FA cup final
Chatter from the sidelines
- FA chairman Greg Dyke offers to host Fifa presidential TV debate at Wembley Broadcasters Sky and BBC have written to all four candidates, current president Sepp Blatter likely to have final say
- DON GARBER: MLS CAN BECOME ‘GUINEA PIG’ FOR USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SOCCER good man!
- African Cup of Nations Host Denies Moving the Cup to Accommodate for the World Cup *sigh* the amount of stuff that's to be moved around for Qatar to have its precious World Cup is ridic. Although, I'm a bit SMH at Af Con being every TWO YEARS whereas every other continental competition go with the once every four years rule (afaik), so I'm meh on everything
- Analysis of Manchester City's defensive structure against Barcelona d'aww you're so cute, thinking Manchester City does DEFENCE
- Napoli or Inter for Reina? Pepe Reina? You're still alive? I thought that you liked chilling in Bayern and not getting much playing time. But yeah, it would be nice to see him between the sticks again
- Mario Balotelli could quit Liverpool for shock MLS switch Just throw the towel in on your European career if this is true, Balotelli
- Thank you Xabi! Alonso recommends Spanish starlet Asier Illarramendi to Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers - might be fanfic, might be not. But we can agree that with the inclusion of Lucas Silva in various matches, Illarramendi won't be around Real Madrid for so long
- Thomas Muller has hit out at critics for suggesting Xabi Alonso and Bastian Schweinsteiger cannot play together in the Bayern Munich midfield. we'll see
Pictures
Premier League
Liverpool 2-1 Manchester City
Anfield turned out for Man City
Jordan Henderson scored a goal in the first 11 minutes
Dzeko replied with a goal in the 21 st minute. As Gary Neville said, it was a game of defensive frailties citing the reason why England has bombed out in Europe since 2012. I turned to my partner and shouted, "See, that's what I've been saying?" My partner goes, "Erm, no, you tend to rage, "Defense mofos, do you practice it!" I replied, "Isn't that the same thing?"
Kun Aguero was working. Had missed chances
I didn't watch the game, somehow found myself at a skeet shooting place at the same time. It's hard to listen to commentary while skeet shooting, but I managed
A tale of two brothers. Didn't Kolo (the younger) used to play for City?
Last night, I got nominated for a footballer quiz, you know, who's the sexiest footballer, best football memory, favourite player, and such like. I put down Kun for the first one. El mister went, "Him?" and I was like, "Yeah, I like what a beast he is on the field, and how he seems warm and engaging off it." He thought that Xabi Alonso would have garnered the honours, I was like, "Have you seen him since he's been at Bayern?" My partner said that success makes people even more attractive. What say you?
City has some really nice kit
Coutinho's goal. Praise reddit for gifs because I checked this out on the way to the car
More of the same. A little defence would be nice, but I'ma leave it here for now
Arsenal 2- 0 Everton
After the disappointment of Europe (and the hand wringing over if English teams can ever make it in Europe, discounting the fact that English teams have made it in Europe to the point where Platini ran on the platform for discounting the English teams in UEFA but - let me stop right here, football has the memory of a goldfish, it's probably just as well). That being said, it would be nice if the art of defence came back into the English game in some measure. We used to be a nation of getting embedded in after scoring a goal and then just dragging it out. Yeah, Spanish free flowing football is a spectacle, but people forget that the Spanish game is positional and disciplined and Rodgers et al seem to be mistranslating what it MEANS- OMG, let me stop, I'm going from discourse into bitching. Sorry for the digression, y'all. Where was I? Ah yes, Arsenal came back and found their form again
Everton in action, but still poor form. Fun fact: Roberto Martinez was a Swans player and all his coaching experience has been in England. Huh.
Arial challenges
Everton be doing that toil
Ospina got man of the man. We move on!
Captain One Final
Chelsea 2- 0 Spurs
Mourinho gets his first silverware in three years. The first since he's been back on English soil, and the relief and joy is plain to see
Credit to Drogba in that even though he didn't play much in the game, he went out, whipped the guys up in the end. He's more captain than John Terry is
Welp. You don't need history if you're winning. Success will give you history soon enough
I appreciated the pomp and glory
The expectant atmosphere above all. Half the team on the Spurs's sheet on that field were English, the same number again being academy grads. Respect to Pochettino, he's doing more than the rest of the Sky Six in this regard *side eye at City and Chelsea especially*. Long may it continue.
Someone asked me to name the ugliest footballer in Christendom, I said John Terry, I regret nothing
Cech was in goal, he wasn't pressured by Spurs much, to be fair. The first half was testy, until Chelsea drew the penalty. Sad times
Mourinho is turnt, y'all, turnt! My partner finds it strange that I'm not a fan of Chelsea, but I'm a fan of Mourinho, especially since (this is his argument) Mourinho is the embodiment of Chelsea and the modern football coach and £40 million players and blah blah blah. I do respect Mourinho in that he seems never to be busy (from what I've gathered) to pay it forward and give younger coaches a helping hand into the game, like Rodgers and Pochettino. My fave is problematic, y'all.
"Hey," said the one who shall not be named, "remember to put some pictures in from the match." Ugh. So in the interest of fairness, a few. Costa winds up Dier
Then Kyle Walker.
Azpilicueta got a head wound. Kane checks to see if he's all right
To be honest with you, Chelsea shut it down. Spurs were leggy (they had three days to Chelsea's seven), Pochettino had no answers (don't be like Biesla in this way, Poch, let me believe!) and his team are in transition (on the active squad of eighteen, six are on the outs, three have lost form) and the most of them are academy grads and young. If you told me in August after the 3-0 trashing they got from LFC that they'd have made the Wembley final with the team that Pochettin inherited, I'd have laughed in your face!
I can't find the picture, but Pochettino made his team come out at the match presentation, and when asked why, he said that in football, there's wins and losses, but above all there's respect.
La Liga
Real Madrid 1- 1 Villareal
This is how I know if Real Madrid didn't do well as they should (by their fans) on tumblr- there are more gifs than pictures
Exhibit A and B, these gifs. To show either referee bias or the fact that the team didn't perform to standard
Or they have pictures of the players before the match
Here's another one of them in the wild!
Pictures posted by the supporters of the yellow submarine
Villareal's font hurts my feelings
Sevilla 0-0 Atlético Madrid
A pictorial representation of how I felt watching the match
Antoine's hair gets blonder and blonder and seems to be in good condition, not trashy looking, or breaking. Conditioner rec?
NGL, I respect Sevilla's style of play, their relative discipline on the pitch, in that they don't get riled when Atlético tries to dictate the pace. They play their own game
One of the more physical matches.
I'll say this for Torres (as someone who's watched him over the years off and on) he can harry, and be a bloody pest for a defender. He's working harder than he has for a while
Valencia 2 - 0 Real Sociedad
Oh FFS
OP: one day, I'll find a seriously cool source for Serie A photos of all teams - but today is not the day. Oh, I need to clarify something that I said in the post yesterday? The reason why the news part was short is the fact that I'm finding most rumours repeating themselves. So it makes no sense to put variations on the same rumours in the post day to day, savvy? So the stuff that interests me will be news items that seem novel. Pobga coming back to the PL is not novel (and bloody unlikely at this point, tbh). Anyway, this week will be busy for me. Please be advised, that I will still do the posts, but again, they might not have all the tags, and I mightn't be around to correct broken links, pictures and whatnot. If anyone can add a tag or two to the post, it will be a help. Thank you!