The biggest night in European football

Here it is. The moment that we have been waiting for the past few weeks. The Champions League final kicks off in less than two hours. In a sense, poetic justice has been done with the final featuring, in my mind, the two best teams on the planet at the moment, both in terms of what they have achieved this season so far (Man U has the EPL and the League Cup in the bag, while Barca won the La Liga and the Copa del Rey) and also aesthetically. So I don't really mind whoever wins. If you were to ask me a few months ago, I would have said Barcelona would have thrashed Man U. No doubt about that. In Messi, Henry and Eto'o, they have the best attacking triumvirate in world football, with all three players each scoring more than 20 goals this season. And their midfield helmed by Xavi and Iniesta, is basically the core of the Spanish midfield that won the Euro 2008 championship last year. However, it is in defence that Man U holds the edge over Barcelona. Especially so since Abidal, Dani Alves and Rafa Marquez will be missing from the Barca lineup tonight. The Rafa loss is probably not that huge of a setback because Gerard Pique is more than capable to replace him. But Dani Alves missing will be a huge loss for Barcelona, more so because of the attacking threat that he poses in tandem with Lionel Messi.

Here's to a fantastic night of football. May the best team wins!

The beautiful (and ugly) game

Much has been said about Chelsea's last minute away goal defeat (1-1) to Barcelona in the second leg of the Champions League semifinal last week, especially about how, arguably, Chelsea was hard done by an inept and incompetent referee, one particular Tom Henning Ovrebo, who "failed" to award the Blues at least three penalty decisions. Conspiracy theories abound about how the controversial decisions were influenced by UEFA wanting to avoid a repeat of an all-English final for the second year running. After all that has been written and said in the papers and on TV, here is my delayed take on it all.

As I have mentioned before, there were at least three potential penalty incidents claimed by Chelsea, all of which were not given by the referee. The first, involved a tug-fest between, if i can remember correctly between, Dani Alves and Florent Malouda, with both players pulling each other's shirt and trying to wrestle the other to the ground. When the referee blew his whistle, the action was indeed inside of Barcelona's penalty box. HOWEVER, the initial tugging, and therefore the foul, in my opinion began outside of the box. The referee was merely letting play continue just in case an advantage would rise in favour of the attacker (which in this case would be Malouda). In this regard, it is similar to a situation, where an attacker is hacked down outside of the box, in a clear foul, but the referee waves play on for an advantage just in case the ball would fall to another team-mate for another chance on goal. However, should the advantage fail to materialize, the referee is right to blow the whistle and pull the play back to where the earlier foul occured.

The second "penalty" occassion involved Gerard Pique, Barcelona's centreback, accidentally handling the ball inside the box. Although it was accidental, I believe a penalty should have been given. Yes, that's right. I'm with Chelsea on this one. I repeat. A penalty should have been given for the handball offence.

The third dubious penalty claim came in the final few minutes of the game after Barcelona had scored. In what was perhaps Chelsea's last chance to win the game, a strike by Ballack was blocked by Samuel Eto'o, as he turned his back to the ball. Ballack strongly claimed that the ball hit Eto'o's arm. But after seeing countless replays, I am convinced that the ball actually struck the back of Eto'o's shoulder. It would have been harsh to award a penalty for that.

So there you go. From three penalty claims, only one could and should have been given by the referee. So were the Chelsea players, especially Ballack and Drogba, right to harass and harangue the referee at the end of the game? A definite NO! A penalty decision missed by the referee occurs all the time. Three missed would have been, as Drogba said it, "a fucking disgrace." But like I have analyzed, there was only ONE valid penalty claim. And the referee could have missed it for a number of different reasons. For example, he may not have clearly seen the handball incident, (which i strongly doubt in this case). Or perhaps, he may have thought it was unintentional. Things like this happen all the time in football matches. By acting like thugs and threatening the referee, the Chelsea players acted like sore losers blaming everything but themselves for the defeat. Didier Drogba himsef missed two gilt-edged chances, one in each of the two legs, to carry Chelsea on to the final. And both were one-on-one situations with the keeper. A world class striker would have taken at least one of those chances. If you ask me, Barcelona deserves to be in the final. After all, they didn't concede at home. And Chelsea did. And in two-legged cup affairs, that's all that matters.