Football

180’2025 (2025-06-29) – Sunday

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Today, I learned about:

June is normally considered as a summer month on the Northern hemisphere, meaning that the Southern hemisphere is starting to experience winter. And, of course, the farther away one gets from the equator, the more extreme the weather conditions normally get. One such interesting phenomenon is the Midnight sun, when the sun never sets during at least two weeks.
Therefore, it is it understandable that those who live in the priviledged areas want to celebrate the occasion. From my own experience I remember the light summer nights in June in Sweden, peaked around the Summer solstice, with its wonderful parties. But also on more Southern latitudes in Europe, there are great celebrations during the summer season. An example of that is Portugal, where the festas juninas (June parties) are being held in many places.
And since Portugal dominated Brazil during more than 300 years, those parties were introduced also in Brazil and are still prevalent during the month of June, even though the meteorogical conditions may be more adverse.
My girlfriend and I had the pleasure of participating in a really animated festa junina on 170’2025 (2025-06-19) as part of the activities at a fabulous resort in Comandatuba, state of Bahia, Brazil. Today’s header photo was taken at the resort. Here are also some photos and a video clip, with the typical music style called forró, from the festa junina. See also reference #1 (in Portuguese) below.

Pictures taken at the Festa junina at Transamerica in Comandatuba on 169’2025 (2025-06-19), showing a typical “arraial” with food, drinks, theater performance and even an attraction where the corageous young and old could try to master the mechanical bull.
Music in the forró style, very common in the Northeast of Brazil, played by a local band at the festa junina.

Finally, you may have enjoyed the FIFA Club World Cup in football that is being played in various venues in the USA. Earlier this month was reported FIFA had made a change in the rules for offside, thanks to an observation from a small Swedish club, Torns IF, in 2023. See reference #2 below for more information.

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: Festa junina no Brasil

2: Fourth-tier Swedish club force global change in offside law after finding genius ‘loophole’ in rules – but the problem has not been fixed!

*: What did you learn in school today?

243’2023 (2023-08-31) – Thursday

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned about:

How exciting sports at top level can be. Sometimes, it is impossible to judge who won the competition and who was only runner up. Some say that we should stop there and give the winner’s award to both, but others think that we should apply measures to find out if one of those athletes was just slightly better than the other and thus win the sole gold medal.

You have probably heard and maybe seen that this month we saw a new champion in women’s football, Spain, who beat England in the final. But before that, we also saw that on three occasions the winner of the match had to be decided in the penalty shootout, because both teams could not be separated, having made the equal amount of goals during the 120 min of normal play.

In the first of those three games, between Sweden and USA, in the round of 16, the decision came when both teams had scored the same number of goals, but where Sweden still had one more chance to win the game. It was then that the Swedish player Lina Hurtig kicked the ball, the US goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher touched it, but not sufficiently to impede it from passing the goal line, with the least possible measure, only possible to judge because of the video recording system called VAR (Video assistant referee). That is the situation you can see in the photos.

This is the user interface of FIFA’s Video Assisted Referee (VAR). Here we can see how the penalty kick from Lina Hurtig passed the goal line with a minmum distance.
GOAL !!!

A video clip from the match can be found in reference #1 below. You may remember that I already talked about VAR five years ago, in my post 224’2018 (2018-08-12) .

By the way, the Swedish team finished third in the competition, but in sequence was rewarded with the top spot in the Fifa ranking of all nations. Grattis, tjejer!

Men’s World Cup final 1966

In the final of the 1966 Fifa World Cup, held at Wembley stadium in London, the match between England and West Germany, was tied at 2-2 during overtime, when Geoff Hurst shot the ball into the crossbar and the question is if the ball did make it inside or not. The referee decided it was a goal, a very questionable decision. If VAR had existed then, how would the outcome have been?. See also reference #2 below.

Was it a goal?

To be continued …

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: The deciding goal, at 01:26

2: World cup final 1966

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2020-11-30 (Monday)

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Today, I learned about:

We have come to the end of yet another interesting month. Below are some interesting things that caught my interest:

On 5G, Covid-19, cocksureness and today’s challenges

My alma mater, Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden was founded on 1829-11–05. And each year since 1991, around this day, there is a lecture about popular science, the William Chalmers lecture, held by a prominent researcher. This year, it was Erik Ström, professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering.

Erik leads a team which has participated in developing the modern day communication technologies, all up to 5G. And now it is planning the development of the successor, 6G. Erik talked about that, but also about the omnipresent Covid-19 and how one can estimate the probability of having the virus if the test result is positive, etc. All this was done in a very leisurely style, I am sure you will enjoy it as much as I did!

See references #1 and 2 below for all details.

One instant from Erik Ström’s speech held on 2020-11-05

What does bimonthly mean?

If you learn that a certain measure should be taken bimonthly, what does that mean? Should it be twice a month or every other month?

The answer is that it could be either way! You have to find out by the context, if you can.

See also reference # 3 below.

What is round and attracts the automated video recording system?

As we all know, technology of all sorts are so developed nowadays that many things can handed over to automated systems and they take care of them brilliantly. But there may be glitches…

The Scottish football club Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC employed an automated video recording system to transmit their games online to their fans who were locked down at home. The system was programmed to keep track of the ball. It worked fine until a certain day the system confused the ball in the field with one of the linesmen.

See for yourself in reference #4 below.

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: About the lecturer and the main content of his speech

2: Erik Ström’s complete lecture

3: The ambiguity of ‘biweekly’ and ‘bimonthly’

4: Is it a ball or a linesman?

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2018-11-11 (Guldsöndag)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

My prediction on 2018-04-15 was correct, 2018 would be the year of AIK. After the last round of Allsvenskan, the Swedish football championship league, once more AIK ended up being the very best! Oh how happy I am!

And as a tribute to the Stockholm region, where AIK has its headquarters, today’s photo shows a marvellous view of Stockholm. The photo was taken on 2018-11-04 from Skinnarviksberget, Södermalm and it shows the City Hall and Riddarholmen.

A photo of Stockholm, showing the City Hall and Riddarholmen, taken from Skinnarviksberget, Södermalm on 2018-11-04.

Furthermore, it is another photo in my series of hosts of the Olympic Games. Most people know that Stockholm was the host of the Summer Olympic Games in 1912, but did you know that it also hosted the Games in 1956? Since Australia had harsh quarantine restrictions, the equestrian events of the Melbourne games were moved to Stockholm. More about the Stockholm games can be found in references #1 and 2 below. Finally, today marks the exact centenary of the armistice after World War I. Exactly one year ago, I wrote about it extensively, you can find it here.

That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: 1912 Summer Olympics

2: Equestrian events at 1956 Summer Olympics

*: What did you learn in school today ?