Weekend Matches: September 29-30

It's football dawn-to-dusk this weekend with good matches being played out all over Europe and even in the MLS. I have been particularly drawn to Series A all season, as some of the best games this year have come from Italy. This week we have a Turin derby as well as Milan and Fiorentina playing in separate, interesting matches. The match of the weekend, however, will hopefully be Roma-Inter, as Inter is getting back on form and Roma sees if they can recover from the draw put on them by my boys from Florence on Wednesday. Hope you enjoy it!


Saturday

7:30am Manchester City vs Newcastle Utd Setanta Sports

10:00am, Bayer Leverkusen vs Bayern Munich GolTv

10:00am Chelsea vs Fulham FSC

12:00pm Birmingham vs Manchester United FSC

1:00pm Roma vs Inter FSC

4:30pm Livorno vs Fiorentina FSC

7:30pm New York vs Salt Lake FSC



Sunday

9:00am AC Milan vs Catania FSC

1:00pm Getafe vs Real Madrid GolTv

2:30pm Torino vs Juventus FSC

Predictions, Predictions

This weekend, one of my readers asked me for my picks of who would win in Europe. (Thanks, “Soccerfan.”) Since “Soccerfan” is presumably one of the eight or nine people who actually read this column, I thought I would answer. “Soccerfan” wasn’t really clear in what he was asking: I presume he was asking about my picks as to who would win the Champions League, but I am also going to provide some quick thoughts on who will come away with the three major European leagues that I follow: England, Spain, and Italy.

Italy

The easiest work is done in Italy, where Inter is running away with the league. As of March 5 they have 70 points and are 16 points up on their nearest competitor. Only a fool wouldn’t pick them.

Much more intriguing is the race for the top four spots in the league, which grants the teams places in next year’s champion’s league. Inter obviously has their spot and Roma seems to have theirs as well. The final two could be Palermo, Lazio, or Empoli, but two of the most intriguing stories in football right now are AC Milan and Fiorentina as they fight for a Champions spot. Milan and Fiorentina, remember, started with major points penalties (8 and 15 points, respectively) and yet are threatening a top-four spot. My favorite club, Fiorentina, has been particularly impressive; without their penalty they would have 50 points and would be sitting pretty. Their utter destruction of Torino yesterday suggests they will not end the season without a serious fight.

England

This weekend Manchester United managed to squeak by Liverpool and remain 9 points up on Chelsea. While I agree with Jose Mourinho that the race is by no means over (Manchester still has to go to Chelsea) I am picking Manchester to win the league by a relatively close margin; perhaps three or four points. While both of the top two teams in England are relatively thin, Manchester has managed to create more depth due to the Henrik Larrson signing and the remarkable health of their team. Also, in spite of Didier Drogba’s fantastic year, I think Christiano Ronaldo is having the best season of any player in the world, and Manchester, I think, should be able to use him to keep their competitors at bay. Just think how good this team could be if Wayne Rooney played as well as his reputation.

I predict that the top four in England will be United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal. I also predict the sun shall rise tomorrow.

Spain

La Liga is, by far, the closest and most competitive league that I am following this year. Sevilla played a great match against Barca this weekend, beating them and taking over first place. In spite of this, I do believe that Barca will ultimately win the league; once they get Ronaldinho, Eto’o, and Messi back in form they seem to me they will be quite unstoppable, in spite of the team’s defensive deficiencies. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see Barca drop the ball, both as Real Madrid fan and as an admirer of beautiful football. Sevilla is a fun team to watch. I just think Barca is a better team than we have seen so far.

My top four in Spain is Barca, Sevilla, Valencia and Atletico Madrid. Real Madrid finishes fifth, misses the Champions League, fires Capello, signs two more big-name players (Franck Ribery for one, maybe) and starts over yet again. God, that’s depressing.

Champions League

This is probably the toughest league to predict, as there are literally six or seven teams good enough to win it. Thus, I am going to go out on a limb here: I predict the final will be…(drumroll please) Inter v. Chelsea. And I believe Inter will win it.

Strange prediction, I know. I don’t think Chelsea will win their domestic league, but because of this I do think Mourinho will pour everything he has into winning the Champions again before he leaves Chelsea. Inter, of course, has to get by a very tough Valencia team who scored two away goals in their first meeting two weeks ago. I do believe Inter will pull Tuesday’s match out, however, and I do believe they will go on to win the Champion’s league simply because the seem like the strongest and most complete team this year. If Inter has ever had a year of destiny, this is it.

More Bad News for Italian Teams not wearing Blue and Black

In December of last year (the latest issue available here in the states) the English language magazine of Italian soccer, Calcio Italia, ran a feature story on Inter Milan striker Adriano. In the story, they basically said that Adriano was a fat, lazy slob who didn’t care about his team and needed to go away.

Since then, Adriano has scored four goals in his last four games, and has made Inter look stronger than ever. They now have at least three, if not four, dangerous strikers and a formidable midfield and defense to boot. Today they destroyed my team, Fiorentina, who might very well be the second or third-best team in Italy. (Fiorentina would be right in the thick of a Champion’s spot if not for their points deduction, and might very well get one anyway.) But they were soundly beaten. Adriano’s mini-comeback suggests the race is all but over for the scudetto. Now we are left to see how Inter will do in Europe.

In England, it seems as if we still do have a race on our hands, since Arsenal was able to hold off Manchester United by scoring two in the final fifteen minutes. It was a genuinely exciting game, capped by Henry’s header in the 93 minute, following the play-by-play announcers rant earlier in the game that Henry was no good in the air. Anyway, Manchester remains six points up, meaning there is still reason to watch the Premiership. Good for Arsenal and good for us.

Series A.....ggravating

I’m a big fan of Italian Series A football. I really am. I love the passion of the fans and the knowledge and dedication of everyone you meet in Italy for their favorite clubs. I am personally a huge fan of Fiorentina and I also like Siena very much. Luca Toni, the great Fiorentina striker, is one of my favorite players in the world, and I also always go out of my way to watch Yoann Gourcuff, who is quickly becoming one of favorites.

I also don’t have much patience for the standard complaints about Series A. The people who call it “boring” or “defensive” or “too low scoring” typically are revealing nothing more than the fact that they don’t watch Italian football and don’t know what they are talking about. This season Series A continues to be one of the highest-scoring leagues in the world, and the passing and attacking football couldn’t be any more attractive.

However, Italian football has to get its act together, or soon it will lose even its most dedicated followers. This week the President of Inter and the Vice-president of Milan were called into questioning for cooking the books; remarkably, this comes on the heels of the most damaging football corruption case in the history of the sport, which happened just this summer. It’s as if no one learned anything.

Here in the United States, our sports scandals typically involve steroids or something. There is no doubt that steroids are bad news, but in Italy, over the past year, we’ve seen clear and convincing evidence that certain favored teams were essentially bribing refs to have games decided in their favor. This, of course, shakes the sport to the very core and rightfully leads fans to ask why they should pay for a product if the game is going to be decided in advance. In the US, if such a sports scandal happened, it would surely be the biggest and most talked-about sports problem in the history of the country. In Italy, it seems as if it was nothing more than business as usual.

The punishments handed out in this summer’s scandal were scandals in themselves; it’s the one area where I have trouble defending Italian football. The fact that everyone got off so lightly almost ensures that people will do it again. If the Italian authorities have any sense at all, they will throw the book at Inter and Milan if they are guilty of cooking the books. Otherwise, people like me might just start agreeing with our friends that there is just something wrong with Italian football.





One other quick note today: Real was bounced, a little while ago, from the Kings Cup. Good job, everyone. Perhaps if the team president wasn’t publicly embarrassing the players, followed by the president immediately apologizing to the players, following the team coach giving rude and obscene gestures to the home fans, the team would be a little more stable. At least as a Real fan I can take with me that Robinho and Gago played well. Still, the team was terrible today in dead-ball situations. It’s too bad the team doesn’t have anyone who is good at the dead ball. You know, someone who is world-renowned for scoring from free kicks. Like maybe even someone who was sitting in the stands watching the game? Ah, well.