Friday, April 10, 2009

Invidious comparisons

What with World Cup Qualifying, the UEFA Champions League, the CONCACAF Champions League, the Premiership, MLS, and the UEFA Cup, I've been spending a lot of hours watching football the last few weeks.

While it is true that it is hard to beat the top 4 Premiership teams for skill, as a competition the Premier League has become downright boring. The fact that in any given season the question of which team will come in 5th provides the most drama and the current spark of interest in games like Man Utd vs Aston Villa is based mainly on the fact that Chelsea and Man United have been showing cracks in their invulnerability is telling. The UEFA Champions League has essentially become the Premier League with the role of whipping boy played by various French teams. Oh, what a shock! Liverpool against Chelsea. There is a charm in watching Chelsea dink their little triangles up and down the field and in watching Ronaldo perform his little steppy-steppy moves, but honestly, is there really much surprise in watching Man Utd win on a late goal? Again? Yawn.

It used to be that the Euro matches provided the same pleasure that the World Cup did: watching teams you'd barely heard of and learning about new fantastic players you'd never seen before. Given that the same dozen top teams swap around the same top players, you don't get that so much, except in some of the early rounds.

On the other hand, the World Cup qualifiers have been rather fun, especially given the plethora of new European teams to enjoy: Kazakhstan has a young and lively team that's rather fun to watch, if somewhat overmatched -- who knew? We'll miss you in the final.

Other teams we'll miss: Gosh, Man City versus Hamburg. Two teams charging up and down the field going at it hammer and tongs. There was more pure entertainment in the first half-hour than in half a season at Stamford Bridge. Holy smokes!

The biggest entertainment surprise for me has been the CONCACAF Champions League semifinals. Sure, I'd heard of Cruz Azul and Atlante, but never really seen them play. And Santos Laguna? The Puerto Rico Islanders? Not on my radar. I confess to having watched the tournament only intermittently, largely to track the team-formerly-known-as-Earthquakes. The semi-finals were fantastic fun, however (at least for a neutral). I once heard the perfect soccer match described as having at least one change in the lead, at least one great goal, and at least one moment of controversy. Both the semi-finals obliged, although it was hard to beat Atlante game for sheer drama: an extra-time (winning) penalty and 3-red-card fight 3 minutes after that. Sad as I was the Dynamo didn't make it this far, I'm looking forward to Cruz Azul vs Atlante in the final, which is something I hardly expected.

Speaking of the Dynamo, they came to town a couple weeks ago to play the team-currently-known-as-Earthquakes. It was just as well that Ching was off on World Cup duty because if he had been the one finishing chances instead of Mullen, things may have turned out much worse for the home side. (I've whined about the MLS continuing with a full program during qualification week before: I see they now partly accomodate the national team by giving their wannabe Man Utd of the US the week off. Funny how LA always gets the special treatment.) It was about a half-hour into it, about the time Mullen skied his third "this is a goal, oh wait, no it isn't" chance, that I said to my son "I don't think this is going to stay scoreless" and he said "I think once there is one goal, there will be a boatload." Truer words were never spoken: 15 minutes later it was 3-2. It is odd and scary for a Yallop team to have such a fragile looking defense. It is going to be a long season if they don't tighten that up.