The Official Champions League Thread

I get the feeling that nobody outside of Spain would care too much for a Villarreal-Barca final so I wouldn't expect too many calls to go amarillo's way.

 

Yeah, its a conspiracy to put Arsenal in the finals.

 

You're right, European referees are generally incorruptible paragons of neutrality and integrity.

 

I didn't say that. But you're statement is pretty ridiculous. Its up there with the frozen ball/David Stern/Patrick Ewing theory.

 

They just said Franco was about to come on.

 

Yeah. I think they said he was a Mexican citizen now?

 

I'd say hinting at corruption and bias in FIFA bears more weight than whining about US officials, given that there's about 5-6 different countries with match fixing scandals in the last few years alone. Not to mention the corruption at the top levels.

These guys make US officials look like sentinels of justice and consistency.

 

I think its pretty standard that you'd need some justification to accuse UEFA of matchfixing the semifinals of the Champions League by telling the referee not to make calls for Villareal. The match fixing you speak of isn't comparable because it was not the league fixing matches. It much more comparable to the conspiracy theory I mentioned earlier because it perfectly aligns with your 'who would watch' idea.

It's just a dumb comment, Sam. Rocketfan007 is a ManU fan, so I know where his bias comes from. You're a smart guy - why go there.

 

Maybe it's as innocuous as Michael Jordan palming. Put that against the backdrop of European soccer's generally corrupt officiating overall and I'd rather be Arsenal than Villarreal.

 

Not at all. But you generally don't like Arsenal. I understand that because you're a ManU fan. That doesn't make you less smart than Sam (he's not really that smart anyway but I was trying to be nice ) - but I haven't seen him say he supports anyone in particular so his bias is unknown.

 

That was definitely a penalty but to say the match was fixed is going too far. Villareal played Italian style conservative football. They never really tried to attack and were happy to be down 0-1. They deserved to lose. Arsenal completely outclassed them, in game play and character. I say character b/c of all the ridiculous flopping that Villareal was doing.

I hope it is an Arsenal vs. Barcelona final, that would be beautiful football because both teams play attacking styles. When Arsenal plays the way they did today, they are tough to beat: The quick one touch passes, the movement by the fowards and midfielders was awesome. I like Man Utd, but I gotta give props to teams who play the right way. Villareal is a nice story but their luck is running out.

 

Nobody said the match was fixed. I said that corruption and favoritism among European officials was and is commonplace, more so than anything stateside, and with that in mind it's not out of the question that there's a referee who feels the same way about an Arselona final and gives Thierry Henry or Robert Pires, playing for a power club at home, more of the benefit of the doubt than he would to a Jose Mari, playing for the party-crashing small market upstart team who played barca last week anyway, whether consciously or not.

 

Most european games i watch, there aren't that many bad calls to where you could doubt the legitimacy of the refs and seriously think that games are rigged. In soccer, it would be very difficult for a ref to completly throw a game without it being close to 100% obvious. Of course bigger clubs and bigger named players get the benefit of the doubt but that occurs every night on a more obvious note right here in the states in the NBA. There's been a favoritism towards stars in the NBA for decades. The NFL playoffs this past season were ridiculous with horrible calls that one could point to in order to question the integrity of the results, especially the super bowl.

In soccer, unless a ref awards unwarranted penalty shots or fails to award obvious ones time and time again, doesn't call the most obvious offsides, or blatantly books many players with red cards to give the other team an advantage, it is very difficult for refs to determine the outcome of games. Today's game, Villareal were flopping so badly all night and could be why they weren't awarded that PK [the guy that was fouled is known as a flopper]. It evened out in the second half because there was a flagrant hand ball in the box by villareal in the closing minutes that wasn't called. Also, that ridiculous NFL style tackle of Henry should have been a RED card. It was unsporstman and very cheap and Henry arguably had a breakaway. In the end i think the calls balanced out.

 

Here's a still of the 'penalty.' He's actually outside the box so at most it was a missed free kick, and Henry's 'offside' goal was a clear mistake against Arsenal.

 

Game about to start on ESPN2. I think Arsenal wins 2-1.