What's happening? I'll tell you what, it's getting exciting. With apologies to MLS (I swear I'm giving it a chance), the game over in Europe has been really heating up. Look, there's even yelling. For those of you who actually recall reading old posts, I've been diligently following the English Premiership all season and we're really hitting the home stretch now. Keeping up with Liverpool has been fairly easy this season because they have been towards the top of the table (standings) in the EPL for most of the season. However, with the play of Manchester United and Chelsea (combined payroll $4 kajillion) the Reds have been mostly outsiders looking in, even from third place. The good news/bad news of the season is that we're coming down to the wire and there's going to be some important games for those top two teams but on the flip side there's no playoffs like in American sports and Liverpool is basically out of the running. In the place of these playoffs is the Champions League (tournament for the best teams from every league in Europe).As a useless side note, I'm a little confused by all of this because in the good ole USA, there one champion and that's that. So, I find myself wondering what is more important to an English team, winning the league or the Champions League title? It seems like a toss-up. I know one thing, Liverpool are firmly focused on winning the CL because they have not other options.
In case you don't follow the game, we're in the semifinals now, with the top three English sides and AC Milan (ummm.. Italian, right?). The format includes each team getting a home game and the aggregate score determining the winner, with away goals as the tiebreaker. This last part is a rule that I've decided I hate. The notion that certain goals are worth more than others bothers me and leads to some questionable (if not downright boring) strategies.
Some other notes:
Please god of soccer (Pele?) don't let ManU and Chelsea play in the final. I'm tired of that so-called "rivalry" of the extremely wealthy. It's only interesting to their respective fans.
Kaka is awesome. Go look up his goals on YouTube. I think Brazil got too caught up on all the Ronaldinho hype during the World Cup and forgot that this guy is one of the top strikers in the entire world. Poor Brazil.In other Brazilians with four letter names, if the AC Milan keeper Dida lets a couple of goals slide past him in the second leg, he might just be lynched. Eye on the ball homie.
Chelsea's coach Jose Mourinho is a self-proclaimed genius tactician, but what kind of strategy was he using in the second half Wednesday? Basically let Liverpool posses the ball, play stingy defense, then have Peter Cech crack a deep ball for Drogba 3/4 down the field. Yeah, who could have ever dreamt up that plan? Yawn.
It's fun that Arsenal is at home watching, isn't it? How's fourth place fellas?
And finally, Liverpool has got to find a way to score some goals. I honestly don't care what the lineup looks like, but Steven Gerrard was crap this week and so was Xabi Alonso.
6 comments:
I agree
Exciting match today - not incredibly well played but certainly dramatic. Liverpool did just what they need to do to get the win.
Neither team was terribly agressive, but that Agger goal was awesome and he even marked Drogba the whole game. Plus, the two penalty saves by Reina...wow.
Reina was amazing. I don't know how much of that is skill and how much is luck, but he seemed to be right on what Chelsea was going to do and stopped them while Cech seemed to alternately not know or couldn't stop Liverpool.
Wow, AC Milan was incredible last night. Nobody can mark Kaka. But, I think Carragher can do just about as good a job as anybody. It's going to be a fun final.
Hello mate!
I love the fact that you Americans are finally catching onto the quality of the beautiful game over here in Europe, and especially in the Premiership - it's nice to see so much passion for my club from thousands of miles away! You're obviously an avid fan/addict like millions of ordinary brits!
Loved the articles - just one small point though - when referring to football clubs, it's normal to refer to them as a plural entity, as opposed to a singular one - for example, we would say "Chelsea WERE beaten ten-nil by Liverpool" (i.e. Chelsea are a plural) as opposed to the way you write it as "Chelsea WAS beaten..." (i.e. Chelsea is singular) - this is because they're teams of people as opposed to individuals.
Again, love the blogging, keep up the good work! I'm only pickin bones because it reads quite bizarrely!
Mike Gooding, Avid LFC fan, UK
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