By Myles Palmer
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A Premiership club reaches the Champions League final !
Liverpool will play Chelsea for the right to lose to AC Milan in Istanbul.
Two big dates in my diary : Chelsea v Liverpool on Wednesday April 27th and Liverpool v Chelsea on Tuesday May 3rd.
JUVENTUS didn’t turn up for the first leg at Anfield and didn’t really turn up in last night’s 0-0 at the Stadio delle Alpi either.
Juve are a ruggedly workmanlike team who win games with flashes of brilliance.
Their game-plan was : We are the masters of the one-goal game, so let’s nick it in the second half.
The Liverpool offside trap was good and by the second half they realised that had nothing to be scared of.
The longer the game went on the more Juventus looked like a clapped-out old Transit van that might not make the motorway and wouldn’t reach Birmingham if it did.
ITALIANS are strange. They refuse to move out of their own culture. They think Serie A is bigger.
Do Juventus see Milan going through to Istanbul as a chance for them to sneak Serie A ?
In a country with Berlusconi as PM you will have Ultras. That’s obvious.
If they’re not happy, the fanatics stop the game, proving that they don’t care for sport at all.
Roma-Lazio, they stopped the game.
Inter-Milan, they stopped the game by throwing 30 flares and one hit Dida on the shoulder.
AND REF MARCUS MERK RE-STARTED IT !!!
Merk tried to finish the game. More flares came down.
Berlusconi could ban the sale of those flares today if he wanted.
I LIKED RAFAEL BENITEZ from day 1.
But we all knew that, after Houllier, it would be hard to teach Liverpool how to play football.
They had been booting it 70 yards to Owen and Heskey for years.
Benitez is a good guy who knows more than he says. So he’s the opposite of most managers, who say more than they know.
His Valencia had more craft than his Liverpool, obviously. It’s early days at Anfield.
CHELSEA beat Bayern Munich 6-5 on aggregate.
They won the first leg 4-2 and lost the second 3-2.
The first half was 10 v 10 because Duff and Makaay never got a kick.
Ze Roberto took Huth apart and had his best game for years.
Joe Cole had two assists and the second one was a ball that Ronaldinho could not have put on Drogba’s head more perfectly.
And Chelsea were lucky.
When Schweinsteiger’s shot was deflected, it hit the bar.
Lampard and Cole’s two deflections both went in the net.
Lampard scored against the run of play in 30, Pizarro levelled it at 1-1 in 65, Drogba’s header put Chelsea 2-1 up in 80 and it was 2-1 until 90 minutes when Guerrero made it 2-2 and then Scholl got the winner in 94.
This is Chelsea’s third season in the Champions League and they’ve reached three quarter-finals and two semis.
I can only conclude that Arsene’s Arsenal – with no semis in eight campaigns – have made this competition look harder than it is.
Enjoyed the two games because I liked the organised physicality of Chelsea and Liverpool.
I prefer the thundering commitment of Terry, Carragher and company to the mean professionalism of Emerson and Montero.
BALLACK was marvellous though, 15 months before his World Cup. He wasn’t scared of Vieira was he?
Its great to see good teams play each other.
As Souness once said, These are the games you live for.
Next time Drogba will face Carragher and Hyypia, who give you less than Lucio and Kovac.
And, with Benitez at the helm, and the roaring Kop still worth a goal, Liverpool have a chance. They need the glory. And they need the money.
BOTTOM LINE ON MOURINHO?
Chelsea have no full backs.
AC Milan have four great fullbacks : Cafu, Maldini, Kaladze and Pancaro.
Plus Stam was a right back before he was at PSV and can play there. And Serginho is a Brazilian wingback who can do a job.
So Milan’s squad is stronger and they have the world’s greatest player in Shevchenko, who came back from fractured cheekbone and HEADED a goal in the first leg against Inter and in the second leg he hit his second greatest goal ever, a left foot swerver from the edge of the box.
SHEV’S best goal was a surreal thunderbolt against Juventus.
Even Abramovich can’t sign a player as great as Shevchenko.
Because there isn’t one.
Shevchenko is out there on his own.
Andriy Shevchenko is the alpha male football gladiator of modern times.
He has more bottle, more confidence, more technique, more focus, more athletic power, more two-footed danger, than any other footballer.
BLACKBURN also demonstrate organised physicality.
Blackburn broke Cisse’s leg in October. Blackburn crippled Robben. They are tough competitors.
In Cardiff, they will have Paul Dickov and Robbie Savage.
Morten Gamst Pedersen has a devasating left foot and can score against anybody.
Once when I was talking to George Graham about fiery strikers, about Wrighty and Dickov, George said ,”I sometimes wish I could take some of the blood out of them and put it in the others.”
I used to know Paul, a lovely Scot.
Paul told me about an incident in an Arsenal reserve game. He went for a 50-50 with the goalkeeper and was badly injured.
He was lying in the penalty area and the ref waved play on. So his teammates kicked the ball out.
But the ref ordered play to continue and the game went on with him still down and still in agony.
So the other team kicked the ball out and Paul was taken off on a stretcher and as he was being carried off he swore at the ref.
And the ref gave him a red card !
Yeah, I love Paul Dickov. Great to see him doing so well at Blackburn. He scored with an early header at Highbury on the last day of last season, as you know.
Have a winning weekend !
April 14th 2005.