So Real Madrid and Juventus, last year’s UEFA Champions League finalists, live to fight another day, and Paris Saint-Germain and Tottenham are both left to ponder on what might have been, how it went wrong and where they go from here.
Liverpool and Manchester City join the champions of Spain and Italy in the quarter-finals, but we knew they would anyway after the first-leg carnage they inflicted on the FCs of, respectively, Porto and Basel. I don’t support either side, but I can imagine that the fans of those two Premier League clubs, while delighted to have seen their team go through, would have been slightly dismayed by the second-leg performances and results. Both teams left out key players, but even so, Liverpool’s 0-0 draw – only the third time they have drawn a blank at Anfield this season – and particularly City’s 1-2 defeat – their very first at home in this campaign – will undoubtedly have taken some of the shine off qualification.
Still, I guess followers of PSG and Spurs would have taken progress to the quarter-finals any which way. Instead they must turn their attention solely to domestic matters. While the Parisians will probably go on to scoop another Ligue 1/Coupe de France/Coupe de la Ligue treble – even without the injured Neymar – they will be aware that outside France their reputation has nosedived following their limp surrender against Madrid at the Parc des Princes. At least Spurs gave a decent account of themselves against Juventus, which is something, but only an FA Cup win plus, of course, another top-four Premier League placing will be adequate compensation for that Wednesday night of woe at Wembley.
Here are some further reflections on this week’s Champions League encounters:
Juventus – arch-pragmatists par excellence
By common consent Tottenham were the superior team over the two legs of their absorbing tie with Juventus. They bossed both games with their passing, movement and accomplished technique. They even took the lead against Massimiliano Allegri’s side – something no other team had managed for months.
But the two goals Mauricio Pochettino’s side could not afford to concede arrived within the space of less than three minutes midway through the second half. Higuaín. Bang. Dybala. Bang. Juve’s first two shots on target, both exquisitely finished, and suddenly the tide had turned.
After that the Italian side were interested in one thing and one thing only – protecting their advantage. No team in the world does that better than Juventus. And, sure enough, Spurs could not find the goal that would have added another 30 minutes at least to the evening’s entertainment. They needed a hero, but the only one present on the pitch was making blocks, tackles and clearing headers galore in the yellow and blue of the opposition – the remarkable Giorgio Chiellini.
They say that the top teams (e.g. Germany at major tournaments) always ‘find a way to win’, and that is exactly what Juventus did against Spurs, a classical display of Italian arch-pragmatism making the club’s first ever visit to Wembley an experience to treasure.
Goal-line officials – don’t you just love ‘em?
Seventeen minutes into the game at Wembley and in Juventus’s first attack Douglas Costa decides to take on Jan Vertonghen in the Tottenham penalty area. The Belgian defender, only just back from injury, allows the Brazilian to get a yard ahead of him, but instead of staying upright and ushering the Juve winger to the byline, he takes a desperate lunge, misses the ball and instead wraps his foot around his opponent’s ankles. Costa does not immediately fall to the turf but goes down in his second movement. Either way, it’s the most obvious penalty call imaginable.
Yet Polish referee Szymon Marciniak waves play on. Juventus players surround him, disbelief mixed with outrage. Vertonghen shares a faint smile with the man he has just felled – the gesture of a guilty man let off the sharpest of hooks.
If the referee missed the foul, then how on earth did his goal-line assistant do likewise? One TV replay showed this ‘fifth official’ (or sixth, I’m not sure) staring intently with head bowed at the Vertonghen/Costa collison, yet he did not intervene – or, if he did, he gave the wrong instruction to his boss.
Now I know that these goal-line officials – introduced a few years ago as a VAR-delaying alternative by former UEFA president Michel Platini – have long been the target of mockery from pundits, manager and spectators alike, with “what do they actually do?” or “what’s the point of them?” the most commonly used observation. I’m not normally one for lazily going with the flow or spouting the latest buzzword, but having watched that ludicrous faux pas at Wembley, I was amazed to find myself shouting out loud:
“What do they actually do?!”
Winners and losers in Paris
The atmosphere at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday night when the two teams came out was fantastic. Perfectly choreographed colour and noise fit for the occasion, with a huge call-to-arms banner proclaiming ENSEMBLE ON VA LE FAIRE (‘Together we will do it’).
Alas, the minute’s silence for Davide Astori was ruined by a few idiots – unlike at Wembley the following evening, when it was impeccably observed – and from that moment on there was an overriding sense that on the pitch, too, PSG were about to fluff their lines.
The truth is that without Neymar’s pace and skill the home side were one-paced and toothless. It was a bad night for the French public, the French team and the French players – Kylian Mbappé and Adrien Rabiot were found badly wanting for PSG and even Madrid’s Karim Benzema, on his 100th Champions League appearance, had a dreadful, wasteful evening – but a great one for the French manager, Zinédine Zidane furthering his reputation as one of the best coaches around with his shrewd horses-for-courses team selection and tactics.
It was also an excellent night for German referee Felix Brych, who, unlike his Polish counterpart 24 hours later, was spot-on in just about everything he did. I particularly liked his take-no-nonsense sending-off of Marco Verratti. If more refs showed a yellow card to players who charge up to them aggressively mouthing abuse, the game would be all the better for it.
To bottle or not to bottle
Sporting rhetoric and vernacular is a law unto itself, with many stock phrases so overused that they begin to lose any meaning. For example, we often hear golfers saying, after a disappointing round: “I left a few shots out there”, yet proud footballers or managers will frequently say in post-match interviews “we left everything out there” whereas others, confusingly, will defiantly pronounce pre-match that “we mustn’t leave anything out there”.
Likewise, after Spurs’ comeback from two goals down in Turin, we were told that Mauricio Pochettino’s team showed a lot of ‘bottle’. Now, however, after letting slip their lead and losing at Wembley, the same side are being called ‘bottlers’.
Any logical explanations very welcome below…
Cristiano Ronaldo – head and shoulders above the rest?
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are unquestionably the two most consistently brilliant footballers the world has ever seen. Their goalscoring feats over several years provide irrefutable evidence to back that up.
I would also say that, among the other qualities that make up their remarkable set of skills, they are also the best two finishers of all time.
Messi would get my vote as the greatest footballer of all simply because I have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, watching him play more than anyone else, but I have to say that I have never seen a better header of the ball in the opposition goalmouth than Ronaldo, the goal he scored at the Parc des Princes just the latest example of his exquisite combination of leap, hang time, power and accuracy.
I remember that pint-sized Chilean duo Marcelo Salas and Iván Zamorano as having exceptional heading technique for their height, likewise Australian Tim Cahill, but no one else immediately springs– no pun intended – to mind as being comparable in the air to the colossal Cristiano.
I’m open, however, to any suggestions…
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