Of all the games I had to miss it had to be tonight's! Fucking gutted. Sounds lie it was a corker.

holy fuck, what a great great great 2nd half. fair result in all. but regardless-- wow! & props to joe hart.

-_- yeah thanks for that!

you can't watch online replay? apparently you can on sky (i get the sky retransmissions via web). they were talking about some "events center" or some such shit during halftime.

oops wrong football thread ;)

I guess all that new Atlanta swagger carried its way onto the forum

watched the dortmund-ajax game on replay last night. it was good fun in all, and dortmund played their usual fast offensive game, but without kagawa they were sloppy-- lots of missed chances and passes to nowhere in the middle of the area. there was nobody to dribble and create situations the way kagawa did, this was more like kick and kick and see what happens-- they still managed to eke out a win, but it wasn't easy in that chaos. of course it didn't help that hummels fucked a penalty kick, poor musketeer (he looks like one).

today-- bayern-valencia!! mang i miss watching them play. yes i know most of you will watch chelsea-juve, but i'll wait for the replay on that...

what an insane 2nd half! It seemed like both teams were doing their best to throw it away. Although I feel that, with Real finally winning, we've been robbed of some great 'Real in Meltdown' and 'Mourinho's Uncertain Future' style headlines. Can't wait for Chelsea v Juve tonight.

i was definitely hoping for real madrid to loose, not just as a barca fan, but i would have loved all the speculation and press conference afterwards. cristiano's "sadness", it would have been great! but alas, its not meant to be...

i totally relate to this. Being a Barca fan, hoping for white pussies to lose, expecting some good laughs at Cristiano's sadness ... everything.

I'm often the same, even when England play: half of me wants them to win the other half just wants to watch the media savage them when they lose.

he's a fucking crybaby, but when he has the ball the bastard plays beautifully.i stil hate him though.

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bayern vs. valencia was a fun game for me (bayern fan) but valencia did nothing on the first half and only got interesting in the 2nd especially after valdez (the paraguayan) got in, even though bayern got real sloppy after its substitutions.

gomez remains benched post-op so pizarro played instead but did little, ribéry only played 1/2 match (not yet sure why), the new acquisitions dante and javi martínez played well, and kroos ruled today. the new striker, whatsisname, something eastern-european sounding with an m and a c and a z (mr mxzzplxcz?) (who substituted pizarro), kicked a horrible fucking penalty. the ref fucked up in several occasions (like stopping the game for a yellow card during a bayern attack instead of letting the game go on then give the card) but whatevs. if was nice to see badstuber on the left instead of center, filling in for alaba, and dante covering his usual spot. i think they have a better defense now than last year though i like alaba.

I'm starting to love CRonaldo more and more. He's a brilliant player, obviously, but I'm even warming to his ego-fueled theatrics. And there's something slightly tragic about a man who will be forever known as the guy who was almost as good as someone else, even when that someone else is Messi. And while I acknowledge Messi's superiority I have to admit that I'd far rather watch CRonaldo at the moment. With Messi you can only watch in awe at his skill whereas with CRonaldo you have all of that, plus the added dimension of his Herculean ego which, love it or hate it, surely contributes to him being the most compellingly watchable player in the world right now, even if he isn't the best. I especially love the way he treats every game like it was a chapter in his autobiography.

So Messi or Ronaldo?

I say Ronaldo everytime.

Although very different in style, they seem about equal talent-wise but Messi doesn't descend into meaningless showboating anywhere near as much. He's also far less selfish than CR and doesn't disappear in games anything like as much. Messi contributes even when he isn't scoring while Ronaldo may as well go home if he isn't getting goals. Saying that, CR's reputation was established long before he went to RM whereas we still have no idea how well Messi would do away from Barca. So I'd score it: Skill = equal (arguable and no way is Ronaldo more talented than Messi); All round contribution = Messi; Attitude = Messi; proven versatility = Ronaldo.

i think what you guys are trying to say is that cron-aldo would look better in drag, and with that i'll have to agree.

anyway, on other news, the bayern-schalke game was pretty great for bayern this morning, though in my eyes they are lacking a striker-- gomez is injured, mandzukic (i think i got the name right) has only sucked balls so far, and pizarro is kinda old to play a full game so they didn't put him in today (he would have done better than mandzukic i think). so bayern dominated almost completely but didn't really reflect that. toni kroos however continues to FUCKING RULE. ribéry out still recovering from injury (which is why i found out he only played 1/2 game vs. valencia). anyway, good fun.

ah i got the fucking bundesliga on cable yes i do yes i do.

managed to catch the last few minutes of chelsea-stoke city and saw the stats of only 7 shots to target-- was it a very boring game or was it "tense"?

you are empty inside

I listened to it on the radio and just watched the highlights on TV. More an interesting match than a good one. A lot is being made of how similar Chelsea's midfield players are. Mata, Oscar and Hazard are all v. good but it's hard to see how they offer anything different from one another when they play together, and unless Torres goes on an (unlikely) goal spree, Chelsea are gonna carry on struggling to convert the chances they have. Plus some pretty cringeworthy diving from Ivanovich and Oscar.

Haha thank you.

LET THE UNITED-LIVERPOOL DERBY BEGIN!

De Gea, Vidic or Scholes not starting is a surprise for me.

messi no doubt!

although as much as i hate ronaldo, i love his interviews and tantrums. hes a much more interesting person. ask messi something "yeah, it was a really tough game, im happy we got the three points, team work... bla bla bla"

ronaldo will actually speak his mind, which he is stupid to do, but its very entertaining.