Metal Reviews

Anyone catch the hairstyles of the Milan team? A deserved loss on that basis alone.

Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion man.

it's extremely douchey but he can get away with it because he's (very) talented.

CL and EL draws are out. good stuff, promising very interesting semi-finals.

Málaga x Borussia Dortmund
Real Madrid x Galatasaray
PSG x Barcelona
Bayern Munich x Juventus

Chelsea x Rubin Kazan
Tottenham Hotspur x Basel
Fenerbahçe x Lazio
SPORT LISBOA E BENFICA x Newcastle United

quite a difficult match for Benfica, Newcastle are a tough nut to crack, what with Cisse, Ben Arfa and co.. the only easy draw would have been Basel, anyway, so we can't complain. playing the second leg in their stadium won't help. hope Spurs fuck up at some point.

Oh shit, I thought sports discussions on online message boards were not limited to the facts. Sorry!

He may be an arrogant bastard from time to time, but Ibrahimovic is just awesome.

he definitely is. and as a player, he'd be a Ballon d'Or candidate if he didn't have to share the stage with Messi and Ronaldo.

IBRACADABRA

Benfica beat Sporting 2-0 yesterday. the second goal came from a brilliant play by Nico Gaitan:

http://abload.de/img/gaitas3qs1m.gif

he's a bit inconsistent (lost the ball countless times last night, for example), but he also made the assists for both Benfica goals. well-managed i think he could really go places. Portuguese media say that he and centre-back Garay are on Man United's radar.

Westfalenstadion. fucking awesome. Fridge posted this on facebook

so i take it football discussion is dead on this forum

Together with all the hopes and dreams of the Madrid/Barça fanboys, yes

I'm ashamed to say I saw neither match, so I'll have some catching up to do over the weekend. But yeah - Germany is an awesome football country with a generation of mature top-of-the-line players who choose not to be transferred abroad, and this is what you get.

it's a strange league. there is one colossal club whose grip on the bundesliga is occasionally loosened by Borussia, with a couple of other strong European-level teams (Bayer Leverkusen and Schalke 04), plus Stuttgart, Werder Bremen, Hamburg, etc. who on a good year can do some cool things. i do think the days when they could actually win it are over for now, though.

but they all have positive aspects in common - lots of locally-trained players, solid finances and full stadiums. AT Kearney (a consultancy) named it the most sustainable league and they were right.

this will all reflect on the national side, whom i think are close to the maturity required to finally win the World Cup. people forget that before Spain became this dominating monster, they had very forgettable campaigns in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. they had to grow and mature.

The Swedish football community is in mourning today. Ivan Turina, goalkeeper for AIK Stockholm, was found dead in his apartment earlier today. He had a congenital heart problem, but the team's doctors were aware of that and nobody thought it could be fatal. The worst thing is that he had two very young kids and his wife was pregnant with a third one. And again, this was a 32 year old athlete in his prime who just fell asleep and didn't wake up again. That kind of tells you how fragile life can be.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013 ... eeper-dead

this heart stuff is pretty scary. Foe, Puerta, Feher, and now Turina... what scares me is how they can play for years before this hits them.

on a more positive note, Benfica made it to the Europa League final! facing Chelsea in Amsterdam... 51 years after winning the European Cup against Real Madrid with a glorious 5-3 scoreline.

Oh man, I feel sorry for Benfica. Last night they deserved a draw and overtime at least. A friend of mine told me they've lost to Porto in similar way few days back, and with that a chance of winning Portugese championship.
That's just shitty.

football died last night, Chelsea killed it. so that's... 5 CL and 2 UEFA Cup finals lost since 1963. that has to be some kind of record.

we can still win the League, if Porto tie or lose and we win, but in Portugal no one has lost the title in the last game and Porto especially are known for very rarely bungling it. with Benfica, on the other hand, i've lost count of the number of decisive games we've lost over the last 10 years.

extremely frustrating season. just 2 weeks ago we had a 4 point advantage on Porto and had just qualified for the final, we were in heaven, and now this.

i put it down on lack of maturity from the players, conceding 2 goals in the last minute in otherwise solid (especially yesterday) displays.

last season, this was Bayern's story... i hope at least we learn from this and grow as a team after what happened.

My local team, Anderlecht, won its 32nd championship title and so goes straight to the CL. Awesomeness.

wow, Bayern! can't imagine what this team will do with Guardiola managing them...

they deserved it, for the 2 finals they lost before this one, for their excellent management, for their brutal ass-raping of Barcelona... and Robben scoring the winning goal, knowing the weight of a lost final better than the other guys, that was very fitting.

Borussia have an amazing project and i hope Goetze's departure doesn't stop them, just as Sahin and Kagawa's departures didn't.

in other news, Benfica lost the Portuguese cup final tody. so that's 2 finals plus one championship thrown away in the past 3 weeks. massive facepalm.

Cristiano Ronaldo might be the world's (now second) most expensive player and the highest paid, but holy shit he is worth every penny. just look at that.

by the way, Benfica 2-0 Anderlecht

Bruno and Mitrovic seemed quite good. i think half the serbian national team was on the pitch at one point - Mitrovic and Milivojević on one side, plus Matic, Markovic, Djuricic and Fejsa on the other.

First goal fell way too early due to a blunder from an otherwise solid keeper. Without that goal we might have had a different and less one-sided match. Praet's goal was on the level, too.

Booked some tickets to see Anderlecht - PSG, probably won't be pretty.

yeah, the keeper played quite well, except when he bounced the ball back to Djuricic in the first goal.

i think this group will go to PSG and Benfica. don't think we can take the top spot though, or defence is a disgrace, they just seem so goddamn disorganised. Garay has to save the day all the time, and Artur the keeper is really lacking confidence.