It seems like a freaking one-year long international break. Until the home match against Blackburn this weekend, we’ll have some more pointless, boring and hyped news, all due to the lack of real news. Something’s happening with Ballack – first the champions league exclusion and now the refusal for a photo shoot, Lampard is injured and won’t play against Russia this Wednesday and for all the Jose haters, some good news. Read on.

Let’s start with the good news (for less than 5% of players of BlueChampions) first. Roman would be an important spectator in the England vs Russia match this Wednesday and that means Guus Hiddink will be on London and obviously, be meeting Roman. Hiddink has a contract with the Russian federation until the end of Euro 2008 and this article from The Telegraph says that Roman will influence what he’d do after that. Being a shrewd seasonsed businessman that he is, Roman would not have offered an extension to Jose for nothing. Unless Jose dates with Roman’s wife or something, I guess he’d keep Jose.

Staying with the England vs Russia match, Lampard is out of this match due to an injury. Not sure if this would keep him out of the Blackburn match as well. We certainly need Lampard’s presence in the Chelsea midfield against a good Blackburn attack. Fingers crossed.

Ballack has started hitting the headlines, not much for the good reasons. Last week, he was ‘mysteriously’ excluded from the Champions League squad earlier and he is obviously disappointed with that. Rightfully so. No one (esp someone like Ballack) wants to see their name missing in the champions league squad. He says:

I am disappointed. But I have to accept it and focus on getting healthy again. Then I can make up my mind about other things. It has got better – but it is not like I could play again or train with the team. I can’t give a prognosis.

While Official Chelsea website has clarified that this decision was taken only because of injury reasons, they could not stop rumours floating around. The most common question is if Wayne Bridge can be named in the squad why not Ballack? But Bridge is supposed to be back in a couple of weeks while Ballack’s date of return is far beyond that he would be able to play the last of the group match or something. That’s as per the Chelse’s doctors and not the German doctors. If you got this line, you know the full story.

Now, there is another episode to the story where Chelsea has denied permission for Ballack’s photoshoot with German national team’s sponsors Adidas, who are also Chelsea’s sponsors. Chelsea seems to have denied this story, but I could not find anything on the official website. May be they thought this is very trivial and not worth the space.

If you didn’t know already, the women’s football world cup is on and here is something Ballack would be proud of. German ladies beat the Argentines 11-0 yesterday in the first match of this world cup. This tournament has 16 nations playing for glory, that includes Canada!! Surely men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

Maysam still leads the Blue Champions club fantasy football but for God’s sake Maysam, please change your team name! And finally, there are very few billionaire owners that are welcomed by the fans, such as ours. See you then.