Another week passes and the world of football has treated us to some more magic. At the weekend we saw the firm-of-mind and staunch-of-heart Arsenal fall apart like a badly constructed lego spaceship when placed under the slightest of pressure. This came at the hands of a Bolton team that had just been battered 5-0 by Stoke. Chelsea moved ahead of them into second and now appear to be the most likely team to challenge United as we move into the final weeks of the season. Not that Arsene would admit that though, he would surely proclaim that until it was mathematically possible he wouldn’t rule out a trophy heading to the Emirates. If his drought continues they will have to start filling in the gaps on the role of honour that spans (part) of the stadium with things like “Carling cup runners up 2011” and “premier league challengers until April 2005-11”.
All the while miracles were taking place at Anfield, that unlikely hero Maxi was busy scoring himself a hat trick and even little Joe Cole got on the scoresheet. Thus allowing us once more to make a comparison between Cole and Messi, following the statement made by Gerrard at the start of the season. We all remember Gerrard telling the world that Cole was better than Messi when the cockney show pony joined the scousers. So, in brief Joe scored his 2nd goal of the season at the weekend and then probably spent the week brushing up on his hubcap stealing while Messi was the difference between Barcelona and Real Madrid in the semi final of the Champions league, going past 50 goals for the season in the process. Gosh, it must be difficult for everyone to decided who is the best out of those two?
Talking of the semi final, or El Classico as it is branded when these two teams meet, what a disgraceful spectacle it became. Granted that this was the third of four meetings in a very short period of time and there is a huge amount at stake but what a load of old shite they served up. How can you take the genius of Messi, Ronaldo, Ozil, Xavi, Villa, Di Maria and a supporting cast of even more super talent and combine them all into such a load of turd? Easy, whisk them all up for a couple of weeks in media hype and add a Jose Mourinho. The man who set the football world alight with his average Porto team and then led the Chelsea team to numerous trophies before falling out with the village idiot Abramovich has long been portrayed as a tactical genius. A man who can inspire his teams to greater efforts than any other manager, he even got Joe Cole to do an impression of a half decent footballer. However since he left Chelsea in a blaze of controversy it seems that Jose has changed a spot, instead of trying to win games by playing better he now sets his teams out to bore them to death, niggle, cheat, dive and intimidate. He managed it last season leading Inter Milan to the Treble, beating Barca along the way and he clearly thought he could do it again, setting his team up on Wednesday without a striker in a home game. What he should have done though is got one of the ground-staff to kidnap Messi and hide him in a hole in the ground (with an owl) until after the two legs of the semi final. Jose though takes the dark path and spends the week before the game trying to wind the opposition up thinking that this will put them off their stride, it clearly had some effect on Barca as both teams engaged in a snarling first half that culminated in a mass brawl. Once Dani Alves, who has since received an Oscar nomination for his performance, had got a player sent off the Madrid game plan was nullified and the mysteriously short Messi weaved his magic scoring twice to end the tie as a contest. What a shame that he couldn’t set his team free and allow the attacking genius of Ronaldo and his understudies to take the game to Barcelona, but then that would have resulted in an open and attacking encounter with an element of risk and that would have been no good at all.
In other news, poor old Jack Wilshere has lost his crown as the best player in the world to the Schalke keeper Manuel Neuer who put in a good performance against a rampant Manchester United in the other semi final. The crown has changed hands many times this season, belonging to the wayward gypsy Samir Nasri at the start until chief primate Gareth Bale whipped it away after a hat trick in a losing performance at the San Siro. Messi won it back by scoring goals as quickly as if he was playing against a team of under 12’s before the London media awarded it to Jack le Wilshere who seemingly was the glue that congealed the Arsenal quadruple challenge. Once the gunners threw all their possible trophies away there was a vacancy at the head of world football and Neuer became the new bestest ever best player with a swishing of his mittens against United. Cue a huge increase in his availability and a few million added to his eventual transfer fee to Bayern Munich who will probably have to stop paying for Franck Riberys underage prostitutes to fund the additional costs.
So, with four games to go in the premier league we still have a race for the title, although if Chelsea fail to beat Spurs it would seem likely that United will be picking up a record breaking 19th title. In the relegation battle it seems as if the noose is starting to tighten for West ham, who should have known better than employ Baron Greenback as their manager given his performance for Portsmouth last season. Wolves and Wigan are both still teetering although I cant imagine many people would miss them from the Premier
