Stunning Day for Elite Teams
Spanish champion and nine-time European Cup winner Real Madrid and English Premier League leader Arsenal were knocked out of the European Champions League in quarterfinal upsets Tuesday.
AS Monaco scored a stunning home victory, defeating Real Madrid, 3-1, overturning a 4-2 first-leg loss in Spain, tying the series 5-5 on aggregate, and advancing on the away goals rule.
In London, meanwhile, high-spending and high-flying Chelsea shocked Arsenal, 2-1, at the Gunners’ Highbury Stadium to win the series, 3-2 on aggregate, after the teams had tied the first match, 1-1, at Chelsea.
“Everybody writes their own story, and the players are writing a superb page for Monaco and all of French football,” said Monaco Coach Didier Deschamps, a World Cup winner with France in 1998.
“It wasn’t easy, but we deserved it. It’s proof that in football anything can happen. You just have to believe until the end.”
Two goals by Ludovic Giuly and another by Fernando Morientes -- on loan from Real Madrid -- were enough to give Monaco the honors after Raul had opened the scoring for Real to extend the Spaniards’ overall lead to a seemingly insurmountable three goals.
In the semifinals, Monaco will play Chelsea, which fell behind when Jose Antonio Reyes scored for Arsenal but tied the score and the series on Frank Lampard’s goal and won it when Wayne Bridge scored three minutes from the end.
“The players are very down,” Arsenal Coach Arsene Wenger said. “This was a big blow.”
In other quarterfinals today, defending European champion AC Milan will have a 4-1 first-leg advantage when it plays Deportivo La Coruna in Spain, and UEFA Cup winner and Portuguese champion FC Porto takes a 2-0 lead into its game on the road against French champion Olympique Lyon.
FIFA Finances
FIFA President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter said in Switzerland that the finances of world soccer’s governing body were “healthy in every respect” and that the Zurich-based organization had made a profit of almost $114 million in 2003.
According to FIFA’s financial statement, it had income of $574 million last year and expenditures of $460.5 million. Almost all of the income was from advances on the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Ailton Makes a Point
Brazilian forward Ailton, the leading scorer in the German Bundesliga with 25 goals for league leader Werder Bremen, has hardly endeared himself to the citizens of the industrial Ruhr Valley town of Gelsenkirchen, where he will play for Schalke ’04 starting next season.
“Everything that I’ve heard about Gelsenkirchen until now is a disaster,” he told NDR Info radio in Germany. “It’s not supposed to be particularly nice, and young people have few opportunities to have fun. Perhaps I’ll keep on living in Bremen and only play [in Gelsenkirchen]. My job is only to score goals there.”
Quick Passes
Chilean Coach Manuel Pellegrini, who won Argentine league championships with San Lorenzo and River Plate in recent years, was named coach of Villareal in Spain’s Primera Liga.... Italy and Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon, 26, signed a new contract that will keep him with the Turin-based club until 2008.... Former Belgian international Fernand Goyvaerts, who spent part of his career with Barcelona and later with Real Madrid in Spain, died at 65.... Leaders of South Korea’s soccer federation will meet Thursday to “discuss all the national team’s problems exposed in the [0-0 World Cup qualifying tie] against the Maldives,” including the future of Portuguese Coach Humberto Coelho.... Gigi Becali, the owner of Romania’s most famous club, Steaua Bucharest, was ordered by a Bucharest court to pay $20,000 for slandering Romania national team Coach Anghel Iordanescu, whom he accused of accepting bribes to influence player selection.... Wimbledon, which upset Liverpool in the 1988 F.A. Cup Final and finished sixth in the English Premier League as recently as 1994, was assured of relegation to the second division when it lost, 2-1, at home to Sunderland in a first division match.
-- Compiled by Grahame L. Jones
