Hey! What's Happening In Soccer? Or: Yet Another Self-Indulgent Post

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.

This week was the first leg of the semis with the second legs on Tuesday and Wednesday (2:30 pm, set your DVR). Currently, Chelsea leads Liverpool 1-0 and ManU leads AC Milan 3-2, with both of the home teams winning. What's it all mean? Well, both Liverpool and Milan both need to score at home, but the Liverpool is in a bit rougher shape. For example, if Milan wins 2-1 at home they advance (aggregate 4-4, away goals 2-1) but if Liverpool wins by the same score, then they would lose on away goals. So, interestingly Chelsea wants a high scoring game (that they don't lose by more than one) and ManU wants a low scoring game (ditto). I guess what I'm saying is be prepared for a snoozefest in Milan and the possibility of fireworks at Anfield. But, if that doesn't happen, remind yourself that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.

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.

Wednesday Wrap-Up

It was the best of times... it was the worst of times. Or it was just a Wednesday with some interesting sports happenings. First, Liverpool at Barcelona. This Champions League clash was a pretty big deal to me and the rest of the world who care about soccer. Frankly, I don't think a lot of people were giving the Reds much chance in the knockout stage of the competition after this tough draw. Plus there was this ridiculous story about Craig Bellamy going all Office Space copier on John Arne Riise with a golf club during a recent training session. Of course, the whole thing turned out to be not true and both started yesterday in what turned out to be a HUGE 2-1 victory for Liverpool. All in all, it was a game played with moments of brilliance and moments of stupidity by both teams, there were some bad calls both ways. And, it just so happened that the two goal scorers were Bellamy (who celebrated with a big golf swing) and Riise.

For anyone not familiar with Champions League format, in the knockout stage each team in the matchup plays a home game and the team with the most total goals moves on. The really interesting thing is that the first tiebreaker is goals scored on the road. So, if Barcelona comes to Liverpool in a couple of weeks and wins 1-0, it would still not be enough due to the 2 to 1 advantage in away goals. After what has been a moderately successful season (at best) with the Reds never really competitive for the Premiership title, this is a bigtime victory and I'm officially excited again.

Elsewhere, in yet another game that wasn't on TV in my area, Purdue got their asses handed to them at Iowa. You just can't afford to lose by 19 at this point in the season if you want to make the tournament. With three games remaining, I'm thinking they have to win them all or really impress everybody in the Big Ten tournament. At least those aren't technically road games, because this team continues to roll over like a dog getting its belly scratched away from Mackey. Ugh. Not much more to say about this game, but I don't think today that Purdue is a tournament-worthy team. Maybe in a week I'll feel differently. I hope.

What Gage Is Thinking About Today

Here comes another fast paced, quit hitting post, because you know you want it. Here's what's on my mind.

- The Heat lose by 42 to the Bulls. Ok this is why the NBA is a total wasteland. No team in the league is forty points better than another team. The recurring problem is that the players just barely seem to care. Usually teams take turns completely not giving a shit. Team A plays hard for a quarter and builds a big lead. Then they get bored and start thinking about paying those alimony checks to their babies' mamas and how it sucks being famous because you can't get away with being a deadbeat dad, etc. Team B suddenly goes on a streak and so on. Most games wind up close at the end. Last night we just ran into a situation where team H started thinking about the post-game meal before tipoff. Dreadful.

- Liverpool (and soccer in general). The Reds had been playing at the middle of the pack all season and I was starting to think it was just to spite me, but this past weekend they got their shit together. I managed to get up and watch them stick it to Aston Villa 3-1 on Saturday with three beautiful goals, particularly one by Dirk Kuyt. Then, yesterday they played Bordeaux at home in the Champions League group round and basically controlled the entire game winning 3-nil. Steven Gerrard got his first goal of the season, the Reds move on to the knockout round and all is well at Anfield today. In other Champions League news, Chelsea played at Barcelona last night and somehow managed to score a tying goal (friggin Drogba) in the 90th minute. Crazy. But the really wild thing about this game was that Chelsea got five yellow cards. Five in one game?? Miami players, take note.

- Scrabble. That's right, not a sport, I know. But, I read Word Freak after a Simmons reccomendation last year and it's really an engaging, interesting read. Well the author of that book, Stefan Fatsis, wrote this article about a player scoring 830 points in one game, an all time record. I've heard speculation that there was some cheating going on, but I don't feel that way, at least not from this article. Somebody was probably just wearing their lucky rainbow suspenders. The interesting thing here is that this record only came about because neither player in the game was very good. Two better players would have never scored as high. What's a good sports equivalent to this? A free-swinging minor league baseball player hitting 80 home runs?

- MotoGP and Americans actually being good at something. Due to the suggestions of a co-worker I sat down and watch a motorcycle race this weekend. It was the final race of the Motorcycle Grand Prix (MotoGP) circuit which, as I understand, is quite popular in Europe. Without being too long winded about it, going in the five-time defending champ Valentino Rossi (Italian) had a slim lead over the American Nicky Hayden. Anyway, Rossi crashed out of the race in a stunningly unpredictable mistake and Hayden won the points title. This is particularly exciting to me because Hayden is from Kentucky and really had to work his way up to this level. It's nice to see Americans thriving overseas after our basketball/baseball/soccer debacles. This is a big deal to lots of motorcycle racing fans, way to go Nicky.

Hump Day Soccer

With the never-ending NCLS dominating headlines and the NFL in mid-season form, it would be easy to forget about the world of soccer. However, for those of you unemployed or with jobs where you get to watch tv all day (damn, I miss that job) today is a good day to settle in and watch a couple of high profile Champions League group matches.

2:30pm ESPN2 - Chelsea vs. Barcelona. The biggest spending team with the most talent (Chelsea) matched up against last year's Champions league winner (Barcelona). Plus, the best player in the world (Ronaldinho) who basicially dissapeared for Brazil in the World Cup plays for Barca. And he's bound to do something crazy awesome. In addition Peter Cech, who just might be the best keeper in the world went down with some brain injury (his dad says he's lucky to be alive), and they lost their backup in the same game so we're down to the third stringer in net. Could be a disaster.

5:00pm ESPN Classic - Liverpool vs. Bordeaux. The Reds go to France to take on a buch of croissant loving fashionistas. This probably matters more to me because I've been following them, but I'd really like to see them play well. They haven't put together a really good match lately, and suddenly Gerrard is out with a hammy (thanks English national team). Not good, and now they're at the middle of the pack in the Premiership standings. At least there's still Champions League for the '05 champs.

A Long Way From Home Field: Two Months Following Soccer

I had World Cup fever. No idea what brought it on, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. I started watching USA friendlies in the spring and never looked back. Every match (read: game) was on TV, even the standard media outlets were covering the event. The whole thing was easy to get wrapped up in. It all culminated with my being fortunate enough to be in a hotel bar in Europe with a gaggle of 12 year old Italian kids for the final match. They laughed, cried, cheered and sang through the whole game. I was hooked, I was enthralled, I wanted to know more and suddenly it was all over. I was a man without a football club (read: soccer team). So I decided to follow English Premiere League (and the soccer world in general). I get Fox Soccer channel, why not? More specificially I was following Liverpool for the purposes of having a team. They are the Reds so it seemed only natural.

Here's an all-too-wordy rundown of what I've learned:
- It's really fucking hard to learn twenty new teams. As if just learning the players on Liverpool isn't hard enough, I can't even name every team in the Premiership. I'm constantly asking myself "Ok that jersey looks familiar, who is that?" followed by "Why the fuck can't they put their team name on the jersey instead of these goddamned ads?" Plus, the whole jersey situation is an enormous fiasco. In virtually every US sport the home team wears the solid color and the away team wears white. Easy. Not in the EPL. Liverpool wears solid red home jerseys but then wears solid yellow (why??) away jerseys. This leads to some confusion on my part. Take for example Liverpool vs. Chelsea. At Anfield (Liverpool's home field) the game would be a red team vs. a black team. However, switch the home team and you've got a yellow team vs. a blue team. Boggles the mind, no?

- Watching an entire sporting event with only a commercial break at halftime is incredible. You know how when you first get HBO you sit down to watch a show, get totally sucked in and the time just flys by? Episodes of Entourage seem to last only five minutes some weeks. As someone who regularly attends NFL games, I can tell you it can seem like you've seen three plays in the past twenty minutes. My only question is: when do these people take piss breaks?

- I'm having an unreasonably hard time understanding the post-season. Given 10 minutes I believe I could fully explain the playoffs for any major US sport to a reasonable person. Apparently Liverpool is playing in the Champions League. Teams from all over the world qualify and compete. The winner of the Champions League is generally considered the best team in the world. Last year Barcelona won it all. The final is sometime in the spring. But the really odd thing is that the Champions League matches are taking place DURING THE SEASON. This means a team will play a league game in their home country and then might go play in Iran or somewhere equally desolate and then come back to league play. Then there is a UEFA Cup for teams not good enough to qualify for the Champions League. I would guess this is a big deal as well. It seems that a NCAA/NIT comparison would not be accurate in terms of importance but I can't think or a better one. Also, I believe that teams busting out of the Champions League early can still go play in the UEFA Cup. Astounding. Then there's some other league championship in the English system but I'm so spent at this point that I don't have the energy to investigate.

(I realize Trout will chide me for this, but did you ever see Baseketball where the playoffs are this ridiculously drawn out system and Al Michaels and Bob Costas look completely overwhemed? That's how I feel.)

- Liverpool's manager, Rafa Benitez, has used something like 94 straight different starting lineups. Jerry Narron has found his soulmate.

- Arsenal's manager is named Arsene. Did he change that after getting the job? Is it just fate? Kismet? Not sure why, but I really needed to get this off my chest.

- There are about eight billion teams throughout the world, and a lot of them play in various tournaments, etc. What an awesome thing, to have a truly world game be played in a global manner. However, it seems that there are less than ten teams who truly have a chance at winning the Champions League, a few from England, a couple from Spain, a couple French teams and some others sprinkled in. That kind of sucks, but there's no real way to creat parity throughout the entire world. (And don't forget to never, ever mention MLS)

- Other countries take their national teams VERY seriously. It was front page news this week that England is thinking about using a 3-5-2 lineup in their next match. 3-5-2!!! OMFG!!! Seriously, take a deep breath.

- USA still doesn't have a coach and still can't pull their heads out of their asses. It was probably time for Arena to go, but you might want to hire somebody else in the meantime. Plus, they just got invited to play in the South American championship next summer which seems like a good idea but will be hard to do with no coach or team. On a similar note, I'm not the one to come up with this idea, but why not have a North/South America tournament every four years? Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and USA would probably be the top four teams with some scrappy underdogs (assuming the USA doesn't fall off the map). That would be fun to watch and on maybe even on par with the Euro tournament.

Well, that seems like enough for now. If you made it this far, here's your lesson: there's a lot of fucking soccer out there, and it's hard to keep track, but for those of us who are the type to check the MLB standings daily, it can be real fun. And, it's still great to watch.