Champions League Semifinals Preview

Good morning, guten morgen, ciao ciao, y feliz Cinco de Mayo, Gheorghies. If it's early May, it means the Champions League is heating up. As all of you know, this event is comprised of the 32 best club teams in European football. After a shit-ton of matches to date, we are down to the semis, featuring four powerhouses. As usual of late, Spain is well represented with their superstar teams Real Madrid and Barcelona. No upstart Atletico Madrid this year, though. Also as usual of late, the British squads are nowhere to be found as we head down the stretch. Rounding out the semifinals, we have Bundesliga juggernauts Bayern Munich and a perky Juventus squad that just wrapped up a title win in Serie A. So let's figure out what to focus on here.

Semifinals Format: As is the case with other knock-out rounds (but not the final), teams play a home-and-home two-game series. Tie-breaker is most away goals scored, which makes for some great drama if the first game is a tie with goals scored. That puts the team that was at home first under the gun. They absolutely must score a goal in the second game to have a chance to advance.

Match-up 1: Juventus-Real Madrid
Game 1: Tuesday May 5th (in Turin), 2:45 PM ET
Game 2: Wednesday May 13th (in Madrid), 2:45 PM ET

Who you might be interested in seeing for Juventus: The key man up front is the Argentinian striker(formerly of Manchester United and Manchester City) Carlos Tevez, known (perhaps by only me) as El Rey de Swarth (see picture above). Despite looking like a caveman impersonating Anthony Kiedis, Tevez is quite good at putting the ball in the goal, especially in the Champions League (six goals to date in this year's tourney). Also worth watching is emerging midfielder (and ex-Man U prospect) Paul Pogba. He is an amazing athlete and I can't believe he slipped out of the grasp of my Red Devils.

If you want to play the "Hey, I know that guy!" game with more Juventus players, look for ex-Man U left back Patrice Evra, who looks a lot like Willis Drummond (pic below), but doesn't play as tough. Also look for ex-Italian national team captain Andrea Pirlo, who is more of a spot-playing reserve these days.

Who you might be interested in seeing for Real Madrid: In short, all of them. The word "loaded" doesn't even begin to describe the squad. We all know about Christiano Ronaldo's ability on the wing, Iker Casillas's skills in goal and the Peter Barrow impostor's speed and laser-like left foot on the other wing across from Ronaldo. But we also have the Mexican striker Chicharito, who is good at finding his way to the ball (but not much else), World Cup sensation James Rodriguez from Colombia, veteran Spaniard Sergio "Don't call me Val Kilmer" Ramos in defense and midfielder Luka Modric from Croatia (he lives on the second floor).



How we see this playing out: In La Liga, Real Madrid is two points back of Barcelona with three left. Their squad has been going full guns a-blazing to keep up in the race for the league title. However, it's hard to guess what's more important to fans of the club - a repeat Champions League win or a league title. All of you La Liga disciples (looking at you, Zman!) will remember Real Madrid just lost out on the title to upstart Atletico Madrid last year, and finished three points back in the race. Real Madrid fans will want both this year, but may feel the Champions League is now their best opportunity, since they don't get a crack at Barca in their last three matches.

Juve, on the other hand, is cruising in Serie A. They already clinched the title, up 15 points with four matches left. They can focus all efforts on the Champions League. But to be honest, they were lucky to get this far, having drawn a weak Monaco squad in the quarters. With a league title wrapped up, the club is firmly in the "happy to be here" camp.

Prediction: Real Madrid in an easy 5-2 (aggregate) romp.

Match-up 2: Bayern Munich-Barcelona
Game 1: Wednesday May 6th (in Munich), 2:45 PM ET
Game 2: Tuesday May 12th (in Barcelona), 2:45 PM ET

Who to watch on Bayern Munich: The German squad is loaded with stars. It features the wily vet Arjen Robben, the, um, eclectic-looking Frenchman Franck Ribery (seen below; yes I know he has a brutal scar from a car injury as a baby, but the dude is still goofy looking), the most fun futbol last name to yell excitedly (Bastian SCHWEIN-STEIGER), stud striker Thomas Muller, and...wait for it...distant cousin of my wife Claudio Pizarro (pictured above). We have never met him, but have heard the stories. The dude has had a good life in his 36+ years. He captained Peru's squad for many years, has enjoyed a prolific European club run (as well as a cameo with Chelsea a few years ago), bought and bred prizewinning horses and even got in trouble with the Peruvian soccer muckety-mucks for partying and smuggling ladies into hotel rooms while the team was preparing for a match. He was suspended eighteen months for what Wikipdia says was "having introduced women and alcohol into the national squad's hotel two days before Peru's away drubbing at the hands of Ecuador."  You have to respect a man with priorities.

Who to watch on Barcelona: In short, everybody. The Messi/Neymar/Suarez trio is muy fabuloso, as they say in the old country. I don't need to recite the rest of the multi-millionaires playing. Maybe I should, but this post is long enough already.



How we see this playing out: Barcelona has a chip on their shoulder. Real Madrid won the last Champions League title and the big three strikers all had a disappointing end to their World Cup experiences. We think they come out hard and strong and out-passion the German squad, knowing they have an easy league schedule ahead. Bayern is stacked, but not as much as Barca.

Prediction: Barca squeaks by 4-3 (aggregate) to set the stage for the match the world wants to see: Barca-Real Madrid in Berlin on June 6th for the pride, the glory, the pay check, and all 99 of Nena's luftballoons.

Your (Rambling, Yet Somehow Abbreviated) Champions League Final Preview

The mainstream American media has been surprisingly on top of tomorrow's big club championship match between Barcelona and Manchester United. SI had a one-page preview in the mag and another good piece here, the WSJ has a big story in today's paper, and the NY tabloid papers are giving it a big mention (one is here). So I suggest you read those after this. My typing mojo has been suppressed by a 13-hour day on Thursday, a delayed train home last night and a short night of sleep thanks to the Heat's fourth-quarter slapdown. So here are some key points before my caffeine-induced energy fades into Bolivian:

Ruud van Nistelrooy - He is known for two things. First, he has the best name in the history of ever. Seriously. How could I miss an opportunity to type it? Pure awesomeness. Second, he set the record for goals in a Champions League tournament (12). Lionel Messi currently has 11, so he has a chance to make history, albeit a history that most Americans don't care about. Watch some of RvN's goals, including some tremendous post-up goals, here, in a video compilation set to what sounds like a terrible Oasis tune.

Lionel Messi - the diminutive striker is awesome to watch. The NY Post calls him a combination of Barry Sanders, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. To those of you who doubt this uber-comparison, allow me to remind you he may be THAT GOOD. He is the world's best player now, and on pace to become one of the greatest of all-time. Don't believe me? Check out the video below. He's the best striker in the world, so good that he offsets Manchester United, which has two of the top ten in the world in Wayne Rooney and Chicharito. And the best thing about Messi - HE DOESN'T DIVE. His teammates collapse and writhe on the ground if you look at them funny, but Messi does not.




Nemanja Vidic - This Ivan Drago lookalike is the most bad-ass athlete from Serbia this side of Novak Djokovic. He is a stopper for Man U and will be tasked with chopping down Messi. It will look bad when he tackels Messi hard, which he will do until he gets a yellow card. Vidic will also be a force on set plays, when his height and elbows will cause match-up problems against a short Barcelona side.

Fox - This game is airing on the real Fox. I'm crossing my fingers they have announcers who don't suck. I know they'll have Brad Friedel in the booth, and I'm cautiously optimistic he won't be terrible. He's been a keeper in the EPL for a very long time and he knows Euro soccer well. But my biggest fear is that they "Americanize" the coverage. We don't need animated robots fighting each other on screen with sound effects, we don't need scrolling information and we don't need Joe Buck.

Wembley Stadium - This match is being played in London, which will be an advantage for the Red Devils. But Barca is as big and powerful of a club, with a huge fan base. I bet they will represent themselves pretty well. Since we're talking about Wembley, I have an excuse to embed the video of one of my favorite live music clips of all-time, Queen doing Radio Ga Ga at Wembley in '85 as a part of Live Aid. Freddy Mercury was at the height of his powers here and it's fascinating to watch him captivate over 100,00 fans, even if his performance is dated and sexually ambiguous, to say the least. The forgotten subtext to this video is how incredibly effeminate this tune is for a live rock anthem. There is nothing remotely heterosexual about the tune, yet it captivated a legion of Queen fans at that concert. That's the power of Freddy Mercury, who was fresh off his role as the villain in Commando. Don't believe me? Go to the 0:13 second mark of this clip. Or look at this picture.

Enjoy the match, folks. Go Red Devils.

Champions League Semifinals Preview

We're heading into the final stretch of the Champions League, the time of the tournament when even the most casual of soccer fans should tune in to watch the most compelling club tournament in the world. Due to my limited (but growing!) depth of knowledge in the space, I will keep things simple.

First off, let's talk about the format. The "semis" consists of two-game series between clubs. Each side hosts a match. If there is a win for each side, or two ties, the first tiebreaker is aggregate goals. The second tiebreaker is most goals scored by an away team, meaning a team that ties 1-1 on the road and then ties 0-0 at home would advance. So an interesting item to watch in the first legs of these series are the goals scored by the away squad. The third tiebreaker would be a pair of 15-minute golden-goal overtime periods, and the last would be penalty kicks. (Editor's Note: Something equivalent to "I think" should preface each of the last three sentences.)

Match-up #1: FC Schalke vs. Manchester United
First Leg: Manchester United @ Schalke, Tuesday April 26th
Second Leg: Schalke @ Manchester United, Wednesday May 4th

Schalke
I know very little about Schalke, other than it's pronounced Shahl-ka and they are supposed to have a great keeper in Manuel Neuer. But before we dismiss them, it's important to note Schalke's impressive run to the semis. After a loss in the first round of group play to French club Lyon, the squad has gone undefeated in nine consecutive matches. The last two of those were a thorough quarterfinals beating of defending champions Inter Milan, 5-2 on the road and 2-1 at home. The first leg of this series kicks off in Germany, where Schalke is 5-0 at home so far in the tournament, having outscored its opponents 12-2 in aggregate.

Manchester United
I will spare you a detailed review of a well-known squad, but this team has been peaking at the right time in both EPL and Champions League play. This year's team is stacked up front, with Wayne Rooney, Javier Hernandez and Dimitar Berbatov leading the team. The midfield play has been solid with a steady rotation of attacking midfielders (Nani, Antonio Valencia, Ji-Sung Park, Ryan Giggs) and defensive hacks who are not afraid to draw yellow cards (Paul Scholes, Darrin Fletcher and Darren Gibson). The back line is all healthy, and 40 year-old Edwin van der Saar will be in the cage as his professional career wraps up over the next month. Mexican striker Javier Hernandez remains the man to watch in this series. He has been a goal-scoring machine for the team all year after fighting for minutes, playing so well he's kept Berbatov off the pitch.

Match-up #2: Real Madrid vs. Barcelona
First Leg: Barcelona @ Real Madrid, Wednesday April 27th
Second Leg: Real Madrid @ Barcelona, Tuesday May 3rd

This match-up of the two titans of the Spanish league is about as good as it gets. The two biggest Spanish cities squaring off, with the scrappy Lionel Messi leading Barcelona against the petulant but gifted Cristiano Ronaldo. Making the series even more interesting is that the two teams have played twice since April 16th. On that date, the teams tied 1-1 in Madrid in Spanish Liga play, which was a better showing for Real Madrid than in November 2010, when they lost 5-0 in an away match at Barcelona. Last week, the teams met again on April 20th in the finals of the Copa del Rey, a Spanish tournament that is so prestigious that Real Madrid accidentally let the trophy get run over by a bus after winning 1-0 on a header from Ronaldo in the 103rd minute of play. The current standings in the Spanish Liga, where Barcelona leads Real Madrid by 8 points with five matches left, indicate Barcelona should be regarded as slight favorites, but this is a grudge match of the highest order, where the two most recent results were a draw and a tie broken in the 103rd minute.



Barcelona
Barcelona's stars include a lot of names you may remember from last year's World Cup, including Argentina's Messi, Brazil's Dani Alves, and Spaniards Carles Puyol and David Villa, who scored five goals for Spain last year, leading them to the World Cup title. Barcelona coasted to the semis after crushing Ukrainian squad FC Shakhtar Donetsk 6-1 in aggregate, but they have not been invincible in the tournament so far, with a 7-1-2 record, including a loss to Arsenal and ties to Euro soccer welterweights FC Rubin Kazan (Russia)and Kobenhavn (Denmark).


Real Madrid
There are no shortage of stars for this team either, including Spanish World Cup keeper and squad captain Iker Casillas, Portugal's Ronaldo, Brazil's Kaka and ex-EPL star Emmanuel Adebayor. Real Madrid has gone 8-0-2 so far in the tournament, with ties to Lyon and Inter Milan being the only blemishes on the team's record so far.

Predictions
Manchester United should be able to use their horsepower to pull out this series. They are comfortably ahead in the EPL (up 6 points to Chelsea with 4 matches left) and have a match against a demoralized Arsenal squad on Sunday May 1st that will likely feature a lot of Man U reserves in the starting lineup. In the other match-up, I have to go with Barcelona, because when in doubt, bet against Ronaldo's waxed eyebrows and his (lack of) heart.

One last thing - I want to remind you all to clear your schedules now. The finals of the Champions League will be at Wembley Stadium on Saturday May 28th at 2:45 PM ET. The game is one more excellent reason to day-drink on a long holiday weekend. The mayhem factor will increase exponentially if Man U is involved.