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Klinsmann, Rainforest Conditioning and the 1953 Hungarian Golden Team

June 17, 2014 — by Rob Kirby

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[Extreme conditioning, cribbed from 1950s Communist Hungary? After last night’s 2-1 victory over Ghana in the coastal heat of Natal, that’s the ideal method for Klinsmann and the U.S. team as they stare down the barrel of the Ruffhouse in Manaus, heart of the Amazon, against Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal. Enjoy the Cult Football at Large article here in excerpt or over at Vocativ.com.]

It’s no secret that the U.S. Men’s National Team is not a favorite going into the World Cup in Brazil. The media has panned the team’s chances, pointing to its unfavorable inclusion in Group G—what some call the Group of Death, with some justification. The U.S. faces three big opponents in the group: Ghana in Natal on June 16, Portugal in Manaus on June 22 and Germany in Recife on June 26. Ghana has knocked the U.S. out of two straight World Cups. Portugal boasts Cristiano Ronaldo—probably the best player in the world—and always shows up in big tournaments (semifinalists at the 2006 World Cup, and the 2008 and 2012 Euro Championships). And Germany reached the World Cup finals in 2002, and the semis 2006 and 2010.

What’s more, America will endure a travel itinerary of almost 9,000 miles between the three group stage matches, kicking off in the far northeast of the country, the heart of the rainforest, then back to the far northeast of the country. None of their games take place near base camp in São Paolo (where the team will return after each match), and all of them hug the most extreme equatorial heat and humidity zones of Brazil.

For the USMNT, there are a lot of factors they couldn’t control: group selection, World Cup layout, the humidity of the Amazon. But prepping for climate extremes, now there’s something that could have been addressed in training.

Way back in January, USMNT head coach Jürgen Klinsmann organized a two-week training camp (of mainly Major League Soccer players) in air-conditioned, five-star facilities in São Paolo. The May training camp was in Stanford, California—hardly known for oppressive conditions. The team then played friendlies in California and New Jersey before confronting some actual humidity in Jacksonville, Florida, against Nigeria (Ghana’s neighbor and stylistic analogue) and winning 2-1.

If he really wanted to prepare his players, Klinsmann should have sent them to the Amazon, confiscated their passports and stranded them in the 80 percent humidity of the rainforest. To acclimatize, players need to swelter for long stretches, training in the muggiest midday heat available, rather than being strapped to electrodes in climate-controlled sports laboratories. Live in huts, not hotels. Yoga, but Bikram. Pull on the humidity like a second skin. The World Cup commences and the players leap through the gate as if on endorphin rushes, ripping through defenses at top speed.

So now what the U.S. needs is an alternate plan—and preferably an out-of-nowhere checkmate. Klinsmann could steer the USMNT out of its hellish World Cup group in Brazil and into the knockout stages, provided he gets dictatorial at the helm. He just needs to incorporate some Cold War Communist management tactics and perhaps jam some treadmills into the sauna.

***

Jürgen Klinsmann had a clinical soccer pedigree. He won German footballer of the year in 1988 and set controls for world domination. He won the World Cup with West Germany in 1990, the 1996 European Championships with unified Germany and two UEFA (Union of European Football Association) Cups—one with Internazionale and one with Bayern Munich. As a player, he barked orders like any authoritative striker, and his stats gave him automatic street cred.

As a manager, Klinsmann led Germany to the semifinals of the 2006 World Cup, and later managed Bayern Munich, only to fall out with the board. His “führer factor” had come under question due to his relentless optimism, yoga advocacy and his residency in Southern California. People sometimes doubted the tanned man in après-ski casual could be the cold-blooded dictator fans expect in a coach.

But when you don’t have superior force (as is the case with his current U.S. squad) psychological warfare and conditioning are your two best hopes. The horse has bolted on conditioning, but regarding mind games and subterfuge, Klinsmann may yet have some chops. Klinsmann goosed Cristiano Ronaldo a good half-year ahead of the World Cup in the FIFA Ballon d’Or voting. When ballot choices became public, people saw that Klinsmann had not only left Ronaldo off his list, but he also nominated his nemeses: Franck Ribery, who deprived Ronaldo of the UEFA player of the year award; the “New Ronaldo,” Gareth Bale—Real Madrid teammate and therefore enemy within; and Radamel Falcao from the smaller club in Madrid that knocked Real out of last year’s Copa del Rey, and handed the team its first city derby loss in 14 years.

The devious placement of the World Cup qualifying match versus Costa Rica in high elevation Colorado in March 2013—and the ensuing snowpocalypse against the group rival in zero-visibility blizzard—was another example, and showed some promising diabolical tendencies. Finding a way to present Ronaldo with a mirror palace built in the jungle would prove an even bigger coup; like Narcissus trapped by the beauty of his image, Ronaldo might miss training sessions or group stage matches entirely.

But yet, Klinsmann brought 26 American players to Brazil in January and let them all leave. That was his biggest mistake. Jürgen should have embraced his inner Iron Curtain coach; in particular, his inner Gusztáv Sebes. By cribbing from the 1953 Hungarian Golden Team’s shocking 6-3 victory at fortress Wembley, and the autocratic advance measures Sebes took in adaptation prep, Klinsmann could have concocted a modern-day heat-tolerance strategy to get America into the knockouts.

***

Back in newly nationalized 1949 Hungary, the Ministry of Defense appropriated the Budapest-area Honvéd team as the army team, whereupon Sebes, as deputy minister of sport, installed himself as coach, appropriated the team for international competition purposes and started conscripting the best players in the country to Honvéd. Conveniently, the club already possessed the deadly left foot of star player Ferenc Puskás, who went on to score 83 goals in 84 games for Hungary (357 in 354 games for Honvéd).

Honvéd doubled as club side and national team, winning the league title five times between 1949 and 1955. It shared trophies with MTK Budapest, the secret service team, because even a ranking deputy minister doesn’t provoke the secret police unnecessarily. MTK also held the final key players for when the operation went full Voltron into the aggregate entity, the Aranycsapat (the Golden Team).

Emerging from the darkest days of Stalinist repression, the Golden Team (also known as the Magical Magyars) fused full-court pressure with fluid interchangeability of roles, a precursor to 1970s Dutch total football. Sebes subjected his national team to a full-time fitness and dietary regimen to ensure their conditioning would deliver high tempo for the full 90 minutes—they were Communist soldiers, after all. (The English media called Puskás, in actuality a lieutenant colonel, the “Galloping Major.”) Sebes focused on technique across the board, so players could change position seamlessly, scoring at will.

After the Golden Team won the Olympics in 1952, England, which historically held up its nose at foreign opposition—having codified the rules 90 years previous, cementing their superiority—deigned to invite the actual world No. 1 team to play at the vaunted Empire Stadium at Wembley. England had never lost to continental opposition at home, and a wet late-November day would offer classic English home turf conditions. England needed a boost. After having declined part in any of the first three World Cups, they got dumped out of their first, the 1950 World Cup, in a stunning 1-0 loss to the lowly U.S. team, which did not qualify for another for 40 years.

Here’s where Klinsmann could have learned a thing or two. As if marshaling forces for something outlandish (you know, like a match in a rainforest), Sebes prepared for the 1953 match against England by importing every aspect of English football to Budapest. He resized a training pitch to the exact oversized dimensions of the Wembley field. He considered the different-style English leather ball that got waterlogged as the game went on; especially with the all-English conditions of a cold, wet November day, it would take on weight quickly. Sebes obtained some English soccer balls and instituted training with them on the replica pitch immediately. He also compelled opposition players in the league to play in an “English style,” in order that the team get used to the different formation the British employed.

Sebes tested the English ball as the match ball in a slightly concerning 2-2 draw with Sweden 10 days before the so-called Match of the Century. A final calibration of shot settings with the gradually heavier ball, in a 18-0 blowout against a patsy Renault factory worker side in France, got Hungary fully acclimated. And on the day at Wembley, Hungary scored within the first minute and destroyed England 6-3. Six months later at the return fixture in Budapest, Hungary inflicted an even more brutal 7-1.

Famously, no Communist nation has ever won the World Cup. Hungary won the Olympics in 1952 and dominated the 1954 World Cup tournament, including a group stage 8-3 rout of West Germany, until suffering a crushing loss to those same Germans 2-1 in the final. (But, somehow, not the same Germans–a totally different lineup, as if the Germans had initially played possum.)

Although Hungary’s Golden Team scored a World Cup record 27 goals in the tournament, logged the famous 6-3 and 7-1 victories over England and went 31 straight games unbeaten between 1950 and 1956, they lost that crucial match in 1954. They’re called the best team to never win a World Cup, though the Dutch team of the 70s also has a claim on that title. In 1956, the Soviets invaded to crush an uprising against Communist rule, and Puskás and several others defected while Honvéd toured South America on exhibition. After that, the national team slowly disintegrated.

Imagine Jürgen had stationed his players in Manaus ever since that January training camp, and all the clubs, agents, sponsors and litigators had miraculously allowed this to happen. Not in plush São Paulo, but in maximum acclimation Manaus—capital of the rainforest. The players willingly submitted to six months straight of Amazonian boot camp, with full focus on their Arena da Amazônia showdown with Portugal, the Ruffhouse in Manaus. Jaunts to the marginally less oppressive coastal Natal and Recife would have seemed like destination vacations. While Cristiano banged in all the goals in Spain and the Champions League, posed in various stages of nudity for magazine covers and photo spreads, and opened a museum about himself in his own honor, U.S. players would have explored new realms of heat exhaustion and emerged reformed, rebuilt and steeled for heat-tolerance in the group stage and beyond.  …

Full article: The Communist Guide to Winning at Soccer  at Vocativ.com

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UEFA Champions League MegaMix Round of 16 Preview (Part 1): Man City-Barcelona, Leverkusen-PSG, Arsenal-Bayern, Milan-Atlético

February 17, 2014 — by Rob Kirby

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Set your DVRs, plan your late long lunches, etc. The Champions League is back. If you're a follower of European club football, you're excited as we are. If not, but you plan to watch the World Cup this summer, this is the competition you need to watch to get ready. Here are our previews of this week's four first leg matches, with a focus on which players to watch on each team (and a particular focus on players that will feature prominently at the World Cup this summer): Man City-Barcelona, Bayer Leverkusen-PSG, Arsenal-Bayern Munich and AC Milan-Atlético Madrid.

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The Great American TV Tune-In

July 4, 2012 — by Rob Kirby

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Expect to see more soccer on American TV.

The trend of increasing U.S. TV soccer viewership continued with the 2012 European Championship, with Americans tuning in throughout the tournament but particularly for Spain’s 4-0 mauling of 10-man Italy in the final. As such, even new viewers could probably repeat the super-over-reported stat that Spain became not only the first country to win consecutive Euros but also the first to win an unprecedented three major international tournaments in a row, factoring in the 2010 World Cup. But since the achievement really is pretty phenomenal, we’ll repeat it, too.

Overall, the U.S. audience jumped 51% over that of Euro 2008. The surge is particularly striking when you consider that the numbers include no big-four broadcast network coverage, but rather just ESPN. (ABC and ESPN partnered in 2008.)

Top Viewership Numbers in Euro 2008 and Euro 2012:

Sun, July 1, 2012          ESPN      Spain vs. Italy 4,068,000
Sun, June 29, 2008      ABC         Germany vs. Spain     3,761,000
Sun, June 24, 2012      ESPN      England vs. Italy     2,968,000
Sun, June 10, 2012      ESPN      Spain vs. Italy     2,113,000
Wed, June 27, 2012     ESPN      Spain vs. Portugal     1,952,000
Sun, June 22, 2008      ESPN       Spain vs. Italy     1,911,000
Thu, June 28, 2012      ESPN      Germany vs. Italy     1,851,000
Sat, June 21, 2008        ABC         Netherlands vs. Russia     1,838,000
Sat, June 9, 2012          ESPN       Germany vs. Portugal     1,798,000
Sat, June 23, 2012        ESPN2     Spain vs. France     1,758,000

Considering the final week of the tournament coincided with Wimbledon, the Tour de France and various golf tournaments, the numbers actually mean something. It’s not like there was nothing else on TV. Some speculate that England’s entry into the quarterfinals helped garner the attention of their American cousins, or perhaps new viewers tuned in to learn what all the fuss was about with regard to Spain. Hard to know. Regardless, the objective data will make broadcasters and advertisers take note.

Over the course of 31 matches in the three-week tournament, an average of 1,300,000 viewers tuned in, versus the 859,000 viewer average in 2008.

Incidentally, these numbers reflect English language broadcast only. On Spanish-language TV, the final posted a 28% uptick in viewers, for an ESPN Deportes total of 1,125,000 viewers, making it the second highest-rated European soccer match ever on a Spanish-language sports cable network.

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Europa League Final Preview: The Basque Lions vs The Madrid Mattress Makers

May 9, 2012 — by Suman

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The UEFA Europa League final is upon us. It’s an all-Spanish match later today, with Atlético Madrid vs Athletic Bilbao facing off at the National Arena in Bucharest.  It’s a late kickoff in Romania: 9:45pm EEST, which corresponds to the usual 2:45pmET/11:45amPT for those of in the US.

(Athletic Bilbao’s nickname is Los Leones, while Atlético is known as Los Colchoneros–The Mattress Makers.  Hence the headline.)

See here for a quick overview of the road these two clubs took the final, and see UEFA.com’s match centre here for previews, feature articles, lineups, stats, etc.  From UEFA’s match backgrounder:

This term Athletic won their home Liga fixture 3-0 in October with the help of two Fernando Llorente goals [a match report here], but a Falcao double consigned them to a 2-1 loss at the Vicente Calderón in March [a match report here].

We previously wrote about Athletic Bilbao initially in November (here), ahead of their home match against Barcelona. We focused there on the interesting relationship between Athletic Bilbao’s manager Marcelo Bielsa and Pep Guardiola. (The two who will meet again in a couple weeks, when Barcelona and Athletic meet in this season’s Copa del Rey fnal. It will be Guardiola’s last match managing Barcelona. Coincidentally that match will take place at the Vicente Calderon, Atlético’s home ground.)

Bielsa and Atlético’s manager Diego Simeone also know each other very well:

Bielsa was Simeone’s coach with Argentina between 1998 and 2002. Both were involved in Argentina’s 2002 FIFA World Cup campaign, where they failed to progress beyond the group stage. Simeone made the last of his 106 international appearances under Bielsa in Sapporo, in a 1-0 defeat by England on 7 June.

Simeone was also celebrated player for Atlético, spending two stints playing in Madrid (1993-1997 and 2003-2005), and his return to the club mid-season as manager has been a very successful one, at least in terms of results. In addition to guiding the club to this European final, Atlético is still in contention for a Champions League spot.  See here for excerpts from a Sid Lowe column about the return of El Cholo to Atlético.

Regarding the squads, here are some players to watch:

Athletic Bilbao: Fernando Llorente up front, at “la punta” of the attack, a player who has won 19 caps playing for Spain (including an appearance in South Africa for the World Cup-winning side); speedy and skilled 18-year-old Iker Muniain, who plays in an attacking midfield role, often out wide; behind them 23-year old Javi Martínez, formerly a central midfielder who Bielsa has moved back into central defense; and right back Andoni Iraola.

Atlético Madrid: Colombian striker Falcao is the primary goal-scoring threat, although young Spanish winger Adrián López has also been scoring in Europa matches; behind them look for Brazilian midfield playmaker Diego.

It’s worth listening to this week’s Guardian podcast. After the discussion of Newcastle-City (and Arsenal’s woes), and Sid Lowe discussing Granada-Real Madrid, he previews today’s match (and afterwards James Richardson and Paolo Bandini discuss the Milan derby and Juve’s scudetto).

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What To Watch This Weekend (April 14-15)

April 13, 2012 — by Suman

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Frankly none of Saturday’s games are all that compelling, but if you must:

FA Cup Semifinal, Liverpool vs Everton (7:30amET; FSC & Fox Deportes): A Merseyside derby at Wembley. Liverpool have been in rotten form, in the league at least, winning just 2 out of their past 10 league fixtures, sinking to 8th in the table. Meanwhile, Everton has been experiencing their typical late-season resurgence–three wins and a draw in their past 4 league matches have actually put them one point above their rivals in the standings. There has much been written about the 10-year anniversary of David Moyes’s tenure at Everton–during which he’s generally been praised for guiding Everton to respectable finishes in the league, but which is conspicuously free of trophies. This FA Cup seems like a chance to finally remedy that.

Bundesliga, Schalke 04 vs Borussia Dortmund (9:30amET; GolTV): The Ruhr derby–or, in the German, the Revierderbyis the biggest rivalry in Germany.  (Indeed, entire books have been written about it, it seems.) Dortmund are coming up a huge win over Bayern on Wednesday, which put them in the driver’s seat to win the Bundesliga. But Schalke, themselves 3rd in the table, will be looking to trip up their hated neighbors.  Schalke are led by the legendary Raul and the prolific Klaus-Jan Huntelaar up front. Their battle against Dortmund’s center-back pair of Mats Hummels and Serbian(-American, albeit briefly) Neven Subotic will be interesting. The latter had a very good game Wednesday, shutting down Bayern’s Mario Gomez.  At the other end, Dortmund’s attacking pair of Shinji Kagawa and Robert Lewandowski are equally dangerous.

Eredivisie, PSV vs AZ (12:45pmET; ESPN Deportes & ESPN3.com): PSV have had a very poor couple of months, dropping down to 5th in the table. But they’re still only 4 points behind 2nd place AZ Alkmaar, who are themselves 3 points behind 1st place Ajax. The player to watch on PSV is deep-lying playmaker Kevin Strootman, who’s been called “the future of the Oranje midfield“–and who has lately been linked with Manchester United.

La Liga, Levante vs Barcelona (4pmET, ESPN, ESPN Deportes & ESPN3.com): Barça are entering a challenging stretch, with the two Champions League semifinal ties against Chelsea next Wednesday and the following Tuesday–and El Clasico squeezed in between, next Saturday.  But for the latter match to be of consequence, Barcelona has to keep winning. They should beat Levante, but they’ve looked vulnerable on the road, and Levante has much to play for–the sit 5th in the table, two points behind Malaga and a spot in next season’s Champions League.

Sunday, April 15

FA Cup Semifinal, Tottenham Hotspur vs Chelsea (1pmET, FSC & Fox Deportes): Another derby in the other FA Cup semifinal. The two London clubs are battling not only on this front, but also in the league–for the coveted 4th spot. And Chelsea is also, somehow, still alive in the Champions League, with Barcelona visiting Stamford Bridge this Wednesday.

La Liga, Rayo Vallecano vs Atlético Madrid (3pmET, ESPN Deportes & ESPN3.com): Atlético lost yet another Madrid derby last Wednesday on their home ground, against their biggest rivals Real Madrid. This is another Madrid derby, albeit a lesser one against lesser opponents. Atlético travels out to the Vallecas barrio of Madrid, to play at the 15,500-capacity Campo de Futbol de Vallecas. It certainly sounds like a great place to watch a game. From the afore-linked-to Sid Lowe column about Real Madrid’s visit to Vallecas a couple months ago:

A huge painted tarpaulin, weeks in the making, was passed over the supporters in the end. Republican flags, red, yellow and purple, were everywhere. The red and black of the anarchists. Ché Guevara banners and others appealing for the legalisation of cannabis. Not that it needed legalising on this evidence. Countless flags, Rayo’s red thunderbolt scorched across them. Song too: the Marseillaise, the Internationale, Yankee Doodle. It went round: end to the sunny side and back; end to shaded side and back again, like a drill sergeant, or Freddie Mercury yodelling with his audience. Lots and lots of noise. No one sat, not once. Instead they squeezed in, clapping and bouncing and singing. Even the half-time entertainment was different: a beast of a man celebrated his prize by parading bare-chested across the pitch waving a Republican flag. Minutes before, Mourinho had walked off down the tunnel and held a thumbs up to the end. Now, those are fans.

Their player to watch is Michu–nee Miguel Pérez Cuesta, who has been a revelation in his first season in La Primera. He started his career with his hometown club of Real Oviedo, before moving to Celta Vigo in the Segunda Division.  He finally got to the big league via a free transfer to Rayo last summer.  Also from Sid Lowe’s column:

Michu twice appeared to have missed his chance to play in primera – first he turned down the chance to play for Sporting because he is an Oviedo fan, then he missed a penalty for Celta in the play-offs – but now that he is here, he has been arguably the season’s revelation. He has 11 goals. Rayo have 32, more than any of the nine teams below them – all of them richer.

That was in late February.  He’s since scored four more, to take his total to 15–even with Fernando Llorente for 6th in leading scorer list. Now he’s being talked about as a possible transfer target for some of the biggest clubs in Europe.

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What To Watch Today: Four Matches Across the Continent

April 11, 2012 — by Suman

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A busy week across the continent, including five more matches in the English Premier League.  But none of those look particularly compelling to us, while there are four compelling and consequential matches elsewhere featuring teams at or near the top of their domestic tables–highlighted a huge match in Germany and a derby in Madrid.  Here they are in order of importance, according to our subjective estimation and interest–given that it’s this member of CF’s birthday today, I’ve humbly requested the good guys at Woodwork to tune of their TVs to GolTV so that we can watch the first two matches in the German-Spanish doubleheader.  Join us if you’re in the neighborhood:

Borussia Dortmund vs Bayern München (2pmET, GolTV): #1 vs #2 in the Bundesliga–the biggest match of the day, and the biggest match of the season in Germany. Bayern has closed the gap between them and Dortmund to 3 points over the past couple months, so that a win on the road in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the mammoth Westfalenstadion (capacity: 80, 720) would pull them even at the top of the table.

Dortmund won the title last year, and with their campaign to repeat, and their young and exciting squad–to be strengthened next year by the arrival of Marco Reus (“the latest star off Germany’s production line“), for whose signature they beat out Bayern–they are looking to challenge Bayern’s Germanic hegemony.  (See this feature on “Why the emergence of a rivalry between Bayern Munich & Borussia Dortmund is essential to the revival of German football“–something that even Bayern fan Boris Becker agrees with.)

In a previous “what to watch” feature, we noted that Dortmund has:

young and exciting players from across the globe on their squad: strikers Robert Lewandowski (Poland) and Lucas Barrios(Paraguay); Japanese midfielder Shinji Kagawa; Serbian(-American) Neven Subotić, who teams up with German Mats Hummels in central defense.  FC Bayern blogger & “Bundesliga wannabe expert” @RedRobbery kindly replied to our question about who to watch in this match, and directed us to also watch midfielders Sven Bender and Jakub “Kuba” Błaszczykowski. (The latter is captain of the Polish national team, and described by Polish great Zbigniew Boniek as a “litte Figo” when Dortmund signed him from Wisla Krakow in the summer of 2007).

Bayern’s squad should be better known to non-German watchers, given their prominence in the Champions League (where they’ll be facing Real Madrid in the semis–1st leg next week!), and the prominence of their star players on various national sides: star wingers Arjen Robben (Netherlands) and Franck Ribery (France), along with the core of the exciting German national team: Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, Toni Kroos, Thomas Müller, Mario Gómez, Jérôme Boateng, Holger Badstuber, Manuel Neuer. Two more players to watch in central midfield: Ukrainian Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (who will be leading the Euro2012 co-hosts this summer) and Brazilian Luiz Gustavo.

Atlético Madrid vs Real Madrid (4pmET, GolTV): El derbi madrileño is always a bitter battle, and this time it’s a match that matters deeply for both teams. Real Madrid is still at the top of the table, where they’ve been all year–but their once-commanding lead over Barcelona has shrunk over the past month to a mere 4 points, following a three draws in their past five matches (1-1 to both Malaga and Villareal, and a scoreless draw Sunday to Valencia)–and now it’s down to a single point following Barcelona’s 4-0 win over (3rd Madrid team) Getafe. So the pressure is on Mourinho and his squad, especially with El Clasico coming up a week from Saturday at the Camp Nou.

Atlético are 7th in La Liga, 7 points behind 4th place Valencia (who’ve just relinquished their seeming stranglehold on 3rd to Malaga) and a Champions League spot.  A return to Europa is more likely–where they’ve had a successful run to the semifinals this year, and in fact play Valencia over the next two weeks (April 19 and 26).  If a goal against Real is going to come today, it’ll most likely be from prolific Colombian striker Falcao, who’s had a great first season in Spain with 20 goals, tied for 3rd best in the league. But 3 of the top 5 are from Real: Messi 39, Cristiano Ronaldo 37, Falcao 20, Higuain 20, Benzema 17.

(Photo above grabbed from viejomadrid.tumblr.com, who got it from an excellent Historias del Derbi fotogaleria)

Juventus vs Lazio (2:45pm, Fox Soccer Plus, ESPN3.com): Juve is still undefeated in Serie A, and after Saturday’s results they’re back on top of the table.  Lazio continues to solidify their hold on 3rd place and hence a Champions League spot–at the expense of competing clubs with bigger names (Udinese, Napoli, Roma, Inter–who sit behind them in 4th, 5th, 6th & 7th).

We’ll be watching for peerless deep-lying playmaker Andrea Pirlo–who Zonal Marking’s Michael Cox recently described as “the most important player of his generation.”

AZ vs Twente (1pmET, ESPN3.com): #2 vs #3 in the Eredivisie.

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Celebrating Easter Sunday: Arsenal-City, Athletic-Sevilla, Madrid-Valencia

April 8, 2012 — by Suman

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The three matches we chose yesterday weren’t the most compelling: Sunderland-Spurs the most dreary, a scoreless draw, while Lazio beat Napoli 3-1 (highlighted by a fantastic chilena goal by Mauri), and Porto beat Sporting Braga 1-0 on their home ground.  There were other interesting results in Italy, where AC Milan lost to lowly Fiorentina due to a late late goal, and later in the day Juve dispatched Palermo, thus pulling even with Milan on points at the top of the table.  And in Germany, both Bayern München and Borussia Dortmund won (vs Augsburg and Wolfsburg, respectively), and thus Dortmund’s 3-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga table was conserved–setting up a showdown this coming Wednesday.  But more on that later–for now, here are a few matches to watch on this sunny Easter Sunday:

Arsenal vs Manchester City (11amET; FSC & Fox Deportes): The big match of the weekend in England.  #4 (though perhaps only temporarily) hosting #2 at the Emirates, with a full 3 points crucial for both teams.  Arsenal need them to climb back into 3rd (ahead of local rival Spurs), in their continuing effort to consolidate a top 4 (preferably top 3) finish.  City need them to stay within striking distance of their local rivals United–if City drop points today, they can say goodbye to any chance of winning the title. Which would give extra pleasure to many Arsenal fans, given that City have developed a habit of poaching some of Arsenal’s key players over the past few years–most recently and prominently French playmaker Samir Nasri–luring them north with petrodollars, plus the promise of hardware in the near future–something Wenger has been unable to guide his sides to in the past handful of years.

When these two teams met in mid-December at the Etihad, City slipped by the Gunners 1-0 thanks to a goal by their slight Spanish star David Silva. Indeed, the theme of our writeup was “Silva es magico.”  But since then City’s (on-field) fortunes have waned, and the conventional wisdom seems to be that it’s primarily due to Silva tiring. He certainly hasn’t displayed the magical realism that was on display weekly in the fall (most prominently in the Massacre at Old Trafford early in the season).

We noted that that December result knocked the Gunners out of the title race–but that was only the beginning of the crisis, with Arsenal seemingly falling out of contention for even a Champions League spot after a horrendous January (lowlighted by the Night Arsene Lost the Emirates–also against United).  But they rebounded with an impressive February, which started with that memorable 5-2 win against Spurs, although they’ve wobbled against recently, with a loss to QPR last weekend.

Athletic Bilbao vs Sevilla (12pmET; GolTV): Two underachieving sides, at least domestically. We’ve been tracking Athletic closely, and they’ve been delivering in cup competitions–thru to the semis of the Europa League, and in the finals of the Copa del Rey (where they’ll be taking on Barcelona, in May)–but they’ve slipped into the bottom half of the table as their league form has slipped badly.  Sevilla has been trying to get back to the level they achieved a handful of years ago, and although they’ve got some talent–including current Spanish internationals Álvaro Negredo and Jesús Navas–their game perhaps depends a bit too much on aging former stars like Malian Frédéric Kanouté and well-traveled former Spanish international José Antonio Reyes.  Reyes has come full circle–he came up through Sevilla youth system and made his La Liga debut with them over a decade ago, and then went on to play for: Arsenal, Real Madrid (on loan), Atlético Madrid, Benfica (again on loan), before returning to his first club.

Real Madrid vs Valencia (3:30pmET; ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, ESPN3.com): The slightest bit of pressure is on Madrid now in La Liga, since Barcelona have pulled to within 3 points.  Hence, anything less than a win would be considered disastrous among los madridistas. It is Valencia, which as seemingly always sit in 3rd–although if they lose and Malaga win Monday against Racing, the latter would pull ahead of them in the table.  Valencia, like Athletic, is thru to the semis of the Europa League, but similarly their domestic form has dipped recently too.