Champions League final will bring out all the stars
Not to overstate or anything, but one of the most glamorous sports matches in the history of the world will transpire today just down the continent in Rome.
There, in the 72,000-seat Stadio Olimpico, they’ll somehow take one soccer pitch and shoehorn onto it both Manchester United and Barcelona, two of the most glittering soccer clubs in any era, for a match of almost blinding star shine.
Those two then will try to solve or thwart each other in the European Champions League final, the hilt of a season-long continent-wide chase for the most coveted club cup on the planet. “It has the capability to be a fantastic final,” went Manchester United Manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s understatement in Rome.
With a 47-country continent plus chunks of other curious continents bracing themselves and filling TV rooms, and thousands of cameras clicking in the stadium, the glamour might be so luminous that Cristiano Ronaldo’s hair gel could wind up proving visible from outer space.
Ronaldo of Portugal and Manchester United would be the best player in the world according to the 2008 balloting, yet this game has so much oomph that it also hogs the runner-up then and the potential winner next time they get around to voting, Lionel Messi of Argentina and Barcelona.
This giant thing has the commanding champion of the English Premier League, the best league on the planet, against the commanding champion of the Spanish La Liga, the most elegant league on the planet.
It has the world’s foremost representative of “beautiful football,” Barcelona, which has scored an astounding 156 goals in all competitions, with 97 coming from its dashing trio of Messi, Samuel Eto’o and Thierry Henry, all in a manner so picturesque that its Camp Nou stadium ought to play only classical music.
The BBC reported that during the 180-plus minutes of a two-match, Champions League semifinal with the London club Chelsea, Chelsea players attempted 687 passes with 59.5%-percent accuracy, while Barcelona players made 1,359 passes, meeting their targets 82.1% of the time.
This Barcelona team can leave people wild-eyed and love-struck, in particular after a 6-2 win at its gigantic rival Real Madrid on May 2 had observers attempting sonnets.
Barcelona’s 38-year-old manager, one Josep “Pep” Guardiola, has piloted this art gallery toward beauty on the pitch and cups on the shelf, having already won both the league and Spain’s domestic-cup competition.
If he and they claim this, they’ll become the first Spanish club to sweep the three, and they’ll hearten all those who believe soccer a measurement of prowess more than roughness.
Yet this beautiful soccer is about to run across dynastic soccer that’s far from unsightly itself, that of Manchester United, and it’s instructive that the only time Barcelona has looked gummed up came against Chelsea of the fast, hard, unforgiving English league.
For minute after minute until almost the very last minute, Barcelona could not score, going blank at home for the only time all season in the first leg.
Only at the brink of exit in London did the Barcelona-raised midfielder Andres Iniesta score a shocking goal in the 92nd minute on a melodramatic May 6 that sent the whole club scurrying into a heaving, festive pile and sent Barcelona through by an aggregate 1-1, advancing because it had scored the lone away goal.
That jolt prevented an all-English final between Chelsea and Manchester United, which would have doubled as a repeat.
Twelve months ago in Moscow, amid more melodrama plus some rain, Manchester United and Chelsea went hurtling into penalty kicks, which Manchester United won only after Chelsea’s John Terry famously shanked a clinching try wide of the goal.
That gave Manchester United a second European Champions League crown under Ferguson and a third overall, and if it can stop Barcelona from getting a third overall and a second in the last four years -- the fabulous Ronaldinho helped it win in 2006 -- Manchester United would become the first repeat titlist in 19 years.
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