Tuesday, March 4, 2008

History 0-2 Arsenal

First English team to ever beat Real Madrid in Madrid?
Check. Spring 2006


A brilliant goal by Th14 beats Real Madrid

First English team to ever beat AC Milan in Milan?
Check. 4 March 2008.


"You're not champions,
You're not champions,
You're not champions anymore!
You're not champions, an-y-more."




An amazing Cesc scene suitable for all ages





Hopefully one of these vids will survive more than a few hours.



Gattuso can only watch...


Cesc celebrates.

AC Milan 0-2 Arsenal.

Match highlights {sadly no sound} here.

An excruciating game to watch, as once Again Arsenal ran circles around Milan, created tons of chances, couldn't convert any, hit the crossbar, etc., etc. and dread set in that although AC Milan should have been put to the sword and be 0-3 or 0-4 behind over both legs, they would somehow sneak a goal or get to penalties and win.

Then in the 85th minute Cesc Fabregas got the ball, ran forward, ran right around Rino Gattuso, and let fly from 35 yards, the ball found the miniscule space between the outstretched dive of the goalkeeper and the post and went in. Magic. 1-0 to the Arsenal and super tired Milan would now need 2 goals in less than 10 minutes to win. Instead Arsenal added a second late into injury time.

Icing on the cake courtesy of Theo & Adebayor

Cesc's goal in the San Siro will go down in Arsenal history, and was so reminiscent of Henry's goal in Madrid. Both wonder goals knocked out European heavyweights and made history at the same time.

The Champions are knocked out; the quarterfinals await.

Elsewhere:

Barcelona 1-0 Celtic. Barca win 4-2 on aggregate, but best player in the world these days Lionel Messi leaves with a torn thigh muscle- a big loss for Barca, but for how long?

Manchester United 1-0 Lyon. ManUtd survive Keita beating their keeper but hitting the post, and win on aggregate 2-1.

Sevilla 3-2 Fenerbache. Teams tied 5-5 on aggregate, and heading to a penalty shootout as we speak. ***Update*** Fenerbache goalkeeper goes from goat to hero: he let the first two Sevilla goals go right through his hands, then saves 3 penalties and Fenerbache beat Sevilla 3-2 on penalties to advance to the quarterfinals.

7 comments:

beast in 'bama said...

I'm hoping that the 'Pool will also win at the San Siro and make it an English trio in the quarters. I would imagine Inter's home record in the CL isn't as gaudy as their co-tenant's, but the way they've been playing this year, beating them home and away would be quite an accomplishment. We'll find out next week.

I'm glad to see ManU and Arsenal move ahead, but I honestly don't care if Chel$ea wins or not. Half of the quarter final pairings being English would be something, but I just couldn't care less if the Blues move ahead. Does that make me a bad person, Kanu?

beast in 'bama said...

Oh, and a tech note. In Firefox, your entire header appears just fine. In IE7, only the first two lines appear. The font size appears much larger in IE7 than in Firefox. Go figure...

I'm liking the aesthetic changes you've made, and Twitter is cool. The new format is definitely easier to read for us geezers.

Anonymous said...

What this means is that there haven't been many English teams as consistently successful as Milan and Madrid.

Then again, I'd like to know how many Italian, Spanish, or German teams have beaten Liverpool at Anfield, I suspect very few.

Anonymous said...

Congrats to the Gunners. A young group of kids with a ton of talent. What a gutty victory? Hey I can sound like Digger Phelps talking about a game and team that he just saw the highlights of himself!!! Up the Arse!!!

Kanu said...

BIB- I don't think there's anything wrong with a Liverpool supporter hating on Chel$ea. Not at all. I never subscribed to the root for my regional enemies when they are playing teams from far away thing. Of course I'm not English either- if I was then perhaps I would feel differently. But even in CFB I don't get the whole "root for the SEC in bowl games thing". I'm the opposite- I root like hell for UGA's rivals to lose- Florida, Tennessee, Auburn- I don't give a shit if they are in the SEC: 1) I don't like them to begin with 2) my school competes for the same recruits as those schools, so the better my team is doing and the worse they are doing, the better off my school is. I feel the same way, albeit to a lesser degree, about ManUtd, The Pool, and Chel$ea in Europe. The Pool I'm actually pretty ambivalent about, but I mostly root for Chel$ea and ManUtd to lose. So anyways, nothing wrong with that attitude from where's I'm sitting.

Thanks for the tech heads up. Speaking of hate, I hate IE and never use it so I had no idea, I had only looked at the site in Firefox and Safari; and to be honest I don't have and probably won't take the time to figure it out- one more in an endless line of reasons to use Firefox and not horribly crappy IE in my opinion. Sorry IE users- switch to a good browser already!

Moin- agreed. While I'm certainly very proud of Arsenal's "historic" accomplishments at the Bernabeu and San Siro, I also fully recognize that between those two clubs they have no less than 16 European Championships in the trophy cases that need regular dusting and shining, while Arsenal have exactly zero.

The only English club that can make the claim is The Pool- 5x European Champions, and even with mostly shit sides the last few years they have won 1 and made it to another final last year. As Solon says, when those jokers hear that Champions League operetta/classical song, some Pavlovian light goes off somewhere and they get it done. Here's hoping the EPL never adopts that same tune.

Brain- Thanks. Not just Digger, must also the vast majority of national college football writers and Heisman voters!

Kanu said...

BIB-

Hmmm, it looks ok {albeit way crappier than Firefox or Safari} in IE6.

I'm not installing IE7 to see, so I'll take your word for it. Might be something like messing with the View\Text Size setting and dialing it down a notch or two.

beast in 'bama said...

Hell, it ain't that bad, Kanu. It's definitely not worth the trouble of installing the bloated IE7. The only reason I saw it today is because I was working at home and from here I have you bookmarked in IE7 and not in Firefox. Time to fix that, I think.

And even though I stated my ambivalence toward Chel$ea above, I still watched them today. To say they had the easy draw of the round of 16 would be a gross understatement.

You have to give them credit, though, if they get up on you 2-0, you're done. They might not play pretty, but they can play some damn good defense. Ballack seems to be much more comfortable now. He's been playing really well the last couple of months.

As for rivals, I actually like watching Everton play. That's a damn good team Moyes has put together. If I were actually from Liverpool like my great-grandfather, they'd probably kick me out of town like Joey Barton and never allow me back.

Oh, and your comments about Tennessee, Florida and Auburn? Shocking, just shocking.