Old Blog of Alireza Sefati.

Calle Soccer

2008-12-03T21:52:00.000-08:00

If you don't know what Calle soccer is, it is time you found out.
Calle Soccer is a new street soccer brand that is taking it back to the streets where the real skills are.
And Soccer Nation has been a forfront in this street soccer movement by promoting street soccer events and sale.
Right now Soccer Nation has huge sale on Calle soccer balls. They are usually $40 retail but they are on sale for $29.95. You will also get a free calle ball bag value of $10.

Also for reading this blog, I would like to offer a coupon code so you can receive free UPS ground shipping as long as you place order before december 10th. The coupon code is fss08.

Let The Change Begin

2008-11-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

Let the change begin.

Also don't forget to check out my new sefati blog. I blog there more often

a few new things

2008-08-18T21:40:00.001-07:00

Ok I don't blog here often as I am blogging on Sefati.net from now on but a few things I would like to announce.

1. Soccer Nation has a new URL that is alot easier to remember: SoccerNation.com
2. A new brand is coming around: Ole. It is basically going to be a unique soccer life style and street soccer brand like never seen before.
3. Soccer Nation looking into opening a second location in San Diego.

Stay tuned.

My Google Pages

2008-03-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

Ok I finally have a Googlepages page. It's basically a directory of all of my links.
Here is the URL: http://asefati.googlepages.com/

Chivas Soccer Gear Online

2008-03-04T14:01:00.000-08:00

Soccer - If you are a Chivas fan, you know you must have the latest Chivas soccer gear. And what place better than Soccer Nation where it has latest original Chivas soccer gear on sale.

Chivas home soccer jersey, Chivas away soccer jersey, Chivas soccer ball, and Chivas travel jacket all are on sale.

So make sure you check out this great online soccer store for great deals on Chivas gear and other soccer gear.

What's Hot at Soccer Nation

2008-02-04T15:13:00.000-08:00

Soccer - I was not planning to blog here any more as I moved my personal blog to sefati.net. However I thought I keep this blog as a reference to the old posts and also to use it announcement of what's new and hot at Soccer Nation.

Calle Street Soccer Balls : Calle means street in Spanish. Calle is a new soccer brand that offers street soccer products.

England Soccer Jersey and soccer gear: Umbro, is the brand that makes England soccer jerseys and soccer gear has done a great job making quality and stylish England football gear. All the England football jerseys and football gear are on sale at Soccer Nation.

Chivas Futbol Jersey and Gear: Reebok is the maker of Chivas soccer jerseys and soccer gear. All Chivas apparel are on sale at our Soccer Store.

Select Prestige Soccer Balls: We are among a very few online soccer stores who carry the elite Select Prestige soccer balls. These are great soccer match NFHS approved soccer balls that are on sale for a great price.

New Blog - I will be blogging at Sefati.net from now on.

2008-01-28T17:26:00.000-08:00

I am moving to host my own blog under sefati.net. I will be using wordpress blogging software which is a better and more flexible blogging software on this blog. Blogger, which is the blogging software this site uses was good and did the job, but now that I am blogging more, I need a more flexible and more powerful software so that is why I choose wordpress. Also I think the URL sefati.net is easier to remember and hosting it myself can help me better customize it.

I am keeping the old posts here for your reference. My new posts will be on my new blogging URL which is www.Sefati.net. It will be same format as this blog, which will be a mixture of everyday life posts, sports posts, and technology and SEO posts.

Also you can view my SEO posts on my SEO Blog.

See you there.

Sen. Edward Kennedy Backed Obama

2008-01-28T11:03:00.000-08:00

Life - I have been kind of indifferent about the primaries becasue I usually find them boring and wasting of my time (and supporters money)

The only elections I usually sort of follow are the final round presidential election and even then I usually don't care much about who wins. The reason for my indifference is the system itself.

However this year's primaries are getting a bit interesting. Obama vs. Clinton war of words are really fun. They are exposing each other's past mistakes (and perhaps corruptions) like there is no tomorrow. Members of the same party exchanging sharp and sometimes insulting words...just way too fun to miss!

So I am going to keep track of boxing round . and see if Hillary's experienced husband (experianced in every way...if you know what I mean..LOL..) can help her win this boxing match or will Obama's black brotherhood kick the Clinton's ass?

Well, we just have to wait and see.

David Beckham is Bad for The Enviornment

2008-01-24T16:07:00.000-08:00

Soccer - David Beckham is not only recognized for the world's richest soccer player, his crosses, his freekicks, or his wife, but now he is also recognized as the "biggest environmental threat" writes Robert Burns from FoxSoccer.com.

British environmental group Carbon Trust claims that David Beckham produces 63 tons of carbon dioxide yearly. They are judging this number simply because he travels so much due to his multiple team obligations, and his other professional and personal obligations.

I find this group very humorous. Because they are ignoring the fact that David usually travels with his team not alone and he is not the only person that wastes so much energy. What about the secretary of states and foreign ministers of country, and other politicians who travel often. What about international business men and women and most important of all, US and British military? I mean WTF, if I have to name one person as biggest threat to the environment would be our own president, Mr. George W. Bush for his multiple random wars and never ending military operations.

Here is the reason behind this. British people are pissed that David Beckham preferred sunny weather of southern California over the cloudy and rainy weather of UK. Or the fact that David Beckham couldn't lead England to Euro 2008. Or the fact that he is the richest footballer ever lived. I say live the guy alone. He is the person you made him to be so stop complaining. Let him make his money and enjoy his life.

Real to Waste Time No More

2008-01-23T12:24:00.000-08:00

Soccer - Today I was reading Fox Soccer website there was news on the sporting director of Real Madrid Predrag Mijatovic admits so much time has been wasted in aquring Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo and Arsenal's super midfielder Fabregas since several previous attempts have failed so he is not planning to waste time no more.

My opinion, these players are good at the team and league they play for and both of their teams are big enough to handle them. And it appears Predrag Mijatovic also sees that too as he acknowledged that fact too in the article so good to hear these players staying in EPL. My opinion is that Real Madrid needs to go after La Liga and Serie A talents so he can get players that can adapt into Real's style of play fast enough.

I think Real should look into brining KAKA from AC Milan. That would be a type of player that Real can use easily and he can fit right it. He is Real Madrid ready ;)

How Google Treats NoFollow Links

2008-01-21T17:32:00.001-08:00

SEO: NoFollow links are increasingly becoming common when webmaster code their pages to link to external pages or some of their internal pages. According to Google, if there is a rel=nofollow on a link, basically that link is ignored by the Google web crawler.

However since I have not been fully convinced by that statement, I tried to do a little test of my own to see how that really works. Check out Google and NoFollow Links post of mine on my SEO blog.

Old Men Can Fight Too

2008-01-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

Boxing: Roy Jones, Felix Trinidad went at this two days ago for a 12 round fight which Roy won the fight by unanimous decision. He managed to knock Flexi down twice, in the 7th round and the 10th, both of the knock downs both of them could have been avoided.Flex got hit in the head with a short punch and after literally 5 seconds he decided to fall on the ground. The second knock down Felix got his too but he was off balance so that was the main reason he fell.

Anyway, Roy threw out less punches but landed more and after those two knock downs, and with help of unanimous decisions, he won the fight but hats off to Felix too for putting up a great fight after over 3 years of retirement and the fact that he seemed alot more our of shape than Roy.

It made it worth watching and for those of us that paid, they aren't complaining either so I guess old men can fight too!

Henry is Back

2008-01-20T12:51:00.000-08:00

Soccer: It seems that Thierry Henry, the former Arsenal striker now playing for FC Barcelona is slowly letting go of his past emotions and settling in Barcelona. He just scored his 6th goal in the season and the first and only goal against Racing. The first half is over but this Henry guy is just getting started!

Go Henry!

Oh yah, you can order your Home Barcelona Jersey or Away Barcelona Jersey at Soccer Nation soccer store.

Mayweather De La Hoya Rematch

2008-01-18T10:00:00.000-08:00

Boxing: According to USAToday, Mayweather and De La Hoya are nearing a rematch of their May 2007 boxing match where De La Hoya lost to Mayweather by split decision.

I was expecting that because both De La Hoya is a great fighter and he is not the type that go out like that. At least not by split decision. And Mayweather has something to prove too. That the last fight which he won was well deserved.

There is also a possibility that Floyed Mayweather maybe training De Lay Hoya again. He is father of the Floyed Mayweather Jr. and has been a trainer of De La Hoya for a long time but didn't train him the first fight out of respect for his son.
All I know is that I expect a better and more aggressive fight this time and possibility of a KO.

Internet Party Video with Google, MySpace, FaceBook, eBay, Amazon and the ther guys

2008-01-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

Internet: I was reading the SEO religion blog today and saw this video I thought it was pretty funny. It is an internet party that all major websites went to.

I thought I share it with you.

Facebook Worth $3 Billion?

2008-01-15T14:29:00.000-08:00

Is Facebook really Wroth 3 Billion Dollars? They better be after the fact that the owner of the site, who lives in a one bedroom apartment by the way, turn down a $750 million buy out.

There are many figures on the net about how much is this company actually is worth, I see $1 Billion, $3 Billion, and even some guy believes they are worth $8 billion!

Facebook is a social networking site that that was launched in 2004 and has grown rapidly that offers free membership and free services to their members. Their business model is the old school internet advertising but unlike the .com days, it is as targeted as possible so it works.

Now I am not sure if those numbers are correct but I do know that does bring us up to probably the most important online marketing success; Targeted advertising. If you have a website or a business that want to be successful online, your online marketing efforts should be as targeted as possible. Checkout my SEO blog on tips on how you can improve your website's performance by increasing your online marketing relevancy.

More Reasons to Eat Organic

2008-01-15T10:45:00.001-08:00

I was reading CNN.com headlines today and saw a headline on " FDA OKs meat, milk from most cloned animals". I find this news disturbing because I have no faith and trust in FDA. FDA has been accused before of corruption before.

Even without FDA's past correuption charges, I still believe the issue of cloning is too unknown to us human. We still don't understand the consequences of cloning animals to their own health and environment, let alone consequences of consuming them and their products.

So why risk it? Eat Organic. It is all about your health. Forget the politics behind this and your loyalty to your affiliated political party. Your health is most important. And don't worry about the fact that organic food maybe too expensive. . Eat less but each good. Its better for you anyways as there are many other reasons on why to eat organic food. Here are more reasons to eat organic.

Nike Sucks

2008-01-12T13:09:00.000-08:00

And soon Adidas and other brands will suck too just like how Nike does. As you may know, I am the president of Soccer Shop LLC, which is the parent company of Soccer Nation. The other day a coach came in and asked for a dozen Nike T90 Soccer Balls. These balls are retailed at $40 and sell them on our website and in our store for $34.95. Since he was a regular customer and he wanted more of these balls, I gave him additional extended discount and offered to sell those to him for $25 each. That is a huge discount however he expected them for $20 each. That is below my cost and I told him that but then he told me that is how much Nike is offering those balls to his high school.

I was shocked as I was unaware that Nike sells to schools directly. Up until now, I was under assumption that they direct their customers to their dealers like us. I know on their website they sell stuff but that is usually clearance stuff or for new stuff it is full retail with no discounts.

Anyway I lost that sale and I was not too happy about it, so I called my Nike guy and he told me that Nike has this program where Nike does business with high schools directly bypassing their own dealers. In other words Nike competes with their own dealers when it comes to high school business.

Pretty messed up isn't it? I mean team business is the bread and butter of soccer stores and smaller sports stores. So if you own a soccer or small sport store, you can kiss your major team business goodbye. Because it is just matter of time that Adidas, Puma, Reebok, Diadora, Umbro, and Lotto, Joma, and other Nike competitors will start implementing similar type of programs.

Thanks to Nike, for pushing and driving the market that way.

Canada is not a soccer nation. But is US?

2008-01-11T15:31:00.000-08:00

I ran into this article that I found interesting. Article title is "Canada sadly is not a soccer nation" the author complains about state of soccer in Canada.

He vents about how people only enroll their kids in soccer programs but end up watching ICE Hocky at the end and most TV programs don't even show the game and people don't really care.

I found this article extremly interesting because this seems to be the issue here in US too. Average sport fans in US talk about Sunday NFL games, Monday night football, NBA, baseball. ESPN shows more poker. But there is a difference between US and Canada. And that are more immigrants who love soccer who live in United States, or come to US every year. Take the Hispanics as an example. They love the beautiful, or futbol as they call it and their passion for the sport is never ending.

Since US is more close to Mexico, the passion of soccer is coming cross the boarder, and the MLS cooperation with the Mexican league, and creating interliga is raising the standards of American soccer. Also arrivals of many soccer stars such as David Beckham to LA Galaxy, and Blanko to Chicaco fire, are all signs of that US is a becoming a true soccer nation.

Talking about Soccer Nation, don't forget to check out their latest products and sale on Soccer Nation website.

Bill Gates Last Day at Microsoft

2008-01-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, Bill Gate is sort of retiring from Microsoft. He is still the Chairman and adviser of Microsoft and the major shareholder, but he is going to be less active in day to day operations and wants to put more focus on his daily life and his global health and education work.

The following is his goodbye video I found on youtube.

I Don't Care for The Presidental Primaries

2008-01-09T15:08:00.000-08:00

If you have been watching the news recently, there has been much news coverage on US presidential primaries.

As much as I love democracy and electing a president is probably the most ultimate right a citizen can have in a democracy, I am not too optimistic about the outcome of the presidential primaries because they are simply biased and unfair.

I mean here they are, supposedly the colleagues and friends of the same party going at it, putting each other down, even banning one another from private debates so they can get ahead.

For example Obama and Hillary are going at it on the democrat site and Ron Paul and rest of the republican candidates accuse each other of not being true republicans. Dennis Kucinich gets banned from ABC presidential debates, and Dr. Paul gets banned from Fox News debate.

If these candidates really cared about America, American people interest, or even their own party, why are these candidates so quite (and frankly even happy) when a fellow candidate is banned from national debate? Why bashing one another just to get ahead? Why not embracing their political agenda and unite for a better America?

So it is fair to say that I doubt the motives of all of these politicians, the debate hosting media, any everyone involved so I really careless about it.

SEO - Importance of Links and Contents

2008-01-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

If you have a website, then you should wonder what can you do for your website to show up better in Google and Yahoo. The steps you take to optimize your website better for better search engine results are called Search Engine Optimization or simply SEO.

Simply submitting your website to Google and Yahoo is not enough. You need to learn and implement the SEO Basics and then you need to do much more.

On my SEO Blog, there are many posts some of beginning SEO posts however if you need to know two important elements about SEO, they are relevant contents on your site and incoming high quality links to your site.

Contents are important because search engines search your websites contents for keywords and links to your websites like votes for your website. So gotta keep the contents natural and relevant for your website and

So check out my search engine optimization blog often for various SEO methods that can help your with your websites search engine optimization efforts.

Going back to the old format

2008-01-03T15:04:00.000-08:00

Hello all and wish you had a happy new year. For 2008, I think I am going to go back to the old format. I am going to start blogging pretty much about everything that interests me. I love sports beyond soccer so don't be surprised to see some posts about other sports and our door events such as Basketball, Boxing, or even Kayaking.

Also will drop non sport related posts here too. Posts about everyday life, technology, business, politics, whatever. Main focus will still be soccer because it is the sport I love and religiously follow. But for a chance you may see some non-soccer related or even non-sport related posts here too.

Anyway, see you soon.

Ali

Last Post of The Year 2007. Welcome 2008

2007-12-26T14:31:00.000-08:00

This is going to my last post for the year 2007. Some exiting developments in soccer world happened this year, my favorite one was Sepahan of Iran making it to club world cup championship, Arsenal's strong appearance in EPL ending the year on top of the table, and of course David Beckham coming to US. The biggest disappointment was of course the Englishmen not making it to to Euro 2008 but life goes on.

I am looking forward the year 2008 because of Euro 2008. It is going to be a very competitive tournament. I think the favorites are Spain and Italy. Although Holland is a strong side too and and they are long over due for a major title. Of course Germany and France are among European powerhouses too and can create wonders. Croatia is going to be a good side too, considering them beating England in England.

As far as business concerned, thank God we have a good Christmas shopping season at the soccer store. It helped us pay a few big bills and to re-invest into our business and get ready for Euro 2008. I am looking forward a good online sale of soccer jerseys for Euro 2008. So don't forget to buy your jersey ;).

I will start putting posts again on the new year, with a slight change to this blog. The soccer posts will continue but you will also see occasional posts about daily life and technology. I figured I give a little life to this blog since after all it is my personal blog.

Anyway, have a happy and safe new year.

Ronaldinho and Deco Will Be Benched Against Real Madrid Game

2007-12-20T14:25:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of respect Frank Rijkaard and always liked him both as a player and as a coach. While being part of Holland team back in 1990s, he made wonders and now coaching Barcelona, he had brought both the Spanish La Liga soccer title as well as European Champion's league title for them. He knows what he is doing. It seems that his strategies and methods have worked very well for Barcelona so far.

According to Goal.com, he is set to bench two of his stars, Ronaldinho and Deco for the upcoming classico game against Real Madrid. Both players have fell out of fitness and have been benched the last few games.

But I think he is really pushing his chances too far by Benching both Ronaldinho and Deco against the classico game against Real Madrid. Lack of fitness according to today's standards don't necessarily mean that players are literally out of form or out of shape. It can simply mean that they have not done as great as expected in past few games and during the practice sessions. Perhaps that is due to fatigue, recovering from injuries, or personal problems.

Great players such as the two time world soccer player of the year Ronaldinho, and the power shooter Deco, are not like other average players and often don't allow their slight lack of form prevent them from creating magic. And that is exactly what Barcelona is going to need against the the La Liga powerhouse Real Madrid. Real Madrid are not an easy side to beat simply by placing good coaching tactics. To beat this team, each team need special players with skills, heart, and experience. And both Ronaldinho and Deco are among those special players that Barcelona is lucky to have. So starting them off the bench in such important game, in my humble opinion, could be an obvious mistake.