2022 Champions League (final)

Liverpool 0-1 Real Madrid

Dang, what a pass!

Well, not completely unexpected: Liverpool was the better team for 90 minutes, but Real made the right play, got the only goal and they are your 2022 Champions League Champions. Fun match, seems anti-climactic but not at all, there was a lot of good action throughout. Liverpool got desperate in the last 15 minutes or so, felt like Real might get another goal on the counterattack.

Liverpool had way more good chances, hit the post a coupla times, made Thibaut Courtois (man of the match!) make a number of killer saves, dominated possession. But they just never found the net and Real did. 

All the way this year's tourney, Real Madrid just kept finding ways to get by even though they felt overmatched most of the time. Karim Benzema was great, Vinicius Jr balled out consistently, and Courtois was the rock in the goal. But the rest of the squad felt disappointing to me. But, oh well, they are the champs (though I wouldn't be surprised if they're totally different next year).

2021 Champions League (Round of 16)

1st leg

Leipzig 0-2 Liverpool

I thought Liverpool controlled the ball better, had a much more dangerous attack; Leipzig had a few moments, especially late, but they were never scary around the goal and shanked the best opportunities badly. Both of the goals were bad defensive giveaways (an errant pass that left Salah wide open and a whiff on a high arcing long ball that left Sane wide open) but otherwise Leipzig's D was pretty good.  This easily could've been a scoreless draw but Liverpool was the better team and a two goal W is probably the right outcome. Gotta figure Liverpool will make it stand up and move on to the quarterfinals.

Barcelona 1-4 Paris. St. Germaine

Wow. For 60 minutes I thought this was an even contest. But when Mbappe scored his second goal around the 65th minute, PSG just went off and destroyed Barca for the rest of the night. Barca scored first on a PK (looked like the right call, then it didn't, then it did again, it was the right call), but Mbappe got loose in the box and tied it up before halftime. Both sides attacked well and kept the action spicy pretty evenly until PSG took the lead. Soon after PSG got another goal on a header from a direct kick (kinda looked like when an extra linebacker rushes the passer and the running back never picks him up). Barca had some moments after that but PSG made better use of their possessions and put it on Barca. Mbappe's hat trick was off a beautiful pass during a breakaway, Barca's D got carved up. Barcelona's got a tough hill to climb but they're really good so that makes the next match all the more intriguing.

Porto 2-1 Juventus

Weirdest line I've seen in a while: Porto scored in the 1st minute of the game on one of the dumbest goals I've ever seen (lazy back pass, caught the keeper off guard, free goal for the other team), then scored in the 1st minute of the 2nd half (nice give-and-go up the right side that just sliced through the D). Otherwise, Juve was the better team but Porto never really had to be any good, so it's hard to tell what the next match will look like. Juve's goal was a thing of beauty: fast break up the left, swing the ball back across to find the open man on the other side, lovely slotted home finish; when you score goal like that on PlayStation, you know you're ready to move up a level. Can Juventus come back and take the 2nd leg? Absolutely, I think they will. 

Sevilla 2-3 Dortmund

Sevilla scored a quick goal but Dortmund dominated the rest of the half and was up 3-1 at the half. Sevilla played hard, got a goal late (not insignificant). High scoring which makes the 2nd leg aall the more exciting.

Ateletico Madrid 0-1 Chelsea

I thought Chelsea had the more dangerous attack but really this was an evenly matched contest. Nice goal, I thought it was offside until the showed the other angle (like 30 minutes later!...man, I hate replay, I'd rather just complain about the refs blowing a call than watching a replay 50 times and then still getting it wrong). Very even match, the 2nd leg will definitely be worth catching. 

Lazio 1-4 Bayern Munich

Uh....yeah...Bayern's just better than Lazio. Add in that Lazio just had a bad day and I think this result looks kinda right. And for good measure: I thought Lazio was offside on their goal and that the ref pitied them for most of the 2nd half. The next leg doesn't even seem necessary, but, hey, crazy things happen in soccer (I do not anticipate any crazy things happening here, though).  

Atalanta 0-1 Real Madrid

Atalanta suffered a red card early (good call, it was pure hip check and no ball), though I'm guessing Atalanta's strategy was to bunker in anyway. For the first few minutes Atalanta attacked well but then played defense throughout. I thought it was gonna work and it almost did: it wasn't til the 85th minute that Mende was able to connect on a long shot off a corner (nice rip!). Real handled the ball well and it really never felt like Atalanta was gonna score, but Real didn't exactly dominate the attack even though their opponent was a man down. But I anticipate that Real will move on from here because Atalanta didn't display any offensive firepower (and they'll missing one of their defensive starters, no?).

Monchengladbach 0-2 Manchester City 

Gladbach just didn't have any offense, didn't get anything going at all until the last few minutes--although how the ref failed to give them a PK in the final minutes was mystifying to me (clear foul, man, clear foul). Gladbach's best shot was a flailing back heel that almost snuck inside the post (I thought it went in at first) and then a rip off a bad defensive giveaway in the last few seconds of the match. Man City was fine, didn't feel like they played their best but Gladbach was nowhere near scoring, so a relatively easy W for them.

Predictions for the 2nd leg:

Liverpool (*) 1-1 Leipzig

Paris SG (*) 1-2 Barcelona

Juventus (*) 2-1 Porto (I'm seeing PK's in this one)

Dortmund (*) 2-2 Sevilla

Chelsea (*) 0-0 Atletico Madrid

Bayern Munich (*) 2-1 Lazio

Real Madrid (*) 2-0 Atalanta

Manchester City (*) 1-0 Gladbach

(Hmmmm....just dawned on me that the road team won 7 of the 8 games)

Recent Sports Watching

NHL
I love hockey but the Stanley Cup Finals is pretty much all I get to see. I caught Games One, Four, Five, Six and Seven and I think I found the Blues to be the better team in general. The Bruins were wild and up for anything, the Blues were more controlled and tended to want to dominate possession. But the game is all about energy and when the Bruins bring the active, they score more goals.

Blues 2-4 Bruins
Blues looked better, Bruins played better. Bruins had the energy and pretty much controlled throughout but the Blues showed flashes of an offense that could hold possession and attack.

Blues 3-2 Bruins
Bruins 7-2 Blues

Bruins 2-4 Blues
Opposite of Game One: I thought the Bruins played more compact and reliable but the Blues played wild, brought the energy and locked down this W early on.

Blues 2-1 Bruins
This series will be remembered for Game Five where the Blues committed an obvious penalty and finished the play with the goal that finished off the win. Okay: I don't watch a lot of hockey and I sometimes miss which interactions are illegal and which are just par for the course, but even I could tell right away that that was a foul--no idea how the refs missed it. Just to hammer home the point: the dude who committed the foul got the puck passed back to him after the dude he fouled turned it over--and he wasn't ready for the pass because he was already arguing with the ref who didn't even make a call! That makes him the guiltiest-looking human being I have ever seen. That kid with the chocolate icing smeared on his face who has no idea what happened to the cake has been moved to 2nd place. The Blues dude gave up on the play to start arguing--that's guilty! That alone should be 2 minutes in the box! And even though the Bruins dominated the final ten minutes or so of that match, they could not overcome the Blues' lead.

Bruins 5-1 Blues
Game Six was set up for the Blues to finish it off, but they didn't show up, man. I thought the Blues were the better team but they played tight and got frustrated by their inability to score. This game was still close deep into the 3rd, Blues sorta checked out by the end, Bruins piled it on, Blues got chippy late but never challenged the scoreboard. Again, I generally thought the Blues were the better team but once the Bruins started scoring, they just piled it on. (I think Binnington (Blues goalie) has been great and should be MVP if the Blues win; but he does have two games (Three and Six--both home games!) where he got beaten like a Bond villain and that is awkward)

Blues 4-1 Bruins

Game Seven: Whoever brings the energy will win the game. Bruins came out crazy but the Blues were able to snake two goals (one right before halftime--I love/hate those!) and seem pretty well in control after the 1st period. But I thought both teams were frisky and in it to win it, so I still expected more goals, maybe even a tie game going into the 3rd. But the 2nd period was pretty even, both teams played better defense than offense, which kinda surprised me: I thought we'd see more playmaking, more guys trying to be the hero, rather than tightening up on D. But the 2nd period was pretty conservative as neither team ever got their offense set up. Still close enough where anything can happen. But a beautiful counter attack goal by the Blues with around 9 minutes left sucked the life of the Bruins. Their defenders start slacking out there, Blues got another goal and this game was over. The Bruins scored a late on to give the fans something to cheer about (nice top shelf knuckleball). 

Good win for the Blues! As I keep saying, I thought the Blues were the better team throughout and when they played their game, they were gonna win. Games One, Three and Six were the ones the Blues didn't show up for, those are the ones they lost. The Bruins had a wider range of play, at their best their offense was overpowering but at their worst they couldn't hold their zone against the Blues attack. I don't watch enough hockey to know how momentous this was, but it was the first Cup for the Blues and they were in dead last in the league on January 1, so they've come a long way in the last six months. 

USA Friendlys
USA 0-1 Jamaica
USA 0-3 Venezuela
Well, the bad news is USA looked straight fucking horrible in both of these games: no creativity, no attack, no teamwork, sloppy in the backline, and no individual standouts. The good news is...the afternoons were sunny and breezy. This isn't USA's A-team, rather these were a coupla last look-over games before the Gold Cup, so I don't anticipate this is a preview of that (thank god!). That said, I doubt Jamaica or Venezuela brought their top squads, either, so this is a reminder that everyone else's depth is still greater than ours. (*sigh* Shouldn't USA be better by now?) Int'l soccer comes and goes so its hard to know what the Gold Cup will bring, I try to enjoy each tourney as the discrete event that it is. So I expect USA will be in, say, the final four, but we could just as easily get bounced by Martinique or somebody. I won't make a prediction because I have no idea what will happen.


Champions League
Liverpool 2-0 Tottenham
Ain't gonna lie: this was the dullest Champions League match of the whole season. I just happened to have seen that Liverpool won just as I was about to sit down and watch the replay (thank you Yahoo Baseball! (*)), which didn't surprise me, so I hoped at least for an exciting match. Not really. Liverpool got a PK on basically the first play of the game (dude, why was the defender waiving his arm like that? Wtf was that guy doing?), drilled it and that was pretty much it because Tottenham never could get any offense going. It stayed that way for 80 minutes or so, got a little more furious on the way out, but not much more because Liverpool was the better team throughout and sat on their one-goal lead to strangle this game. They stuck a late goal (nice finish) but that didn't do much to diminish the general lameness of this game.

That's too bad, I kinda loved this whole tournament. I watched as much this year as I've probably ever seen and I dug all of it. I was so into Ajax, really impressed by Barcelona, Juventus overachieved, Real Madrid underachieved, Bayern Munich got real old real fast and, holy shit, Man U was in the quarters (how on earth did that happen?). The big what-if is PSG, all they had to do was slip past a hapless Manchester and they might've done some damage. Liverpool was the best team of the whole tourney (they did beat Barca, too, so they earned the crown) and Tottenham just kept managing to survive all the way to the last game (if it was two games, I'd make it even odds for them to come back and take it).


French Open
I saw virtually none of this (I'm not an early morning sorta joe) except the very end of Thiem over Djokovic in the semifinals. The match was called the night before (for some reason), then suffered a long rain delay the next morning, then back and forth all the way. I expected Djokovic to take control but he never quite did, I expected Thiem to falter but he never quite did. Tennis is weird that way: the competition is so close at this level that the tiniest differences loom large. Either way, the winner was gonna get smoked by Nadal (hey, Thiem took a set off him, nice work).


(*) Angry old man rant: back in the day the sports ticker across the bottom of the screen during a ball game was the greatest invention since the flush toilet and I have actual memories of the ticker itself (1996 SEC Tourney B-ball final, I still don't believe UK lost that game). But now in a day and age when I get any score any time anywhere in the universe, I don't need the damn ticker. And putting in Bundesliga scores is supposed to make you look cool--but I watch my soccer on DVR, so now I have to start avoiding the damn ticker that I haven't needed in forever and just takes up space on the screen. Do you get it? The ticker actually interferes with my love of sports! Like the beeper and the VCR, it had its time and place and now it just takes up space.

2018-19 Champions League Semi-finals

Tottenham 0-1 Ajax
Ajax 2-3 Tottenham
(3-3; Tottenham advances on road goals)
Wow, what a fucking finish.  The 1st leg was a microcosm of the whole tourney for these two teams: Ajax played smart and together, Tottenham tried to play too fast and got nothing going on offense and fell apart on defense. The first half of the 2nd leg was more of the same, Ajax dominating possession and up 2-0 at the break. Then Tottenham continued their run off pulling it out of their asses late, while Ajax suddenly looked like one of the early round opponents (namely, rattled and back pedaling in the face of a superior team). When the game gets loose, Tottenham gets it going and they're keeping the Texas Tech vibe alive for me: I still don't know how they got by Manchester City, now I don't know how they got by Ajax--maybe Tottenham is good!


Barcelona 3-0 Liverpool
Liverpool 4-0 Barcelona
(Liverpool 4-3)
I will say I'm not shocked that Liverpool came back and stole this late. Hey, Livepool had offense, they attack well and Barcelona had, until the 2nd leg o the semifinals, more or less coasted through this tourney without having to work for it. That said, Barca would've taken the draw, so they were still able to win right to the last second and they couldn't muster up even a hint of offense. (*) So Liverpool scores right away and add another right after halftime, both of which were legit goals: keeper was basically unable to stop either of them. Then the third goal right after that was one of the most perfect headers I've ever seen: that dude's like 10 feet in the air and has torqued his back in an impossible position to perfectly turn his head to re-direct the pass into the upper 90 (absolutely fucking flawless!). Then the fourth goal will be the favorite of Liverpool fans for the next 50 years: the casual walk away, then quick step back catching everyone off guard and finding the only guy that's actually paying attention, who then beats the keeper. Holy shit, man. I've never seen anything like that. And Barca was still alive to make it frisky right down to the wire but they just didn't have it in them somehow. That last goal was such a kick in the solar plexus that they were just stunned from then on. All English final, I'm stunned, as well.


Champions League Final (June 1, 2019)
Tottenham v. Liverpool
Okay, I didn't believe in Texas Tech all through this year's NCAA tourney because they kept winning so improbably, until the championship when I finally gave up my inhibitions and decided that Tech was capable of beating anyone. Yeah, well Tech lost in the Final (great game, but not great enough for Tech) because they finally played a team that was exactly like them...they were their own kryptonite. Now Tottenham faces another Premier League side but I think Liverpool is better. I'm not shocked that Liverpool came back and beat Barca, but I'm still amazed Tottenham came back on Man City and on Ajax. Liverpool beat a better team and I wasn't shocked....indicates to me that I think Liverpool is the better team and in a one-game final, I think they're more likely to control the flow and score more goals. I gotta go with Liverpool (I'll say they win 2-1).


(*) I don't typically break down plays but there was one in this game that almost broke my brain when I first saw it and after it was all over I had to go back to. 1st half at the 15:40 mark, Barca midfielder gets a long ball over the defense, two other strikers slip their defenders and its a 4-on-2 breakaway for Barca, ends up with Messi unmarked at the top of the box with three dudes to pass and a lot of goal to shoot at...hesitates too long, defender pokes it away at the last second. That's the play that will haunt the Barca faithful, they would've ended the game early, they let it get by them, Liverpool whittled them down and drank their milkshake.

2018-19 Champions League Quarterfinals (2nd Leg)

(I saw these games but was on the road and didn't get a chance to do these wrap-ups in a timely manner; also, both of the semis have started but I haven't watched either yet)

Juventus 1-2 Ajax (agg 2-3)
Ajax is a gritty gutty team that plays crisp football and gets it done more often than not. I can't help feeling like they're the plucky underdog that has overachieved but, man, they've been better than Juventus in these two matches, so can't front on them as they move forward. Juventus is fine but beyond Ronaldo, I'm not feeling the attack up front.

Barcelona 3-0 Manchester United (agg 4-0)
Yeah, the score tells the story. Man U lucked their way through the Round of 16 (PSG would've made this match a lot more fun) and were way over-matched against Barca here. Barca took a while to get going but once they did, they piled it on.

Porto 1-4 Liverpool (agg 1-6)
Liverpool's offense was just too much for Porto to deal with. Porto gave a good effort but they just weren't built to last against Liverpool.

Manchester City 3-4 Tottenham (agg 4-4)
Crazy game! They each had goals taken off the board, too, that just add to the craziness. Personally, I thought Man City was the better team throughout but they didn't get the score to go their way. Oh well.


Semi-finals
Tottenham-Ajax
Felt like this should be a Man City-Juventus matchup, right? Well, Tottenham is the Texas Tech of this tournament: I've been watching them win at every level and yet I can't help thinking they've wildly overachieved and shouldn't have gotten this far--but then again, Tech massively impressed me in the Final, they very much deserved to be there, and perhaps Tottenham will rise up and prove me wrong again. I like Ajax, they play a tight, teamwork game and I think they're the favorite here.

Barcelona-Liverpool
The real final, no? Barca is rolling but somehow they don't seem like they've really had to do anything yet, you know? Liverpool's offense is really good and they will keep Barca honest. This is a great matchup, looking forward to catching this opening game (which I am about to watch right now). I guess I'll give Barca just because they're really good but I wouldn't be shocked if Liverpool outworked them.