” Sports must sometimes send out the most confusing messages to its young. Over the past weeks, Spanish teams and athletes have been the best in the world in soccer, basketball, tennis and cycling. Yet the country’s two major sporting institutions, F.C. Barcelona and Real Madrid, pursue disparate philosophies in reaching for the major club trophies in soccer.” (NYT)
“The title of the film about the world’s most famous defunct soccer team was ‘Once in a Lifetime.’ Anyone for ‘Twice in a Lifetime’? The team in question is the New York Cosmos, a club that was the flagship team in the North American Soccer League, which ceased operations in the mid-1980s.” (NYT)
Diego Maradona
“Late on Tuesday afternoon, the Asociación de Fútbol Argentino (AFA) finally announced, as we all knew they were going to, that Diego Maradona’s contract as national team head coach wasn’t going to be renewed. When a small child falls over quite softly in the street, you can count under your breath to three or four before they start bawling. To anyone in Argentina, this was as predictable as that.” (WSC)
Maradona Loses Showdown With Grondona Over Argentina’s Future
“Diego Maradona is out as coach of Argentina, according to the Associated Press. The Argentina Football Association announced it would not renew his contract after almost two erratic years in charge. Ernesto Cherquis Bialo, spokesman for the team, said that differences between Maradona and Julio Grondona, the A.F.A. president, ‘were impossible to resolve’.” (NYT)
Raul Gonzalez
“Raul Gonzalez, the captain and leader of Real Madrid for more than a decade, will only see Jose Mourinho, the Spanish club’s new manager, in passing. Raul, 33, will leave the club where he has spent his entire career as Mourinho comes in to remake Real Madrid in the new ‘Galácticos’ era.” (NYT)
“The World Cup has gone, but the embarrassment lingers for England and its Italian coach, Fabio Capello. The coach and his legal advisers are seeking to distance him from an online rating of players’ performances that bears his name. The Web site, the Capello Index, published last week, does not list one English player among the top 70 at the World Cup after the country was beaten 4-1 by Germany in the first knockout stage.” (NYT)
“Somalia’s most feared insurgent group, the Shabab, claimed responsibility on Monday for the coordinated bombings that killed more than 70 people in Uganda as crowds gathered to watch the final match of the World Cup.” (NYT)
“Jessica Hilltout, a nomadic, Belgian-born photographer, loaded sacks of deflated soccer balls onto the roof of a battered yellow Volkswagen Beetle last year and began a seven-month road trip across Africa to document the continent’s love of the game. She found it in villages where children played with joyous abandon on dusty patches of ground, sandy beaches and lush fields, far from the stadiums where Africa’s first World Cup would be held.” (NYT), (Jessica Hilltout)
“Welcome to the World Cup, where every team is the Galácticos. The nickname refers to Real Madrid, the most famous and successful soccer club in the world, which has made a practice, in the past generation, of spending enough money to recruit Zidane and Beckham and Cannavaro. Oops, almost forgot Cristiano Ronaldo.” (NYT)
The Lower Buttons – Intogeymy 1967
“Arriba, Puyol! That’s how I will think of him from now on, this muscular defender, with his ringlets flopping all over the place, leaping above the tall timber of the German defense and heading the Spanish where they have never been before. Carles Puyol looks so much bigger in the photos, but in reality he’s short for a central defender, reminding me of Yogi Berra, who could hit a ball off his shoe tops and send it over a building in the biggest of games. Puyol can leap beyond his 5 feet 10 inches and did it in the 73rd minute Wednesday night to give Spain a 1-0 victory over Germany.” (NYT)
Giovanni Battista Di Jacopo, Pieta
“‘What does it take to win the World Cup?’ asked Henry D Fetter of The Atlantic a couple of days ago, in a post called ‘What It Takes To Win The World Cup’.” (Pitch Invasion)
Özil the German
“No player has fascinated me more at the World Cup than Mesut Özil. He has the languid self-assurance on the ball that comes only to the greatest footballers. Where others are hurried, he has time. He conjures space with a shrug. His left foot can, with equal ease, caress a pass or unleash a shot.” (NYT)
Tap-in and Taboo
“If this happens, what will people say about Bryan Thomas (on Twitter, in newspapers, on comment threads)? Will anyone say that he has violated the ethics of the game, that he deserves further punishment? Will anyone argue that the rules of the game need to be changed so that teams cannot benefit from committing a penalty? I suspect, rather, that Thomas will be generally credited with a very smart play. How is what Luis Suárez did at the end of yesterday’s match against Ghana any different?” (Run of Play)
when i get older
“Brian at the Run of Play did a very good job crushing the idea floated in The Atlantic that countries with an authoritarian history play more winning football. The idea memed, nonetheless. (Shocked that highbrow soccer dorks — my favourite phrase this World Cup, used by TNR Goalpost to describe their ideal reader base) appear not to check RoP before coffee.) Laughable, snobbish solipsism — it’s not just for FIFA anymore, kids.” (Treasons, Statagems & Spoils)
Time Can Do So Much
“What I want to know is whether we’ll remember any of this in ten years, or if we’ll look back on it as the mass blackout during which we all wrote mystic texts. I can’t remember two more deranged or thrilling days of soccer, or four more shocking games, in any recent tournament, and Euro 2008 made me compare Aphrodite to a Toyota Prius. It was all the more stunning because it came out of nowhere—that’s not to say this World Cup had been boring, but it had rolled along at a pretty regular tempo and, apart from a few moments of madness and bliss, within a fairly livable emotional band.” (Run of Play)
Luis Suarez
“Why, among all the South American teams, have you heard so little talk about Uruguay this summer? I’ll tell you why: Because they’re civilized. Uruguay is the first democracy of Latin America, the first country where women voted. Whenever they have a national conflict, they solve it by referendum. Even the flyers announcing illegal prostitution clubs have a polite note below: ‘Please do not throw this paper in the street. Use a trash can.’” (Vanity Fair)
Uruguay rides luck against Ghana
“Against Ghana, though, in the final minutes of extra time, there was no control; there was merely nerve-rending hanging-on, and if Asamoah Gyan had taken the penalty he went on to take in the shootout five minutes earlier, Uruguay would have been out and Ghana would have been Africa’s first ever semifinalist. Instead after the game ended at 1-1 in extra time, Uruguay triumphed 4-2 on penalties.” (SI)
The New Hand of God
“Finally, there’s the larger point — PKs may feel like a gimmick, but, yeah, there’s no denying: It’s one heck of a gimmick. Like the fortune in the fortune cookie, it works. The penalty kicks ending of the Uruguay-Ghana match on Friday was so emotional, so heartbreaking, so inspiring, so powerful — it was the peak of this World Cup. It was one of those universal moments of sport, the sort of thing you can just enter without credentials, without prior knowledge, without any sense of the game. This was boxing without violence, tennis without lines, an Olympic 100-meter dash without a finish line. This was raw sport.” (SI)
World Cup Live: Uruguay vs. Ghana
“An unbelievable finish at Soccer City in Johannesburg put Uruguay through to the semifinals and Ghana out of the tournament in absolutely heartbreaking fashion. Ghana was awarded a penalty kick at the end of extra time when Uruguay’s Luis Suarez punched a Ghana shot off the goal line with his hand — a denial of a certain goal and a red card offense, but punishable only by giving the Black Stars a penalty kick as the last act of the match. But Asamoah Gyan blew his chance to give Ghana a 2-1 victory by shooting the ball off the bar and out of play.” (NYT)
“Italy and France, the last two teams standing at the previous World Cup, did not make it out of the first round in this one. Africa is down to its last hope, Ghana. The Americas are flourishing. And something new is stirring in Asia, where fans of South Korea and Japan took to the streets at 3 a.m., each celebrating their country’s breaking through to the second stage of the tournament for the first time on foreign soil. Watching the first round of matches, and the elimination of Europeans in particular, one gets the feeling there has been a cultural swing in the global game.” (NYT)
Bob Bradley
“When Landon Donovan scored in stoppage time to rescue the national soccer team from elimination and sent the Americans to the Round of 16, it was just before noon on the East Coast, just before 9 a.m. on the West Coast, and just plain early in general across the United States. But Americans celebrated the same way, wherever they were.” (NYT)
Desperate Hope, Dramatic Ending for U.S.
“Chance after frantic chance the United States had Wednesday in its 1-0 victory over Algeria at the World Cup, each one more tempting and frustrating than the other. Finally, desperation seemed to tighten like a noose, strangling the Americans’ patience and accuracy.” (NYT)
Goal! The thrill of World Cup victory
“For weeks a multi-front soccer culture war has been raging in the blogosphere. But one goal by the man who just staked a pretty good claim to the title of ” greatest player in the history of U.S. soccer,” Landon Donovan, should permanently change the terms of debate. But first a little context: In the group round of the World Cup, scoring a goal in “stoppage time” — a few minutes of overtime after the end of regulation to make up for time lost to injuries — to break a scoreless tie and move on to the next round is one of the most dramatic things that can possibly happen in soccer.” (Salon)
A Foreign Game Looks Very American
“Tim Howard was playing hurry-up, booting the ball in desperation, watching the backs of his teammates, American athletes, as they raced downfield trying to save four years of effort. ‘It wasn’t a soccer match,” Howard said. “It was an athletics match, track and field.’ Sprinting has been, in its way, an American sport, whereas soccer has always been a foreign sport that frightens people — well, except for the millions of Americans lined up in pubs and dens and offices all over their country on a weekday morning, going crazy after the best, or the most dramatic, or the most important soccer match in American history.” (NYT)
Bliss, and a Belgian Spared
“It has been a beautiful day. It was a perfect match, offering up everything that draws us to football. The devastation of the goal-that-was-not, the relief as the team, rather than fumbling into frustration, kept carefully building up excellent plays, defending beautifully, and pushing, pushing, pushing. Raïs M’Bohli, the Paris-born Congolese/Algerian goalkeeper — who, I imagine and hope, will be moving on rapidly from his professional team in Bulgaria after this showing — stopping the goals relentlessly, seemingly on his way to becoming Algeria’s new national hero. In perfect if sadistic form, the team kept us all in suspense until the very end, when in a beautiful, invincible run, scrappy, a little enraged, bringing together Donovan, Altidore and Demsey in a gorgeous one-two-three, and here in Durham and throughout the country and the world there was that explosion of joy that can only come when it has been long-deferred, seemingly unattainable, and perfectly plucked from out of nowhere.” (Soccer Politics)
The American Ascendancy
“And then it happened. Sunil cried, too. And he woke up this morning to escort Bill Clinton and shake the trees for votes from FIFA’s 24-member Politburo for that 2002 World Cup bid. (Clinton is the bid’s honorary chairman; he got a big cheer when his face appeared on the video board last night.) ESPN was assured another weekend of USA-fired ratings. And given that we’ve landed for the first two knockout rounds in the best group since the Beatles, the possibility for advancing further than any modern US men’s national team are real. Project 2010, anyone?” (TNR)
“I’ve seen both of these nations in major competitions. As you may have noticed from the Slovenia-Algeria report, I saw the Slovenians at Euro 2000. The USA however, were one of the teams playing at my first live World Cup match in 2006 – their opponents were Italy, in what was one of the games of the tournament. And that was the point at which my view on American’s playing football changed. It was all down to the fans who travelled to Germany. On the upside, they were very enthusiastic about the game, and (unlike the perception from the more ignorant sections of our media – i.e. most of it) were very knowledgeable about the game, as you would expect people who’ve flown thousands of miles for as little as one game to be.” (twohundredpercent)
For U.S., Only Frustration Is Clear
“In the 85th minute Friday, the referee Koman Coulibaly gazed into what was supposed to be a penalty area but was actually a mosh pit. Sure, the Slovene players were committing acts usually experienced during the arrest scenes on “Cops.” But the Americans were also doing their share of slam-dancing and assorted frisking maneuvers usually reserved for the security line at the airport.” (NYT)
On Feeling Cheated: Notes on USA – Slovenia
“Sport culture seems to be the one discursive space in which we can declare that we were robbed, that our team was cheated, that the game wasn’t fair – and we don’t come off as bitter or resentful. This sort of anger – at being kept out of the World Cup finals by someone’s handball, or at being cheated of the three points awarded to a win by a rogue referee – is perfectly allowed – a certain sense of injustice is in fact nursed into an art.” (From A Left Wing)
Margaret Gradwell, Indaba Series
“We were looking for Spain to really get the tournament going – they did exactly that, but by being on the end of the biggest shock so far, rather than providing an amazing attacking display. Switzerland’s win was remarkable – to keep a clean sheet against this Spanish side is very impressive. Ottmar Hitzfeld’s side did not actually play particularly defensively – they rarely had the ball, certainly, but they broke in numbers and frequently got four men in the box when they had the ball in an attacking zone.” (Zonal Minute)
World Cup 2010: Spain’s nightmare – an early dream final with Brazil
“Two wildly contrasting states jolted this World Cup to life, with North Korea (totalitarian) roughing up Brazil and Switzerland (laissez-faire meets conservatism) shocking Spain, the European champions, in Durban. With the first upset of the tournament the iconoclastic Swiss may have spoiled the dream final. If the favourites finish second in Group H they are likely to collide with Brazil in the second round.” (Guardian)
Unflinching Swiss Give Spain a Jolt
“Beautiful to watch and all but impossible to beat for the last two years, Spain has not yet figured out how to combine artistry and victory in South Africa. Since winning the European championships in 2008, the only blemish on its record was a surprising 2-0 loss here to the United States in last year’s Confederations Cup. But the even bigger surprise came Wednesday on a lovely late afternoon in Durban, where Spain was beaten, 1-0, by Switzerland in the World Cup opener for each team.” (NYT)
“Sporting history surely teaches us not to be too hasty in drawing conclusions. Yet it is already tempting to observe as this World Cup unfolds that Germany might be rising again, and Italy, the defending world champion, falling. There seems to be a new, vibrant, powerful Germany — a side whose players are too young to fear defeat and whose diverse ethnic backgrounds are a testimony to the society now forming in that country.” (NYT)
“Robert Green’s ‘hand of clod’ goal against the United States, painful as it was to watch (here it is again!) … … was not the first howler committed by the England keeper.” (NYT)
“Best places to watch – A World Cup pub crawl might start here, and it might last all month.” (NYT)
“An American soccer star joins the TRIAD Trust using the game to educate children and young adults about how to protect themselves from contracting H.I.V.” (NYT)
Condoms for the World Cup and other ways to keep HIV at bay
“In three months hundreds of thousands of soccer fans are expected to descend on nine South African cities for the 2010 World Cup. But for so many visitors going to a country where more than 10 percent of the population is estimated to have HIV/AIDS, many public health experts are worried that the event will kick off a spike in transmission. South Africa, in turn, has responded by requesting one billion condoms for the year (many of which will be supplied by the U.K.)—more than twice as many as usual, the BBC noted.” (Scientific American)
“And the winner is. … As the World Cup opens Friday amid a celebration of exceptional vibrancy with host South Africa playing Mexico, two countries float above the field of 32 teams: Spain and Brazil. Yes, Africa is the host. Yes, Asia is developing. And, yes, there are dark horses — the gifted but erratic Argentines, the talented Dutch and the ever self-confident English among them.” (NYT)
“First, sorry for what are becoming all-too routine pauses on A More Splendid Life; my own less than splendid life has this sorry habit of getting in the way. So, some fun announcements. Second, one of the reasons it has been a bit quiet around here is because Brooks at Dirty Tackle has lost his mind and let me post up various bits and bobs on his esteemed site over the next five weeks for the World Cup. So you can see the nice, clean, North American-wide version of what I do.” (A More Splendid Life)
“Some of the world’s most accomplished and explosive players are limping into the World Cup, if they have made it here at all, and few are as bruised and battered as the stars of the English Premier League, where the physical nature of play is particularly unforgiving.” (NYT)
“The book features the original balls of every Football World Cup between 1930 and 2010; it describes the stories and legends surrounding these balls and makes observations on footballs in general. In his extensive interview, German goalkeeper legend Sepp Maier talks about his love for these spherical objects.” (The World Cup Balls), (NYT – The World Cup Balls)
“The World Cup opens Friday, and this host city is draped in the flags of the 32 participating nations. With the world’s biggest sporting event coming to Africa for the first time, hope wafts across the continent that one of the six African teams might win. ‘The talent is there, certainly,’ Bob Bradley, the United States coach, said. Yet history says that disarray in preparations, desperate coaching changes, poverty, official corruption and vagaries of the draw will conspire against Africa’s chances.” (NYT)
“Pelé was barely 17 ½ when he marched onto the field in 1958 for his first World Cup match. He learned one thing that day in Goteborg, Sweden: the World Cup is vastly different from the club soccer he played back home in Brazil.” (NYT)
“Roam the mountains and vineyards of Slovenia, and its citizens and soccer players will regularly remind a foreign visitor of two verities. This is not Slovakia (a very touchy subject). This is a very small country: about the size of New Jersey and home to about 300 million fewer inhabitants than its future World Cup opponent, the United States.” (NYT)
“United States forward Jozy Altidore’s right ankle will be evaluated later Friday while his teammates continue their preparations for the World Cup. With only a week before the start of the tournament, players and coaches are especially wary of new injuries, or the danger of aggravating old ones.” (NYT)
“Imelda Marcos is unlikely to attend any matches of the 2010 World Cup, but she (and her prodigious collection of quality footwear) will find some kindred spirits gallivanting across the green soccer fields of South Africa in the latest high-fashion (and high-priced) kicks (or boots, or cleats). Few could rival the collection of the former first lady of the Philippines, but when it comes to soccer cleats players can never have too many shoes. In fact, they probably need more feet!” (NYT)
“The official mascot of Africa’s first World Cup — a stuffed leopard with spiked green hair — was made in China. The official World Cup anthem, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa),” was written by the Colombian pop star Shakira. The official restaurant? McDonald’s. And with less than three weeks before the world’s most watched sporting event, only 36,000 of the almost three million tickets have been sold in Africa outside of South Africa itself, the host. On a continent whose people mostly live on the wrong side of the digital divide, tickets were mainly marketed online.” (NYT)
“Abas Suan’s life straddles two worlds that seem inexorably locked in eternal conflict. Suan is an Arab citizen of the state of Israel, one of 1.4 million Muslim citizens of the Jewish state. Suan is a hero to the people who support his hometown club team, Bnei Sakhnin. Suan is also a beguiling figure among Israelis — an Arab who played on the country’s national soccer team and scored a crucial goal in a World Cup qualifying match against Ireland in the country’s abortive attempt to advance to the 2006 World Cup in Germany.” (NYT)
“Every four years, there are certain unassailable commercial indications that the World Cup is near: sporting goods companies unveil new national team jerseys, companies offer promotions to try to cash in on World Cup fever, and desks begin to groan under an avalanche of (mostly) new soccer books.” (NYT)
“Ronaldinho’s gap-toothed grin will be missing from the Brazilian team photos from South Africa. The most dazzling player of a generation was omitted from Dunga’s preliminary roster Tuesday, signaling perhaps that supreme talent alone is not enough to be part of the Seleção, and that training habits and commitment may also be important.” (NYT)
“Lucas Radebe grew up in South Africa playing soccer with a tennis ball, or a sphere made from old cloth and shopping bags. Lacking jerseys in the Diepkloof township, a part of Soweto, he and his friends gathered sacks of mealie meal, a grain staple. They cut out holes for their arms and heads and scrawled numbers on the bags or colored them with dye.” (NYT)
“When England drew the United States, Slovenia and Algeria at the coming World Cup, The Sun tabloid ran a headline that said ‘EASY,’ and added, ‘best English group since the Beatles.’ The British actor Hugh Grant then appeared in New York on ‘The Daily Show’ and told the host, Jon Stewart: ‘I’m always surprised you have a male football team. It’s a female game here.’ As inventors of the sport, the British can be condescending and uninformed about the game in the United States, viewing American soccer with the same smugness that the United States might view English baseball. Not everyone is so dismissive.” (NYT)
“Several members of Bayern Munich have parlayed the German club’s success this season into a potential summer sojourn to South Africa with the national team. Germany Manager Joachim Loew announced his 27-man preliminary World Cup roster Thursday, which included seven Bayern players who won the Bundesliga and are vying for the German Cup and European Champions League crowns.” (NYT)
Antonio Gramsci
“The countdown to the 2010 World Cup South Africa can now be measured in days. And when it comes to the world’s most popular sport, there are often philosophical questions to ponder, but in the eyes of the world’s great thinkers — from Greek stoics to Jamaican Rastafarians — the game of soccer has always occupied a hallowed spot on a higher plain, up there somewhere between a bicycle kick and a diving header, depression and existentialism.” (NYT)
“With only 43 days to go before the start of the World Cup, the head of the South African organizing committee said Wednesday that the host country’s infrastructure is superior to any previous tournament host; the stadiums are pristine; and the country is ready to welcome more than 370,000 visitors for the biggest party in the world.” (NYT)
Hieronymous Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights
“It has been reported that England’s national soccer team will sleep in special tents to prepare for the altitude in South Africa, site of the coming World Cup. This undoubtedly came as a relief to many, given where a couple of high-profile players were said to be slumbering lately in scandals that cost defender John Terry his captaincy and his fellow defender Ashley Cole his marriage.” (NYT)
“With a 3-1 lead going into the second leg of the UEFA Champions League semifinal on Wednesday, it is fair to say that Inter Milan’s chances are better than 50/50. Perhaps Jose Mourinho was trying to be generous to his hosts. More likely, Mourinho, the Inter Milan manager, was trying to ease the pressure on his players and tweak Barcelona.” (NYT)
“After the Wall, Berlin’s Olympiastadion was one of the landmarks of German division. And after the now-united city’s team, Hertha, succumbed to a late goal on Saturday, losing 1-0 to Schalke, its relegation from the Bundesliga now looks to be inevitable. That means the former East German soccer league will have no representative in the country’s most affluent division. It also means the German capital city will have no team in the Bundesliga.” (NYT)
Jose Mourinho
“Esteban Cambiasso praised the ‘extraordinary work of our three forwards’ after FC Internazionale Milano’s 3-1 win against FC Barcelona in the first leg of their semi-final tie at the San Siro, a sixth consecutive UEFA Champions League victory for José Mourinho’s side.” (UEFA)
Inter 3-1 Barcelona: Why did Pep Guardiola play Zlatan Ibrahimovic?
“It’s not often during his two seasons as Barcelona manager that you can conclusively say that Pep Guardiola got his tactics wrong – but tonight that was the case, as Inter take an important two-goal lead to the Nou Camp. Both sides essentially played their standard formations. Inter were 4-2-3-1 with Samuel Eto’o and Goran Pandev wide, and Javier Zanetti continuing at left-back. Barcelona played a similar team to the first leg at against Arsenal – Zlatan Ibrahimovic leading the line, Lionel Messi behind him, Pedro in a wide-right role and Seydou Keita playing from in to out on the left.” (Zonal Marking)
James Lawton: Mourinho calls the shots to make Italy think again about his style
“Even Jose Mourinho has rarely known a night like this, one in which not only a second Champions League title but perhaps even the keys of European football may have been at least halfway into his grasp. If Mourinho had some substantial gifts from his Portuguese compatriot referee, including a third goal that was plainly offside, there was no questioning that he had produced from his Internazionale a magnificent response to the challenge of facing the reigning champions of Europe, a team with the potential, some of us may still believe, to touch new levels of excellence.” (Independent)
Italian Football Faces Tough Times
“The most important league table in Italian football right now isn’t the Serie A standings, where AS Roma and Inter Milan are locked in a titanic tussle for the title, or even the Serie B championship, where Torino—one of the country’s most historic clubs—is hoping to secure a top-flight return. It’s actually an obscure ranking of European’s football nations known as the UEFA coefficient table, a mind-boggling complex formula that has produced one very simple conclusion: Italy’s days as a football superpower could soon be at an end.” (WSJ)
Champions League: Inter Milan 3, FC Barcelona 1
“Inter Milan meets Barcelona tonight in the first leg of a mouthwatering Champions League semifinal that many fans think should have been the final itself. With Lyon and Bayern Munich meeting in the other semifinal tomorrow, the glamor — and global attention — will all be at the San Siro in Milan this evening. The visitors are Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona: Spanish league leader, defending European champion and for many, currently the best team in world soccer. The side also, of course, fields the planet’s best player, by popular acclaim, in Argentinian forward Lionel Messi.” (WSJ)
‘It Will Not Be Inter-Barcelona, It Will Be Inter or Barcelona’
“Inter Milan counter attacked with great effect Tuesday against Barcelona, coming back from a goal down to win the first leg of the UEFA Champions League semifinal, 3-1. Barca went up early, scoring a crucial away goal by way of Pedro Rodriguez. He tucked away an angled pass from Maxwell, whose run down the left flank past Cambiasso to the goal line was unchecked by Maicon and Lucio, who both stopped dead in their tracks. But Inter responded with determined counter-attacking play, as per Manager Jose Mourinho’s instructions.” (NYT)
Inter Milan vs. Barcelona
(footytube)
Inter Milan (Internazionale) 3-1 FC Barcelona – Recap and Video Highlights – Champions League – Tuesday, April 20, 2010
“The UEFA Champions League kicked off its semifinal round with a 1st leg match between Inter Milan (Internazionale) v FC Barcelona at the San Siro. Either team would be favored to win the competition if they were to make the final. Barcelona has been in very good form in the Champions League while Inter Milan has knocked out favorites like Chelsea.” (The 90th Minute)
“There’s a pretty good chance that you know Olympique Lyonnais are playing today in the UEFA Champion’s League semi-final against Bayern Munich. You may not also know that Lyon’s women’s team are also playing in their UEFA Champion’s League semi-final this Saturday, against Swedish giants Umeå IK.” (Pitch Invasion)
Late-Game Heroes Have Lifted Bayern Munich and Lyon
“Arjen Robben’s contributions to Bayern Munich in the Champions League this season have been eerily consistent, and supremely valuable. In the 65th minute of the second leg of the Champions League round of 16 match on March 9, the Bayern Munich wing capped a stunning 11-minute spell with a sharply angled shot into the top corner of the Fiorentina goal. How fortunate. Though the German side lost the match, 3-2, it was Robben’s stunner that saw Bayern through to the quarterfinals by virtue of away goals, 4-4 on aggregate.” (NYT)
“Many have commented that, in an ideal world, this may have been the final of the competition. Barcelona and Inter are generally considered to be the strongest two sides left in the Champions League – and of course, they are also the only two actual champions left. For the tactical enthusiast, however, a two-legged tie between the two most interesting sides in the competition is a more exciting prospect than a one-off game.” (Zonal Marking)
Inter’s date with destiny
“Outside influences have had a habit, recently, of trying to penetrate Inter’s hardened outer shell ahead of their Champions League semi-final against Barcelona. Most notably, there have been allegations about the Nerazzurri’s perceived role in the 2006 Calciopoli scandal which have been brought to light by the defence attorneys for disgraced former Juventus director Luciano Moggi.” (ESPN)
It Was a Weekend for Clearing the Air, Though Not in England
“In sports, the shortest journeys often turn out to be the most perilous — as derby matches affecting the leading clubs across Europe demonstrated throughout the weekend. This, however, is a uniquely challenging time for long-distance travelers across the Continent, and for once the great and the good of soccer are in the same boat, or grounded plane, as the rest of us.” (NYT)
Espanyol make their new home a fortress to derail Barcelona
“As the bus turned in, all you could see was the palms of their hands hammering against the window. Then as the light filtered through, Nico Pareja in the aisle, arms aloft and chanting. His Espanyol team-mates were bouncing and shouting and thumping on the glass. Outside, they were too. Along the narrow streets of Cornellà, balconies were draped in blue and white, music blaring. Bars were packed with Periquitos sinking minis – litres of beer in plastic glasses – and hollering war cries.” (Guardian)
Emmanuel Adebayor
“How easy it is to forget that athletes at their peak are, by the very nature of their tasks, young but expected to be wise in their event, world-traveled but isolated and vulnerable. This week, Emmanuel Adebayor, the goal scorer for Manchester City, gave up the captaincy and, he said, the calling to ever play again for his country, Togo. He is 26 and a millionaire, and he said he just cannot get out of his head the day in January when Angolan separatists fired on the Togo team bus, killing three people in it.” (NYT)
“Tottenham record their first league win over Arsenal for a decade, and simultaneously rule Arsenal out of the title race. Arsene Wenger’s side have been written off on at least two previous occasions, but this, surely, is the end of the road. No major surprises in the starting line-ups – with injuries throughout the side, Wenger merely chose what he had. As against Barcelona, the only choice was between Emmanuel Eboue and Theo Walcott, and the Ivorian got the nod. Denilson played in space behind Abou Diaby and Samir Nasri in a 4-1-4-1 shape.” (Zonal Marking)
What a Debut, What a Goal
“What a Premier League debut and what a golazo. Danny Rose, a 19-year-old wing for Tottenham Hotspur, will have a difficult time topping the first goal of his English Premier League career — a 30-yard blast 10 minutes into the north London derby against rival Arsenal on Wednesday. (NYT)
Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Arsenal – Recap and Video Highlights – English Premier League – Wednesday, April 14, 2010
“Two London based clubs met in a derby match in the English Premier League as Tottenham Hotspur hosted Arsenal on Wednesday, April 14, 2010. Arsenal needed a victory to keep their title hopes alive while Tottenham needed a victory to keep pace with 4th place Manchester City. A draw or loss would likely end both club’s chances of their goals.” (The 90th Minute)
“The most eagerly-anticipated league match of the 2009/10 season, and a deserved win for Barcelona, who will now surely go on to win the title. Pep Guardiola sprung a surprise with his initial line-up, deploying Dani Alves as a right winger, with Carles Puyol at right-back, and Gabriel Milito coming into the centre of defence. Messi played centrally but drifted around, Pedro played from the left, and Keita was used more centrally than in previous matches.” (Zonal Marking)
Barcelona Win Deals Blow to Madrid
“Spain’s biggest selling daily – the sports newspaper Marca – billed it as the ‘Game of the Millenium.’ Most other media were somewhat more restrained, simply calling it the ‘final’ of La Liga. And while that may have been a bit premature – there are, after all, 7 games left in the Spanish league – there is little question that Barcelona’s 2-0 win at Real Madrid’s Bernabeu stadium dealt a body blow to the ‘Galacticos, v. 2.0’ as some have called Real’s expensively assembled squad.” (WSJ)
El Clasico
“I spent twelve hours sorting through the clichés and evasions trying to get to the truth, only to realize that the truth was in the cliché. Early in the first half, maybe even before the game started, Phil Schoen said Pellegrini would be fired if Madrid lost, because ‘right or wrong, that’s just how Madrid do business’.” (Run of Play)
Strikers’ Goal: Get Paid on Time
“Another goal from Lionel Messi and another inspired display by Barcelona decided Saturday night’s El Clásico derby against Real Madrid. Football fans are advised to savor the performance: It will be the last we see of La Liga for some time. There will be no football matches in Spain next weekend after the Spanish players union, the AFE, called a strike Friday over unpaid wages, which will halt games in the country’s top four leagues between April 16-19.” (WSJ)
Barcelona Makes Real Look Second Best
“The hour is midnight, but Madrid is not about to sleep anytime soon. Its team, Real, has just been outplayed and outclassed by Barcelona in Madrid’s own cathedral to sport, the Bernabéu. The 2-0 score line does not settle the Spanish league title, because each team has seven games yet to play. But, with goals from Lionel Messi and Pedro Rodríguez on Saturday, each of them created by the master passer, Xavi Hernández, this was indeed a defining night, another one in Barcelona’s omnipotent season.” (NYT)
The best player in the world plays in Spain
“English football has always had an uneasy relationship with all things continental. The absence of any teams from ‘The Best League In The World’ in the semi-finals of the Champions League this season has been greeted as a national disaster but this would not have always been the case. When the tournament was first created in 1955, Chelsea were forbidden from entering it by the Football League chairman, Alan Hardaker, and even the England team did not play in a World Cup until 1950.” (WSC)
“As the 32 national team managers evaluate players consider injuries and plot strategy ahead of the 2010 World Cup, millions of soccer fans around the world are completing their own plans for the qaudrennial tournament. Most will watch on TV (some in 3-D). Still, organizers expect as many as 450,000 fans to travel to South Africa and join almost a million vuvuzelas-blowing local fans attending the tournament.” (NYT)
“Barcelona hosted the 2nd leg of the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals against Arsenal with the score 2-2. The winner would advance to the semifinals to face Inter Milan. Arsenal came into the match without several key players (Gallas, Arshavin, and Fabregas) while Barcelona were without two defenders (Puyol and Pique). Arsenal would not be the favorites and have a tough task to get a win at the Camp Nou.” (The 90th Minute)
Barcelona 4 Arsenal 1; agg 6-3: match report
“They don’t need to hold an election to find the right man for No 10 here. Lionel Messi, who wears the Barcelona No 10 shirt with such distinction, scored four goals in a performance of such majesty that comparisons with the great Diego Maradona grow in substance with each stylish showing.” (Telegraph – Henry Winter)
Match Of The Midweek: Barcelona 4-1 Arsenal
“How, then, do Arsenal solve a problem like Lionel Messi? If he isn’t unquestionably the best player in the world at the moment then he is in the top two or three, and if this evening’s Champions League quarter-final proves anything, it proves that one player, in irresistable form, can win a match. Lionel Messi has been in sensational form all season but this evening, with an individual performance so sublime that it feels at times as if he is the only player on the pitch, there is simply no stopping him. Arsenal supporters may wonder aloud what difference the injured Cesc Fabregas, William Gallas and Robin Van Persie might have made to their team, but it is difficult to imagine that anything barring a full, career-threatening assort upon Messi would have made any difference to what happens this evening.” (twohundredpercent)
Messi – the devastating decoy
“Reading Phil McNulty’s blog after the Arsenal-Barcelona game, I was struck by the number of people who went out of their way to criticise the performance of Lionel Messi. It is indicative of the enormous pressure the young Argentine will be under in the World Cup – the same pressure that broke his friend and former Barca team-mate Ronaldinho four years ago. People are expecting circus tricks and something special in every game. It is the dilemma of the big name star in today’s football.” (BBC – Tim Vickery)
Messi Lifts Barcelona With 4 Goals
“Lionel Messi pretty much put Barcelona in the European Champions League semifinals by himself. The reigning world player of the year scored four goals, getting a hat trick in a 22-minute span of the first half, to lift the defending champions over Arsenal 4-1 Tuesday night and advance Barcelona to the semifinals for the third straight year. ‘A player like this only comes along every 25-30 years,’ Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez said.” (NYT)
Barcelona 4-1 Arsenal: Messi produces a stunning performance, but Arsenal gave him the room to do so
“If there was any remaining doubt that Lionel Messi is the greatest football player of his generation, they were erased tonight, as Barcelona got the better of Arsenal in the much-hyped battle of the teams playing football ‘the right way’. Arsenal didn’t lose this match tactically, but they didn’t help themselves.” (Zonal Marking)
Barcelona – Arsenal: A Champion League Live Blog
“We all wish no one had to win. Of course we do. In a just world, these two teams would combine to form a pure white dove made of energy, which would fly across the land, fields greening in its wake. But they can’t (probably, depending on Xavi’s passing). Someone has to win this, and it won’t be Cesc Fabregas’s femur. Savagery is afoot, and if you’re using the word “dilly-dallying,” you’re dilly-dallying already.” (Run of Play)
Barcelona’s celestial No 10 has Nou Camp in raptures
“It is getting increasingly difficult not to resort to hyperbole when describing the feats of Lionel Andrés Messi. Judgement should be withheld until the World Cup, when the 22-year-old will carry the hopes of an Argentina team handicapped by having Diego Maradona as coach. If Messi can still perform then as he does for Barcelona he truly will rank alongside Pele, Alfredo Di Stefano, Johan Cruyff and Maradona himself.” (Independent)
Masterclass from Lionel Messi ends Arsenal’s European dream
“Arsenal were outclassed by a Barcelona side simply to good for them and a masterclass from Lionel Messi in which he scored a breathtaking hat-trick in twenty-one minutes. You could have tried blindfolding him. Handcuffing him even. To a railing. Quick-dried slabs of cement around his feet. Rolled a giant boulder off a cliff like a Wile E. Coyote contraption. In fact, no matter what you tried, nothing was going to stop him. Lionel Messi was that good and comparisons with the best ever are wholly justified.” (Arsenal Column)
‘Mythical, universal, the Lord’s anointed one’ – Spain hails Leo Messi
“Leo Messi did something impossible last night. He got even better. He had scored in the Champions League final, the Copa del Rey final and the World Club Cup final, emulated that goal from Diego Maradona, hit three in the clasico against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou, two at the Santiago Bernabéu, and scored two hat-tricks in a row. But he’d never scored four before. Until last night. Last night, even Marca and AS, the myopic leaders of the Madrid media dropped to their knees; last night, so did the English. They could ignore him no more. Last night, as El PaÌs, put it, “Messi ate Arsenal’.” (Guardian)
“Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid will be preparing for Saturday’s Spanish “clasico” with Barcelona, but the rest of the soccer world will be fixated on the four return matches in the quarterfinals of the UEFA Champions League. ‘I don’t like to watch the Champions League matches because it leaves me a bit annoyed because I know that our team was good enough to remain in the competition and we are not because of our own fault,’ Ronaldo told a Spanish television station.” (NYT)
“Bayern Munich scored twice within two minutes and hung on with 10 men to beat Schalke and return to the top of the Bundesliga. Schalke started the match Saturday in first place but lost 2-1 at home after Franck Ribéry and Thomas Müller struck in the 25th and 26th minutes. Kevin Kuranyi cut the deficit in the 31st minute.” (NYT)
“Few African national soccer teams in recent years have supplied as many impact players to Europe as Ivory Coast. Sven Goran Eriksson, the team’s new manager, is no doubt familiar with the Ivorian stars of the Premier League like Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou and Emmanuel Eboue. But many of the country’s best players began their European careers in France, and it is in Ligue 1 where Eriksson might find the next name for his World Cup roster this summer: Gervais Yao Kouassi, known as Gervinho.” (NYT)
“Two of the most popular teams in Argentina — River Plate and Boca Juniors — and their legions of frenzied fans are not a happy bunch these days. The two clubs have long dominated the game in the South American nation and in the capital, Buenos Aires, but they are trapped in the lower half of the first-division standings more than halfway through the Clausura (closing tournament).” (NYT)
“The harmony of 60,000 voices that drifts out of the Emirates Stadium in London every other week is evidence that sport can bring people together. Singing as one, Arsenal fans serenade the leadership of the bookish, 60-year-old Frenchman who leads their favorite soccer team. ‘One Arsene Wenger,’ rings the chant . ‘There’s only one, there’s only one Arsene Wenger. One Arsene Wenger!’” (NYT)
“As Europe’s soccer season approaches the time for prizes or brickbats, the Bayern Munich coach, Louis van Gaal, declares: ‘These are the weeks of truth. We’ll either get the gladiolas or we’ll be dead.’ Never the shrinking violet, Van Gaal might soon live to regret his rhetoric.” (NYT)
“A World Cup campaign is usually a four-year process that starts when a national team engages in torturous self-examination immediately after its ouster from the last championship. Coaches are fired (or their contracts are not renewed) and aging players retire from the international scene. Even the winner is often in need of a new manager to enliven the roster and refresh tactics for the interspersed continental championship and next phase of World Cup qualifying.” (NYT)
“Could this be the year that a French team wins the European Champions League? The last team to do so was Marseille, which won the title in 1993, the first year the current format for the European Cup was adopted. But no team from France has lifted the trophy since. Olympique Lyon and Girondins Bordeaux aimed to end that drought this season; both teams advanced to the quarterfinals in impressive fashion. But it will be one or the other as the two teams were drawn Friday to face each other in the quarterfinal round.” (NYT)
“It’s elementary sports psychology: To produce their best in the biggest moments, athletes are advised to recall peak performances from the past. But as Bordeaux prepares to face Olympiakos for a place in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals tonight, Laurent Blanc, coach of the French club that’s been the surprise of this year’s tournament, will focus his team’s attention not on the six European matches it’s won this season, but the only one it didn’t.” (WSJ)
Mid-Week Review Show: EPL Talk Podcast
“Looking back on the mid-week action for Premier League sides in Champions League, Europa, and within the Premiership, analysts Laurence McKenna and Kartik Krishnaiyer join host Richard Farley on this version of the EPL Talk podcast.” (EPL Talk)
Match Of The Midweek: Chelsea 0-1 Internazionale
“How would you feel if you were Roman Abramovich after this evening’s Champions League match between Chelsea and Inter? When he disposed of Jose Mourinho just over three years ago, it was reportedly a show of player power the likes of which the English game had seldom seen before.” (twohundredpercent)
Different Routes Yield Same Result
“One of the joys of sports is that they confound just about any theory that attempts to explain them. When Real Madrid was eliminated from the Champions League last week, and Manchester United produced one of the biggest victories in its history, it was reasonable to conclude that stability counted for something.” (NYT)
Italian press celebrate Inter’s victory over Chelsea
“Having held a grim-faced silenzio stampa (press silence) for the past week, Jose Mourinho’s relationship with the Italian media had reached a new low on the eve of Inter’s Champions League return leg against Chelsea. A touchline ban, a pitiful display against Catania and ongoing grief with Mario Balotelli had formed a simmering backdrop to the game, with the Nerazzurri lumbered with the added burden of being Italy’s sole survivors in the competition.” (WSC)
Chelsea vs. Inter Milan
(footytube)
“It would be the cruelest of defeats for Chelsea fans if the Blues, a team built at great expense to win the Champions League, were to be eliminated by the man previously tasked with capturing European glory for the club. Jose Mourinho, the former Chelsea manager, will return to Stamford Bridge on Tuesday with that same goal as the boss of Inter Milan, which holds a 2-1 lead in the two-game elimination series. The current Chelsea manager, Carlo Ancelotti, will try to do what Mourinho, Avram Grant, Luiz Felipe Scolari and Guus Hiddink could not do.” (NYT)
“Come June, soccer’s World Cup will be hosted by South Africa. Though only 4 of the 64 games are to be played here in Nelspruit, a $137 million stadium was built for the occasion. The arena’s 18 supporting pylons reach skyward in the shape of orange giraffes. At nightfall, their eyeballs blink with flashes of bewitching light.” (NYT)
“The lasting image from France’s anemic, controversial, but ultimately successful campaign to qualify for the 2010 World Cup will be the un-penalized handball by Thierry Henry that helped Les Bleus slip by Ireland in a two-match playoff last November.” (NYT)
Scissors Kick 