Chel$ea 1-1 Arsenal.
Halfway through the 2nd half it had 0-0 draw all over it, and I was thinking about an interesting article I read on Friday about how the Prem is now the lowest scoring league in Europe this year, the new Serie A if you will. But things soon came to a boil.
A great Flamini goal gave the Arse a 1-0 lead with 12 minutes to go and it looked like it might just be Old Trafford all over again. An absolute blinder be Essien put those thoughts to rest in the 84th minute - a stunning strike, absolutely unsaveable. At that point it was frustrating because Ash Cole fouled Hleb to gain Chel$ea possession that led to the goal, but no foul was given. But after Chel$ea hit the woodwork not once, but twice in the added 4 minutes, both with the goal at their mercy and one from 2 yards out, the frustration of 1-1 turned into happy/lucky to get a point 1-1. Chel$ea hit the post 3 times in total, and after Porto hit the woodwork twice on Wednesday you have to say it was a fortuitous week for The Gunners.
In addition to being a really talented footballer, Didier Drogba has always been a cheating, diving cunt, but yesterday he really stepped it up. His performance was like a one man re-enactment of Portugal's 2006 World Cup campaign. After about the 5th incident, which ironically was the most legitimate of the match, Mats had seen enough: he promptly went into Mad Jens of North London mode and pushed Drogba, who fell like he had been shot. DD then got up and went over and pushed Mad Jens to the ground. After much deliberation the ref gave them both yellow, which I have to say was a pretty level-headed decision. Many refs, who like to be the center of attention (Graham Poll, Mike Riley, Steve Bennett) would surely have sent them off (or in Poll's case given them each 3 yellows).
As predicted, Mats pulled a classic Mats.
And of course Mourhino was a classless fool afterwards and lured Wenger into yet another verbal bitch fight like two 14 year old girls. So pretty damn entertaining for a 1-1 draw.
Speaking on stunning strikes, did you see Matthew Taylor's 45 yard volley on Saturday? Wow. Not off of a 30 yard cross at an angle like RVP's goal of the season nominee, but much farther out, which in the end will probably be internalized as better.
Oh, and Kanu's goal that put him back into the EPL scoring lead was pretty great , too.
Red Stripes playoff campaign was rained out, so next week then for that.
One of the highlights of my weekend was sticking it to the man, the man in this case being Ticketmaster. I bought my tickets for the January G Love show from the local venue box office, thus saving the $8.50 "convenience" charge per ticket and the $5 "processing charge". It made me feel all warm and fuzzy to put one over on those vile & evil fuckers. I think Kris Kross had Ticketmaster in mind when they famously said, in their badass 12 year old way, "you can get the finger. The middle".
Kris Kross: hates Ticketmaster, too.
Finally, I watched The Game Of Their Lives last night. It is pretty horrible, and Patrick Stewart as the narrator was painful, but if you are going to make a movie about one of the biggest upsets in soccer history then eventually I am going to watch it (the upset being the US beating England 1-0 at the 1950 World Cup, a scoreline that was literally so unbelieveable that when the news was wired back to England, no one in England thought it was real, they just assumed that the telegraph was a typo and that the score must have been England 10-0 US. Allegedly...).
So you've been warned. The historical information gleaned from watching is interesting, but the movie is so cheesy, formulaic, stereotypical, and poorly acted that you might need to do some eye-rolling exercises before you fire up the DVD to be sure that you don't pull a muscle rolling your eyes during the film.
1 comment:
Jens has been getting theatrical recently hasn't he? Not that he ever stopped being nuts, I suppose. This is the same keeper who was red carded in Germany for running 40 yards up field and slap a player on his own team for not being prepared to receiver a quick toss from him.
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