Barcelona takes it to Real Madrid
Real Madrid can blame Chelsea for the debacle that happened to it on Saturday.
Furious at being held to a 0-0 tie at home by the English team in a European Champions League semifinal game Tuesday night, Barcelona traveled to Madrid and took the defending Spanish champion apart piece by incredible piece.
Barcelona’s comprehensive 6-2 victory not only ended Real Madrid’s 18-game unbeaten streak and all but secured the Spanish title for Coach Josep “Pep” Guardiola’s team, it also was one of the worst defeats ever inflicted against the nine-time European champion on its own field.
By the time Barcelona’s fifth goal rolled across the line, many in the crowd of 80,000 already were streaming from the stadium in disgust.
The fallout is going to be spectacular.
Real Madrid Coach Juande Ramos will be gone once the season ends. Real Madrid’s World Cup-winning Italian defender, Fabio Cannavaro, will be back at Juventus. Real Madrid’s Dutch winger, Arjen Robben, will be looking for a job posthaste.
Other players, too, will probably be shown the exit, but the biggest change will come in the front office.
Former Real Madrid President Florentino Perez, the man who built the “Galacticos” by bringing the likes of Raul, Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo and David Beckham together at Santiago Bernabeu stadium, will all but certainly return when elections are held in June.
Perez, with money to burn, will try to build “Galacticos II,” and his pursuit of such stars as Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka and others will make for a fascinating summer in the transfer market.
The Madrid faithful do not suffer such humiliations lightly, and the demand for change will be enormous.
Meanwhile, the respective coaches were left with vastly differing viewpoints Saturday.
“It’s a very sweet night, winning at this stadium and in front of these fans,” Guardiola said.
“There is an unpleasant taste in the mouth,” Ramos said.
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Kroenke gets it right
While his old Denver friend Phil Anschutz continues his merry way in Major League Soccer, Stan Kroenke is moving up in the world.
On Friday, Kroenke, who owns the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche and the Colorado Rapids of MLS, increased his stake in Arsenal of the English Premier League to 28.3%, making him the team’s biggest shareholder.
Arsenal, better known worldwide than the Nuggets, Avalanche and Rapids combined, will play Manchester United on Tuesday in a must-win European Champions League semifinal in London.
Before long, Kroenke will go head-to-head for control of the club with Arsenal’s other big investor, Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov.
When that comes about, Kroenke might well turn to Anschutz and suggest a partnership.
It would be a smart move, and Anschutz would be smart to consider it.
After all, isn’t it time he joined the likes of fellow North American billionaires Malcolm Glazer, George Gillett, Tom Hicks and Randy Lerner and entered soccer’s big leagues?
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Klinsmann pays the price
Now that Bayern Munich has seen fit to remove Jurgen Klinsmann as coach, one would have thought the German club could have shown a little more class in the wake of his dismissal.
But no.
First, it was the Bundesliga team’s Dutch captain, Mark Van Bommel, long an undermining figure, who suggested almost within hours of Klinsmann’s departure that things would now go right for the defending Bundesliga champions.
Next, Franz Beckenbauer, the club president whose feelings about Klinsmann run hot and cold depending on results, stated that Klinsmann had lost not only the locker room but also the front office and the fans.
“He had lost the respect of the club’s management and the team,” Beckenbauer said. “You could see that the team was not following the coach anymore. They were doing what they wanted, and those were the first signs of things collapsing.”
Fans at Allianz Arena had turned on Klinsmann with increasing anger in recent weeks, despite his having coached Germany to third place in the 2006 World Cup.
“There were many fans who were against him from the very first day,” Beckenbauer said. “We underestimated the effect of this atmosphere against him.”
Such are the expectations for clubs such as Bayern that even reaching the quarterfinals of the European Champions League and being only one game out of first place in Germany with five games to play were not enough to save Klinsmann.
Bayern, under interim successor Jupp Heynkes, won Saturday and is still positioned to win the league and qualify for next season’s Champions League.
Klinsmann, meanwhile, lasted only 10 months in his first club coaching job. What he will do now is up in the air, but he’s only 44, and the soccer world has certainly not heard the last of him.
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International playing field
A total of 54 players from 26 countries took part in the Barcelona-Chelsea and Manchester United-Arsenal European Champions League semifinal matches last week, with the decisive return legs set for Tuesday and Wednesday. Here’s where those players were born:
Spain: 8
England: 7
France: 7
Brazil: 5
Ivory Coast: 3
Cameroon: 2
Argentina: 2
Serbia: 2
There was also one player each from: Mexico, the Czech Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo; Nigeria, Germany, Guyana, Ghana, Belarus, the Netherlands, Senegal, Ireland, Scotland, Portugal, Wales, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, Togo and Denmark.
