European Champions League play could benefit Italy in World Cup
Judging by the teams that last week advanced to the quarterfinals of the European Champions League, Italy is looking pretty good to win the World Cup.
Huh?
No, that wasn’t a typographical mish-mash or a shocking display of soccer ignorance. It was merely an observation based on which players from among the eight teams most likely to win the World Cup also play for one of the eight teams still in the running to win the Champions League.
South Africa 2010, the 19th World Cup and the first to be played on African soil, begins in Johannesburg on June 11. The final of the Champions League, meanwhile, will be played May 22 in Madrid.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time in between to recharge the batteries from a grueling Champions League campaign, or to get over the disappointment of losing at the final hurdle, before stepping onto soccer’s biggest stage.
This is where Italy possibly benefits.
Only one player virtually guaranteed to be on Coach Marcello Lippi’s Italy World Cup roster — 19-year-old Inter Milan defender Davide Santon — is still chasing the Champions League dream.
The rest of Italy’s players, the vaunted stars from AC Milan, AS Roma, Juventus and Fiorentina, have been shunted aside. They have only Serie A to play for, and that looks like a race set to be won yet again by Inter Milan, if it can hold its nerve.
Conversely, France’s World Cup hopes could take a beating during the latter stages of the Champions League, with no fewer than a dozen French internationals still involved.
Because defending French champion Bordeaux was drawn to play former French champion Olympique Lyon in the quarterfinals, a handful of France’s likely World Cup players are guaranteed at least a semifinal place in Europe’s top club competition.
Similarly, either Manchester United’s French defender Patrice Evra or Bayern Munich’s French winger Franck Ribery will still be playing Champions League soccer at least until the end of April because United and Bayern — who contested the memorable 1999 Champions League final — face each other in the quarterfinals.
It could be a long spring for already long-faced France Coach Raymond Domenech.
Another quarterfinal will see Arsenal playing Barcelona, and that series could have a major impact on World Cup favorite Spain. Six of its potentially key World Cup players will be playing in the two-game quarterfinal series.
With Barcelona having won all six of the competitions it entered last season, and still battling to retain its Spanish and European titles, there has to be a concern for Spain Coach Vicente Del Bosque over burnout or just plain exhaustion.
Brazil, the second-favorite to win the World Cup, meanwhile will be keeping a wary eye on the final Champions League quarterfinal series, in which Inter Milan plays CSKA Moscow, the only outsider in the final eight, with no World Cup-bound players.
Brazil Coach Dunga’s starting goalkeeper, Julio Cesar, and two of his starting defenders, Maicon and Lucio, both play for Inter Milan, and Dunga will be desperate to keep them all healthy and motivated.
Bert van Marwijk, coach of the Netherlands, also is paying close attention to Inter Milan. Van Marwijk has four World Cup players still in Champions League contention, but Inter playmaker Wesley Sneijder is far and away the most important. It is not too much to state that Dutch hopes rest on the midfielder.
Germany, which has reached the final in seven of the last 14 World Cups, winning three, might be half-hoping that Manchester United disposes of Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals just to give six of Germany’s players a longer break.
On the other hand, Germany Coach Joachim Loew could view a Champions League winner’s medal as just the thing for Bastian Schweinsteiger and his Bayern teammates to take to South Africa as a confidence booster.
It all depends on the viewpoint.
Take England, for instance, if Wayne Rooney continues his brilliant form for Manchester United and wins both another English Premier League title and the Champions League, will he have anything left in the tank for South Africa or will he be even more motivated to complete a unique trio of titles?
That’s what England Coach Fabio Capello must be wondering, and the same goes for Argentina Coach Diego Maradona.
As Lionel Messi goes, so goes Argentina, and Messi, the reigning FIFA world player of the year, is in spectacular form for Barcelona. In fact, about the only honor missing from his astonishing array of accomplishments is a World Cup winner’s medal.
South Africa 2010 could provide it, but how Barcelona does during the rest of its season could make or break Argentine hopes.
Like it or not, the Champions League and the World Cup are inextricably entwined, and doesn’t that make it all the more fascinating?
