For the past couple of weekends, I haven’t been able to watch as much footie as I wanted to. A big project at work sapped all of my energy and our new condo required a ton of attention to details that were both physically and mentally draining. All of this forced me to catch up on my sleep during the weekends and miss two weeks worth of football. I also missed pretty much every Champions League match within that time period but since Roma and Juventes respectively beat my Chelsea Blues and Real Madrid Whites, I can’t say that I’m really disappointed about this.
So when this past weekend came around, my work project was pretty much in the can and the condo issues were as in control as we could get them. This meant a weekend free to watch as much football as I could fit in. And what a weekend of football it was.
The theme of the weekend for the two big Spain La Liga matches was “a hat trick-plus-one.” One of them, the Real Madrid/Màlaga match I’ve already gushed about in my previous post. This, for me, was the game of the weekend. I’ve watched my beloved Madrid take quite a few knocks since the season began and I pray that that Gonzalo Higuaín’s four goal performance will restore the team’s confidence. A few hundred miles away, their El Clàsico rivals, Barcelona, delivered a brutal performance against Valladolid. Not only did Barca’s Samuel Eto’o put for balls in the net, he put all of them in in the first half! Two more goals from both Eidur Gudjohnsen and Thierry Henry finalized a 6-0 shout for Barcelona.
If the theme in Spain was “a hat trick-plus-one,” then the theme in England was “a hat trick-minus-one.” Happily, my Chelsea Blues shut out the Blackburn Rovers 2-0 off of two Nicolas Anelka goals. I’ve talked mad trash about Anelka recently and he’s consistently making me eat my words, seeing how he’s the leading EPL scorer with 10 goals as of this post. Along with this and my erroneous pre-season hyping of Tottenham, I learned that while a little trash talk is a must for me as a footie blogger, I need to balance it out with a more structured understanding of the game’s fundamentals. I’m going to try and direct future posts to this specific point.
It needs to be said that all the matches mentioned up to now were matches where top notch teams pounded teams that kinda suck. Not so, with the Arsenal/Manchester United match that led to a 2-1 win for the Gunners thanks to two goals from Samir Nasri. Like Real Madrid, Arsenal needed this win to boost their confidence. They’ve done well enough this year to stay in the EPL’s top four but their overall performance has been lackluster…teams like this shouldn’t lose to the Fulhams and Hulls of the world.
A new learning experience for me was my first French Ligue 1 game: Paris Saint-Germain vs. Lillie OSC. I also finally saw ex Barcelona/ex Roma man Ludovic Giuly play a live match…something I’ve really wanted to do for a while now. PSG took the game 1-0 off of a Giuly goal and I’ll leave my comments at that. I did want to point out some differences that I saw between the style of Ligue 1 games and that of other European leagues, but it’s much too early for me to do this as I’ve only seen one game. I plan to watch more though and will then share my observations.
GREAT weekend and about time…I needed it!