At Old Trafford they believed that for the sheer edge-of-the-seat,
heartstopping drama 1999 would never be beaten. And then at 1.35 Moscow time
this morning, suddenly we had to reassess the definition of an
extraordinary, stupendous way to win the Champions League, Manchester
United-style.
For Eric Abidal, a team-mate at Lyon, he is "The Buffalo", for his Chelsea
colleagues "The Train". You might expect a hulking presence and a lot of
noise from Michael Essien, but if those nicknames aptly reflect his power
and pace on the football field, he is one of those players transformed off
it.
English football’s domination of this season’s Champions League is proof that
the game needs quotas on foreign players, Fifa’s president, Sepp Blatter,
claimed yesterday.
Avram Grant may not yet have proved he is a good manager but last night
reinforced something about him we already knew: he is a very lucky manager.
There were 94 min, 2 sec played when this Champions League semi-final tie
was turned on its head by John Arne Riise’s own goal. It was one more goal
more than Chelsea deserved.
Arsenal have been drawn against Liverpool in the quarter-finals of the
Champions League.
Milan’s 2-0 defeat by Arsenal on Tuesday night at San Siro was the end of a
cycle. Or the end of an era. Or an epoch. The Italian media couldn’t quite
agree on the time frame but the sense that this Milan team had come to the
end of something was universal. In a rare burst of English, the country’s
largest-selling sports daily, La Gazzetta dello Sport, brought the curtain
down on the team with the headline: ‘Milan – The End’.
Greater Manchester Police have offered to assist in the compilation of a
report on the treatment of Bolton fans by Spanish police during the club’s
UEFA Cup game against Atletico Madrid.