Football (Soccer) Thread

[Duque de Bragança]

Montpellier almost French league champion thanks to a 94th minute goal. Last game of them will be against an already relegated team, Auxerre. The PSG won 3-0 but will have to hope for a defeat of Montpellier to be champion.
Another tough season for French football on the Champion's league next year

[Ed Anger]

I was enjoying the crowd shots of butthurt Man City fans before they pulled that game out of their asses. Especially angry scarf man.

[FunkMonk]

I was enjoying the crowd shots of butthurt Man City fans before they pulled that game out of their asses. Especially angry scarf man.

My favorite part was the Joey Barton showdown. The man is a credit to the English race.

[Ed Anger]

I was enjoying the crowd shots of butthurt Man City fans before they pulled that game out of their asses. Especially angry scarf man.

My favorite part was the Joey Barton showdown. The man is a credit to the English race.

They should have let Balotelli go after him. I would have enjoyed that.

[Ed Anger]

My facial expression after those two goals:

[FunkMonk]

 

[Josephus]

I was enjoying the crowd shots of butthurt Man City fans before they pulled that game out of their asses. Especially angry scarf man.

My favorite part was the Joey Barton showdown. The man is a credit to the English race.

They should have let Balotelli go after him. I would have enjoyed that.

It almost happened. Balottelli was ready to go after him, but he was pulled back. Taht would have been awesome.

[Viking]

Villareal just got relegated. 

The Yellow Submarine is going down?

[Neil]

I was enjoying the crowd shots of butthurt Man City fans before they pulled that game out of their asses. Especially angry scarf man.

Yeah, that was something.  Both the butthurt, and then the comeback.

[Josquius]

Pretty damn shocking turn of events. I'd hate to be a QPR fan, to lose it in the last moments like that...

[Brazen]

Having lived in Manchester for three years I support City. I was flicking between both games with a United supporter. After each goal we'd flick back to see the reaction as everyone studied their mobile phones. I have to admit I though the Blues had blown it, but to see the faces of the Reds fall in that last minute made all the stress worthwhile.

Further evidence, were it needed, that Joey Barton is, in fact, a twat.

[Josephus]

Pretty damn shocking turn of events. I'd hate to be a QPR fan, to lose it in the last moments like that...

it didn't matter to them. They were celebrating at the end as well, since they avoided relegation due to Bolton's tie.

[The Larch]

An article on Juventus' that Pedrito will surely enjoy:

Andrea Pirlo's peerless pass-mastery could lift even the Trentside fog
Juventus's pageant with Notts County and the title–winning form of their regista epitomise a fine moment for the Old Lady

The first time I saw Andrea Pirlo was on a cold and fog-shrouded November evening in Monza in 2000, when he was a member of the Italy Under-21 team sent out to confront Howard Wilkinson's England selection. Only 11 minutes had been played when the referee abandoned the match but since that night Pirlo's quality has illuminated every ground on which he has played, and none more so than Juventus's new stadium, where he and his team-mates celebrated the Serie A championship on Sunday.

A byword for graceful creativity, Pirlo has been the most influential midfield player in Europe this season, bar none. Last summer he left Milan, his home for 10 glittering years in which, mostly under Carlo Ancelotti, he won two European Cups, two Uefa Super Cups, one Fifa Club World Cup and two Italian league titles, and where he had intended to finish his career. But Massimiliano Allegri, Ancelotti's latest successor, wanted to install a different sort of influence in the position Pirlo had made his own, at the base of midfield: someone more physical, more aggressive, such as Mark van Bommel or Massimo Ambrosini.

A one-year extension was the best Milan could offer when Pirlo's contract expired. The player reckoned that, at 32, three more years would be about right. Milan declined his suggestion and probably no greater misjudgment has been made since Real Madrid sold Claude Makélélé to make room for David Beckham. Once it became known that Pirlo was on the market, Juventus snapped him up. Their new coach, Antonio Conte, himself a former international midfield player of great distinction, saw Pirlo as the foundation of the side he was building to go with the club's new home.

Last September the stadium was inaugurated with a stylish gala. Following the speeches and the presentation of great figures associated with the club's history, from Giampiero Boniperti to Edgar Davids, a game took place between Conte's new team and Notts County, the current representatives of the club who, back in 1903, sent Juventus a set of the black and white striped shirts in which they have played ever since.

When you think of all the famous clubs who would have happily accepted such an invitation, the Barcelonas and Manchester Uniteds and Bayern Munichs, this was a gesture of great historical sensitivity on the part of Andrea Agnelli, Juve's 36-year-old president, the fourth member of his family to hold the post. It came in response to a tentative call from Jim Rodwell, Notts's chief executive, wanting to ask Juventus to help mark this year's 150th anniversary of the world's oldest professional football club. Certainly, Agnelli responded, but why don't you join our celebrations first?

And so it came to pass that the players and officials of a club in the third tier of the English game found themselves on a private jet and in a five-star hotel, all at the expense of hosts for whom their ancestors had done a small favour more than a century earlier. For that, as much as for anything else, I reckon Juventus fully deserve their success in recapturing the Serie A title, the reward for a deed of outstanding dignity and generosity.

Others will conclude that Juve's success in remaining unbeaten throughout the entire league season was more to do with the quality of Pirlo's passing. As he did for year after year in Milan's colours, the newcomer made himself constantly available to his team-mates, always there to receive the ball and move it on in the most relevant direction. He was compass and metronome rolled into one, and he did not get injured or suspended.

As the very promising Conte showed the extent of his tactical imagination by shuffling his team's formation from an initial 4-2-4 to 4-1-4-1, then to 4-2-3-1, and finally to an alternation between 4-3-3 and 3-5-2, Pirlo remained the keystone, utterly reliable and seemingly ageless. Only the colour of the stripes had changed.

Pirlo began his career as a classic No10, an attacking midfielder in the mould of Gianni Rivera or the young Roberto Baggio. The role did not quite suit him and it was while he was on loan from Internazionale, his first big club, back to Brescia, where he had started out, that the veteran coach Carlo Mazzone identified a new, deeper position from which he could direct the play. He became what Italians call a regista. Not having a word for it, we borrow a term from American football: the quarterback. Xabi Alonso and Paul Scholes are pretty good exponents but no one in recent times has come close to Pirlo's calm mastery and next month he will be a key figure in Cesare Prandelli's Italy at the Euro 2012 finals.

And so on Wednesday, four days before their team conclude a highly successful season with an appearance in the Coppa Italia final against Napoli, Agnelli and his fellow directors will open their new club museum, located in the Juventus Stadium (which really deserves a more resonant name). Among their guests will be Ray Trew, Notts County's owner, who rescued the club from their latest flirtation with oblivion two years ago, and Jim Rodwell. With their own anniversary functions already under way, the pair will be hoping to bring back news of a return fixture with the new champions of Italy before the start of next season. Imagine it: Andrea Pirlo at Meadow Lane. Just as long as the Trentside fog holds off ...

Really cool the part about inviting Notts County for the maiden match at their new stadium. If they now go to Nottingham in the summer for Notts' 150 anniversary that'd really be super classy.

[Josquius]

Yeah, really nice of Juve; who have always been my favourite Italian club.

[Pedrito]

Pirlo is one of the most genial playmakers I've ever seen in action, his abilty to dictate the timing of the offensive manoeuvering is really impressive. Plus, he's a great assist man and an exceptional free kick taker. Allegri is still biting his hands.

just look at the assist for Grosso for the first goal against Germany in the World Cup 2006, look at the movements of the head, scanning the field for the most reliable passing option:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7HUMGvvwf8  God, it still gives me the goosebumps

About Notts County, it was really a nice move by the chairman, and I really hope they will go to Nottingham this summer.

Little piece of useless trivia: Juve's away jersey this year was pink in honour of the first Juventus jersey, that was used for some years until Notts County sent their signature B&W jerseys.

L.