The final group, including England & France, under the new guidance of Roy Hodgson, the Three Lions will face Euro 2000 champions France as well as Sweden and hosts Ukraine. But it’s not just England who have young talent flowing through their ranks, the other three sides will all have talent to look out for in June.

Andriy Yarmolenko (Dynamo Kiev & Ukraine)

This 22-year old is making big noises in Ukraine. Andriy Yarmolenko is a tricky left-footed winger and is approaching 100 appearances for his club. In those 84 games he’s managed 30 goals and broke on to the international scene in 2009. With 18 caps and 7 goals Yarmolenko is a dead cert to go to the EURO’s this summer and could be a dangerous customer for right-backs to deal with in Group D.

Emir Bajrami (Twente & Sweden)

There are some talented players coming through the Eredivisie right now and Emir Bajrami is one of them. The Swedish winger has attracted the interest from some of the top European clubs and will be a big threat in his national side in Ukraine.

After five years at Elfsborg, Bajrami made the move to FC Twente and scored his first goal for Sweden just a week later. He’s made 15 appearances for Sweden scoring 2 goals and could be in the starting XI when they face up to the hosts next month.

John Guidetti (Manchester City & Sweden)

John Guidetti may be on the City payroll, but not everybody will know who this young striker is. Guidetti has been out on loan at Feyenoord and has made a big impact in Holland. He’s got 20 goals in 23 games and made his international debut this year, giving him a fighting chance of getting a spot on the plane next month.

He’ll be returning to Manchester soon and may find it difficult to break through with the array of talent ahead of him at the Etihad, but if Guidetti was to go elsewhere he looks like he could be a steal for a team that creates chances because Guidetti is a goal scorer.

Oliver Giroud (Montpellier & France)

If anyone can stop the drought of goals that France seems to be suffering with at major tournaments recently, it could be this young man. Oliver Giroud has come to the attention of several top clubs and has been scouted extensively by Liverpool.

He began to make a name for himself in France with Tours where he scored 38 goals in 69 games before getting a move to Montpellier. One of the key men in their rise up the Ligue 1 table, his 37 goals there brought him to the attention of Laurent Blanc last year, and he’s already scored for France after just three appearances. He could be an outsider to be a big hit at this year’s tournament.

Kyle Walker (Tottenham & England)

Because I know much more about my country’s national side than I do with the other 15 teams, I could obviously have named any amount of players that we could take to Ukraine this summer, but I’m going to focus on two. Kyle Walker has just won the PFA Young Player of the Year award and could be England’s starting right-back at this summer’s championships.

With Micah Richards struggling with injuries and Glen Johnson out of form, Walker looks almost certain to go to the EURO’s and will most likely be in the first XI. With bags of pace, a good future and apparently a great free-kick, Walker will be one to watch this summer…plus he’ll have to deal with Yarmolenko and Baljrami!

Danny Welbeck (Manchester United & England)

Danny Welbeck has come on leaps and bounds in the last few years. A loan spell at Sunderland last season did wonders for his form and confidence and he’s become a first choice in Sir Alex Ferguson’s side this season, becoming the main partner for Wayne Rooney.

With Rooney suspended for England’s two opening games, Welbeck seems the likely choice to lead the line against France and Sweden. His goalscoring return isn’t that of a clinical striker, but he’s chipped in and has proven to be a great team player for United. Can he be the man to fire England to glory?

Image Courtesy of  katatonia82 / Shutterstock.com

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With Jaws came blockbusters. In 1975, Steven Spielberg had become the forefather of the big summer films, but with the release of Life in a Day, arises the genre of cinematic experiment. Life in a Day is a collaboration between Scott Free, Ridley Scott’s production company, and Youtube. On July 24, 2010, people filmed a portion of their lives on camera and then uploaded it via Youtube to Scott Free Productions. About 80,000 people submitted their pieces, amounting to 4,500 hours of video. These submissions were done all around the globe from 192 different nations.

The film was announced just weeks before the mass filming on July 24. In order to achieve many different perspectives in the movie, Against All Odds Productions distributed over 500 digital cameras around the world. After filming finished, every user uploaded his or her footage onto Youtube where it was then reviewed and edited. The editing was done by director Kevin MacDonald, Joe Walker and 25 helpers, and primarily used a trial and error process of eliminating and finding the footage MacDonald felt would make it in the film. Rummaging through the videos took about 6 months. It was then given to Sundance for its world premiere on January 27, while Youtube streamed it over its website in order for the world to see what it made.

After the premiere at Sundance, there was a Q&A session with MacDonald, Walker, Liza Marshall (co-producer), Tim Partridge (co-producer) and 26 of the filmmakers that shot some of the footage. At the Q&A session everyone talked about his or her experiences on the project. One of the questions toward MacDonald was what the intended message was in the film. He responded, “I suppose it sounds like a cliché…[but] the message is about connection, and that we are all connected.” The main obstacle the creators had was the editing. Liza Marshall had said, “…the original cut we saw was 3 hours, and we wanted to keep everything in the 3 hour cut, so we had a really difficult decision process to basically to half of the movie.” Because there was so much footage, another obstacle MacDonald found hard was making these bits and pieces of film into a logical narrative.

This movie hits home with just about everyone.  It makes you feel small. It makes you tear with joy, then shutter with a sea of overwhelming.  It shows the audience that there are other people in the world that are just like them. When watching the movie, you realize that no matter how disagreeable the day is getting, no matter how rainy the sky looks, there is always someone parachuting out of a plane, or eating a juicy watermelon. MacDonald was right, and not in a clichéd way, because what he said is, in fact, true. It connects us by making us realize that people we have never met before do the same things that we do. It does not point out to one person as an individual. It points out everyone as a collective. It is releasing on July 27, 2011. A whole year will have passed since all the events were caught on film. Even if you do not like documentaries, even if you do not like MacDonald or Ridley Scott, see this movie. It opens your eyes to what life is– beautiful. And the best part is that it is not in 3-D.

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After Ohio passed its dramatic union stripping bill, the state is posed for an epic fight over the measure.  Ohio does not have a recall process like Wisconsin but they may have something better, a referendum process that was used successfully the last time Ohio tried to strip unions.

Under Ohio law, opponents have 90 days from the time the governor signs the legislation to collect 231,149 signatures to get a referendum on the November ballot.  If they collect enough valid signatures from 44 Ohio counties within that time frame, the law wouldn’t go into effect until the November election—that is if voters approved the referendum, which now seems pretty unlikely.

It is pretty obvious that the majority of people are not for the union stripping measures that are popping up all over the nation.  It is certainly painfully clear in Ohio.  The Columbus Dispatch analyzed more than 14,000 of Governor Kasich’s emails obtained through a public-records request.  The breakdown was pretty dramatic.  Only 16 percent of the emails were in favor of SB 5 which proposed even more draconian union stripping measures than Wisconsin.  A whopping 84 percent of the emails analyzed were against the bill.  Despite these numbers, the Ohio legislators passed the bill and Kasich quickly inked it into law.

Nearly two-thirds of the emails came from writers who identified themselves as a public employee or a close relative – virtually all of whom opposed the measure.  However, even without the self-identified public workers, the Senate bill was still opposed by 57 percent of those who emailed Kasich.  And dozens of those who backed the anti-union law are from out of state, with several remarking that they had seen Kasich on Fox News.

Before passing the bill, Kasich said there were some who support Senate Bill 5, and the number will grow as more people understand what’s in it. He also acknowledged many Ohioans’ dissatisfaction with him and parts of his agenda.  “I really think that people want change, but they’re not sure what it should look like,” Kasich said. “When the headlines every day are about change, it unsettles people. But I said that from the beginning, that this was going to be a time of big change, and that there would be people who wouldn’t like it.”

It seems like doing something that is overwhelming politically unpopular will have consequences.  That is certainly the case in Wisconsin where the first recall petition has been filed.  In Ohio, it appears that the political consequences could defeat this bill ultimately.  It seems like lawmakers would be more concerned with taking on these losing battles knowing that it will affect their future.  Their cavalier attitude concerns me.  Do they know something about the next election that I don’t know?  Or are they simply betting that voters will continue to have poor memory and will forget about their giant misdeeds by the time the next election rolls around?  The reason why these positions are elected positions are to prevent this sort of power grab.  If the vast majority of voters are against a proposal, the elected official should bow to the will of the people.  This is intended to be a “representative government.”  What happened?

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