Reuters Soccer Blog

Soccer Break Monday – Goalline technology…again

It is never over until the fat lady sings or should that be until Alex Ferguson stops talking about refereeing decisions?

The Premier League title race is reaching boiling point and Ferguson is hot under the collar that his team did not get a penalty in their 1-0 defeat to Arsenal.

Is it all just mind games, ?

It could be, after all, only three points now separate United and Chelsea ahead of next week’s showdown between the top two at Old Trafford.

Ferguson’s sense of injustice was no doubt heightened by Chelsea’s win over Tottenham Hotspur that managed to re-ignite the debate over the need for goalline technology and highlight Heurelho Gomes’ flaws as a keeper in the space of a couple of seconds.

You have to give credit to Redknapp for not foaming at the mouth and frothing his indignation like many managers would have done in his place.

Redknapp did prove, however, the need for someone to sit down and explain to all Premier League managers the difference between flying to the moon and goalline technology as there was once again widespread disbelief that one has been accomplished without the other.

Soccer Break Wednesday – Real v Barca. Take three.

Growing tired of Real Madrid and Barcelona playing each other? Not here we aren’t. And nor is an octopus named Iker (see picture).

The Champions League is the biggest club competition in the world and generally where players peak, so Wednesday’s semi-final first leg should be the best of the recent encounters between the Spanish rivals.

A place in the final, most probably against Manchester United after their barnstorming performance on Tuesday albeit against a lacklustre Schalke 04, will be at stake. Will the third ‘clasico’ in 12 days be an all-out attack fest or a nervy 0-0?

Who is your favourite of the two sides? Barcelona for their slick-passing panache or Real for their watchability factor, in which coach Jose Mourinho plays a large role.

A player in form in the Champions League is Schalke keeper Manuel Neuer. Alex Ferguson heavily praised the German but it seems he is set for Bayern Munich as Neuer himself has ruled out a move to the Premier League.

Finally, in England Stoke City edged further away from the relegation zone with a 3-0 defeat of Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday and Wolves find themselves deep in trouble. Can they stay up? But at what cost to the FA Cup finalists Stoke after influential midfielder Matthew Etherington went off with a hamstring problem?

Discuss all these topics and other stories in world soccer on the Reuters Soccer Facebook page. And please feel free to send us recommendations for your pick of the day’s stories.

Relegation in Argentina – is the system fair?

Olimpo, a modest team from the port city of Bahia Blanca on the windswept Atlantic coast in southern Buenos Aires province, are doing well in the Clausura championship. They are in fourth place three points behind leaders Velez Sarsfield.

Boca Juniors, one of the big clubs from the capital, are 14th — seven points off the pace.

Yet Olimpo, promoted this season, are in greater danger of relegation than Boca. Their fourth place in the table does not save them from also occupying one of the promotion playoff berths as a result of the three-season points averages.

The averages were introduced 28 years ago and although the move was not presented as such, it was designed as a safety net for a poor season by one of Argentina’s big clubs after San Lorenzo suffered a humiliating relegation in 1981, though it failed to save Racing Club in 1983, the first year of its implementation.

River Plate, third two points off the pace, began this season in the promotion playoff places and are now only just outside them with the constant fear of slipping back into them with a defeat.

The bottom two sides in the 20-team division go down automatically, those in 17th and 18th place meet teams from the second-tier Nacional B championship in two-legged playoffs.

River’s delicate position was due to a very poor 2008-09 season and failure to redress the balance enough the following season. They finished the Apertura championship in the first half of this season in fourth place and have been doing even better in the Clausura, edging away from danger — although playing pragmatic, defensive football a long way from their traditional, attractive attacking style.

Soccer Break Tuesday – Bad omens for United

The semi-finals of the Champions League are upon us and the omens are not good for Manchester United ahead of their double-header against Schalke 04.

They might be running away with the Premier League title and facing a side who are 10th in their own table (ok, those portents look pretty rosy), but they have come unstuck the last two times they have lined up against German rivals in the semi-finals.

And these particular German rivals have Raul, the pocket poacher who proved far too wily an opponent when they lost to Real Madrid in the quarter-finals in 2000.

But the motivation is there for manager Alex Ferguson, who after 25 years spent overhauling Liverpool’s domestic record, has admitted he is more than a little envious of their red rivals’ European success.

If this clash doesn’t whet the appetite then you only have 24 hours to wait for Real Madrid’s semi with Barcelona – and if you are not looking forward to that then I’m guessing you’ve clicked this link by mistake.

Real boss Jose Mourinho has a knack of rubbing Barcelona up the wrong way and after last season’s semi-final victory with Inter Milan, he has been struck off many a Catalan’s christmas card list.

And for those of you who don’t know your ‘Cules’ from your ‘Meringues’, we have prepared a little pocket phrasebook to accompany the ‘Clasico’.

Belgrade derby was full of nice not nasty surprises

I attended my first Belgrade derby on Saturday and all the preconceptions I might have had were happily blown away in the brisk Serbian wind.

The fixture is widely regarded as the most fiery and dangerous derby in world football but despite the game almost being a title decider, the sting was taken out of the occasion by Red Star ultras refusing to turn up at Partizan’s stadium.

Religious convictions had told them the game should not be played on Easter Saturday so they boycotted.

So there was no violence whatsoever, but that didn’t stop a huge number of riot police being there.

You wonder how the fans manage to cause trouble with the meanest-looking police unit imaginable. Massive men covered in thick riot gear which has led them to be nicknamed ‘Ninja Turtles’.

I also never realised how close Partizan’s ground was to Red Star’s stadium. There are almost as near as Anfield and Goodison Park.

Partizan’s home was smaller than I imagined, an open bowl with a running track, but the fans still made for a decent atmosphere despite the lack of Red Star supporters. There were a few flares and banners but nothing I had not seen in Italy or Marseille.

Real bristling with confidence before Champions League semi

In our latest Monday Spanish soccer post, Mark Elkington in Madrid looks at the state of play ahead of Wednesday’s Champions League semi-final between arch rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona, Diego Forlan’s relegation to the bench at Atletico Madrid and the curse of the balls on the pitch.

Real bristling with confidence before Champions League semi

Last week’s dramatic King’s Cup final victory over Barca has provided a palpable boost to Real coach Jose Mourinho and his players and they romped to a 6-3 win at third-placed Valencia on Saturday despite resting several key squad members.

Barca, by contrast, laboured to a 2-0 success at home to Osasuna, one that nonetheless preserved their seemingly unassailable eight-point lead over Real at the top of La Liga with five games left.

However, their problems were compounded by injuries to Gabriel Milito and Maxwell. With Carles Puyol, Eric Abidal and Adriano already on the medical list, coach Pep Guardiola has a severe defensive headache.

David Villa provided a bright spot amid the injury gloom by breaking his 11-game goal drought when he opened the scoring with a typically clinical strike at the Nou Camp.

Real’s cup win, their first since 1993, came after the 1-1 draw at home to Barca in La Liga, a result which helped banish memories of their 5-0 drubbing at the hands of the Catalan club in November’s league game in Barcelona.

Good Soccer Break Friday

It’s Easter weekend but there’s no rest for the world’s football players with another hectic schedule of matches.

To bring you up to date with all of the major European leagues, read our Serie A, Ligue 1, Premier League, La Liga and Bundesliga previews ahead of the next round of matches.

There’s also news about the football rich list, David Beckham topping one magazine’s top earners while his former club Manchester United are apparently the richest club in the world. A Champions League trophy in 2011 would certainly help their cause.

In England, West Ham United’s Scott Parker was voted as the best player by the football writers, a change from Gareth Bale’s win as voted for by the players.

Who would you rate as the Premier League’s best player in 2010/11?

Discuss all these topics and other stories in world soccer on the Reuters Soccer Facebook page. And please feel free to send us recommendations for your pick of the day’s stories.

Picture: David Beckham (R) and Tim Leiweke, President & CEO of AEG, talk as they watch the Los Angeles Lakers play the New Orleans Hornets during Game 2 of their NBA Western Conference first round playoff basketball game in Los Angeles, California April 20, 2011. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Solbakken’s Copenhagen may be undone by own strength

 By Philip O’Connor

 It was as if Stale Solbakken’s winning machine had been taken by the moment.

Crowned champions minutes before kickoff by Odense’s failure to beat Nordsjaelland, they quickly fell behind to lowly Lyngby.

But the charismatic, shaven-headed FC Copenhagen coach hadn’t delivered a third straight league title — his fifth since taking over in 2006 — by easing off on the home straight.

The Danish champions duly went up the gears on the battered, dry pitch and in the end won comfortably courtesy of goals from Dame N’Doye and Christian Bolanos.

The winning machine was back on track.

Solbakken’s achievements in Danish football this season have been outstanding.

RSL will miss their ‘Rasta passer’

There is a rare air of jubilation around Major League Soccer after Real Salt Lake managed to come away from the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions League final away to Mexican champions Monterrey with a 2-2 draw but it is tempered by the loss of their best player for the return game.

MLS commissioner Don Garber took to twitter to post ‘Congrats RSL! Well done’ and many fans of other MLS teams have been quick to applaud the result. In many ways, this year’s run to the final by RSL has been taken by the league and its supporters as a validation of their status in the game.

Tired of being labeled a ‘Mickey Mouse’ league by foreigners and dismissed as irrelevant by old-school mainstream sports media and equally annoyed at the tendency of some American fans of European soccer to laugh off MLS as a pale imitation of the ‘real thing’, MLS fans have delighted in Real’s achievement. This is the first time a team from the league has reached the final of the Mexican-dominated competition since it changed to a league format in 2008. In the days when the tournament for North and Central America and the Caribbean was a knockout affair – only twice did an MLS team make the final. Added to the odds stacked against RSL on Wednesday was the knowledge that no team from the North American league has ever won on Mexican soil in a competitive game.

As this emotional account of the game concludes, Javier Morales superbly taken 89th minute equaliser was much more than an equaliser “It was, most of all, the moment so many fans of Major League Soccer have waited for: a concrete result providing a firm reason to believe”.

Still, as the author of the above piece notes, 90 minutes remain to be played and they will be anything but straightforward for the team from Utah. The confidence, verging on over-confidence in some quarters, that RSL can finish the job off next week, is largely based on the fact that Salt Lake have not lost at their Rio Tinto stadium for 34 straight regular season and Cup games.

But Jason Kreis will have to a field a team in the return leg that does not feature his most influential player – central midfielder Kyle Beckerman, who is suspended after picking up another yellow card in Monterrey. No player is irreplaceable but Beckerman’s importance to Salt Lake’s success over the past two years cannot be understated. The 28-year-old, who sports distinctive Rastafarian-style dreadlocks, is not only the best American midfielder in MLS, he is absolutely central to the team’s appealing possession football.

Soccer Break Thursday – Mourinho wins. Again.

Jose Mourinho and winning appear to go hand in hand after the colourful Portuguese coach delivered at the first time of asking in Wednesday’s King’s Cup final.

All the more significant was beating Barcelona for the first time as Real coach, which sets up a fascinating double header in the Champions League semi-finals on April 27 and May 3.

The pictures of Real’s celebrations are everywhere but what was not captured was defender Sergio Ramos dropping the trophy off the open-top bus during their victory parade. Or maybe not.

Real fans will be hoping their team do not let slip their slight pyschological advantage ahead of the Champions League having kept Barcelona dangerman Lionel Messi largely quiet during the final. The pacy Argentine stood still for five minutes after the final whistle, inconsolable.

The likely opponent for either Real or Barca in the Champions League final is Manchester United, whose form has dipped recently but all the same Alex Ferguson’s men seem destined to win another league title after Arsenal faltered against Tottenham Hotspur in another classic North London encounter. Chelsea are trying their hardest to make it interesting mind you.

Finally, our thoughts are with Gerard Houllier after the Aston Villa manager was taken to hospital. The stresses of football management cannot be underestimated, if that turns out to be a possible cause.

Discuss all these topics and other stories in world soccer on the Reuters Soccer Facebook page. And please feel free to send us recommendations for your pick of the day’s stories.