Metal Reviews

penalty? NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

EDIT - holy shit Arsenal!

Faaaaak. Exciting stuff by the end, but Holland well outplayed us. And one of our goals was totally offside. Fail...

Yeah, what a crazy match. Robben like a boss.

Portugal tied with Poland. we suck and do not deserve our current FIFA ranking. it's absolutely inexcusable for a team that has players in some of the best teams in the world to play like this, and the drama queens (both players and managers) we have only made things worse. we went from having one of the world's toughest defences to having a crap defence, with Ricardo Carvalho and Bosingwa leaving after spats with the manager.

on top of that, several SHIT players, like Postiga, Hugo Almeida and Ruben Micael get called up, oddly enough they're all represented by one of the most powerful agents in football today, Jorge Mendes (he also represents Cristiano Ronaldo and José Mourinho).

the federation head and the manager have publicly stated that their goal is to reach the quarter-finals. that is not ambitious enough for a country with our quality of raw materials, but it's clearly too ambitious for a team that plays this badly even against minor opponents. Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and even France would/will utterly destroy us.

Scotland managed not to lose! Yay

France beat Germany 2-1, in Germany. They probably did not do it on purpose, so whatever.

Goles de los clubes de Mourinho tras sus primeros 99 partidos oficiales: 209 con Oporto, 183 con Chelsea, 167 con Inter, 271 con Real Madrid

El Real Madrid es el primer equipo en toda la historia de la liga que marca 85 goles en las primeras 25 jornadas

holy shit

both Manchester teams kicked out of the Europa league!

Man City lost away to Sporting Lisbon 1-0 in the first leg, and were 2-0 down at home in the second one. they came back to win it 3-2 but it wasn't enough. i am really happy for Sporting. Sá Pinto really did manage a near-revolution, the team was more motivated than ever, and now they managed to eliminate a team that has more than ten times their budget.

Who wants to play the Europa League anyway.

Watched the Man Utd - Bilbao game yesterday, it wasn't even funny how badly Utd got humped. Slightly made up for Basel's incredibly embarrassing performance...

Champs League draw out!
QF1 APOEL x Real Madrid
QF2 Marseille x Bayern Munich
QF3 Benfica x Chelsea
QF4 AC Milan x Barcelona

Semis will be winners of QF1 vs QF2 and QF3 vs QF4.

also, Europa League, which i do consider an important competition.
QF1 AZ x Valencia
QF2 Schalke 04 x Athletic Bilbao
QF3 Sporting CP x Metalist Kharkiv
QF4 Atlético Madrid x Hannover 96

Semis will be winners of QF1 vs QF4 and QF2 vs QF3.

Benfica x Sporting for the european supercup!

AC Milan vs Barça, amazing. Hope the culés lose.

For once in my life I might actually be supporting an Italian team.

Ooh great, we're in for a final Real vs. Barca.

almost sounds like a conspiracy. i'm done with superclasicos though, between the spanish league, spanish cup, spanish supercup and champion's league clashes, i already have a pretty good picture of how it plays out:
- shit talking on both sides
- during the game, several red cards for real
- real score and/or play a very good game
- xavi and/or messi pull a rabbit our of their hats
- barça wins
- more shit talk

boooooooooooring

Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

Fun fact, out of the 16 clubs still alive in a European Cup :
- 5 are from Spain
- 3 are German
- 2 are Portuguese
- 1 is English
- 1 is Italian
- 1 is French
- 1 is Dutch
- 1 is Ukrainian
- 1 is from Cyprus

Which means 50% of the remaining teams are either Spanish or German. Behold, the future of football.

exaggeration. English teams usually fare much better, this is an unusually weak showing from them.

Italians are the ones who should be worried. Juventus are on the up-and-up but they're still not as strong as before Calciopoli, Inter are shit with an ageing squad and no real manager, Lazio, Parma and Fiorentina are no real European competition, Roma wtf. and of course Milan, very good players (any team would be lucky to have Pato or Ibrahimovic), but not as good as in, say, 2006/2007, and certainly not as good as in the 90's.

two Spanish teams now have not just a colossal difference in quality vs their local rivals, they are now head and shoulders above anyone else in Europe, and this trend can't go on.

Remember when a small Scottish club of local teenage boys stunned everybody and beat the biggest teams in Europe, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, to become champions of Europe? Sigh...

are you talking about these fellows?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Lions
all from the same city more or less, but the route to victory didn't include Bayern or Real.

Benfica also did it in the 60's, while the players weren't local, they were all Portuguese or African (back when Mozambique and Angola were Portuguese colonies), they beat Barcelona in 1961 and Real Madrid in 1962. the total bonus given to the Benfica squad that year wouldn't cover a single player's bonus at Real.

different times, indeed. although for all their resources, most of Barcelona's top players are born and bred at the club, it's the likes of Real, Chelsea, Man City and whatnot that make everything so fucked up. hopefully financial fair play will help balance this out again.

Nope, an even more impressive feat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_C ... E2%80%9383
The Gothenburg Greats. We'll never see their likes again.