erwin wrote:
Brilliant second half from Lyon after changes by Puel. Pellegrini, on the other hand, is a plank.

Sam said on here a while back that Lisandro López might not get into the Argentinian squad for South Africa. That would be madness ... notwithstanding his laughable miss in the dying minutes.

It was an unbelievable miss, unbelievable. My other half was watching the game with me (she likes Lisandro) and after a minute of silence, she looked me in the eyes with complete honesty and said, "I... could've scored that." She then couldn't understand how he could celebrate with such enthusiasm, me neither, I would've retired from football after the final whistle after a miss like that.

But this is Lisandro, man of war! Fantastic lay off for the goal, brilliant throughout the 90 minutes (the miss was in the 92nd) and the poor Madrid defenders didn't have a moment to themselves. They were either chasing Lisandro around the pitch or being chased by him when they were in possession of the ball.

There was an incredible statistic at the end of the first half which said Madrid had completed 152 passes, whilst Lyon had completed something like 34. It wasn't because their passing was bad, it was just that they couldn't get a hold of the ball. The changes that Puel made at halftime were incredible, Madrid just couldn't react to the change of game plan and Lyon were worthy winners. I'll echo what erwin says about Delgado, great player.

steveeeeeeeee wrote:

But this is Lisandro, man of war!

Apparently, there was a trifulca in the tunnel after the game. Lisandro turns to Sérgio Ramos: "Weren't you going to stuff us 3-0?" They only didn't get into a bit of actual bovver because there's a fence down the middle of the tunnel at the Bernabeu (please note, Benfica).

What did I tell you all? Milan are shit.

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
Watchin beckham stumbling around like an old man, feigning effort like a old heavyweight boxer, reduced to picking up cigarette butts outside the door of a mid level gangster it was sad. Maybe he could have told ronaldo that it's all downhill after you leave man utd.

Gerard Pique has certainly had a terrible time at Barcelona since he left Man Utd.

Had Real gone through, we'd likewise note those two hilariously inept misses by Lyon and say that with a little luck it might've gone their way.

Umm, well had Madrid taken their chances as I said before then there would have been no need to push your entire team up the field in the last minute in the desperate hope of snatching something - the only reason that those chances came about for Lyon.

Taylor wrote:
To be fair to Clive, Gary Neville and Ronaldinho are interdimensional operatives travelling the universe together, battling shadowy forces which emerge through breaks in the time corridor. And they do have a weirdly guarded and evidently complex emotional relationship. They just don't go on and on about it.

I don't care that it's only March, I'm nominating this as Post Of The Year.

hmm, i reckon that ac milan were absolutely delighted that the english media were concentrating on david beckham, because otherwise the concentration would have been on how unbelievably shit ac Milan are. But then again signing famous has beens to distract people is entirely the point.

As for the game itself, ac milan were the worst team i've seen playing at old trafford in years. Even worse than manager mick's reserve XI, who at least tried a bit. Man utd were rather poor and sloppy but knew that every time they got the ball there was a goal there for them if they really wanted it.

It seems that unlike the first leg, ac milan had most of the possession, which was a bit problematic from their point of view, because all that happened is that they went pass-pass-pass-pass-pass-pass-"Oh balls I've given the ball to wayne rooney and I'm 30 yards out of position, ah fuck it I couldn't be bothered."

There is the Marca led Real Madrid staple of venting their fury on the coach and knee jerk reaction by sacking him, probably at the end of the season. Or they could try and behave like a serious football club, realise that it was one of those nights, see they are still gelling and understand they have a brilliant coach in Pellegrini and a decent chance of the Spanish title.

god love us you'd think you'd understand them a bit better now wouldn't you. Real madrid aren't a real football club, they're a sportutainment franchise like the WWE.

They're more interested in fame and having their cocks sucked by their own tame media, and pretending that they are geniuses with their dubious financial statistics than actually being any good at football. They're a nonsense club, who've shrunk the other teams in the league to give them a steady stream of easy league victories to simulate success. I remember getting a lot of abuse from certain quarters for saying that it was sad that Cristiano ronaldo had decided to retire from serious football, but a sixth consecutive second round humiliation? A quarter of billion pounds, spent on what exactly?

Garcia sent me a series of text messages mocking kaka saying things like "Kaka, from the people that brought you Sheva" which I thought was very mean. He too misses the point. Kaka is a very handsome young man, and he's famous for having won a european footballer of the year trophy despite playing in serie A, and only having a 5 game seasons. But he's very handsome and has a lovely smile. And he's very famous.

So while two proper football clubs play for the champions league trophy in the bernebeu this june, I'm sure that we can expect marca to run front page stories about how real madrid are going to sign the star players of the clubs in the final as they desperately try to remain relevant.

at least they pay well though.

Gerard Pique has certainly had a terrible time at Barcelona since he left Man Utd

But barcelona had to have their best ever season, to stay at the same level he had been at man utd. It'll be all downhill from there.... on a marginally more serious note pique had a man utd career about as meaningful as david platt or peter beardsley.

he's a good footballer and barcelona suits him, but he seems to have rather poor reactions, and his man utd career never really recovered after a leadenfooted performance against bolton where he was more michael dawson than franz beckenbauer. It wasn't just that he was physically bullied by kevin davies, it was that he was being physically bullied by nicolas anelka.

Rooney v Pato. Not much of a contest in the end was it. I'm surprised the quality of Rooney's finishing hasn't received more credit on here.

I wouldn't go as far as TMK in saying they were the worst team to visit Old Trafford in years, but they were certainly no better than the mediocre Premiership teams who turn up there in the expectation of a routine drubbing.

Sad to think that this is the second best team in Italy at the moment.

meregreen, they have players capable of skill that most premiership players could never dream of, but i have never seen a team try less, or seem capable of trying less, since inter washed up at OT last season.

Meanwhile adidas have just revealed that the net result of buying all of those galacticos is that not only are real madrid kits being outsold by Liverpool, but now they've been passed out by Chelsea. Ouch.

meregreen wrote:
I wouldn't go as far as TMK in saying they were the worst team to visit Old Trafford in years, but they were certainly no better than the mediocre Premiership teams who turn up there in the expectation of a routine drubbing.

Sad to think that this is the second best team in Italy at the moment.

They were as bad as the Real Madrid side that got thumped 4-0 at Anfield last season, if not worse, and exhibited many of the same frailties plus a whole slew of others to boot. As morale-boosting a win as this is for United, psychologically as much as anything, we can't read too much into it or make any serious predictions on the outcome of the Champions League based on United's performance. We looked worryingly exposed at the back several times and were lucky that Huntelaar blazed over. There will be far sterner tests to come.

Like meregreen said, it reminded me of the sort of routine thumping that the likes of Tottenham or Everton get at Old Trafford every season. For Italian football iit was embarrassing, but to be honest I have no idea how Milan are second in the league. I would fancy the chance of teams like Palermo, Napoli and Fiorentina (who were robbed of a win by the referee in both games against Bayern, frankly) much more than Milan.

The Mighty Kubelgog!!! wrote:
Meanwhile adidas have just revealed that the net result of buying all of those galacticos is that not only are real madrid kits being outsold by Liverpool, but now they've been passed out by Chelsea. Ouch.

To be fair, it's not a kit many neutrals would buy, there's just nothing cool about it design wise and there's not much Adidas can do to jazz it up other than put a bit of lilac in it every four years or so.

I can't imagine that too many neutrals buy a chelsea strip either. It's kind of amusing that signing players like aquilani and johnson has more of an impact than buying ronaldo and kaka

Naturally, while acknowledging that Milan were terrible yesterday, I completely disagree about these comically exultant and transparently biased judgments upon the innate quality of the squad, which I think is pretty respectable and deserving of a second place position in Serie A.

I put the loss yesterday down mainly to their attitude/work rate and a poor choice of formation (and of course Man Utd amazing efficiency). Along, perhaps, with not having two of our best players, Nesta and Pato, available. Milan created enough chances to score, probably roughly as many as Man Utd, and didn't finish any of them. Man Utd didn't have to chase this game, they were happy to concede possession and defend/counter. Milan probably would have played better with less of the slow-paced, probing possession; there were only going to be so many chances to pick the lock and score that way. Milan aren't bad on the break themselves (especially with Pato in), and there were virtually no breaks that I can recall.

dalliance said it perfectly, that when Man Utd had the ball it was 8 against 11. We put out an attacking formation because we were faced with the unrealistic goal of winning 2-0 at OT, which I don't think anyone actually believed was possible after blowing the superior performance at San Siro. So this shitty attitude plus one too many non-defending players meant once it was 1-0, it might as well have been 4-0.

Milan is capable of fielding a better formation than was on display last night. Huntelaar is almost worthless; he can get himself into positions to score, as he did last night a couple times, but can do almost nothing else. He detracted from Borriello's value because they're similar lumbering-type players; Borriello plus Pato is a much better combination (Pato covers WAY more ground than Huntelaar). Antonini would have been preferable to Jankulowski on the left, Bonera would have been preferable to Abate, who is darned useless isn't he, on the right. Nesta better than Bonera in the center.

So yeah, there's no real depth. And Ronaldinho only plays well when we're winning. And Seedorf outclasses everyone on the pitch when he wants to.

On Real Madrid, the exultation is similarly comic. They fucking deserve to be ridiculed obviously, but the loss to Lyon does NOT magically relegate the entire franchise to joke status. They're a pretty great squad in the big scheme of things, they're just way too expensive. That part's a joke, but they're still a team capable of beating any other top team I reckon.

Have Madrid ever outsold Chelsea in terms of official kits?

English clubs have a huge inherent advantage in that measure because (as we've often discussed before) British (and Irish) supporters are much more likely to buy a new kit every season (or at all) than their continental counterparts.

One other thing, the ridicule of Beckham is unfair and mean-spirited. 1) he played fine, had a great shot and some useful crosses, and 2) Leonardo didn't put him in to please the OT crowd, he was always going to get put in midway through the 2nd half if Milan were losing, just as Leo has done a dozen other times this season.

And actually it was the nicest part of that game, seeing the fans cheer him. If he'd have scored that volley I expect there would have been a standing ovation.

Bruno wrote:
...they're still a team capable of beating any other top team I reckon.
The point with Real Madrid surely is that they're not a team at all. They are a collection of incredibly talented individuals masquerading as a team.

I don't know. That was certainly true of the Galacticos MK1. But I think that there is much more genuine balance and teamwork in this incarnation. Sure Ronaldo is someone who likes to beat teams on his own, but Diarra, Alonso, Higuain, Kaka are all team players.

meregreen wrote:
The point with Real Madrid surely is that they're not a team at all. They are a collection of incredibly talented individuals masquerading as a team.


This sounds a little like buying into a prepackaged narrative to me. The top clubs in each of the top leagues are composed of incredibly talented players; the imported stars of Real Madrid were all surrounded by other stars at their former clubs, this isn't the first time any of them has played on a team full of primadonnas and swollen egos so now they're all suddenly flummoxed about what to do with the ball. (What's more they're all internationals.)

Madrid's big-spending ways are what drive that narrative, because it creates an unrealistic expectation of how great the squad should look, and then reality sets in and people realize that a team of stars can still lose or play like shit of a night, especially in European games. (but that they'll still always have enough to come in first or second in the league)

And what Etienne said.