main

PreviewSchedule

What to Watch This Weekend, Part 1: Saturday Sept 17

September 17, 2011 — by Suman

 

Subscribing as we do the just-in-time philosophy, here’s your weekend TV guide for today’s matches, with the first one kicking off in 15 minutes at Ewood Park.  Check back tomorrow morning for Sunday’s picks.

(As usual, we’ve included US TV coverage, and listed kickoff times in terms of ET.  If you live elsewhere, do the timezone math, and check your local listings–or rather check livesoccertv.com.)

Saturday, Sept 17

England, Blackburn-Arsenal 7:30aET (ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Venky’s boys host the Gunners.  Arsene’s revamped squad is still a work in progress, but at least they’ve produced a Premier League win and a Champions League draw (on the continent against a good team, no less).  They should really beat Blackburn, given that the Rovers are sitting dead last in the table, with only a single point from 4 games. But we’ll see..

Spain, Gijon-Valencia 12pET (DirecTV 477): We like Gijón, because it’s the hometown club of un amigo (y un periodista…y un buen jugador).  Plus we like Manolo Preciado (and his moustache).  But we also like Valencia, and would like to see them do more than just finish 3rd in the league again this year.  We think they could make some noise in the Champions League, even though they only managed a draw against Genk this week. There’s no reason they shouldn’t advance out of their group (along with Chelsea, most likely–so they will need to beat Bayer Leverkeusen).

We're bullish on Barça to run past Osasuna in Pamplona today

Spain, Barcelona-Osasuna 2pET (ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): Barcelona are coming off two consecutive disappointing draws–against Real Sociedad last weekend and then against AC Milan mid-week.  In both cases they were leading before defensive lapses allowed the opponent to draw level–indicating that Guardiola’s squad may indeed have a weakness, with a lack of depth in defense. In addition, both Alexis Sanchez and Andres Iniesta are out for a number of weeks due to injuries, so all of a sudden the midfield is looking a little thin too.  On the bright side, that means we’ll see more of Cesc, Thiago, and Ibrahim Affelay–and perhaps even a more competitive La Liga race (though probably not the latter).  Today they travel to Estadio Reyno de Navarra (formerly El Sadar) in Pamplona to take on Club Atlético Osasuna.  Again, like with Arsenal, it should be a match that the big club should win–as recently as three years ago Sid Lowe described them as ” the worst top-flight side in the whole of Europe.” [*]

Italy, Inter Milan-Roma 2:30pET (Fox Soccer, Fox Deportes, ESPN3.com): An important match for both clubs, which are both struggling mightily in the early going.  Inter has opened the season with 3 stinging defeats: in the Italian Super Cup to rivals AC Milan, in their Serie A opener to Palermo (a stunningly entertaining match), and in their Champions League match on Wednesday, shockingly,  at home to Turkish Champions League fill-in Trabzonspor.  But we’ll be rooting for la magica Roma, out of loyalty to nostro amico Romano.  Plus we’re rooting for Barcelona imports Luis Enrique and Bojan Krkic to do well in Serie A.

*: We can’t resist excerpting from Sid Lowe’s column about Osasuna at length, just in case you’re too lazy to have clicked thru:

Time was when El Sadar was the place to watch the game in Spain – a tight, steep, oppressive ground that, as current coach José Antonio Camacho put it with a hint of nostalgia, “smells of football”. A fearsome place – part Basque, part not – where no team dared tread, Osasuna’s home gloried in a small pitch and a stand so sheer that from the top you could see the hills but not the touchline and certainly not the dugouts where opponents were wedged right in against the baying hoards banging on the box behind them. A place where players could almost reach the fans from the pitch, clobbering reporters on their way through, and where fans could certainly reach players from the stands – launching everything from Chupa-Chups to metal oil jugs.

Hostile as hell, it was a place where even if fans couldn’t reach, ball-boys could, hurling more than just abuse at unsuspecting corner takers. A place where what happened on the pitch seemed like the logical extension of what happened off it; where Osasuna matches were all blood and thunder, with the emphasis on the blood. This was the club where one striker admitted that he told his team-mates to “just sling the bloody thing into the box” and another added “we’re not superstars, what we are is gladiators”; the club whose tactics often involved booting the ball, and the opposition, as high in the air as possible. It wasn’t always pretty, but boy was it passionate – and in its furious, slapstick brutality, oddly good fun.

Effective, too. Since returning to the Primera Liga in 2000, and surviving on the final day of the following season, Osasuna never really found themselves in desperate trouble again, despite one of the smallest budgets in the division. Better still, this time three years ago they were top of the table under Javier Aguirre, the coach who responded to suggestions from his players that they would go out and enjoy themselves at Camp Nou by snapping: “The bastards are mad, they can enjoy themselves in the pub.”

But then something changed. The name, for a start. Osasuna flogged the rights to name their ground and, having won nine out of nine at El Sadar, they immediately lost three on the trot at the Reyno de Navarra. It wasn’t enough to prevent a historic Champions League place at the end of the 2005-06 season but the slide had started…