Euro Watch August 18th
- You can make the point the most important time of a football match in the last ten minutes but the last five minutes of the first half and the first five minutes of the second half are often the most important times of a match. Time and time again you see a goal late in the first half change the game around. Celtic were executing their game plan trying to make sure they have something to play for in the second leg of this contest. Then William Gallas scored a goal Bobby Zamora would be proud of. From there Celtic just seemed defeated going into halftime and try as they might Celtic are not the type of team to chase a game against a team of Arsenal’s quality. Too add insult to injury Caldwell’s own goal has pretty much sealed this tie ahead of the second leg to be played at the Emirates.
- Portuguese teams have never fared well against Italian teams. By and large Portuguese teams play into an Italian teams strengths. Sporting can take some positives but they can not make silly mistakes like the ones they allowed Fiorentina to take advantage of. Right off the bat Sporting goalkeeper Rui Patrício allowed a weak goal six minutes in to grant Fiorentina the critical away goal. From there Fiorentina allowed Sporting to bring the play to them knowing a 1-1 result would still suit them. Just before the hour mark Simon Vukcevic after some nice build up play finally drew Sporting level. In a mental midget moment Vukcevic took off his jersey after already being yellow carded earlier in the game. I’ve seem a lot of things in football but I do not recall a player getting his second yellow card after taking off his jersey. Usually a player would recall he is on a card. The difference between Champions League football and the Europa league is somewhere between 20-25 million which is a lot of money for any club. I’ll give credit to Sporting who even down to ten men still took the game to Fiorentina and Miguel Veloso gave Sporting a deserved lead placing a shot into the top corner to make it 2-1. This snapped Fiorentina back to life and down a man they were not able to hold off Alberto Gilardino. Is the draw a fair result? Yes but with the two away goals it will now take something special for Sporting to come up with an away win.
- Every other game pretty much went with the form book. FC Copenhagen kept the all important clean sheet getting a 1-0 win at home against APOEL Nicosia. Olympiakos pretty much wrapped up their tie against FC Sheriff with a 2-0 road win and Aliaksandr Hleb proving there is life after the Barcelona bench scoring a lovely goal to seal Stuttgart 2-0 win over Romanian side Timisoara.