I am not here. You did not see me.

For once I have a decent excuse for my lack of posting: I'm on vacation. In Amsterdam, to be exact. So I got to watch the Euro U21 final between Holland and Serbia in a bar full of very excited Dutch people, which was entertaining. (Although now I feel like an idiot for not realizing that I was going to be here during the tournament and attempting to get tickets. Oh well.)

*checks news*

Holy shit, Henry's going to Barcelona? For realz? The first proper bit of news in weeks, and it just has to be while I'm away. And it raises some very interesting questions:

• Does this mean Arsene Wenger is out the door too?
  
• Is there really room for yet another diva in the Barca dressing room?
  
• More specifically, what's going to happen to Samuel Eto'o?
  
• Just how pouty is Cesc Fabregas going to be now?
  
• And finally, how much does a Victorian maiden go for on the open market these days?

Premiership Weekend Roundup: October 28-29

Bolton 0 - 4 Manchester United
Chelsea can win games but they can't play attractive football. Arsenal look beautiful but they can't score goals. Manchester United, at the moment, can do both, and it's great to watch. The first 20 minutes of this game, in particular, were fantastic, as they systematically decimated a Bolton team that's looked pretty solid up until now. And Wayne Rooney has now taken any suggestion that he might have been in a slump and stomped all over it like Ricardo Carvalho's balls.

It's funny how I have so much less to say when United are playing well. Just one thing: They were guilty of some terrible marking on set pieces -- they kept leaving players open at the back post, and they were very lucky that Bolton didn't make them pay for it. Although the way United played, they probably would've gone out and scored another three or four goals to retaliate.


Liverpool 3 - 1 Aston Villa
If Liverpool can dominate a game as well as they did in the first half here against a previously unbeaton Aston Villa, why have they sucked so much in other games this season? They didn't dramatically rejig the lineup or anything like that. They just played really good, simple football. IT'S NOT THAT HARD. Or at least it shouldn't be.

Other random questions that are plaguing me today:

• Why was Carragher playing on the left of centre defence and Hyypia on the right for the first half-hour? They switched back to their usual positions after that, but I assume that there must have been some reason for the change.
  
• What's with the new strategy for corners? Instead of Steven Gerrard pinging them all wildly into the box, Luis Garcia was taking a lot of them yesterday, with a second player coming short to give them another option. They didn't always use it, but it was there almost every time.
  
• Liverpool are starting to play better. Stevie G seems to have fixed his hair. Are these two things unrelated?
  
• And finally: Now that they've won a whopping two games in a row, how many changes will Rafa make for the Champions League match against Bordeaux on Tuesday?

Sheffield United 0 - 2 Chelsea
Hilario saved a weak-ass Sheffield United, Frank Lampard scored from a (non-deflected) free kick, and Chelsea won. Business as usual. The one incident that stood out for me was in the second half, when a bunch of the Chelsea players surrounded the ref and tried to pressure him into giving a handball against the Blades. Despite the face that (a) it wasn't intentional, (b) Chelsea came away with the ball anyway, and (c) they were leading 2-0 at the time, so (d) it just made them look like petty douchewads.


Arsenal 1 - 1 Everton
The Gunners only managed a draw despite having more than 70% of the football and Everton having a grand total of one shot on target. Their fans, understandably, are a little disgruntled by the team's approach to the game. Thierry Henry's response:

"I would die like that, playing that type of football, rather than compromise our principles. There are no questions about that, no questions. The fans have the right to speak. I keep on hearing them shout 'shoot'. I don't know what they're trying to say or do. But I think they're getting sucked in by what some people are saying."

This is just a wild guess, but I suspect what they're trying to say is "PUT THE FUCKING BALL IN THE FUCKING NET, TITI."


Other results
Newcastle 0 - 0 Charlton
Fulham 0 - 1 Wigan
Portsmouth 3 - 1 Reading
Watford 0 - 0 Tottenham
West Ham 2 - 1 Blackburn

Things we have learned from the World Cup this week

• Losing on a last-minute penalty is probably the shittiest way ever to go out of the World Cup. I wasn't a huge fan of the Socceroos going into the tournament -- due partly to their inexplicable connection with John Travolta -- but you've got to feel for them. Particularly Harry Kewell, who apparently missed their final game because he was struck down with gout. Yes, gout. Like he's Henry VIII or something?
  
  
• Switzerland make England look like a penalty-taking machine by comparison. Apart from that, they're extremely boring to watch, especially without Philippe Senderos running around all bloody.
  
  
• Half the guys on the Ukraine team are named Andriy. What is up with that?
  
  
• Brazil don't have to play pretty football to win. They just win. (Bastards.) Apparently this is fine for Brazil, whereas for England it sets off a national crisis.
  
  
• I should have known that cheering for Spain was a bad idea. I blithely ignored all that talk about them being perennial underachievers, because they actually had a good team this year. They cruised through the group stage, and I started to really believe they could do it. And then what happened? They choked like the big choking chokers they are.
  
  
• If Thierry Henry really believes that diving makes you a woman, then he should be out shopping for some new sports bras right about now.
  
  
• Yes, I'm still bitter.

Meanwhile, Information Builders has been compiling the World Cup statistics that really matter. I'm sure you'll all be shocked to learn that Italy leads the tournament in diving, while Holland is #1 for tantrums. (Link from World Cup Blog.)

And now, I have to go figure out what to do with my fantasy football team. I'm tempted to sell all the English players, because then they'd probably win just to spite me.

World Cup III: Togo, or not Togo

I've been complaining at being stuck at work while the World Cup matches are on, but the advantage is that I don't feel compelled to watch games like Togo v. Korea or Tunisia v. Saudi Arabia, and I can just follow them online instead. Sounds like both games had a lot of action, but not a lot of skill.

And, actually, you could say the same about Germany v. Poland. The Polish keeper, Boruc, was pretty good, but most of my entertainment came from wondering how many different ways the Germans could find to fuck up in front of goal. Also, Klinsmann really ought to remind them that passing into space is great, but not if your teammates are running in the opposite direction. Still, they got the win, and it looks like Germany will be the first team to book its place in the final 16.

Of the other games that I actually watched:

• Brazil 1-0 Croatia: It was probably impossible for Brazil to live up to all the pre-tournament hype, but they're going to have to step it up a notch if they want to win this thing. It's not that they were bad, they just weren't as fantastic as I'd expected. Croatia. meanwhile, are probably the best of what you'd think of as the second-tier European teams -- along with Serbia; if only the country didn't keep splitting into smaller and smaller pieces.
  
  
• Spain 4-0 Ukraine: I'm trying not to get too excited over this result, because chances are they're just going to choke in the quarter-finals, but damn that was a great performance from Spain. They've got an excellent midfield, now that Aragones seems to have stopped fucking around with his lineup (and got over his fear of the colour yellow), and they're very good at holding possession. I thought the penalty for Torres was a bad call by the ref, and I wouldn't be surprised if Shevchenko uses some of Abramovich's rubles to take out a hit on the linesmen, because he got screwed by offside calls a few times, but Spain were cruising in spite of the officiating.

Question of the day: Which of the supposed star strikers has underperformed the most so far? Ronaldo? Thierry Henry? Wee Michael Owen? My vote goes to Henry, because he doesn't have the excuse of recovering from injury or carrying around a whole extra person. Of course, he doesn't have the team built around him the way he does at Arsenal, but still, you expect him not to suck quite this much at an international level.

Oh, and the other advantage to watching the games on tape in the evening? The ability to fast-forward through all the annoying commercials (no more really cool oom-pah-pah bands!) and the half-time blather. I still think the Canadian commentators are better than the guys on ESPN, but really, they shouldn't have so much trouble pronouncing "Thierry Henry." Considering that we speak French here and all.

Champions League Final

Barcelona 2 - 1 Arsenal
The dream final, they called this one. And it was memorable, but not exactly for the reasons everyone expected. Ronaldinho was merely good but not brilliant. Thierry Henry failed to score in what was probably the most important game of his career. And then there was that inevitable moment of lunacy from Mad Jens when he hauled down Ludovic Giuly.

All credit to Arsenal, because they certainly didn't play like they were a man down. They even went ahead, thanks to Emmanuel Eboue diving on the edge of the Barcelona box, and Sol Campbell heading the resulting free kick into the back of the net. And they could have extended their lead, if not for some missed chances in the second half. But the Gunners just couldn't hold out long enough, and when Samuel Eto'o finally slipped through the defence to equalize in the 75th minute, you could almost see the fight drain out of them. It wasn't a surprise when Barcelona scored again less than five minutes later.

After that Barca just held onto the ball and ran down the clock, but up until then it had been a fantastic game to watch as a neutral. Barcelona and Arsenal are supposedly two of the most stylish teams in European football, and there was certainly some pretty passing, but also lots of scything challenges -- although the pouring rain probably contributed to that. I half expected to see pairs of animals lining up along the touchline.

The good news for England fans is that Sol Campbell was solid at the back, so he's probably not going to have another wobbly in the next couple of months, and Ashley Cole looked good as well (aside from his ridiculous chin pubes; what, he couldn't find time to shave properly during all those months he was out?). The bad news is that they'll have to face Henrik Larsson when they play Sweden, and he's the one who created both goals for Barcelona.

You know, I like Thierry Henry -- he's extremely talented and he usually seems like a classy player. So I'm disappointed that he decided to take a page out of Jose Mourinho's Big Book Of Whiny Crybaby Excuses, and blame the referee. Yes, the refereeing wasn't great, but I think the errors were pretty evenly balanced against both teams, and the biggest one -- sending off Lehmann -- Terje Hauge got right. He could have held off on blowing his whistle, let the goal stand and shown Lehmann a yellow card instead, but the red card was fair, and frankly I think that Barca would have won anyway. Maybe Henry should spend less time pointing fingers and more time wondering why he couldn't score, even when he was one on one against the keeper.

The broadcast also reminded me (as if I needed any more reasons) how much I hate the ESPN feed. For this game, in addition to Tommy Smythe, rapidly becoming a caricature of himself, and Janusz Michallik, who's just as useless as a pitchside commentator as he is in the booth, we were also treated to Marcelo Balboa, former U.S. national team member and giant tool. His main contribution was enthusiastically defending Eboue for diving to win the free kick and then slamming Deco for trying the exact same thing later in the game. Also: Anthony LaPaglia as halftime analyst. WTF. Please tell me this isn't what I have to look forward to for the World Cup.