"The best thing for them to do is to stay at nil-nil until they score."
Well, that has to be the most entertaining 0-0 draw TDH has ever seen. Non-stop action, quality football, tons of chances, amazing saves, even sporadic bouts of sportsmanship - the game had everything except goals, and TDH didn't miss them much.
Madrid were unlucky not to get that early penalty on Ronaldo, though TDH recognizes that Gilberto's boot touched the ball... eventually. And the Highbury faithful had to know that trying to wind up Beckham late in the game was a bad idea. As soon as they started riding him, he struck his first decent cross of the game. Earlier the man was spraying balls into the stands like one of these. A more on-song Beckham could easily have led to a different result.
In the next round, TDH hopes Adebayor will get a start in place of Reyes. He's got to be one of the hottest prospects in the Premier League right now. In any case, the Goon Show has a lot of young players who are developing really well. In a couple of years, if Walcott starts scoring and they pick up a big midfielder, they should be back to their best.
For the time being, though, TDH doesn't expect the Gooners to go much further. The first team with composure (hello Milan) will probably turn them upside down. Good-bye English hopes. But speaking of Milan, Mara, give us some effusive comments whenever you feel like coming down from that cloud....
Madrid were unlucky not to get that early penalty on Ronaldo, though TDH recognizes that Gilberto's boot touched the ball... eventually. And the Highbury faithful had to know that trying to wind up Beckham late in the game was a bad idea. As soon as they started riding him, he struck his first decent cross of the game. Earlier the man was spraying balls into the stands like one of these. A more on-song Beckham could easily have led to a different result.
In the next round, TDH hopes Adebayor will get a start in place of Reyes. He's got to be one of the hottest prospects in the Premier League right now. In any case, the Goon Show has a lot of young players who are developing really well. In a couple of years, if Walcott starts scoring and they pick up a big midfielder, they should be back to their best.
For the time being, though, TDH doesn't expect the Gooners to go much further. The first team with composure (hello Milan) will probably turn them upside down. Good-bye English hopes. But speaking of Milan, Mara, give us some effusive comments whenever you feel like coming down from that cloud....
posted by Daniel Altman at 9:40 PM
1 Comments:
how well you know me...
the game finished at midnight or thereabouts here, and I had to be in the office for 7:00, but if it wasn't for that, these comments would have been on last night.
Where do I start? First off, Pippo showed exactly what he's best at: goals. Doesn't matter how sloppy or beautiful. And the first header was a beauty, and the for his second, he scuffed the ball so badly it went straight up rather than forward. But pippo has no vanity when it comes to goals. he was perfectly happy to nod the resulting flick-up into the net.
We could easily have scored 7. In the first 30 minutes we made Bayern look like a pub side. We should have been three up, not just two, given Sheva's pitiful penalty. Bayern did come into it at the end of the first half, but then Pippo struck right at the beginning of the first to kill their momentum. After that, we took our foot off the gas, and Bayern had a lot of the ball until Sheva set Kaka free for number 4, and then it was exhibition time: Sheva missed a one-on-one, Gila missed two, Seedorf knocked wide from five yards and again from 12...
It was the best performance from Seedorf since 2004, and the defence were generally excellent (couple of shaky moments). Serginho was our best attacker, Kaladze a rock at the back. He and Nesta completely shut down Makaay and Pizarro. Their goal came from Dida's poor handling.
anyway, this is almost a second post. But basically, I'm chuffed, but last year and the year before we scaled these heights before tumbling - we need consistency.
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