A Beautiful Thread for the Beautiful Game

And there was a repeat of last week's result. Borussia Dortmund won 1-0 in France against PSG, who lost any precision in the last stroke. Another year, another disappointment for the home team.

To their credit, though, Borussia played pretty well despite PSG's aggressive search for goals.

Real Madrid 2 - 1 Bayern Munich

Up until the first 99 minutes, it was a fantastic match. Bayern scored first, and it seemed like that would be their winning goal since each and every opportunity for Real Madrid either went with the ball flying skyward or with Neuer catching the ball. Then Joselu scored two goals in 88' and 90' respectively (the latter validated after VAR) and then the last few minutes were passing until the 99th one.

Here's the thing, though.... The match was supposed to end at 99', because the official extra time was +9. Things then got out of hand. The referee couldn't decide which goal opportunity was to be the last, and with that all sorts of messy stuff started happening, including what seemed to be a goal for Bayern that was nullified by offside. Even I am unsure if it was really offside, because De Ligt seemed to be in line to intercept the ball. The match ended up lasting 104 minutes.

Sigh... controversies like this are unnecessary, man.

Well, the Europa League final was decided.

Atalanta beat Olympique 3-0 and Bayer Leverkusen tied with Roma 2-2. How to keep an unbeaten streak going this long.

Edited by Blueace on May 9th 2024 at 6:52:04 AM

Also, with Aston Villa's elimination in Conference's semifinals, died the last bastion for the Premier League in European tourneys this season (though the biggest blow already happened with the elimination of City, Arsenal and Liverpool).

Either way, congrats to Leverkusen! I'm rooting for them in the UEL Final!

Not a good season for English football in general, especially if rival fans are willing to label the Prem as the 'farmers league' because, according to them, none of them can beat out the likes of La Liga/Bundesliga teams.

Side note, the term farmer's league used to be for leagues that are only dominated by a single club, like PSG with Ligue 1 and Bayern with Bundesliga (sans Leverkusen in this season and Dortmund from 11 years ago). Now, it's to describe a league who's top teams are unable to beat against other top teams from their respective leagues. For example, English teams in this season.

Because of the dominance of the Premier League in terms of marketing in the global scale (and the stereotype of English arrogance, to some extent), it's becoming a target for fans other leagues who thought that all what they have was the money earned from broadcasting deals and merchandise sales from their clubs, whilst the others can boast about their passionate fans and their entertaining matches (both of which are subjective).

European football, especially the Champions League, is usually conquered by German and Spanish clubs, with those from Serie A thrown in the mix. While English clubs can compete against them, they were pretty much having a tough time whenever they meet.

But what do I know. I'm just lamenting in this forum post. You can disregard mine.

Hey, there's not much to lament, in the latest 4 years the UCL had two English champions (2021's Chelsea and 2023's City) and a runner-up (2022's Liverpool, which previously won in 2019); I wouldn't say they're in a rut just because of this year. It just was the time to shine for Germans (which has a finalist in UCL with Dortmund and another in UEL with Leverkusen, and a tough semifinalist with Bayern; if anything, if it wasn't for Real Madrid, the Spanish football would have consumated a nasty blow due to Barcelona's and Atlético's unexpected eliminations).

The big teams from England probably will have a lot to think about after the failures in Europe this year, though.

Meanwhile, Kylian Mbappé announced officially that this season will be his last with Paris Saint-Germain.

It's not known yet where he'll go next, though, since that chapter of this whole soap opera is going to last for a while still.

He is pretty much a lock on Madrid, isn't he?

Probably. After so many red herrings in the past four years, I have decided not to believe it until I see it.

And dude said good bye to Paris with a defeat 3-1 against Toulouse. He scored a goal, though.

River Plate won 2-0 against Libertad in yesterday's Copa Libertadores match, and not only advanced to the Round of 16 but also qualified to next year's Club World Cup thanks to their placement in their CONMEBOL club ranking.

EDIT: Also, Juventus has just won the Coppa Italia. From what I've read, it's their first trophy in three years.

Edited by MyFinalEdits on May 15th 2024 at 5:40:53 AM

Huh, the rosters for Copa America were increased from 23 to 26 players. That's something that should have been from the start, but still.

The FA will vote on whether to keep or remove VAR on June 6th.

Oh dear...

(I was going to edit the post above to add the following, but it grew so big that it merited its own, albeit doubled, post)

Juventus has just sacked Allegri, apparently due to how celebrated the Coppa Italia victory. What makes this perplexing is that Allegri was already going to leave at the end of the season, so they could have waited until the season was over. Huh...

And it appears like Xavi will also be sacked. Again, he said in late January that he was leaving, but his statements before and after Barcelona's match against Almería^note where he said that it would be almost impossible to compete against Real Madrid next season. Think of what happened to Bernd Schuster in late 2008 when he managed Real Madrid and said it would be impossible to compete against Barcelona didn't sit well at all among the powers that be, who wanted him to stay for at least one more season.

Lastly, despite rumors that Bayern would try to change their minds regarding Thomas Tuchel, the man himself confirmed that, yes, he will also leave.

At least neither Klopp nor Liverpool cried wolf, as Klopp stood firm to his statement hat he would leave (and hopefully nothing weird will cause an earlier departure, despite the current conflict between him and Salah). And hey, Liverpool will already have a confirmed new manager (Arne Slot, of Feyenoord fame).

Makes you wonder if things were that strained that they kind of jumped the gun.

Considering that Laporta didn't attend the match between Barcelona and Almería, and his previous anger over the 4-2 defeat against Girona (in the same weekend when Real Madrid secured the league's trophy), it's likely.

Well, the Bundesliga officially has an unbeaten champion as Bayer Leverkusen beat Augsburg 2-1 in the last day.

Also, because Bayern Munich fell into 3rd place due to their 4-2 defeat against Hoffenheim, they won't be able to qualify to the German Supercup, meaning that Harry Kane will have to wait until May 2025 at earliest to win a trophy with the club unless Bayern takes a huge lead in next season's Bundesliga to become champions in April or something. Of course, Kane could also win this year's UEFA Euro with England, but...

And Manchester City won today and are the Premier League's champions. Arsenal had a good run, but tripped too much.

Toni Kroos announced that he'll retire after the upcoming UEFA Euro. Ouch...

Guy deserves it, got a great career. At least he got to retire at Madrid -with possibly one more Champions cup on the horizon- instead of being forced out from the team.

True.

Marco Reus (Dortmund) and Iker Muniain (Athletic Club) are also retiring. And it's also confirmed that Claudio Ranieri (who managed to keep Cagliari in Serie A) will retire as a manager.

Lastly, Pochettino will leave Chelsea.

Atalanta 3 - 0 Bayer Leverkusen

Talk about a shocker! Lookman scored at 12', 26' and 75' to give the Italian club their first international trophy in history, the Europa League.

Atalanta is also the first club to defeat Leverkusen after no fewer than 51 matches.