Failed to Capitalise

Zat Knight adds to list of scorers that exposed Man Utd's leaky defence

Chelski got away scot free big time. And Man Utd squandered it big time. On a Saturday where the Gooners shockingly went down 2-3 to West Brom at the Emirates and Chelsea being outsmarted by one Tevez from City plus the Scousers languishing with a 2-2 draw with Sunderland, it was most certainly a good Sunday for Man Utd to demolish the deficit. That turned out to be much more difficult than envisioned within 5 minutes into the game when Zat Knight placed Bolton 1-0 up with a headed goal from a corner. It became a uphill battle for United as Bolton now had the easier job of holding on to their lead. I would say that Bolton came prepared with a certain style of play. The physical robustness of their forwards, Davies and Elmander is clearly causing huge problems for the back four. There were plenty of times when Evra and Evans were outmuscled or when Vidic and O'Shea were a second slower. Rooney continues to misfires and Berbatov does not seem to be putting on his shooting boots.

Nevertheless, United was rescued in the first half by a moment of individual brilliance by Nani who dribbled from his own half, beating several defenders along the way and finishing it off with an amazing goal. This was reminiscence of Giggsy's 1999 FA Cup goal against Arsenal..lol. I would have thought fortunes would have improved in the second half and Bolton, in their disciplined manner, manages to go another goal up thanks to a freekick by Petrov. This is not looking good at all but kudos to Bolton in taking their set-pieces well and really doing the damage when it matters. Meanwhile, I would say that this is obvious signs that the United defence is performing below par. 9 goals conceded in the past 6 league matches with the last three conceding at least 2 goals each. United were further inflicted with 2 injuries to Giggsy and Rooney and Fergie responded by sending out Macheda and Owen in hopes of getting the equaliser and hopefully the winner. Owen had a fine game againt Scuntorpe earlier with his brace and he added a 3rd goal to this year's campaign when he scored an important life-saving equaliser.

Will Fergie look back at this alongside with Fulham and Everton as the defining moments for the title race? Well, one can have two perspectives after this match, one being that United lost 2 points to catch up, or the other positive viewpoint is that they have cut the 4 point deficit to 3. Fergie knows how bad the points that were lost in this match, as shown by the cold handshakes that he had given to his counterparts after the match.

Leeds City Stories

It's almost coming to a week since my arrival of Leeds and I'm glad and relieved to have settled most of the administration procedures such as registering, making a bank account and going through induction week. These few days were filled with lots of walking and finding out the whereabouts of every area and shops that are vital for survival. So, on Monday was the start where we need to report to Law School to get some headstart information and to meet with the director of students. There were a few other students from HELP who were also at the meeting. Halfway through the briefing, the director kinda asked whether there were any football fans in the group and my classmates all pointed at me. He asked me which team I support and in my mind I was going like,"Oh, this is not a good idea at all especially when I'm in Leeds" and I'm duly reminded with my brush-ins with the Uni. of Liverpool lecturers who asked me the same thing when United was thrashed 1-4 at OT. So I answered hesitantly,"Manchester..." and before I could finish, he was jumping in glee and shaking my hand in return, to my big surprise. Apparently, he ain't from Leeds and he's a Man Utd fan - 27 years and a season ticket holder too. Whew! And I discovered later in the other intro lectures that he loves taking shots at Leeds and Liverpool fans..lol. Not to mention, he's an ELS lecturer too, which reminds me of my previous ELS lecturer who was a Liverpool fan instead..haha.

I had to quickly rush off from the uni after Monday's session to get back to my accomodation area for a welcoming reception and briefing at 5pm. I managed to make new friends over there, a Malaysian PhD student from PJ, a Pakistani undergraduate and an Indian from Tamil Nadu doing Masters. We had to walk back to the university campus for the briefing (when I had just came back from it! grrr) . On the way walking there, there was this drunken Brit at the park who was screaming at our group as we walked by. He started to approach nearer and continued on screaming but he was blocked off by the fence. My Pakistani friend responded to him by telling him "Good day sir, good day sir"..lol. We quicken our steps to walk away from the area, just in case he decides to jump over the fence..haha. After the briefing by the warden at the lecture theatre, we proceeded on to the Senior's common room and wow, they have a bar right inside the Uni itself serving alcohol. As residents, we were all entitled to 2 free drinks using the coupons and we were allowed to pick any drink including beer. I picked juices for my first two drinks but later as we were chatting away, the warden came over to distribute more spare coupons and I'm fortunate to get two more drinks! Spent it on another juice and a free bottle of beer. Ahhh, with so much of free drinks, my dehydrated lips were finally restored to it's original moisturised condition. There was also a free dinner catered for us to my delight and it's an interesting range of pastries and bread. Haha..any sort of free food is welcomed, no matter how foreign they taste!

On the next day, we were supposed to meet up with our personal tutors, something like lecturers assigned for the pastoral care of the students. The thing about British timing is that it must not be too early or too late. It's always on the dot. So, we happen to be too early and we asked the lecturer in a room whether we can meet Mr Brian Hogan, as it was stated in the sheet of note written for us. The lecturer then told us that Mr Brian Hogan had died many years ago and that sparked a small moment of confusion. And then only I realised that the seminar room is named after him and there's only one tutor assign for the group of us instead of 2. Whoops, didn't know we were looking for a dead person xD

There was a fresher's fair on all the clubs and societies and as expected, the student union building is huge. It even has its own supermarket and pub and the eating cafeteria called the Refectory can actually be transformed into a 2000 seater concert hall. It seems that joining academic societies in the Uni is quite expensive, and Law Society is going on for a whopping 55 pounds lifetime membership. It's worth it if I'm a first year student, but there's little that I can do when I'm transferring in from the 3rd year. Arggghh..would really love to join it but cost-benefit considerations gotta come first. I managed to find the Christian Union though and made some contact with a few of the members there. They had organised a picnic for international students at Hyde Park and yea, had an interesting time interacting with the few of them. I've also joined the Malaysian & Singaporean Society and there's gonna be a city tour with them this Saturday.

After exploring and discovering things at Leeds for quite some time now, these are the few observations and first impressions that I have:

1. The British are a very polite bunch of people but they are not easy to warm up to. This means that unlike their American counterparts who are much more eager to make acquaintances, the British are more cautious in their approach. Often, it requires some initiative on the international student's part to break the ice. Somehow, international students interacting with other international students constitute little problems, be it whether they are Arabs, Pakistanis, China or African students.

2. British customer service is top quality. Be it whether they are doing taxi business, cashiers, salespersons or bankers, you'll feel top class as a customer anywhere and anyplace and they'll go all out to serve.

3. Shops here open as early by 8pm and close early, latest by 8pm. You will rarely see any shops open beyond that unless it's McDonalds or Kebab takeaway. That's because 8pm onwards is pub and clubbing time.

4. The British like to drink. And drinking is a big part of the culture. You see people drinking in the morning, afternoon, evening - all the time, everywhere. Everynight outside my room, I'll hear drunk Brits shouting and screaming. With that being said, beer is also relatively cheap here. And I like one of the more exotic English Apple beer which my English housemate treated me yesterday.

5. Fresher's week is not the mild orientation camps or sequences that you see in South East Asia. It's notorious enough with all the booze and partying for the 1st year students and it happens not once or twice..but everynight! In the day time, all the clubs will be distributing flyers to students at the uni, providing free drinks etc. and yea, basically the students turned the city center into a party city. At almost every night, you'll see lots of young Brits who are dressed up and ready for clubbing. Not sure whether they'll continue doing this once term starts

6. The streets at foreign land are not that clean actually. They are comparable to the streets of Kuala Lumpur. You get lalang growing in patches, styrofoam boxes and papers strewn all over the place. The inner premises are kept clean by those responsible of the land but not the public spaces.

7. Certain type of foods over in the UK are too cheap to be true. These things are like chocolates, bacon, carbonara sauce, bread (jumbo loaf for 50 pence!), salmon and pasta. Cooking at home with such ingredients would mean that my lunch and dinner would cost a measly 2-3 pounds at most per meal and it wud even be much more less if I have a meatless diet.

Ahhh, those are some of the small portions of Leeds City stories that I've experienced. I'm sure there are more to come in the future.

Berba on Fire

Berba makes no mistake in finishing his hat-trick

This is fantastic. My first Premier League match in the UK had fallen on an auspicious match! What better way to start my Premier League season in the UK than the ever-classic clash with the Scousers between United and Liverpool? To top it up, I actually watched it in a bar, which happens to be a Leeds United lair. As such, celebrations and reactions need to be tone down for safety..lol. In the end, it was good match with lots of breathtaking moments.

United fans have never really been convinced on the value of Berbatov up till this match, myself included. The countless amount of wasted chances and lethargic running characterised him all these while. Last season's performance by Berbatov left little to be desired to the extent that it was rumored that he asks Fergie to allow him to stay to prove himself. Nothing about his Tottenham form has been replicated well in his Man Utd career and indeed, some of the Old Trafford crowd have grew weary waiting for it to come out. Perhaps he has lost it just like Owen.

This season's story proved otherwise starting from the pre-season. Berbatov's being in good shape and this culminated in an excellent performance against Chelsea in the Community Shield. Since then, he's been banging in goals for the early Premier League matches. His best form in United truly showed its nature in this match.

I would say that United on the overall view was the better side with them getting the chances going and was more of a threat than Liverpool. There were a few close calls but on the 41st minute, the deadlock was broken which I felt that Liverpool could have prevented if Konchesky had covered the post earlier instead of hovering just behind Pepe Reina. Berba for the first goal had shook off his marker to head it in and Konchesky decided to do an Uruguay style handball save but it still went in anyways. The Scousers sunk into deeper trouble when Berbatov finished off a superb bicycle kick to put United 2-0 up. Such was his confidence that this goal would definitely rank as one of the contenders for the goal of the season. More drama followed by as Evans clumsily brings down Torres in the box and Gerrard converts the penalty with ease.

A controversial point of play emerge later when O'Shea was alleged to pull Torres down as the last man. Fergie said that Torres made a meal out of it while the Scousers were screaming for O'Shea to be sent off. Nevertheless, Gerrard got his free kick and a Fletcher's cowardly shift away from the wall meant that his shot managed to squeeze through the wall gap. To the annoyance of most United fans, the team has now squandered a 2-0 lead for the second time in a row. Another draw would leave the fans fuming for sure and Berbatov has no intention of letting them to do so. In the late 80+ minutes or so, he rose above Carragher to head in a ball into the net to become the first United player to get a hat-trick against the Scousers since 1946. Sheer delight for the Old Trafford crowd and by the end of the final whistle, there's no way Liverpool could wriggle out of defeat. Once again, Dimitar Berbatov has outperformed Rooney this season and he looks set to be on fire with 7 goals tied with Malouda on the top of the scorer's sheet so far.

With one rival match being dealt with, Man Utd is now at least within a distance reach from Chelsea while Liverpool continues to languish at 16th place. It doesn't look good for the Scousers at all. Oh well, I've thoroughly enjoyed this match and what a way indeed to smack Liverpool from the back when they think for a moment that they were safe to escape..lol.

First steps in Europe

It feels so surreal to be here but I ain't dreaming. I've set foot on British lands, have seen the cottages and fought with the chilling winds of the North. First of all, I wanna thank those that had came to the airport to send me off - Justin, Li Ann, Kylie, Jan Vy, Joel, Jon Low, Reuben, King, Jonazan and of course Godma and Jeremy. As expected, I had drove to KLIA myself with mama and my brother. I've passed by KLIA plenty of times last month to send off the JPA folks and each time, I'll return back from the airport. Only this time, I'll never return to PJ after driving to the Terminal. It's gonna be my last drive for the year and I hope those driving skills don't grow rusty when I return next year. I reached the airport at about 8pm, thanks to the rush hour jam at LDP..lol.It's nice to see Justin and the committee 30 minutes later together with Jonazan and King. I had one last great dinner with some of them on the 16th in Jan Vy's house and I find it a fitting end to one of my last few dinners in Malaysia with them.

I checked in my luggage at about 9pm and thankfully, the weight of all the stuff just touched nicely at 30.7kg. That means I need not ditch any books or stuff from my bag..haha. The check-in time was actually at 10.35pm, so I need not go inside that early as I had expected. Justin and the committee needed to go back early for their planning retreat, so my last moments in Malaysia was spent with King, Jonazan, my brother and mama. With the blink of an eye, it was time to say goodbye. I walked past the doors and checkpoints which I had seen the JPAs doing while I was standing in the viewing gallery previously. As I sat in the train connecting to the boarding halls, I can only imagine what went through the minds of each of them. For me, it was a dawning realisation that I'll miss many of them in Malaysia where communication is just a phonecall away if we wanted to have a gathering. When I reached the boarding hall, it was 10.55pm, so I sped up my walking just in case the plane door closes early. I'll be taking the Royal Dutch airlines (KLM) so the first destination would be Amsterdam Schipol airport before transferring over to a smaller plane to fly to Leeds.

The sight of the plane leaving KLIA towards Europe made me bid one final adieu to my homeland silently, but it's merely temporary. In the plane, the Dutch girls and boys shuffle up and down the alleyways of the plane to serve food and drinks. There's a small screen TV on board so I amused myself with some movies like A-Team and Karate Kid, which I did not catch in cinemas previously. The first hour of the flight was spent enjoying whisky while watching a movie since it's free on the plane. I spent hours drifting in and out of sleep because the seats were rather cramped and the air was stuffy. My lips and mouth were dry and bitter just after 3 hrs of sleep. But fortunately, I got it moisturised with the occassional plain water and orange juice. I did keep some little tracking on the route of the plane flight and it makes me go "Wow, if I were to paradrop out of the plane, I'll be in this place!" or just "I'm actually flying above Mother Russia!". The route taken was a diagonal cut past India, through Afghanistan, Russia (Moscow/Minsk), just below the Scandivian bunch of Sweden and Finland, Northern Germany and then finally at Amsterdam.

When the plane landed at Amsterdam, I was quite excited because I had stepped foot onto Europe for the first time. A small step for mankind, a big step for Stan. So this means that The Netherlands had the honour of being the first European country that I stepped foot on. There were lots of things to discover around the transit area, particularly Dutchy in nature. I went to check out the Dutch McDonalds, there were Dutch jerseys on sale, Tulips and even those wooden Dutch shoes. I changed my British pounds into some small amount of Euros to get myself a Dutch souvenir shirt..haha. There's also a small art museum in the transit area itself. An observation of the Dutch in the airport made me realised that quite a number of them are not Caucasian in nature. Quite a number of the Dutch are actually mixed ethnically with Indonesian or Pacific looks (van Bronckhorst/Patrick Kluivert) and I've met the Jamaican looking ones like Edgar Davids. I finished circling around the place for 2hrs and I still have 1hr+ left which was rather boring since the wi-fi there needs to be paid. Finally, the time to board the smaller plane came and this plane ride had more interesting views outside since the previous 12 hr ride was shrouded in darkness. In fact, I would say that my night time darkness was extended by 7hrs on my flight day. I had the opportunity to see Amsterdam on a bird's eye view before the plane ascended above the cloud to cross the English channel. When it was time to land, the plane descended gradually upon reaching the British mainland and I could see all those manors and cottages sprawling over the green fields. Apparently I find that Dutch had better looking and neater farms than the English..lol.

The Leeds Bradford Airport is a small one, and it reminds me of the Johor Senai Airport. Immigration was quite a queue. The officer checking asked a few questions but nothing complicated in nature other than tweaking my ears to catch the English/Yorkshire accent. The airport apparently had a few CIA/MI6-looking police officers stationed after the checkpoint which checks passengers even after they had passed the immigration officer. I collected my luggage and with everything cleared out, headed to the international students booth located near the airport entrance. We got a short briefing before heading out to catch a taxi. The moment I stepped out of the airport, a cold gush of wind blew past me and it was refreshing at first, something like Genting. At as time passes by, it got spammed constantly and it became an irritation even under the shining sun, which doesn't seem to warm up at any time. Waiting for a taxi was a learning experience too after observing several things. Apparently, there are Brit Man Utd fans who are not shy to parade it around in Leeds. I've seen plenty of them strolling out of the airport while I was waiting for the taxis.

The taxi service in UK goes all out to help the passenger. At first they called a standard car cab and when the driver saw my 2 classmates and I had 30kg worth of luggage each, he said that he can't take us but offered to ask the counter girl to change my transport provider to another driver. I was kind of worried that they would ask us to take 2 taxis instead of one, because one taxi already cost 20 pounds per car. Since we had 3, it was divided cheaply among us. Interestingly, the taxi company actually called another bigger vehicle for us at no extra costs. So, the way they work things in the UK, is that the company submits itself to the needs of the customer and making sure that the customer gets the service, no matter what nature/characteristic the customer is. This is reflected even in the airport workers helping the elderly or the disabled to carry luggages all the way into the public transport. Lol, you'll never see this happening in Southeast Asia where an extra mile to work means extra cash! And the other thing is that I noticed that a majority of the taxi drivers in the UK are Indians.

The first few sights that I saw as the taxi zips out of the airport was farmland with cattle in it and some cottages. As we ventured into the city center, we begin to see restaurants and other shops. The roads are narrow here and it is designed to make pedestrian walking easy. There are plenty of designer shops (LV, Prada etc) but all of them are housed in typical English styled shophouses. Even if there are complexes, they are only a few storeys at most. There doesn't seem to be gigantic complexes that exist in Leeds, so there's no way I'm going to find a replica of Mid-Valley or 1 Utama there..lol. Anyways, I reached Sentinel Towers in time and checking in was not a hassle at all. Two accomodation tour guides gave me the essential briefing on what to do. I'm thoroughly inmpressed when I saw my room because it has the better end of the deal with a double bed! I find it quite spacious and it's carperted at the same time. One of the best things for that room is that I have my own toilet to myself. I found an interesting welcome package on my table with tidbits and snacks in them too..haha. Oh well, that's gonna be my home for at least a year. There's so much to discover and explore in this new place, it's like a New World discovery. I'll update further on my experience later as I discover more things around the university and the city centre! :)

Operation Sealion II

Date of Invasion: 17th September
Departure location: KLIA
Time of Departure: 2315
Mission briefing and equipment check: 2115
Order of Battle: Rendezvous with Dutch resistance forces in Amsterdam in 12hrs time. 3 hours of transit followed by a smaller plane infiltration past the English channel into Leeds Airport. Little resistance is expected
Expected arrival time: 0950 local time

This is it. The H-hour and D-Day of my life is here. It's time to jump into Europe.

Horror Comeback

Arteta completes a horrifying sight for United fans

This is unbeliavably frustrating. All I gotta say is don't count your chickens before they hatch. Or rather, before the final whistle is blown. Even when you have a two goal lead in the 91st minute. It's nice to see late comebacks especially by United but when comebacks come to haunt them at the other end instead, it's produced in the most stupidest fashion ever. Here we have Moyes getting all wrong with his selection and they were 1-0 up first. Fletcher equalised nicely and allowed both sides to be all square at the second half. When Vidic hit in the 2nd and Berbatov the killer 3rd, it looked set for the coffin to be sealed and done. Then Cahill equalised in the dying minutes, and I thought, well, that could be a consolation goal and that's where 2 goal cushions come in handy to deal with a late goal like this.

It was as if Murphy's law sprang into life at that moment when the worst possible scenario played out. Fresh from the restart, Everton came racing down and Arteta completed the comeback by forcing the equaliser into the back of the net just within the minute. That was 3-3 from 1-3 down for the home side! What in the world were the defence doing? Once again, United were snapped in the butt, unable to hold water because of defensive lapses. That's 4 precious points dropped from 2 should have been confirmed victories. Moyes has gotten probably one of the greatest escapes of his career and yet he's so greedy that he had to invade the field to argue with the officials that Everton could have gone to win the game had the referee not stopped the play. Geez..be thankful!

I would say that Berbatov had a fine game and continued his good start to the season with 4 goals under his belt. It would say that Ferguson made a good judgment sense by taking account into the mental aspect of the game by leaving Rooney out, with him taking note of the flak that Rooney will get from the Toffees, who seemed to be sworn enemies with him the moment he left them. Rooney's gotten used to the flaks but this time, it's more stinging that usual considering the probe into Rooney's rather promiscuous off-field life which would be subjected to plenty of ridicule from the crowd. The defence meanwhile seems to have lot of lapses even without Ferdinand. Neville is too slow to catch up with the pacy speed of the Everton midfield and the most epic fail has gotta come from Evra. I can't understand why Patrice went acrobatic kung fu in the air to stop the invading Everton players at the first goal when a simple tackle will suffice. 4 matches played may be early but somebody's gotta stop the Chelsea juggernaut!

One Last Makan Spree

It was a massive effort to shift all the stuff back but I managed to make it thanks to some fantastic help from King and Reuben from JB. Actually, I had planned to return earlier back from the Southern Island on Monday for one last trip up north but Mama's exam invigilation duties and an unexpected death of a relative meant that it had to be postponed to Wednesday. Meanwhile, I made sure I had my fill of Botak Jones and cleaned my room well since I won't be bunking in anytime soon for at least a year. Since I was there for the week, my relatives and family friends there gave me some farewell dinners to send me off which I appreciated very much.

On Wednesday, I drove down along the highway in the evening and had a night's rest at PJ first before continuing the second half up north at the next morning. I had the usual ice kacang and char kway teow combo at Lorong Selamat for late lunch. Unfortunately, for dinner, my beloved Pork Noodle stall at Ho Ping Kopitiam was not open, so I had to make do with some Oyster Omelette and French Smoked Salmon at Northern Beach Cafe. Breakfast at the next morning was at Macalister Lane, opposite the road where I grew up. The famous chee cheong fun @ Seow Fong Lye Kopitiam there had remained elusive everytime I came to Penang because I went there late and usually they are finished by 11am. So I made it a point this time to go early and I got my fair share of it. There's also the Char Kway Kak @ SFL cafe and the Kway Teow Tng in Kim Lee at the same lane which I gladly slurped up. Each of these folks that I ate from had been in business since I was staying at Penang at the age of 3 or so and I grew up during my childhood eating from their stalls. Almost 15years+ down the road, all of them still had the same superb taste.

Afterthat, I stopped by Taiping during noon hours for my Mama to visit her relatives and I had to visit my favourite Hainanese kopitiam Yut Sun there to dunk in for one last time all the old classic fare. I would say that particular place is a piece of heaven where 1Malaysia truly exists. All my years eating there, I've never failed to see a healthy mix of Malays, Chinese and Indians gathering to eat under the same roof in a Chinese kopitiam. By evening, I'm on my way back to PJ since I have practice today and my last Sunday at GFS will be tomorrow. Ahhhh..it'll be hard to say goodbye to Pastor Vic and all the families there. It's been a fantastic 2 years of learning and serving there :)

One day in September

The most iconic image of the entire Munich hostage crisis which flashed before cameras and televisions

I was flipping through my movies library today and watched a few minutes of portion of the movie "Munich" when I decided to read more about it on the Internet. It turns out to be a coincidence that today 5th September was the exact day when the Munich massacre happened 38 years ago. If you think the recent failure of the Filipino police force in dealing with the Hong Kong tourist hostage was bad enough, history reminds us the handling of the Munich hostage crisis by the West German authorities was as disastrous. It was the middle of the 1972 Munich Olympics when a group of trained operatives from the militant group Black September, stormed into the Olympic Village in 31 Conollystrasse in the early morning hours to take hostage of the Israeli atheletes residing there. The village security was intentionally lax, following the Germans' determination to change the world's perceptions about them as a result of the bitter taste left by Hitler from the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It was this poor security loophole that was exploited by Black September with great success, starting from the infiltration of the facility as a worker and a mere casual visitor entering the facility without proper identification. They had the blueprint scouted well. Apparently before the games had even started, a West German psychologist, Dr. Sieber had came up with 26 worst case scenarios for the Olympic committee to examing and the predicted situation 21 was eerily too similar to the events that actually tanspired on 5th September. It was however dismissed as being too ridiculous to happen.

On the fateful day, the hostage takers entered into the Olympic Village compound in the most ironic fashion. Quite a number of atheletes had preferred to climb over the fence perimeter to return back to their apartments rather than taking a long detour back to the main gates with the guards. The bunch of them happened to stumbled upon a group of rather drunk group of American athletes who were at the same time, wanting to climb over the fence. Lo and behold, the Americans, unsuspecting of what they were doing or who they were (since all were dressed in tracksuits) helped them to climb over. Once inside and clear from outside eyes, the terrorists removed their AKs from the sports duffel bags and loaded them with bullets. They proceeded in breaking through the doors of the Israeli apartments. Of course, a struggle did occurred between the Israeli athletes and the gunmen as some of them were wrestlers and weightlifters and they thought they had a chance to overpower them with their muscular mass. The struggle did not last long as the gunmen promptly killed 2 of them during the struggle as a reminder to the 9 other sportsmen that they were holding. That was fail number 1 already. Hostage death.

So, the Munich police came in and started negotiations but the problem with the police force is that there were never any elite force or anti-terrorist squad present in Germany that were trained to deal with these types of problems involving highly armed situations. A large part of reason was because of the post-war agreements and the limitations imposed on Germany to operate any of these specialised militaristic group by the Allies. At first they tried storming the building with some track-suited policemen into the compound. Fail number 2: The camera crew were broadcasting the events to worldwide television and this included police positions and movements which the terrorists can observe from their TV sets..lol. Eventually, the storming idea was called off and towards the evening, the negotiations resulted in the terrorists demanding that they be transported via helicopters to the Airport to be flown to Cairo. It was at the airport that most failures were compounded. The Munich police devised another flip flop plan to have policemen dressed as airplane crew in the jet so that they can overpower the terrorist once they are in the plane. They don't seem to be able to make up their minds on a decisive course of action and towards the last minute, they decide to abandon this plan too and adopt another solution, that is to get snipers to take out the terrorists as they walked out of their helicopters. The problem is that there were never any trained snipers in the police team and the handpicked 5 were picked because they had regularly joined weekend competitive game shooting. That's fail number 3. They only had G3 rifles to rely on without scopes or night vision goggles. Fail no. 4. The Munich police had assumed that there were only 5 terrorists and that was the reason why they employed 5 snipers for one head each. Total number of terrorists coming out of the helicopters: 8. Ooopss. Fail number 5. No radio contact between the 5 snipers. Fail number 6. Three were on the control tower and two were on the ground. The two on the ground were vaguely instructed to start shooting as soon as they hear gunfire sounds.

Once the terrorist touched down in the airport, two of them went to inspect the alleged getaway jet plane and when they discovered that it was empty, they started running back in panic to tell their other comrades that their positions were compromised already. It was at this point that the German "snipers" started to open fire, killing two terrorists and fatally wounding another. The others managed to get away and ducked for cover. A firefight followed afterthat and this was proceeded by an hour of so of standoff, terrorists still hiding in the airport runway vicinity and giving sporadic shots once in a while. The terrorists succeeded in shooting out most of the airport lights and in the moment of confusion and darkness, friendly fire meant that that the 2 snipers on the ground were mistakenly targetted by their colleagues on the control tower, reducing the amount of operational sharpshooters to 3 personnels. Fail no. 7. The situation would have been easily settled with the deployment of armoured personnel carriers but the APCs were deployed only after the gunfight occured. And then they were stuck in a traffic jam. Epic Fail no.8. So, it finally ended with the remaining terrorists going on a kamikaze run towards the helicopters, spraying bullets and killing all hostages under point blank AK -47. To finish off the job, the terrorists lobbed grenades to explode the helicopters, burning the corpses in the process before they themselves were shot dead by the police. All hostages died at the end of the day. GG.

Up till today, the Germans could never account for their tactical failure in dealing with the crisis. It was a doomed rescue operation from the start, with many basic mistakes being made that could have saved lives. The West German government responded by forming the elite commando Swat group of GSG-9. Security at the Olympic Games was never compromised since then. Munich spent less than $2 million for security. The security bill in Athens 2004 was estimated to be more than $600 million. History does teach lessons in the end. Both sides did not gain at the end on what they had demanded, although one could say that it was a political statement success for the Palestinians in a way since they were brought under focused world media attention after the incident.