The last time FC Barcelona and Real Madrid met in the Copa del Rey, Cristiano Ronaldo and company took the trophy in the Final. Unfortunately for “Los Blancos,” the dropping and destroying that trophy from their victory parade bus is what people remember more than actually winning. For Ronaldo, Barca is that thorn preventing aspirations for soccer supremacy Read the rest of this entry »
FC Barcelona’s goalkeeper flubbed a clearance resulting in a Real Madrid goal in the first minute of the game but with a little luck and resiliency, Barcelona won 3-1 to tie their rivals as league leaders in Spain. Read the rest of this entry »
Soccer fans don’t have NBA withdrawal; we have the Champions League. And with all the drama Wednesday night – including Bayern Leverkusen’s upset of Chelsea, Valencia’s 7-0 demolishing of Genk and Arsenal being the only English club to secure a spot in the knock-out stage – the match all fans anticipated with FC Barcelona and AC Milan lived up to the hype. Read the rest of this entry »
Over in the soccer world, championships were decisively won and lost this past weekend.
Beginning in Spain, only five points separated Barcelona and Madrid in their annual two-horse race at the start of Saturday morning. By day’s end, Madrid’s title challenge was effectively over. Read the rest of this entry »
Fifa 11 follows NBA 2K11′s footsteps with a recent release on the PS3 and Xbox 360. It gives you a taste of what you’ll find in the full game with multiple difficulty settings, 3 minute halves and the following clubs: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Bayer Leverkusen, Olympique Lyonnais and Juventus. The demo also features some unlockables to bide your time with like the ability to play as well as play in Emirates Stadium. Read the rest of this entry »
In the midst of a tight title race, Barcelona seems to be eager for greater separation from Madrid come next season. If preliminary reports out of Spain are to be believed, then the biggest transfer of the summer is complete and David Villa will soon don the blaugrana. Heading southwest in the opposite direction could be Barca attackers Bojan Krkic and Alex Hleb and duffel bags packed with a cool 40 million euros.
It would be a move in response to a similar one that backfired last year: bringing in Zlatan Ibrahimovic in exchange for 46m euros and Samuel Eto’o, who on Wednesday celebrated reaching the Champions League final with Inter Milan at the expense of a misfiring Barca. But this time around, Barca shouldn’t be victim to a jack move of such epic proportions. Despite being 28 (aging by soccer standards), Villa’s worth every euro, putting up numbers that justifiably rank him as one of the continent’s best strikers for the better part of a decade now.
Since the onset of Valencia’s financial collapse a few years ago, talk of the club’s most valuable asset moving to Madrid, Manchester, Barcelona, or London has been rife. Not coincidentally, on the heels of this also comes the news that Argentine international and Atlético Madrid striker Kun Aguero will trade the rojiblanco for Chelsea blue. Atlético is set to collect their own king’s ransom of 40 million euros.
A few weeks ago, Chelsea, like Barca, was expected to run away with its respective league. However, Manchester is once again breathing down its neck, thus, the need to splurge. All of this shopping before the season has even ended serves to highlight a year of tight competition across the continent. Photo finishes also look likely in Italy (Inter leads Roma by 2 points), Germany (Bayern Munich and Schalke are tied), and Holland (a point separates FC Twente and Ajax).
Another theme has been the confounding twists. Liverpool will probably finish seventh in the EPL. Tottenham will probably (finally) qualify for the Champions League. Fulham could win a European cup. Auxerre has an outside chance at the French title. Franck Ribery might end up in jail. Celtic imploded. And the list goes on.
Any recent soccer coverage (especially from that of a non-football site) must make mention of Lionel Messi. Over the past month in particular, the play of the little Argentine has suggested that he could be the greatest soccer player ever—at 22, mind you. Maradona has even said so himself (though he says a lot of things).
Saturday evening brought the big showdown: Barcelona v. Madrid, Messi v. Ronaldo, La Liga title on the line at the Bernabéu. Anticlimactic, it was. Just over half an hour, Xavi chipped the ball over the Madrid backline, and Messi, with a faint touch, converted inches of space into a clear shot on goal. 1-0. Read the rest of this entry »
The first El Clásico of the season has come to pass, and the evenness of the affair shouldn’t have been too surprising. After all, Madrid’s lack of chemistry, due to their Pollock approach to team construction, continued to plague them. And Barca, as first exposed by Russian outfit Rubin Kazan in the Champions League, simply won’t replicate their scintillating form from last season.
But yesterday’s match was noteworthy for being Cristiano’s first starring turn. He should’ve scored, but perhaps a game-changing contribution was too much to ask following a lengthy injury spell, even for the reigning World Player of the Year. That Madrid even made it a match, in Barcelona no less, is promising to them just a fortnight removed from disastrous defeat to Segunda B side Alcorcón, as well as last season’s embarrassing 2-6 loss against the blaugrana.
Another debutant made the difference, though. It was a beautiful first-touch volley from Ibrahimovic, shortly after being subbed in for Thierry Henry, that provided the win in the storied rivalry that goes some way towards justifying his hefty pricetag. His presence, though, means the the absence of the likes of Robinho and Javier Mascherano due to insufficient funds. And a lack of reinforcements could mean a reverse scoreline come April when the blaugrana have to travel to Madrid.
Messi was conspicuously ineffective, despite this being his year as the favorite to claim Ronaldo’s crown. In truth, he’s been struggling ever since the final whistle of last season’s Champions League triumph. The weight of Argentina’s national team struggles has somewhat unfairly fallen upon him and not Maradona for his general lack of actual tactics.
If it’s anyone’s year, just look over in West London and pick out any of the boys in blue. Drogba. Terry. Essien. Chelsea are once again the machine they were in 2005 and 2006. They dispatched Arsenal at Ashburton with ease, and the return of Joe Cole may render the loss of their African contingent in January for the Africa Cup of Nations not too significant.
The aforementioned trio, in particular, are also enjoying seasons to savor with their national teams. Ivory Coast, England, and Ghana are all streaking as they head into the World Cup. The world’s elite have on eye on the wide-open summer showpiece and June’s looming quickly.
Football talk dominates the headlines now (especially with Vick landing in Philly), but across the pond, the coming weekend brings about the dawn of the futbol season in England. Just last week, the top divisions in both France and Germany also kicked off, with the likes of those in Spain and other countries to follow suit as August winds down.
Besides battling for the championships in their respective leagues, clubs around Europe will also be vying to stay in the top four (or top three in Germany, France, and Russia, and top two in Turkey, Holland, Greece, Scotland, etc.) to qualify for Champions League football in 2010/11 to compete for continental supremacy (this year’s spots obviously have been decided). Here’s a club-by-club rundown of those most likely to nab those coveted CL spots from the three top leagues in Europe.
England (EPL)
*Awash with more Arab money cash than any other league in the world, the Premiership’s Big Four (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, and Manchester United) has now expanded into a wide-open Big Six, with Manchester City and Tottenham looking to deliver on their substantial investments.
1. Chelsea
2008/09 EPL Finish: 3rd
2009/10 Champions League participants: Yes
Bringing in a disciplinarian last season didn’t work out with all the big-name stars in their roster. With ex-AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti in to manage the egos instead of battle them this time around, look for him to coax the best out of the likes of primadonnas such as Didier Drogba and Nicholas Anelka.
2. Manchester United FC
2008/09 EPL Finish: 1st
2009/10 Champions League participants: Yes
Wayne Rooney simply can’t compensate for the loss of the best player in the world. But with pure wingers in Antonio Valencia and Nani, as well as Michael Owen and Dimitar Berbatov upfront, they’ll lack movement but retain the same fixed point system that gave them success with Ruud Van Nistelrooy. The difference between Read the rest of this entry »
They don’t call it “El Clásico” for nothing. The political and societal differences between the nationalist, conservative-minded madridistas and separatist, liberal Catalans have elevated the twice-annual matches between Real Madrid and Barcelona beyond strictly footballing terms. Read the rest of this entry »
The cruel thing about soccer is that in an instant, 180 minutes of hard-won domination can be rendered useless. Case in point, yesterday’s Champions League semi-final match between Chelsea and Barcelona.
Over the course of two matches, Chelsea managed to shackle — statistically-speaking — the greatest Barcelona team ever, better than the likes of the early ‘90s “Dream Team” and the ’06 squad featuring Ronaldinho at his superhuman peak. Barcelona was running scared shitless, mistiming every pass in anticipation of hard tackles flying in, especially from one man — marauding midfielder Michael Essien.
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