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“Champions” League Wrap-Up
By David Mainiero
|May 16, 2010 12:45 PM
11gunners.com / Will Cesc be joining Leo in Barcelona next year?
Isn’t a little early to be writing a wrap-up story about this year’s UEFA Champions League action weeks before the final? Nope, not this year.
Let’s go back to when the brackets came out for the Round of 16. This is where this year’s competition began its free-fall, but all hope wasn’t lost just yet. One side of the bracket consisted of two real contenders: the 2007-2008 champions, Manchester United and Real Madrid. On the other side of the bracket, there was not only a better overall quality of teams, and three teams who could win it all: defending champions Barcelona, Arsenal, and Chelsea.
Round of 16: Real Madrid falls to the lowly Lyon, who are currently in fifth place in the French Ligue 1, and let’s be honest, compared to the English Premiership and La Liga in Spain, the French Ligue 1 is about as good as the NBA’s D-League. By the way, 5th place means in Ligue 1 means that Lyon is currently poised to not even qualify for the Champions League next year (and they ended up making it all the way to the semifinal this year thanks to their victory over the equally undeserving Bordeaux side that made the quarterfinals after beating the Greek club Olympiacos in the Round of 16). On the other side of things, Inter knocked off Chelsea, CSKA Moscow somehow beat Sevilla, and Barcelona and Arsenal both rightfully advanced.
Let’s fast-forward to the quarterfinals. Lyon beats Bordeaux on a 3-2 aggregate score in possibly the least exciting quarter-final matchup in the history of the Champions League considering both teams are currently poised to not even qualify for the competition next year by being 5th and 6th, respectively, in Ligue 1. Bayern Munich stuns Manchester United, advancing on their advantage in away goals. So on this side of the bracket, there’s officially no one I care to watch. On the flip side, Inter Milan, as expected, gets a free ride on the CSKA Moscow express train to the semifinals (CSKA Moscow didn’t score a goal in either leg of the competition, and the entire squad has now been relegated to a gulag somewhere in Siberia). Meanwhile, Barcelona and Arsenal, the two most enjoyable teams to watch in the sport clashed in an epic quarterfinal match, which lived up to all the hype in the first leg, but ended up in an anti-climactic fashion when Arsenal and Barcelona’s captains, Fabregas and Puyol, along with several other players weren’t able to participate in the second leg because of injuries and suspensions. For Barcelona fans, watching Messi’s magical 4-goal performance at the Nou Camp must have been worth all the risk of having to face Arsenal so early in the competition. For a die-hard Arsenal fan like myself, it sucked.
So obviously, I was pretty upset that my two favorite teams, Arsenal and Barcelona, who I anticipated would face each other in the final barring any disaster in the random draw (which came to fruition) and barring any devastating injuries/suspensions incurred by star players (which also came to fruition) were going to end up battling it out in the quarter-finals. But, at least I got to see a some great soccer.
Although I had already been displeased, to say the least, about the heavily skewed brackets in the knock-out stages and that this was the first year in Champions League history that no English side advanced to the semi-finals, I still kept my mouth shut. Why? At least there was still one indisputably world-class squad in the mix --- Barcelona. Now that the uppity Jose Mourinho, the self-dubbed “special one,” has fulfilled his second wildest dream (first being beating Barcelona in a Champions League final) and danced across the field to celebrate his triumph over the club he worked for as an assistant coach from 1996-2000 in front of about 90,000 really pissed of Catalan people, I have no interest in watching the final. Even if I did want to watch Bayern Munich and Inter duke it out in Madrid in a couple of weeks, I wouldn’t get to see Bayern star Ribery or Inter standout Motta because of their suspensions. Although Mourinho’s post-Barcelona and post-Chelsea era success makes for an interesting storyline, the absence of any team past the Round of 16 that is going to win its domestic league this year (with the exception of Barcelona, who have now been eliminated), has made this tournament utterly lackluster.
Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing an underdog pull off a miraculous upset against all odds, but not if it deprives me of watching great matches between world-class sides in the latter stages of the competition. For those of you who aren’t big soccer fans, imagine this:
At the end of the incredibly protracted NBA playoffs, you don’t get to see Kobe vs. Lebron in the finals, or Kobe vs. Dwight, or Kobe vs. “the Big Three” (sorry Paul Pierce, you’re conceited and you’re a drama queen, so I replaced you with Rondo in the Big Three); instead, you get the Thunder vs. the Bobcats. Great, I’m glad everyone in the major metropolises of Oklahoma City and Charlotte will be satisfied…
The combination of big upsets and an unlucky Round of 16 draw are at the root of all of this. Without this combination, this result could have probably been prevented. The UEFA powers-that-be aren’t soccer deities that can magically prevent upsets from occuring, but they certainly could change the drawing system to preclude such a disaster from happening; maybe the Round of 16 could include some additional seeding measures based on teams’ performances in their domestic leagues? I don’t really know how that would work out, but that won’t stop me from complaining. This whole debacle is worth discussing, and I’m pretty surprised that I haven’t read anyone objectively expressing the kind of frustration I am in the mainstream media or blogosphere. Maybe everyone is just too captivated by the Champions League intro song. Well, I hope all those people enjoy the Champions League final this year because I’ll be doing something far more satisfying at 2:45 P.M. Eastern Time on May 22nd: eating Chipotle.
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Editor:
David Mainiero is the Executive Editor of The Dartmouth Independent.
***
Writers:
Jamie Berk is the Editor-in-Chief of The Dartmouth Independent.
Charles Buker is an avid tennis player and co-editor of The Smoke-Filled Room, TDI's politics, business, and international affairs channel.
Andrew Citrin is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
Josh Etzion plays lacrosse at Dartmouth and is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
AJ Houston plays football at Dartmouth and is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
Alexandra Gakos is The Dartmouth Independent's resident hockey expert.
Sam Page is the NL East editor for SBNation.com and writer for Amazin' Avenue, one of the most popular New York Mets blogs on the internet. His work has appeared in the New York Times.
Scott Schwartz plays baseball at Emory University and is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
Christopher Silberman is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
David Smith plays basketball at Emory University and is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
Rich Tompkins plays football at Vanderbilt University and is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent.
Andrew Zolot is a contributor to The Dartmouth Independent and a recipient of Amherst College's Corbin Prize, awarded annually to the college’s best original informal essay.
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“the absence of any team past the Round of 16 that is going to win its domestic league this year (with the exception of Barcelona, who have now been eliminated), has made this tournament utterly lackluster”
blatantly false…i dont understand why you would choose to write about something you know so little about…part of the hype behind this year’s final is the fact that bayern and inter have both won their domestic titles AND league cups, making it a duel for the treble
the second half of this article is pointless…you dont even mention the fact that a team from every major league aside from the english was represented in the semi finals
By Amunt on 05/22/2010 at 11:48am Report Abuse
and just to continue…your parallel with the NBA is just absolutely weak…comparing munich and milan to charlotte and ok city in terms of absolute near hysterical passion behind their teams is ridiculous…im sorry this is harsh but honestly i hate when americans try and write about soccer thinking that they instantly understand the game when clearly you didnt even spend 5 minutes reading soccernet…also how do you expect a ranking system to affect the amount of upsets? wont that create even more? i mean hypothetically…madrid in that very same ranking could draw lyon so basically a bs ranking system gets thrown in (very very much like the BCS to make an american reference) and everybody gets upset…instead of dismissing the champions league final so readily, maybe you should watch it and get a real appreciation for the game
By Amunt on 05/22/2010 at 11:54am Report Abuse
hahaha nobody cares about soccer, get over yourself amunt
By whom on 05/22/2010 at 12:38pm Report Abuse
Amunt, I can certainly understand your frustration with the article, and American coverage of the soccer in Europe in general. All your points are valid in light of the information available to you; however, I wrote this article at the end of April and the date and time have been altered as a result of some complications with the new site’s launch. When I wrote the article, the idea of a Champions League final between two teams competing for the treble was fairly remote. Roma looked like they had Serie A under control and had a manageable schedule ahead of them while Inter had no cake-walk. Bayern were even with Schalke with two games to go in the Bundesliga, and despite Bayern’s substantial advantage in goal differential, they had been in pretty poor form domestically (with only two wins in their past eight games) and had stumbled a lot throughout the year against weaker teams. I knew that both teams were still in the running for their league cups, but it would have been a hell of a prediction to say both clubs would pull it off.
But, even if I knew these things, I still wasn’t that pumped about the final. The treble storyline and the Mourinho/Van Gaal pupil/teacher rivalry storyline were interesting to write about, but didn’t make me stop wishing it was a different matchup. I anticipated a defensive game from Inter and knew Bayern would be lacking maybe the most explosive player in the competition in Ribery. Do you think the game was that great today? It was better than I thought it would be and Inter defended quite well after going up one nil, but I’d still take a final with Arsenal or Barcelona in it any day. To me, and most people I talk to, free-flowing attacking football is much more enjoyable than a style that emphasizes defense.
As for your other comments:
1. Not mentioning the other major leagues being represented in the final. So what…I mentioned the much more historic and substantial point that this was the first time in Champions League history that there was no English side in the semi-finals. Forgive me for not raising what I consider to be a fairly facile potential counterpoint. The entire tone of the article should have indicated that I could care less if there was more representation of the other leagues, I just want to see the best teams play their best soccer. Lyon had no place in the semis, plain and simple. It’s not a diversity contest, it’s a championship.
2. NBA parallel - The article was geared toward an audience with substantially less knowledge than you about these teams or European soccer in general. Admittedly, it’s not the best analogy. Nonetheless, I have to take issue with your criticism here. The analogy was drawn to put the upsets in the context of a current issue that the general reader would be able to relate to. I fail to see how the passion of the fans is relevant. By the way, Oklahoma City only got an NBA team because of the passion of their fans when New Orleans had temporarily played in the city after Katrina. Obviously, in general, the passion that NBA fans have for their teams is not quite at the level of the top European soccer teams…it’s just a different culture. Even if the passion of the fans has some relevance, Inter’s fan base pales in comparison in size and passion to that of Barcelona (a team that it’s clear that I wanted in the final), which further reinforces my point in the article, which you obviously disagree with.
I wrote in the article that I don’t know what I think a ranking system would do in terms of upsets, but like I said, it wasn’t just upsets that caused the problem. It was the skewed nature of the brackets at the onset. I don’t see how it would create more upsets? It would be NOTHING like the BCS, that’s just a convenient straw man to enhance your argument. Unlike the BCS, It wouldn’t be an arbitrary ranking system based on votes or any weird formulas that no one understands…it would be cut and dry, based on domestic performance up until that point. I’m not saying it should definitely happen, I’m saying it should be discussed, and hopefully received in a more open manner than it has been by you.
I’d like to think I have a very strong appreciation for the game; I’ve played competitively my entire life, I’ve kept up with European soccer since I was 11, and in the past four months, I’ve been to two Barcelona games, an Arsenal game, and a Bayern game. Not that any of that enhances my argument’s authority in any way, just some background information because we clearly don’t know each other and you’ve made some pretty bold insinuations about my knowledge of and appreciation of the game. I don’t see how you are in any position to comment on that (now that you know this article is actually a month old).
Had I been in your position, I would have had the similar comments, but in the future, I wouldn’t read too much into someone’s appreciation or knowledge based on one isolated instance that you may or may not know all the details/context of, especially in a public forum. That being said, I can definitely appreciate your passion and take no offense to anything in here…you should consider writing for us - shoot me an e-mail if you’re interested at all.
By David Mainiero on 05/22/2010 at 09:41pm Report Abuse
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