With yesterday's first eight games of this Matchday completed (Matchday 4.1, if you will)--highlighted by Spurs demolishing defending champion FC Internazionale Milano by a score of 3-1 (which in turn was highlighted by young Welshman Gareth Bale "terrorizing" Inter with his streaks down the left side of the pitch)--we move on to Matchday 4.2. Eight more matches later today! We'll be gathering at CultFootball headquarters to watch Real Madrid playing Associazione Calcio Milan in the San Siro (though I'll also be lobbying for live look-ins on Arsenal playing FC Шахтар Донецьк in the fancy new Донбас Арена--which will host a number of Euro 2012 games, including it seems one quarterfinal match and one semifinal match).
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Schedule
Champions League Matchday 4 Underway! Get Your Fixtures Fix Here
UEFA Champions League Matchday 4 has already started, with Panathinaikos v Rubin Kazan already underway in distant Kazan (Russia), then 7 more matches later today, and 8 more tomorrow. With the first 3 Matchdays completed (on September 14-15, September 28-29, and October 19-20, respectively), we’re now at the halfway point of the Group Stage, i.e., halfway thru the home-and-away round robin schedule within each of the 8 groups, with every team having already played the 3 other teams within its group over the course of those first 3 Matchdays. Now they turn around and play each other again, but at the other location. (For example, Barcelona hosted Panathinaikos on Matchday 1, played at Rubin Kazan on Matchday 2, and hosted København on Matchday 3. For Matchdays 4, 5, and 6, they play at København, play at Panathinaikos, and host Rubin Kazan.)
Without further combinatorial ado, here are the fixtures for today and tomorrow, pulled directly from UEFA.com (luckily copying-&-pasting is a link-preserving operation, so you can click thru below to UEFA’s group, team and match pages! Very handy for checking group standings; lineups once matches are underway, and results once they’re finished.)
NewsSchedule
Matchday 2.2 — starting in mere minutes!
Matchday 2.2 is today, with 8 more matches featuring the other 16 teams. All of them kick off at 2:45pm ET, except for one: FC Barcelona goes even further east, to play FK Rubin Kazan on their home field (Kazan being the 6th largest city in Russia, and the capital of Tatarstan (see below the fixture list):
Wednesday, September 29
Group A
Internazionale v Werder Bremen @ Giuseppe Meazza (Milan, ITA)
Tottenham Hotspur v Twente Enschede @ White Hart Lane (London, ENG)
Group B
Hapoel Tel Aviv v Lyon @ Ramat Gan Stadium (Tel Aviv, ISR)
Schalke 04 v BenficaB @ Veltins-Arena (Gelsenkirchen, GER)
Group C
Rangers v Bursaspor @ Ibrox Stadium (Glasgow, SCO)
Valencia v Manchester United @ Mestalla (Valencia, ESP) – FSC & FSE @ 2:45pmET
Group D
FK Rubin Kazan v Barcelona @ Central Stadium Kazan (Kazan, RUS) – FSC & FSE @ 12:30pmET
Panathinaikos v FC Copenhagen @ Athens Olympic Stadium (Athens, GRE)
From the Wikipedia entry for Kazan
Kazan (Russian: Каза́нь; Tatar: Казан, Qazan) is the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. The sixth largest city of Russia, it lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. The Kazan Kremlin is a World Heritage Site. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the right to brand itself as the “Third Capital” of Russia. In 2009 it was chosen as the “sports capital of Russia”.
CommentaryNewsVideo
“Mourinho Finally Gets Mad”…well, un poco (with video)
I must admit, I am falling for the yet-nascent psychodrama that is Mourinho in Madrid (“MiM” from now on). So I eagerly clicked thru when online footy mag fourfourtwo.com‘s La Liga Loca blog led with the headline “Mourinho Finally Gets Mad“, and kicked off the post with some purple prose:
For months now, the Spanish press have been performing their solemn duty of trying to make José Mourinho go completely postal, but sadly with little success.
However, on Monday evening, it was joy to the world and ding dong merrily on high as, after a trying period of four press conferences a week for the Bernabeu boss, hours and hours of provoking, probing and pressing finally brought some decent results – not only did Mourinho completely lose his rag, he also found it again and then set it on fire…
Commentary
Random pregame thoughts on today’s Champions League matches
Will Real Marid be able to score away from home? Will all the talk and camera time get monopolized by Mourinho, or will Marseilles manager Didier Deschamps also get a bit of attention?
Will Arsenal rebound from their debacle Saturday? Will Lukasz Fabianski prove any more capable than the injured Almunia?
Will Martin Stekelenburg do as well (or even better) against AC Milan’s, compared with his stellar albeit losing performance against Ronaldo, Higauin, Ozil et al two weeks ago? Will he get any help from Luis Suarez if the need arises?
NewsSchedule
Champions League Matchday 2! Get Your Fixtures Here
Matchday 2 is upon us! Once again, all 32 teams will be in action–2 games in each of the 8 groups, for a total of 16 games today and tomorrow. As with all the group stage Matchdays, the 8 games on Tuesday featuring the 16 teams from 4 of the groups (Groups E, F, G, and H today), and 8 more games on Wednesday with the 16 teams from the other 4 groups. Champions League Matchdays are so grand they take up 2 actual days!
Fixtures for Matchday 2 listed below, along with live TV coverage (in the US); apparently all matches are being shown live on DirectTV, but we’ve just listed cable coverage, i.e., on the Fox Soccer/Sports channels–FSC, FSE, FSP & FSN. See SoccerTVListing.com for a full listing.
See UEFA.com’s Champions League site for Matchday 1 results and group standings.
All matches kickoff at 2:45pm ET, except for one early match each day (12:30pm ET, marked with a * below):
Tuesday, September 28
Group E
AS Roma v CFR Cluj-Napoca @ Stadio Olimpico (Rome, ITA)
FC Basel v Bayern Munich @ St Jakob-Park (Basel, SUI)
Group F
Spartak Moscow v MSK Zilina @ Luzhniki Stadium (Moscow, RUS)*
Chelsea v Marseille @ Stamford Bridge (London, ENG) – FSN (=MSG+ in NYC?)
Group G
AJ Auxerre v Real Madrid @ Stade Abbe-Deschamps (Auxerre, FRA) – FSE
Ajax Amsterdam v AC Milan@ Amsterdam Arena (Amsterdam, NED) – FSP
Group H
Braga v Shakhtar Donetsk @ Braga Municipal (Braga, POR)
Partizan Belgrade v Arsenal @ FK Partizan Stadium (Belgrade, SRB) – FSC
Wednesday, September 29
Group A
Internazionale v Werder Bremen @ Giuseppe Meazza (Milan, ITA)
Tottenham Hotspur v Twente Enschede @ White Hart Lane (London, ENG)
Group B
Hapoel Tel Aviv v Lyon @ Ramat Gan Stadium (Tel Aviv, ISR)
Schalke 04 v BenficaB @ Veltins-Arena (Gelsenkirchen, GER)
Group C
Rangers v Bursaspor @ Ibrox Stadium (Glasgow, SCO)
Valencia v Manchester United @ Mestalla (Valencia, ESP) – FSC & FSE
Group D
FK Rubin Kazan v Barcelona @ Central Stadium Kazan (Kazan, RUS)* – FSC & FSE
Panathinaikos v FC Copenhagen @ Athens Olympic Stadium (Athens, GRE)
Commentary
Champions League: What We Saw
The cultfootball brain trust was huddled around a giant screen for three of yesterday’s matches, though we tended to pause longer on Real Madrid v Ajax a bit more than the others. Whereas the Chelsea and Arsenal matches were blowouts, Real always looked like they might give one up on the counter, and Ajax are no slacks— though their real standout was the keeper Maarten Stekelenburg (who you may remember from the World Cup). We didn’t have the chance to see the other games as we don’t have Direct TV, the bastards.
On a night when Real’s strikers had ample opportunity to shut down the game, Stekelenburg consistently provided no angle for glory. There were nearly 20 shots between Higuaín, Ronaldo, and di María, and only Higuaín put the ball away (and only from very close range for what we thought were a couple of slop goals). Ronaldo’s shots were particularly funny to us, sour grapes mostly because once he breaks his duck you just know the goals will come pouring in.
Higuaín on the other hand doesn’t look like much of a superstar striker. He does have a deceptively quick first step, exhibited mostly in closing down defenders, but he doesn’t exactly play with his head up. Still, he finds himself the right positions to slam home easy goals, and that’s a skill of high value, though often overlooked for carefully crafted movement finished off with a precision volley or some curling dipper.
Real’s attacking movement was created almost completely by some combination of Marcelo, Özil, and di María. The three looked fantastic, especially the Turkish German, and it gives me some sense that Mourinho won’t settle on an entirely defensive-minded strategy in the season to come. Only time will tell of course, as the true test will be El Clásico on the 28th of November.
Oh, and did I mention the most important member of the cultfootball team?
NewsSchedule
Champions League – Day 2 Fixtures (& return of the liveblog?)
It was a fun afternoon yesterday, flipping channels between the 4 games we eventually found on the dial, and we’re looking forward to this afternoon, when it looks like we’ll be able to flip in between 3 of today’s 8 matches (on FSC, FSE & FSP).
We’ll most likely be watching Cesc Fabregas (left) lead Arsenal against visiting Portuguese side Braga, but no doubt we’ll also look in on Mourinho-led Madrid hosting Ajax of Amsterdam (FSE), and Premier League powerhouse Chelsea visiting Slovakian side MŠK Žilina (FSC). And we may just break out the liveblog this afternoon..
Here’s the full list of today’s fixtures:
Wednesday, September 15 (all games kickoff at 14:45 ET)
Group E
Bayern Munich v AS Roma @ Allianz Arena (DirectTV; rebroadcast on FSE at 19:00 ET)
CFR Cluj-Napoca v FC Basel @ Stadionul Dr. Constantin Radulescu (DirectTV)
Group F
Marseille v Spartak Moscow @ Stade Vélodrome (DirectTV)
MSK Zilina v Chelsea @ Pod Dubnom (FSC; rebroadcast on FSP at 17:00 ET)
Group G
AC Milan v AJ Auxerre @ Giuseppe Meazza (DirectTV; rebroadcast on FSC at 21:00 ET)
Real Madrid v Ajax Amsterdam @ Santiago Bernabéu (FSE; rebroadcast on FSC at 17:00 ET)
Group H
Arsenal v Braga @ Emirates Stadium (FSP; rebroadcast on FSE at 17:00 ET & on FSC at 19:00 ET)
Shakhtar Donetsk v Partizan Belgrade @ Donbass Arena (DirectTV)