Champions League Round of 16 Wrapup

I was a less than impressive three for eight in my predictions. But I'm quite happy with that, because in almost every case the team I liked better is through (the obvious exception being Chelsea, and even there I couldn't quite bring myself to cheer for Porto).

Liverpool 0 - 1 Barcelona (2-2 aggregate)
Yeah, they lost. But who cares? Because last year's champions are out and Liverpool are not. And now we do the dance of joy!

I was nervous before the game about how Liverpool would approach it -- whether they'd try to just defend their lead from the first leg and end up paying for it. And they did put on a very organized, disciplined display. Jamie Carragher was awesome once again (I could watch him make tackles like this all day, seriously), and the whole back line was solid, including Arbeloa once again playing out of position at left-back (which makes more sense than you'd think, since Leo Messi cuts inside onto his left foot a lot). They didn't spend the whole game sitting back, though. Liverpool actually had a lot more shots than Barca did, but they just could not hit the net. And I've made that exact same comment way too many times this season. More shooting practice, please, boys?


Tuesday's other games

• Valencia 0 - 0 Inter Milan (2-2 aggregate): Ok, you've all seen the fight, right? Watch it again anyway. It's not like there are any goals to tell you about. Plus, even though we're officially supposed to disapprove of this sort of thing, it's still tremendously entertaining. A twisted kind of credit goes to Valencia's David Navarro for actually breaking Nicolas Burdisso's nose rather than just flapping at him like a sissy, but negative points for then running away afterwards.
  
  
• Chelsea 2 - 1 Porto (3-2 aggregate): Chelsea were hardly dominant in this game, but they were also helped by some terrible goalkeeping from Porto's Helton, who made a complete hash of stopping Arjen Robben's shot. And hey, look at that! Michael Ballack finally did something useful and scored the winning goal. He's been well worth that gazillion pounds a week in wages, eh?
  
  
• Lyon 0 - 2 Roma (0-2 aggregate): Yeah, Roma still have no strikers. But apparently they don't need them.

Manchester United 1 - 0 Lille (2-0 aggregate)
Thank you, Henrik Larsson. If that was his last goal for United, it's a good way to go out. I really wish they were able to keep him, though; he may have only scored three goals so far, but they've been valuable ones. And all of a sudden they're short on strikers, with Louis Saha and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer out injured. And considering that Wayne Rooney is now their only option who (a) is fit and (b) hasn't spent the past year recovering from a horrific injury, maybe the thing to do is not strand him out of position and hope that he'll magically be in form. Yes?

No. Instead Sir Alex opted for the dreaded 4-5-1, with Rooney and Ronaldo on the wings and John O'Shea in the centre in place of Ryan Giggs. There are several possible reasons for this: resting Giggs before this weekend's FA Cup game; trying to placate Lille; giving a start to O'Shea in hopes that he'd repeat his heroics against Liverpool; and/or attempting to drive me around the bend once and for all. But whatever the reason, it didn't work out. Admittedly United were less defensive than they often are with this formation, morphing into a 4-3-3 when they went forward, but that flowing attack is still missing. They desperately need to get their attacking form back for the run-into the season, because they're going to be looking for goals from all over without a guaranteed finisher in the lineup.


Wednesday's other games

• AC Milan 1 - 0 Celtic (1-0 aggregate): Celtic's abysmal away record in Europe continues, but they put on a good show here, taking Milan to extra time before they were defeated by a brilliant goal by Kaka, which was the first time either side had scored in more than three hours of football.
  
  
• Arsenal 1 - 1 PSV Eindhoven (1-2 aggregate): Arsenal's season has gone to shit in less than two weeks, and it's all their own fault. This game was a microcosm of their problems this season: Trying to pass the other team to death rather than shooting, and then, when they did deign to shoot, terrible finishing. They probably would have gone through if they'd been able to score in either leg, but in fact their only goal came courtesy of a PSV player -- Alex, who also scored at the other end to put his own team into the quarter-finals.
  
  
• Bayern Munich 2 - 1 Real Madrid (4-4 aggregate): Real Madrid shot themselves in the foot right from the kickoff, as a mistake by Roberto Carlos let Bayern Munich in for Roy Makaay to score the fastest goal in Champions League history. Bayern went 2-0 up before Real pulled one back with a late penalty, but it wasn't enough as the Spanish side went out on away goals.

Quarter-final draw

1. AC Milan v Bayern Munich - Bayern have already knocked out one former heavyweight in Real Madrid. Can they do it again?
   
2. PSV Eindhoven v Liverpool - Probably the best draw Liverpool could have got, although they can't underestimate PSV.
   
3. Roma v Manchester United - This could be tricky. United should try to take the game to Roma in the away leg.
   
4. Chelsea v Valencia - Go Valencia. That is all.

Semi-finals: W1 v W3, W2 v W4

Champions League Round of 16: February 20

Lille 0 - 1 Manchester United
Congratulations, Lille! You have been officially awarded the prestigious title of Pissy French Bitches 2007 (previous holders: Arsenal). They are now (a) blaming Man United for the over-crowding in the away end and (b) claiming that the game should be replayed because the referee let Giggs's goal stand. Both of which are bullshit.

Let's start with the free-kick. Yes, quite often the referee tells the teams that they have to wait for the whistle to restart play. He didn't do that this time. So when Lille spent too much time faffing around setting up their wall and Giggs took advantage of that, they have only themselves to blame. It's understandable that they feel hard done by, especially since they'd previously had a goal disallowed for a push on Vidic, but reacting as if they were going to take their ball and go home is needlessly petulant. It's the sort of behaviour I'd expect in my rec league (where, instead of referees, you call your own fouls and the teams award each other "spirit points" after the game; yeah, it works about as well as you'd expect), not from professional footballers.

As much attention as is being paid to this -- and when I finally saw the game, I was a little disappointed, because I was expecting a bigger kerfuffle -- the more serious issue is the trouble with the away fans. There are conflicting reports as to what exactly happened, but basically: there were too many fans in the away section of the stands, possibly because of people using fake tickets, possibly because of stadium staff not actually checking tickets and just letting people in. Some of those fans felt that they were in danger of being crushed and tried to climb out, and the security people dealt with this by spraying tear gas at the crowd. Which, as you can imagine, was a big help. The whole thing is just boggling to me. I mean, having to segregate away fans behind wire fences is boggling enough in the first place, considering that I'm used to North American stadiums where you can sit anywhere. I can accept that it's necessary in other places, but if you're going to do it, isn't the point to make it less dangerous for the fans, rather than more so?

Right, so: Massive organizational fuck-ups aside, what about the game? Well, United started brightly enough, with lots of possession, but not enough of it was in the final third of the pitch. Although they lined up in the 4-4-2 I was hoping for (hallelujah!), they were lacking the final ball to the strikers or players really driving forward from midfield. Lille did a good job of harrying them and closing down space in the midfield; I thought Jean Makoun was their best player and it's easy to see why United were interested in him. Gradually, though, it was looking as if the game would peter out into a scoreless draw, until Giggs stepped up to give United a crucial away goal. Despit that, I hope they'll go all out to win the return leg at Old Trafford, because I thought a lot of their problem on Tuesday was due to their usual caution in European away games, despite the purportedly attacking formation.

Quote of the game, from one of the commentators after Cristiano Ronaldo was substituted after being effectively shackled by two defenders all night: "He's not a happy bunny, is he?" (No, he's not.)


Real Madrid 3 - 2 Bayern Munich
This was definitely the most entertaining game so far. (I can say that because I haven't watched Barcelona-Liverpool yet.) I'd predicted either no goals or a ton of goals; apparently a ton of goals it is. Both teams seemed to be taking turns showing off how badly they could defend, particularly against set pieces. Remember when Fabio Cannavaro won World Footballer of the Year? Yeah, me too. Vaguely. Bayern will probably be happy with the score, despite the loss, because the late goal from Mark Van Bommel to make it 3-2 means they need just a 1-0 scoreline at home to advance.

Quote of the game: One of the ESPN brain trust (I think for once it wasn't Tommy Smyth) praising Raul for outjumping the defender for Real's second goal. And neglecting to mention that said defender was Philip Lahm, who is quite a good player but is also approximately three apples tall.

PSV 1 - 0 Arsenal
Much like Real Madrid-Bayern, this was (cliché alert!) a game of two halves. Arsenal played their usual fluid possession football in the first half but couldn't capitalize on their dominance. PSV were pretty clearly playing for a draw, but I think Arsenal must have started to panic a bit at halftime when they weren't in the lead. As a result they didn't play as well in the second half, and they handed PSV a lifeline. I also read today that Thierry Henry has been carrying an injury, but I'm not sure that's enough to excuse him after another lacklustre performance in an important game.

Celtic 0 - 0 AC Milan
Both teams should be somewhat happy with this result: Celtic Park is never a welcoming place for away teams, but Celtic will be pleased to have kept a clean sheet and prevented Milan from picking up a useful away goal. Not so happy: anyone who watched the game, which was pretty dull aside from watching Gilardino falling down extravagantly.

Champions League Round of 16: Part 1

Once again, it's time for me to attempt to make predictions about the next round of games, so that I can look back in a couple of weeks and see how spectacularly wrong I was.

Up first: Tuesday's matches.

Celtic - AC Milan
I happened to catch the end of the AC Milan game this weekend, which featured three goals in the last 10 minutes and did nothing to dispel my conviction that all Serie A games are either utterly boring or utterly insane, with nothing in between. Ronaldo scored twice to help Milan win that game, but he won't be featuring for them in the Champions League, which is a problem because they don't really have any other fit strikers at the moment (and yes, I realize it's stretching things to refer to Ronaldo as "fit"). Celtic have the advantage of starting at home, in what's always an intimidating atmosphere -- just ask Man United about that -- and I think they should win that one, but I'm honestly not sure if they've got the quality to make it through over two legs.

PSV Eindhoven - Arsenal
PSV have been out of form recently, whereas Arsenal -- that mind-numbingly boring draw against Blackburn aside -- have been scoring freely. I expect them to win this one, although they may struggle away from home. Mostly it depends on whether Thierry Henry decides to act like a proper captain and put in a solid performance, or hang around near the touchline shrugging expressively. The other issue is the solidity of their back line, with Emmanuel Eboue out injured and William Gallas possibly coming in to the defence after a long layoff.

Lille - Manchester United
Lille are definitely the underdogs here, although they did give United a lot of trouble last year. But I think that was down to the Red Devils' own poor form more than anything else. They're looking a lot better this season, and I fully expect them to go through. The big question is whether Sir Alex will opt for a 4-5-1 formation for the away leg, despite the fact that it NEVER EVER WORKS. I'm also a bit worried about who's going to be in goal for United -- hopefully Edwin van der Sar will be back, because Tomasz Kuszczak didn't exactly convince me against Reading on Saturday.

Real Madrid - Bayern Munich
The latest in the meltdown at Real Madrid's is a rumour that Fabio Capello is about to quit. Bayern, on the other hand, have the advantage of already getting their coaching drama out of the way, after replacing Felix Magath with once and future manager Ottmar Hitzfeld. They also have Oliver "Most Terrifying Man In Football" Kahn between the posts. Just look at that face: Most opposing strikers won't even dream of scoring against him, they'll be so busy just trying not to wet themselves in terror. Bayern have to go far in the competition if they want to have a hope of salvaging their season, seeing as they're currently languishing 12 points off the leaders. Real are also stuck down in fourth place in La Liga, but with a slim chance of catching Barcelona. I think this one's going to be very tight -- either no goals or a ton of goals -- but Real will edge through.