It is no secret that the National Football League has been trying to expand into the international market for quite some time. The National Basketball Association (NBA) has a large fan base all around the world and the NFL sees no reason why American Football can't be just as popular outside the US.

There are many hurdles for the NFL to overcome before it can reach a global appeal. For one, most international sports fans consider football to be a game played kicking a round ball into a goal. The whole concept is relatively foreign and probably confusing for these fans.

The other major hurdle is that NFL athletes have voiced considerable objections to playing in the International Market. An NFL franchise in say London would have a very difficult time signing top players to their roster and would probably need to pay a premium. 

Regardless of these hurdles, the NFL is still full speed ahead in their quest to become a globally recognized trademark. This Sunday of Week 4, the Minnesota Vikings will cross the Atlantic to battle the Pittsburgh Steelers in London Town. They even got Gene Simmons on board to sing the National Anthem. The American National Anthem that is!

I have a few questions to ask about this booking: 
    
    1. Why would the new owner of an Arena Football Franchise (LA Kiss) agree to promote a rival Football League? 

    2. Why in the world would anyone think Gene Simmons has the singing ability to pull off the national anthem? 

    3. How much alcohol is going to be served to the Brits to make all of this entertaining? 

Would love to hear some of your answers in the comments below.  

Here is how it all went down:

Armenia is off to the races in the UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifying Group 10 thanks to a 1-0 victory against Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan found themselves second in the section going into the game, having won 1-0 in Belarus in their opening fixture. However, they have now been leapfrogged by their opponents in Astana, who prevailed courtesy of Gagik Poghosyan's early goal.


Poghosyan's decisive intervention came in the fourth minute, heading in from
Aghvan Papikyan's corner. It proved sufficient for Rafayel Nazaryan's side,
who negotiated the remainder of the game without undue alarm.

"I am really pleased that we won the game against Kazakhstan," said the
Armenia coach. "They are a well-balanced team throughout. In the first half we
played more aggressively but then we decided to change our tactics. In the
second half we played more defensively because we started to feel the
pressure."

We even hear the Armenian Team has a famous celebrity fan by the name
of Kim Kardashian. The reality star of "Keeping up with the Kardashians" went to
Twitter back in June to boast about Armenia's victory over Football powerhouse
Denmark. Is it possible the Armenian players are getting an extra boost of moral
from Kim K's 18 million Twitter followers?

120 minutes of regular time and extra time had passed and the Confederations Cup semifinal match between Spain and Italy remained deadlocked at 0-0. The two teams went to penalties. For fans of the two countries, anxiety was building up like a hurricane. This is the time to start saying your prayers.

Candreva made a penalty for Italy, then Xavi made for Spain, and both teams kept making the penalties, and kept making the penalties…on and on. Eventually, Italy’s Bonucci, a central defender who has probably taken four spot kicks in his entire life, missed one over the bar. Spain’s Jesus Navas stepped up and finished, sending his country to the Confederations Cup Final, where they will face up against host Brazil on Sunday.

The beauty of this Spain team is that it keeps evolving. After technical skill and the ability to retain possession finally overcame the neurosis of past failure at Euro 2008, there came the years of control in 2010 and 2012, as
World  Cup and another European Championship were collected playing safety-first keep-ball. For all the criticism of its supposed negativity in Poland and  Ukraine there were signs of another Spain emerging, one that had begun to come to terms with the problem posed by an opponent that sits deep against it. 


It is an issue any possession-based side will have. If you dominate the ball 
to the extent that an opponent despairs of ever winning it back, that opponent 
will eventually simply stick men behind the ball, allowing you possession but 
trying to deny you space in the final third to create any goal scoring 
opportunities. Spain's response for a long time when faced with such an opponent
  has been simply to keep passing. The process is attritional but Spain 
essentially knows that as long as it has the ball it isn't going to concede and 
that, eventually, an opponent is likely to be worn down. A mistake -- and a goal
  -- will come. 
  
At the Euros, Vicente del Bosque, the Spain coach, spoke again and again 
about "control." But he also spoke about "profundidad" -- depth of 
field. If an opponent packs men behind the ball, what is lost is depth of field:
  Spanish attacks essentially start higher up the pitch and that means that 
"verticalidad" -- verticality, playing the ball towards goal -- is far 
harder. The risk is that the team with the ball ends up playing too 
horizontally, going back and forth across the pitch without making any progress,
  without generating the burst of speed necessary to puncture a well-drilled 
rearguard. 

That is why Jordi Alba is such an important addition. Although ostensibly a 
left-back, he is a converted winger and has many of the technical attributes 
you'd expect of an attacking player. But vitally, he has great pace and stamina,
  working up and down that left flank, and seems to have the gift of timing his 
runs to arrive in space. He did it against Italy in the final of the Euros last 
year and he added another two in the 3-0 win over Nigeria on Sunday. 
  
Both those games were a little unusual in that Italy and Nigeria actually 
tried to engage Spain high up the pitch and did leave space behind them. For 
Spain that is a rare experience and against Nigeria it was one with which it 
wasn't entirely comfortable, yielding numerous chances, particularly in the 
first half, that better finishing might have punished. It may be that Spain, as 
Barcelona did against Bayern Munich last season, is not very good at defending 
-- or at least not at defending in the sense of thwarting an opponent coming at 
it. It seems to happen often with gifted possession sides that they get so used 
to defending with the ball, reducing the risk by denying the opponent the ball, 
that they effectively forget the mechanics of what to do when they don't have it
  and an opponent does attack them -- and of course Alba and Gerard Pique are
both  Barca players. 

  
But what Alba offers is a player who can arrive at pace onto a sideways pass,
  and so turn horizontal movement into vertical movement. There are, essentially,
  two ways to beat a massed defense: go round it or go through it: Alba has the 
pace to create overlaps -- and conveniently does so on the left, where Spain, 
with Cesc Fabregas and Andres Iniesta sharing the midfield and forward duties, 
are naturally narrow -- and he can also go through by dint of coming from deep 
positions. 

Just as importantly, Alba can actually defend. Dani Alves performs a similar 
role on the right for Barcelona (and it may be that against better opponents 
Barca decides next season it must temper the attacking urges of one or the 
other) but his defensive inadequacies have regularly been exposed at 
international level -- most notably against Paraguay in the 2011 Copa America 
when his haplessness made the winger Marcelo Estigarribia look so potent he 
earned a move from the French second division side Le Mans (who had loaned him 
out to Newell's Old Boys in Argentina) to Juventus. 

Alves hasn't yet been exposed in the Confederations Cup, although with he and
  Marcelo (who may be even worse defensively) both pushing up, Brazil looks 
horribly vulnerable to counterattacks that hit it wide. Del Bosque, 
instinctively cautious, counters that threat by balancing Alba with Alvaro 
Arbeloa on the right. Arbeloa seems almost archaic now, a fullback who actually 
defends, but he is key to how Spain play, often shuffling across to function 
almost as a third center-back (a role Sergio Busquets can also fill, dropping 
back from deep midfield) when Alba advances. 

Much has been made of the success of Spain at youth level, which seems to 
suggest its success will endure. Perhaps the most alarming aspect for the rest 
of the world, though, is that the team those players will break in to has been 
together so long, has evolved so smoothly, that it has the rhythm and internal 
balance of a club side.