Finally, I get to write about my favorite team.  Everton FC, a Liverpool based BPL team, is currently in a duel with London based Arsenal for a spot in the top 4 of the premier league this year.  With very few games left, this race is heating up more and more with each team looking to secure a spot in next season’s Champion’s League competition.
Arsenal find themselves in very familiar situation, however, as the past few seasons have left a spot in the top 4 uncertain until the very end of the season, fending off London rivals such as Tottenham.  This year, they face off with my boys in blue, my Liverpool Toffees whom I love so dearly.
Things are looking pretty good for Arsenal, though, I must say.  They face a stretch going into the end of the season with opponents that are almost exclusively sitting in the middle and bottom of the table, while Everton find themselves moving into battles with Manchester giants United and City in 2 of the next 3 games coming up.  The bookmakers have already predicted an Arsenal top 4 finish, and I have to say that is definitely a nerve-wracking thing to hear.
To their credit, Everton have won six straight games in the premier league, brushing Arsenal aside with a 3-0 victory at an intimidating loud Goodison Park a little over a week ago.  This is an incredibly impressive feat, and it would be a shame to see such an amazing effort go unrewarded.
If you’re unsure of whom you should support in this face-off, I would say go with the American representation.  That’s right – Tim Howard, the USMNT goal keeper, wears the number 1 shirt for Everton and protects that net with his life.  Go Toffees!

COYB

https://soundcloud.com/brian-oneill-38/podcast-1

Sunday’s European action featured a number of interesting results, including Manchester United’s 0-3 home defeat to Liverpool, a game which might cost struggling manager David Moyes his job, and Tottenham’s 0-1 defeat to arch-rivals Arsenal, putting the spurs under further fire from their supporters after a horribly disappointing season.

The most prominent headline in world soccer, however, undeniably came from a a fixture in the Spanish Primera which I was lucky enough to attend.

(pictures taken by me at the game – if you can distinguish colors, Barcelona is dark, and Osasuna is light.)

 

Barcelona hosted minnows Osasuna in a pushover match which resulted in a 7-0 defeat at the hands of the Cataluynan’s – a massive scoreline, yes, but hardly a surprise given the respective stature of each club.  The headline was not the scoreline, though, but rather the record breaking hat-trick by Argentinian star Lionel Messi, who netted his 371st goal for the club in 9 years and about 400  since is first appearance for the club.  This shocking number surpassed a 90 year standing record by Barca legend Paulino Alcantara, who netted 369 for the club in 1924.

It goes without saying how ridiculous of a number that is.  But in case this is all blurs together in the context of  world soccer,  the top scorer ever in the Premier league was Alan Shearer with 260 total over 434 appearances.  And the top scorer ever in the Italian Serie A was Silvio Piola over 23 years in the game.  So yes, blah blah blah, Messi is the best player in the world.

But to score so many goals in such style is a level beyond incredible.  Dipping, ducking, darting his way around hapless defenders, Messi netted a hat trick on the big anticipated day.  Regardless of Osasuna’s pushover status, the players that Messi ghosted were still professionals by any definition, trained for years and years together to keep attackers from finding the net.  Remember that time over the summer when you were 10 years old running around the beach tossing a baseball with your friends? The Osasuna defenders were probably on the training pitch passing soccer balls around and preparing themselves for the opportunity to play in a professional match, like Sunday’s, to face others who had been training for just as  long, like Messi.

Messi’s first goal was surreal yet casual, flicking a well driven cross from Alexi Sanchez up and over the goal keeper to the bottom left corner.  This goal was pretty typical from a team that specializes in pin-point accurate passing, a trait characteristic of the next goal as well.  For is second helping, the Argentine made a fantastic move with three defenders surrounding him to two-touch the ball inside the six-yard box to the feet of Barca star midfielder Andres Iniesta who returned the ball for Messi to blast it into the top right.  Starting from the beginning of the attacking third of the pitch, Messi and Iniesta had alone worked the ball into such a dangerous position with about 4 deadly accurate passes.  Finally, the hat-trick came from another driven cross from the wing, only this time landing in close control of the Barca no. 10 who, upon shifting his weight ever so slightly to the left, sent three Osasuna players, including the goalkeeper, flying in the same direction, only to switch calmly to the right and slot the ball into the bottom right corner with ease.

This week features the second leg of the elimination round of the Champions League.  The Champions League is considered to be far and away the most prestigious club competition in sports, involving the top teams from almost every League on the continent.  The number of clubs eligible per League is decided by a rating system put in place by UEFA (Union of European Football Associations).  The maximum number of teams eligible for any Leage is 4.  Some of the countries lucky enough to have four participating teams include the Barclay’s Premierleague, the German Bundesliga, the Spanish Primera, the Italian Serie A, and the French Ligue 1.  I’m sure none of these names come as a surprise, and while there are occasional dark horse teams in the mix a this point in the competition, history shows that the cream tend to rise to the top and dominate the presence.  So anyways, here’s what’s going on this week.

 

 

Tuesday:

 

Several weeks ago, there was plenty of excitement in the competition.  Atletico Madrid, who currently sit second in the Spanish Primera between gians Real Madrid and Barcelona, took down Serie A participants AC Milan.  The Rossineri fought hard at home, but ultimatly could not hold off Atletico, allowing a late away goal which could prove fatal to the Italians if they fail to find the net in Madrid.

(Mario Balotelli’s face speaks to Milan’s disappointment as Atletico goal scorer Diego Costa walks by)

Title defenders Bayern Munich saw off Arsenal 2-0 after a red card was shown to Polish goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny for taking down Dutch winger Arjen Robben in the box on a clear goal-scoring opportunity.  Ten-man Arsenal fought valiently, but ultimately could not hold off the dominant offensive power in the Emirates Arena.  The Munich giants now have the gunners at home at the Allianz in Munich, and are expected to snuff the Gunner’s champions league hopes with a decisive performance.  However, it would be foolish to write Arsenal of just yet, as the past two years have seen Arsene Wenger’s men stage some frightening second-leg comebacks.  Two years ago Arsenal fell 4-0 at home to AC Milan, only to come one goal short of bringing the competiton level with a 3-0 win in Milan.  Last season, they fell 3-1 at home to Bayern, only to bring the aggregate score level in Munich at 3-3 with a 2-0 victory.  Unfortunately, the number of away goals scored is used as an aggregate tie-breaker, which saw the German giants advance and eventually hoist the trophy.

(Toni Kroos’s one-time shot flies past back-up keeper Lukasz Fabianski into the top corner)

 

Wednesday:

 

In the first leg, Barcelona defeated British side Manchester City 2-0 under extremel similar conditions to the Arsenal-Bayern fixture.  What was looking to be a fantastic competition was marred by a second-half red card by City defender Martin Demichelis.  The Argentine took down fellow International teammate Lionel Messi sloppily with a clear path to the goal, setting up a penalty which was put away with ease by the four time Balon D’Or winner.  Suffice it to say that Manchester City certainly has its work cut out for its visit to Barcelona two days from now, entering the monstrous Camp Nou, a compact, steep-sided stadium with an intimidating 100,000 fan capacity and an even more daunting history of success.

 

(Camp Nou in Barcelona with an epic colored seating arrangement)

However, if the contracts of the City players are any indication of their ability to step up to such a task, then we should have quite the game on our hands as Manuel Pellegrini’s men will claw their way towards the two goals they need to survive.

A much less inspiring fixture features the Bundesliga’s second place club, Bayer Leverkusen, traveling to Paris where will take on big, bad Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s high-flying Paris Saint-Germain.  In Leverkusen, Zlatan lead the French Ligue 1 leaders to a 4-0 victory, dominating half the scoreline and producing one absolute stunner that silenced the Bayarena.

 

(Zlatan Ibrahimovic celebrates after an incredible goal against Leverkusen)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZTZJJ1WyWQ

Check out this link to see what this looked like…

 

Perhaps Leverkusen will put up a fight, but to be completely candid this just isn’t Leverkusen’s year in the Champions League.

A pretty crazy weekend of action saw the beginning of the MLS season, some intense regular season Premier Leaugue games, and, most of all, a regular FA Cup Shocker.

The FA cup has been a tournament held high in the hearts of British soccer fans for decades, a competition won by so many of the past and current greats.  It is a competition involving 10 levels of British soccer.  Stop to think about that for a second.  There are 20 premier league teams.  There are 734 teams that compete in the competition.  If that doesn’t strike you as a sports competition of cosmic proportions, I don’t know what will.

The first three rounds of the cup are played without any premier league teams.  This makes sense because it gives the bottom percentage of clubs a chance to beat eachother out in a fair effort to get a shot at the big leagues who, bing 20/734 clubs, are theoretically better than 98% of the teams involved.  So what do we expect to happen? Well, we expect that these top 2% of clubs will enter in the third round and, without much of a concerted effort, lay waste to the bottom 98% of clubs.

But history has shown that this is not always the case.  In fact, it is more common than you would think for lower division teams to pull of a miracle against premier league clubs.  About a decade ago, my personal favorite team Everton, a team that has never been relegated from the premier league (an extremely impressive feat matched by the likes of Manchester United), was brought to their knees by lowly Shrewsbury, a club which currently plays in the third teir of British soccer, League 1, in a 2-1 defeat.  In 1988, the great Reds in Liverpool tumbled at the hands of Wimbledon FC in the final match.  And, last year, Wigan, a Premier League club who had been doomed to relegation, pulled off one of the most shocking upsets of all time in defeating Manchester City, winners of the Premier league only two seasons ago, defeating them 1-0 at the death with a goal that startled a crowd of blue-clad fans.

Want to know what happened this Sunday? The exact same thing.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHIrdd6nnOs

 

Wigan Athletic pulled off yet another upset victory over the big-spending club, defeating them 2-1 and advancing to the semi-finals.  Pulling off one upset win over a Premier League giant is a pretty big deal.  Doing it twice is just out of this world.  It’s like the Giants beating the juggernaut Patriots in the Superbowl of 2008.  It could’ve been just a fluke performance, but they did it again 4 years later and marched off the field having proven that they just won’t lose to that team.

This is what makes the FA Cup so wonderful to watch.  Because of the way the European soccer season is structured, there isn’t a “regular season” and then a “post season.”  There are competitions such as the Premier League, the FA cup, the Capitol One Cup, and European competition all at the same time.  This means that a team has to manage the fitness of their players very carefully, making it nearly impossible for star players to start every game the way they would in, say, Basketball or Football or even Baseball.  In those sports each game means the same amount, but in Soccer each game is part of a different competition at first, and if you manage to stay in the FA or Capital one cups, the season becomes a constant struggle.  Manchester City, a top premier league team, finishes in the top 4 of the Premier League almost every year now, making them eligible for the Champions League, the most prestigious club soccer competition in the world, meaning that they have four competitions to play in every year, each with varying degrees of weight.  Teams like Wigan generally only have 1-3 small competitions to worry about, considering they are in a lower division, and priorities are much simpler (get promoted, try to win a big competition).  Also, they just generally just don’t face nearly as much scrutiny as a top club like Manchester City would.  So when they meet in the FA Cup competition, it’s a regular David and Goliath story, with one massive underdog and a giant that makes the mistake of overlooking the minnow.

There was interesting news in the Soccer world this past week as United States full-back, Fabian Johnson, has agreed to join German club Borussia Moenchengladbach this summer on a free transfer.  Johnson is 26 years old and currently resides in the south-west of Germany under contract for his current club, Hoffenheim.

Here’s a look at what this guy can do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZapo_sAnFw

And here’s a good example of the kind of quality Gladbach has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZhx-iOe3qU

This move is interesting for a number of reasons – predominantly because it involves a US soccer player taking a forward step in his European footballing career.  Gladbach currently sit 4 places and 9 points atop Hoffenheim in the Bundesliga table and boast such stars in their lineup as Marc-Andre Ter Stegen, a Goalkeeper attracting the attention of one of the Colossuses of world football in Barcelona, and notable forwards Max Kruse and Raffael Araujo, meaning that this switch is something of a compliment and a blessing for Johnson.  Many American players playing in Europe do not get the opportunity to prove themselves at consistently higher levels in more prestigious clubs, so whenever they do, it’s a pretty big deal.  American stars like Clint Dempsey and Michael Bradley have been some of the few to take positive steps in their European Careers – Dempsey moving from mid-table premier league side Fulham to top-5 side Tottenham, and Michael Bradley making his way out of British club Aston Villa to take on challenges in Italy for Chievo Verona and then Roma.

What makes this move for Johnson perhaps even more important, however, is the fact that players such as Dempsey and Bradley have very recently made their moves back to the United States, taking big-money contracts with much less competitive MLS sides such as Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC which pale in comparison to the European giants from whence they came.  Most people in the soccer world would view this kind of move as a step back, which, at this stage in the MLS’s development as a competitive league, it really is.  So when word of Fabian Johnson taking a forward step in his career comes forward, American soccer fans can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that there is at least one guy out there that still wants to challenge himself at the highest level in one of the most competitive leagues in the world.

This is especially important in light of the upcoming World Cup.  With the imminent arrival of the most prestigious world competition of any sport, let alone soccer, the performance of American players in their respective leagues is hugely important, and this performance relative to the quality of their league is all the more significant.  The more American players competing at the highest level of the game the better, especially given that the USA’s first round World Cup draw has been labeled the “group of death” with the inclusion of the German and Portuguese national teams.  These countries boast some of the best players in the world with the likes of Mesut Ozil (Germany) and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) leading their front lines, so having any type of experienced defender will be crucial.  This is exactly why, ultimately, Fabian Johnson’s imminent forward step in the German Bundesliga is an extremely positive thing, as it is both indicative of his progress in the game and a quantitative measurement of his ability to succeed at the highest level.  USA international manager Jurgen Klinsman, a German himself, will surely be pleased.

England

Saturday’s action in the Barclay’s premier league saw Chelsea climb atop the table with a 3-1 win over the already struggling Fulham.  Particularly impressive in this win was German international Andre Schurrle, who netted a hat-trick (check out his goals here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L8iSrBxP-I).  His three goals were enough to keep the blues above Liverpool in the table, whose three goal win over Southampton was not enough to top the title race, but did instead add to their ferocious 38 goal differential (that is to say they have scored 38 more goals than they have conceded).  This differential is currently keeping them in second place above Arsenal.  The Gunners suffered a shock 1-0 loss to Stoke City at the weekend, allowing Liverpool to come level on points but exceed Arsenal’s 24 goal differential – a crucial tie-breaker that could come into play towards the end of the season.  Sitting comfortably in fourth with 57 points, Manchester City did not play a league game this weekend but rather emphatically snuffed out the struggling, possibly relegation-bound Sunderland’s hopes of winning the Capital One cup as stars Yaya Toure, Samir Nasri and Jesus Navas struck to ensure a 3-1 win over the Black Cats.  Fifth and Sixth spots Tottenham and Everton both added three points to their struggles for a top four spot with 1-0 wins over Norwich and West Ham respectively.

Spain

Derby day on Sunday saw one of the most ferocious rivalries in European Soccer take place at the Vicente Calderon in Madrid.  Atletico Madrid hosted Real Madrid and, in a fascinating fixture, held Los Blancos to a 2-2 draw.  Real’s recent Balon d’or recipient Cristiano Ronaldo pulled his team level in the dying minutes after what seemed was surely going to end a famous win for Atletico.  This draw ensured that Real Madrid stayed atop the Spanish Primera Division, while it forced Atletico to third place, just two points behind FC Barcelona who won emphatically 4-1 at home against Almeria.  The competition in Spain continues to be a three-horse race between the Cataluynans and both Madrid based club, as all three sit 10 points above Athletic Bilbao in fourth place.  The Basque based club fend off Villareal for the fourth spot, who are 6 points behind after a 1-1 draw to Real Betis at the weekend.

Germany

Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich continued to exercise their power hold on the Bundesliga as they crushed fourth place club FC Schalke at the weekend in a 5-1 victory (check out the match highlights here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au-ke8TZTW0).  The Munich giants continue to add to their insurmountable 20 point gap on top of the table ahead of second place Borussia Dortmund, who, to their credit, won convincingly at the weekend in a 3-0 defeat of FC Nurnberg.  Robert Lewandowski, Polish international and star striker for Dortmund, netted his 15^th goal of the season – an extremely impressive statistic for having just passed the half-way mark.  This win gave them an important two point lead over third place Bayern Leverkusen, who were defeated 0-1 by FC Mainz.  This marked a third straight Bundesliga loss for the club, helping continue a miserable run of form in the league.  After their thrashing at the hands of Bayern Munich, FC Schalke thankfully only find themselves two points behind Leverkusen for a third place spot, but sit only two points above fourth place contenders VFL Wolfsburg, who were also embarrassed in a 6-2 loss to mid-table side Hoffenheim.

Italy

Juventus climbed higher atop the table in Milan this weekend after bringing down the Rossineri in a 2-0 victory.  A nice finish from Spanish international Fernando Llorente opened the scoring, but a ferocious 20+ yard strike (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt5wzD837CM) from Argentine Carlos Tevez silenced Clarence Seedorf’s men.  This win helped Juve extend their lead on top of the serie A to an intimidating 11 points over AS Roma, who drew level with Inter Milan on Saturday.  Roma look forward to the possibility of closing the gap with the Torino-based giants, but also look backwards towards Napoli who sit only 6 points behind them in a much closer race for second.  Napoli’s efforts to catch up to Roma were unconvincing, however, in a 1-1 draw to Serie A minnows Livorno.  No doubt a sigh of relief was breathed for Napoli with the defeat of fourth place club Fiorentina at the hands of 8^th place Lazio, giving Rafael Benitez’s men a 7 point gap.  Meanwhile, former Italian giants Inter Milan look eagerly upward from the fifth place spot, only 4 points behind Fiorentina.

My name is Brian O’Neill and I’m going to bring you random tidbits of World Soccer news that strikes me as important as it comes.  I am tend to dip in and out of global soccer news, so that is what I hope to bring to you.