, and/or to explore cultural dimensions of the target country (or countries). Research by Thorne et al (2005) (cited in Thorne and Payne 2005)) suggests that language students prefer blogging to traditional journals or weekly essays. Students also reported frequently looking back over their own and others students’ earlier blog postings, and the majority noticed significant progress in their writing over time. For a blog to be successful, there needs to be significant teacher input and feedback, and the blog should be structured around a series of specific activities or topics. This encourages learner input, focus and motivation, and deepens their learning by stretching their output beyond their competency level or comfort zone. Also, the asynchronous nature of blogging enables students to take their time over postings in a low-pressure environment.

Campbell (2003) identifies three potential uses for the blog in the language classroom:

1. The tutor blog: daily reading practice for learners, online verbal exchange using comments, class information, resource for self-study.
2. The learner blog: students get writing practice, develop a sense of ownership, and whatever they write can instantly be read by anyone else and, due to the comment features of the software, further exchange of ideas is promoted.
3. The class blog: Students can create a free-form bulletin board, interact in an international classroom language exchange, or a project-based language learning exercise, where students can develop writing and research skills by creating an online resource.

Here follow a few good models I came across while researching this subject:

En mi bolsillo (In my pocket) – A class blog developed by a group of advanced Spanish students. They are encouraged to talk about everyday objects that have a special significance to them. If you can read Spanish, there’s an interesting debate on whether they should be encouraged to correct each others posts, or whether it’s acceptable to leave mistakes in the text since they’re learners. It’s an interesting question for language teachers, since linguistic accuracy is the ultimate aim. However, leaving in mistakes is valuable in that the author can see progress and improvements in expression over time.

Blogging Engish – A class blog, developed by Sarah Guth at the University of Padua for advanced learners of English, with the aim of improving their language skills and information literacy skills through the use of Web 2.0 tools. E-tivities are posted to the class blog, students complete their e-tivities using a personal blog, post relevant links to del.icio.us using a common class tag, and there’s also an intercultural wiki for exchange with students in the States (See next section on wikis). There’s an interesting assessment model too: students are assessed based on their input to the various media: 10% del.icio.us links, 40% individual analysis on personal and group blogs, final papers 25%, comments on classmates’ posts 10%, and editing the wiki (15% collective grade). Interestingly, the personal blog is graded on content and relevancy rather than linguistic accuracy, which encourages students to focus on process, reflection and vocabulary, rather than being inhibited by potentially inaccurate use of grammar.

CALL Lessons 2005-2007 – Award-winning tutor blog, developed by Teresa Almeida d’Eça, a teacher of English in Portugal. The blog, written in English with the odd Portuguese translation for difficult words or expressions, is a record of CALL lesson plans, activities and reports. As with the blog above, the striking thing is just how important regular teacher input is in the maintenance of a successful blog.

Drake College DULAP programme – Drake College follow a constructivist, student-centred approach to language learning, with students encouraged to develop an eportfolio in which they reflect on their language-learning progress, including audio clips, video clips, writing samples in the target language, self-assessment and reflective writing. Jan Marston and Clayton Mitchell of Drake University talk about the DULAP programme on a podcast on languagelabunleashed.com, where they highlight the importance of teaching students and staff about how to learn (and teach) in this new learner-centred curriculum.
Taken from http://web20andlanguagelearning.wikidot.com/blogging

What Is Web 2.0?

The term ‘Web 2.0’ originated in a conference brainstorming session, run by O’Reilly Media Inc., publishers of technology-related books). It’s not easy to describe succinctly since there are, as yet, no set standards that define a Web 2.0 application. Web 2.0 refers to the emergence of a set of applications on the web which facilitate a more socially connected web where everyone is able to add to and edit information online (Anderson 2007). Some, such as Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the Web, argue that Web 2.0 is simply a “piece of jargon”. He said, in a podcast interview (2006), that ‘If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along’. Scepticism aside, however, there is widespread acceptance that the internet has latterly become dominated by a group of applications that emphasize participation.

These Web 2.0 applications share the following characteristics:

1. Power to the user
Web 2.0 is all about the user. Whereas Web 1.0 was dominated by content provided in static pages, Web 2.0 applications have democratized the web by prioritizing user-generated content, ownership and social connectivity. In an interview with Stephen Reiss of Wired magazine (2006) on NewsCorp’s acquisition of MySpace, Rupert Murdoch stated that:

To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media…Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.

2. Harnessing collective intelligence (O’Reilly, 2005)
Web 2.0 applications rely on user-generated content and interactivity. Drawing on James Surowiecki’s ‘wisdom of crowds’ theory, Web 2.0 applications leverage the power of the masses. A prime example of this is del.icio.us, a collective online bookmarking system, which makes use of user-generated metadata (‘folksonomies’) to organize the web.

3. “Web as a platform” (O’Reilly, 2005)
Rather than just passively using the web to source information, Web 2.0 users are able to run rich internet applications in their browsers. These applications, such as blogs, wikis and aggregators, have a participative element, which encourage users to add, edit or simply rehash content (mashups). The focus is on microcontent (Alexander 2006) – blog posts, microblogging (eg twitter), wiki edits, podcasts, photos, news feeds – all of which can be repurposed elsewhere using web feeds (RSS, Atom) or AJAX-based applications. Obvious examples are Facebook applications (enabling users to import data into their profile), and dedicated aggregators, such as SuprGlu or Pageflakes.

It’s important to note that the student demographic will be accustomed to Web 2.0 applications. These ‘digital natives’ (Prensky 2001) are likely to use email, instant messaging, VOIP, mobiles, social networking accounts, blogging and virtual identities, on a regular basis. However, many ‘digital immigrants’ are also active in blogging communities, social networking sites and virtual worlds1. Language instructors can leverage these increasingly familiar tools – blogs, wikis, podcasts, networking, second Life – to provide access to authentic sources of language. The following sections will explore how these technologies can be used enhance the language-learning process.Taken from http://web20andlanguagelearning.wikidot.com/what-is-web-2-0