Sports: Glory days
With only about two-thirds of the European football season elapsed, there appears precious little suspense looming in the three elite European soccer leagues. Manchester United, Inter Milan and Barcelona have all threatened to make runaways of their respective leagues.
Which means the resumption of Champions League — with the first legs in the round of 16 Tuesday and Wednesday — couldn’t have come at a better time for fans. While Serie A, La Liga and the Premiership may not be destined for thrill rides, dramatics are pretty much assured when those leagues collide to determine which rules the continent — until that matter is settled with the May 27 final in Rome.
This year’s European club championship looms as potentially a historic tiebreaker. Over 53 seasons of Champions League, teams from Italy, Spain and England have ruled, with each country producing 11 European champions. Of late, that dominance has been even more pronounced with the three nations accounting for eight of the past decade’s champs. This year appears unlikely to prove an exception: all four English and all four Spanish teams in the competition have reached the knockout stage, while three Italian sides remain. (Portugal still has two teams left, while France, Germany and Greece have one apiece.)
England’s performance last year was unrivalled, placing three teams in the semi-finals followed by the first-ever all-English final — a classic shootout in Moscow with Man U prevailing over Chelsea. A lot of national pride is at stake as England tries to maintain its supremacy. League bragging rights serve as a jolly consolation prize for the failures of the English national team, particularly when compared with the recent glories of World Cup champion Italy and European champion Spain.
While the foreign owners of the Premier League’s elite haven’t turned off the spigot, continuing to pay the top prices to import the best players, England’s Champions League perennials (Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal) will be hard-pressed to replicate last year’s stunning success. Not only are a couple of those teams struggling now but each of the four faces a marquee match-up with an Italian or Spanish team experienced in the rigors of European play.
Here’s a preview:
Arsenal-Roma (2/24 London, 3/11 Rome):
Two teams that got lucky to draw each other. Both young Arsenal and old Roma are sputtering at home — in fifth and sixth place, 17 and 16 points off the pace respectively — and may not qualify for the next Champions season. Arsenal’s much ballyhooed youth movement hasn’t delivered. The team has been starved for scoring — with only one goal in its last four league games, three draws and a loss. The Gunners should get a boost from the return, a full year after he broke his leg and ankle, of Eduardo, the Brazilian-born Croatian striker, as well as from just-arrived Russian star Andrei Arshavin, who was quite a revelation in last summer’s Euros. The biggest boost, though, is Roma’s tired legs. While Roma squeaked by lowly Siena 1-0 at home on Feb. 21, fans remained distressed about the 3-0 whipping at Atalanta a week earlier. Still, Roma won its Champions League group ahead of Chelsea to reach this round.
Man U-Inter (2/24 Milan, 3/11 Manchester):
Two teams that got unlucky to draw each other: the best in England vs. the best in Italy. Man U has FIFA World Player of the Year Christiano Ronaldo up front and incomparable experience — Man U lifers Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Gary Neville with more than 1,800 caps between them — behind the Portuguse superstar. The team has allowed only 11 goals in 26 Premier League games this season and has set its sights on winning all five trophies for club supremacy in England, Europe and the world. Inter has a well balanced team that provides a couple of huge obstacles: Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who plays all over the field and, at 6’-31/2”, can wreak havoc over the sturdiest defenses; and hunky (in every sense) Brazilian goalkeeper Julio Cesar, a genuine superstar from a nation that always seemed to regard the last line of defense as an afterthought.
Liverpool-Real Madrid (2/25 Madrid, 3/10 Liverpool): Real has won more European titles, nine, than any other team, but none since 2002. Which helps explain why it has also fired seven coaches since 2003, trying to find the right man to meld a lineup overloaded with star power. But new coach Juande Ramos, who took over in December, and old star Raul, who just became the team’s all-time leading scorer (and is Spain’s as well), have the team rolling in La Liga — seven straight wins in which it has allowed a total of just two goals (including a 6-1 rout of Real Betis on Saturday). Liverpool has to hope that striker Fernando Torres, just back from injury, can locate last season’s magical touch. But despite a dry spell at home, Liverpool always seems to save its best for European competition; it has won once, reached a second final and lost in the semis over the last four years.
Chelsea-Juventus (2/25 London, 3/10 Turin): Chelsea keeps spending the rubles — but, like baseball’s New York Yankees, for less results. It recently got spanked 3-0 and 2-0 by both its front-running rivals, Man U and Liverpool. More stunning was its failure to score at home in a recent 0-0 draw with Hull City. After that fiasco, Dutchman Guus Hiddink, the master of the quick fix, was installed as the team’s third coach in less than a year. He debuted Saturday with a 1-0 win at Aston Villa, enabling Chelsea to leap over the Birmingham side into third place. Juventus seems to have lost some of its swagger since climbing back into Serie A following Italy’s match-fixing scandal. Still, the team is loaded with experienced stars and Turin has always been an especially difficult place for English teams to play. Juve coach Claudio Ranieri would love nothing more than a touch of revenge on the team that fired him back in 2004. Chelsea’s path could be littered with ex-coaches; Jose Mourinho jumped to Inter in 2006 after leading Chelsea to back-to-back English league titles.
More GlobalPost dispatches from sports correspondent Mark Starr: