Champion’s Day Two: A Day of Caution

Yesterday’s four matches in the Champions League were, in my opinion, less interesting than the first day’s. Three of the four matches drew and the fourth, Liverpool v. Barca, was seemingly won by accident by the merseysiders as they gratefully accepted a number of defensive errors by the Catalans.

In truth, all eight squads were probably set to be happy with ties, as it would leave clubs in a position to make their move in the second leg. This left the viewers with, from what I saw, was some fairly uninteresting football. I saw the two ESPN games; the Chelsea-Porto match was dreadful, and the Liverpool game only really became interesting in the second half and especially after Liverpool got its second goal and Barca went into all-out attack. From what I’ve read, the Inter game was interesting while the Roma game was, um, not.

Regardless, we should have some interesting matchups set up for us in two weeks, where we will hopefully reap the benefit of the cautious play this week. Hopefully we will see attacking football played in the Barca-Liverpool match at Anfield, the Real-Bayern match in Munich and the Arsenal match at Highbury. I’m also hoping Inter, Lyon and Porto come out firing on all cylinders. We shall see.