If you have the day off tomorrow or are otherwise free, ESPN2 at 3:00 p.m. will be carrying fourteenth place Blackpool (LLDWL) hosting Chelsea (WLDDW) at Bloomfield Road.
As for the Champions League this week, Tuesday’s games hold one probable foregone conclusion and one intriguing possibility.
The foregone conclusion is probably the Shakhtar Donetsk v AS Roma match. Shakhtar scored three goals against Roma in Rome in the first leg, while surrendering two goals. This puts Roma in the position of having to score two goals against Shakhtar in Donetsk while surrendering none. One goal surrendered by Roma will require them to score three against Shakhtar. I just don’t see that happening.
As for the intriguing possibility, there is a way for Arsenal to win against Barcelona, but it is a daunting task: they must score first. That would put Barcelona in the position of having to score two goals while surrendering no additional goals to send the game to penalties and three goals to win outright, again while surrendering no goals. The smart money is probably still on Barcelona, but Arsenal could still pull it off. What will not work is the strategy that José Mourinho employed against Barcelona in the second semifinal last year. Arsenal doesn’t have the talent in defense to commit to catenaccio against a possession team like Barcelona. The one thing that is in Arsenal’s favor is that Carles Puyol is out of this match as he was in the game in London.
For Wednesday’s games, notwithstanding the away goal scored by Schalke, I think Valencia’s recent form has been much better than Schalke’s in their respective leagues and believe that they will win. For Spurs against AC Milan, Spurs does have a slight advantage in their away goal at the San Siro and the return of Gareth Bale. Spurs had a Jekyll and Hyde performance today against Wolverhampton: surrendering goals, fighting back and surrendering a goal at the end of the game to earn a draw instead of a win. Milan, for its part needed Gennaro Gattuso to score his first goal in some three years to beat Juventus. Spurs defense has to come to the fore here and a goal for Spurs would help immensely as well.
There is no live broadcast of the Shakhtar Donetsk v AS Roma game except on the regional Fox Sports Net, which will require you to check your local listings. Fox Soccer Channel has Barcelona hosting Arsenal at the Nou Camp Stadium on Tuesday at 2:30. On Wednesday Fox Soccer Channel has Spurs v Milan at White Hart Lane at 2:30 p.m. At the same time on Fox Soccer Plus, you can catch Schalke v Valencia at the Veltins Arena.
BGinCHI
Just finished watching the Man u vs Liverpool match, which I’d recorded this morning. Keep in mind Mrs. BG is a Huge (not physically) Man U fan.
Needless to say someone is quite happy and trying not to lord it over the wife.
Seeing Nani cry was a low point in the match. Yeah, he got clattered, but Jesus, welcome to the EPL.
Looking forward to the Spurs vs Milan match on Wed. Hope Spurs kick the absolute shit out of them.
Anya
Man u vs Liverpool match was such an exciting game, Liverpool earned the win and I think Suarez was the hero of the game, Kuyt being very close second.
Anya
I accidently pushed sent and the stupid thing is not letting me edit my comment.
JeffH
Actually Shakhtar Donetsk v AS Roma will be on Fox Sports Net, so it probably has better coverage than the Arsenal-Barca match.
Randinho
@JeffH: Understood, but I’m really only focusing on the televised games.
JeffH
@Randinho: Fox Sports Net is the collection of regional cable sports networks with the Fox name, so it is televised.
sherifffruitfly
What the hell is this post even about?
Randinho
@JeffH: Fair enough and in digging a little I found it on the Madison Square Garden Plus (MSG+) Network live here in NYC. Unfortunately I don’t know specifically which regional networks will be carrying it in specific parts of the country, so as they say, check your local listings.
@sherifffruitfly: The world’s most popular sport. Apparently everyone else was able to figure that out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Randinho:
It’s about sex? I thought it was about soccer.
m wilson
great stuff…
Randinho
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay, the world’s most popular team sport.
Unless, of course, that describes something that I really don’t want to know about . . .
Mr Stagger Lee
I wish FSC would televise Argentina Soccer, I wish my cable would televise Fox Soccer Plus. As well as an Arsenal fan I am a Boca Juniors fan.
Yutsano
@Randinho: That way lay madness, good sir. That way lay madness.
ChrisZ
Arsenal is away for this Champion’s League match, not hosting. Or is Fox Soccer Channel replaying the previous match on Tuesday?
I’m kind of conflicted about whether I even want Arsenal to win or whether I’d rather they have some more free time and focus on the Premiership and F.A. Cup. If I had more confidence in them I would want them to go for all three, but even if they get past Barca I wouldn’t make them favorites to win and there will still be seven other teams. The Premiership’s just a two team race at this point.
J. Michael Neal
As long as this is a sports thread, fuck the NCAA. With you-know-who’s rusty pitchfork. This evening, they produced this abomination of a bracket for the women’s hockey tournament. Every single WCHA team got screwed. The #1 team in the nation, and it isn’t close, is Wisconsin. The lowest seeded team is Dartmouth, and they aren’t within a mile of whoever you decide is #7. So, instead of sending Dartmouth to Madison, the NCAA ships them to Ithaca to play #2 Cornell. Wisconsin’s reward for being the best is having to play a Minnesota-Duluth team that somehow fell to #7 because no one in the NCAA can add, let alone design an algorithm that doesn’t break when you breathe on it.
Minnesota, which lost to Wisconsin in OT in last night’s WCHA final, doesn’t get to host a game. Instead, they get to go to Newton to play BC. (Yeah, Newton. Find Chestnut Hill for me on a map of Massachusetts.) Minnesota finished with a better RPI than BC did and should be seeded ahead of them based upon the official criteria. Because the NCAA doesn’t understand math, they decided that BC’s much better record against teams in the Top 12, they were going to reverse that, despite the fact that the reason their record is so much better is because, despite limiting it to the top 12, BC played a much easier set of games than Minnesota did, even using RPI.
I watched the Gophers play Wisconsin five times this year, going 1-3-1 with two excruciatingly close losses against a team that went 31-1-1 against everyone else, which becomes 29-0-0 if you exclude Duluth, too. Given the way we stomped UMD on Friday, it would take someone a lot of persuading to convince me that Minnesota isn’t the second best team in the country. And they don’t get to host their quarterfinal. And, if they win in Newton, they play Wisconsin in the semis. The NCAA very cleverly prevented the possibility of an all WCHA final. That happened each year from 2006 to 2008, and the whining from points east was incessant.
It should be noted that in the ten years of an official NCAA D1 women’s tournament, Duluth has won five, Wisconsin three and Minnesota two. That adds up to ten. If they provide enough affirmative action, maybe the NCAA will be rewarded by an eastern team winning eventually.
BGinCHI
@J. Michael Neal: Best. Women’s. Hockey. Post. Ever.
Ever.
burnspbesq
@J. Michael Neal:
Whine, whine, whine.
Want to convince people how good you are? Shut up and win.
It takes a lot to get me to root for Cornell. Congratulations, you’ve done it.
J. Michael Neal
@burnspbesq: So, you actually approve of having teams play out of the proper seeding? Why not just randomly draw a bracket, then?
You approve of an organization that uses a ranking algorithm that is so broken they have to make an ad hoc decision not to count some of the games in order to prevent a win against a bad team from lowering a team’s RPI? Or that doesn’t recognize that playing games against the #1, #6 and #9 teams in the country is a more difficult schedule than playing against the #3, #10 and #12 teams? I’m probably more offended as a math geek than I am as a Gopher fan.
dollared
Here I was going to an argument at Balloon Juice and a hockey game broke out….
Yutsano
@dollared: So when did you move to Canuckistan?
Sarah, Proud and Tall
Even though I am English by birth, I confess the charms of soccer have passed me by for most of my life.
However, I did enjoy the 1970 World Cup.
Actually, that’s lie. The World Cup was an alcoholic oxygen deprived blur.
It was the week after the World Cup that was fun. I spent most of my time in Guadalajara either spreadeagled underneath Pele while he shovelled coke into every orifice he had, or drinking Bollinger off Gerd Müller’s six pack.
That was all an alcoholic oxygen deprived blur too, but at least I was enjoying myself.
Happy days.
SRW1
I wouldn’t put too much stock into Schalke’s recent league form. Apart from avoiding relegation, which I think they won’t have that much of a problem with, the regular Bundesliga season has almost become a distraction as there isn’t anything in it for them any more (even Europa league qualifications is out of reach.
If Schalke wants to salvage anything out of this season, it has to be in a cup competition. Not surprising then that it has been those cup competitions where they have had their more decent games, like the recent defeat of Bayern in the DFB cup, where Schalke has reached the final (and will play a second league team).
While I very much doubt that Schalke has the caliber to stand up to the real heavy weights in the CL, I suspect they will give Valencia a really hard time. Raul may no longer have the legs of yore, but he still seems to have the instinct for scoring opportunities.
Attaturk
I just have a feeling…based on copious amounts of evidence…that Arsenel is going to choke its way to a 4-nil defeat at Camp Nou.
Their loss at the Carling Cup summed up the last half-dozen years perfectly.
Meanwhile, speaking of international sports I don’t really understand, what year does the Cricket World Cup end?
Randy Paul
@ChrisZ: My goof. It’s at the Nou Camp. Fixed for the sake of posterity.
hatmandu
I’ve been a Spurs fan for 19 longggggg years. Pessimism is built in, but I am predicting victory over the Rossineri. League form has been shaky (though in true Lilywhite form, never boring), but Wednesday is the biggest night at White Hart Lane in decades. Bale is back, Modric regaining strength after surgery, Van der Vaart expected back, and Defoe finally showed some scoring form at the Molineux on Saturday.
Of course, Spurs will probably follow this with a home loss to Wigan Saturday, but alas, that is life at the Lane.
Yurpean
@Attaturk:
There’ve been some very interesting matches so far. I mean I’ve not actually watched any of them, but I have followed them on the Guardian’s over-by-over, by far the most civilised way of following sport. So far we’ve had Ireland beating England from what seemed like an impossible position (they had to get 328 runs to win, which would have been hard in and of itself, but at one point they were just 111 for 5, before Kevin O’Neil scored the fastest ever WC hundred.).
Then there has been England’s win over South Africa, where England set a quite pathetic target of 172 only for SA to fall apart after 30 odd overs, losing their last 7 wickets for less than 50 runs.
Paul in KY
@Yurpean: We have several Indians working here & they are all avidly following the Cricket World Cup.
The other day Ireland beat England in cricket!! That’s sort of like Canada beating us in U.S. style football.
All of the Indians are hoping for a Pakistan – India showdown (in criket, not in nuclear warfare).
Tuttle
SRW1 hit the nail on the head in regards to Schalke. The league is done for and Schalke needs money so all their effort is going into cup play. Plus this match is at the Veltins. German squads are always tough to beat at home. I predict 1-0 Schalke. Raul will sneak one in and Neuer will be like a God in goal.
Speaking of today’s game, there’s something I’ve been wondering about Blackpool. I don’t know much about the team or the city, but I was kind of grooving on their style and their colors (I’m from Tennessee, Orange and White is always cool) earlier in the year. But every match I watched at the ‘Pool there was a god damned Confederate flag hung behind one of the touch lines. What the fuck is up with that? It would be like me taking an IRA flag to a Braves game.
I mean, I know why you see the (so called) Stars and Bars at Hamburg: They won’t let those fascist fucks fly their swastikas. And I’ve seen it a couple of times at Nuremberg, Napoli and Palermo (whose fans claim it’s a “southern” thing). But as far as I know Blackpool’s fan-base isn’t particularly known for fascist leanings and it’s certainly not in the south of anything. Just kind of perplexing.
dollared
@Attaturk: You should be more cheerful. The matchups and situation favor Arsenal. Barca is missing their two best defenders, and without them they have to move every center player back one step.
Against other teams, Barca would be challenged by this. Against Arsenal, the one team with the speed and attacking skill to truly threaten Barca, Arsenal has a great chance at gaining that first goal. 2-1 Arsenal, 4-2 overall, is the most likely score.
Now, being a Cubs fan, I understand your anxiety…..
dollared
@Yutsano: Nah, still a gringo. Born and raised in the WCHA, which does mean that certain parts of Canada would almost be like California to me. But do I care about the women’s seedings? Let me put it this way – I’m guessing that most of the seeding decisions were based on making sure the competition venues were clear for men’s practices and games.
pragmatism
come on you spurs!
Samuel Knight
Right now the top of the premier league is one huge dog fight. There does not seem to be a heck of a lot separating the top 6. So how do they stack up against Italy and Spain.
Given how all 4 of the English Squads did what they needed to do in the first leg, have to give them a decent chance this time.
BUT – Walcott being out, and Van P probably available only as a sub makes Barca really tough. They will need to be lucky.
Tottenham should do it again – they ran rings around AC last time, and at home with Bale – they should knock them out.