Champions League Nights and Away Day goings on!

Champions League Nights

Tonight’s game represents the chance to see arguably the competitions best two teams go head to head once again in the last 16 2nd leg. As we all know the tie hangs in the balance at 1-1 thanks to a couple of brilliant headers at the Bernabeu Stadium last month with Welbeck and Ronaldo getting on the scoresheet at either end in an enthralling tie.

It was always going to be enthralling though wasn’t it, a combination of media hype, the Cristiano Ronaldo effect and the two teams whose presence in this competition is admirable at the very least, provide Sky and other channels enough evidence to stand outside every building these players are in and talk about tonight’s game.

My personal opinion and prediction in my gut is a United win and a quarter final place. I’ve always believed games like these though are too difficult to forecast, so I may being eating my previous sentence. But a combination of United’s attacking presence in Rooney and Van Persie as well as what I imagine will be a syllable breaking atmosphere in Manchester, and the thought of a Real Madrid taking home the glory goes past me and my silly early predictions. But who knows, anything can happen. From late 2004 to mid 2008 I witnessed some games played by Liverpool in the Champions League that even Gary Neville and his ‘MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL!!!’ touch board would fail to analyse.

I’m well aware of Cristiano Ronaldo and what his stature is within football and if anybody doubted that check every single back page in the British tabloid and they will bring you up to date. What many of these journalistic institutions forget sometimes though, in all the hype and excitement, is that football is actually played by 11 players, and I think I’m right in saying the other 10 at Real Madrid are ‘ok’...just!

Players with the calibre of Ozil, Benzema, Higuain and Alonso will have somewhat of an opinion on how the game will go tonight, and I can guarantee it won’t be a 100% conversation on Ronaldo, so United will need to be ready for this and Sir Alex Ferguson will have made them well aware of the fact it won’t just be the ‘Ronaldo show’. There’s also the large matter of French big man Raphael Varane, the 19 year old who Madrid eyed up on the basis of Zinedine Zidane’s advice. This advice now seems seismic in terms of Varane’s impact and he is someone who can further etch his credibility into supporters’ minds as he looks to add his Nou Camp goal last week to his ever growing popularity.

These games are the games we remember, whoever we support, a spectacle we appreciate, as the big guns in the television channel world use their best presenters combined with their best music to tug our heart strings with some brilliant pre match montages. This, combined with the next 90 minutes of what we all hope will be some unbelievable football, will all unravel itself out very soon.



Away Days are the best days.


I was lucky enough this weekend to once again grace the presence of another Premier League ground as Liverpool visited Wigan in a late Saturday kick off. Now away days are something that often exists in folklore in any type of fan, particularly in Britain. They carry the stories and tales of days gone by and I’ve always been someone keen to create my own as we ventured 40 minutes up the map with Facebook statuses in our hand and rum in our pockets.

There’s a certain element of chance to away days. Your day to somewhere away from your usual ground often entails an expensive hit on your bank account. So when you turn up and your team gets beaten you question EVERYTHING about your team and yourself and why you bought 8 cans of shady beer instead of just the four.

But winning.....wow. Winning doubles your beer count at the till and trebles your morning headache as well as giving you a lifetime of memories, even if they did all come from a short trip to Wigan.

The toothless man with a box of frosties, ‘partying when Suarez gets a pen’, Downing scoring an actual goal and chocking on the red smoke of a flare as Suarez bagged his hat-trick down our end provide me with a Saturday I don’t really remember, but one I’ll never forget. It means everything even when it doesn’t in the league, and I can’t wait for the next one. Hopefully that time I’ll be able to actually tactically analyse the game.