United's Twentieth Wrapped Up At Old Trafford

The writing was on the wall for the past few months but today it became official; Manchester United have won their twentieth English League title. It widens their gap with rivals Liverpool a little more (Liverpool sit at 18) and sees Robin Van Persie win his first ever major trophy since the FA Cup in his inaugural season with Arsenal. I'm sure Piers Morgan's head exploded when he saw RVP lift the Premier League trophy today.

A tip of the hat must go to them for securing another title before the month of May and having seen off every competitor with ease. If Manchester United win their remaining games, they will sit on a mighty 96 points and overtake Chelsea's previous record of 95 in the 2004/05 season.

Take a bow, Manchester United, you earned it.

Aguero's Late Stunner Leads City to Victory

Sergio Aguero. The man has been an afterthought for the majority of this season due to a variety of niggling injuries but today his quality shone through as he fired Manchester City ahead of their rivals, Manchester United, in the Manchester derby. City will claim it as a victory to uphold their honor as reigning Premier League champions; Manchester United will say it is a minor annoyance on their way to the title this year. Fergie, after all, is not known to allow his players to blow a twelve point lead in the table during this time of year.

Regardless of United's inevitable 20th league title, Manchester City dominated this game. United could have cemented their title today but City wanted it more. Mancini's men fought with pride and they prevailed. City dominated possession and looked the more threatening side throughout the contest. United had a few breaks that looked dangerous but they, by and large, looked like an away team playing for a draw (they were playing at Old Trafford). Yaya Toure did give away a free kick in a very dangerous area; Phil Jones' header bounced off of Kompany and into the City net to equalize for United. 

Manchester City would regain the lead but not until the 78th minute through Sergio Aguero, having been brought on for Samir Nasri, in a goal that was reminiscent of the one that won them the Premier League last year. City will enjoy the victory of this particular battle; United will enjoy the parade after they win the war in May.

Editor's note: Previous version of this blog post didn't include the video.

Showdown at Old Trafford

Manchester United versus Real Madrid. Fergie versus The Special One. Oh, and that Ronaldo fellow. This game has all the potential for being a thrilling night at the Theater of Dreams. Ryan Giggs, who will be playing his 1,000th senior level game, did the opposite of downplaying this tie to United supporters. Jose Mourinho rested seven key players against Barcelona so that they would be fit for the game in Manchester. His side that was rested had handily beat Barcelona 3-1 at Camp Nou. The only notable United omission will be Phil Jones as he does well to shield the United back-line.

This game should be a thrilling end-to-end encounter and it is CR7's triumphant return to Old Trafford. I foresee an ovation from the Stretford End no matter the scoreline. He is in blistering form and Real is riding high off of two consecutive El Clasico victories. While Real Madrid is floundering in third in La Liga, United  is still sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League with no legitimate challenger in sight. United did have a confident 4-0 win against Norwich on Saturday so both teams should be firing on all cylinders.

It will be interesting to see if Fergie chooses to play more defensive wingers against Madrid's Di Maria and Ronaldo. However, if Fergie decides to go with a more attacking line-up, get your popcorn ready. Both of these teams are simply too good and their managers too passionate to let this tie become a snoozefest. If you're not into soccer or don't watch it much, watch this game. This game, even though it's the round of 16, may be one of the most thrilling matches to watch in this year's Champions League.

Final score: Real Madrid 3 Manchester United 2 (R. Madrid 4-3 agg.)

The Manchester Derby Never Disappoints

What a cracking match at the Etihad on Sunday! If the BPL wanted to market its brand around the world with evidence, this was a perfect game for just that. It had pace, skill, power, world-class players, and goals. Sadly, a few idiots tried to ruin a thrilling game; marring one of the games of the season with their stupidity.

Ignoring those incidents, the game was thrilling and quite a joy to watch as a neutral. Manchester United had an astonishing start to the game with a Rooney brace. The Red Devils are really showing how dangerous they are on the break and have an embarrassment of riches of offensive weapons that fit this style perfectly. They still have a shaky defense and Michael Carrick is just terrible. City did well to slowly recover and not let United run up their lead.

Mancini's insistence on playing Mario Balotelli still astounds me. If he is still there after January, I will be shocked. City showed a ton of desire and eventually got back in the game. Yaya Toure continues to show why he should be used as an attacking midfielder but Mancini keeps deploying him too deep. Kolarov scored a captain's goal and City were level and pressing.

Samir Nasri. The perfect example of the overpaid footballer that has no heart. Firstly, why was one of their shortest players in the wall? Secondly, why would you limply stick your leg out like he did? I do feel Joe Hart has the ability to get to that ball but a completely avoidable and unnecessary deflection. Mancini needs to get ahold of his squad and move some pieces around. Manchester United are playing like a team possessed recently and are distancing themselves atop the Premier League table. In all, a great match marred by the events that followed Van Persie's game-winner.

The Mark Clattenburg Situation

Racism and football (soccer for those that prefer that term) have not been able to separate themselves from each other in recent times. The most noted cases of late were those involving Evra-Suarez and Ferdinand-Terry. I find it shocking that Rio Ferdinand got away with calling Ashley Cole a racially pejorative term between black Englishmen. I have followed English football since early in 2006 and this flurry of racism cases has been as shocking as it is unsettling. Yet, the most unsettling has been the reaction to Chelsea's formal complaint against Mark Clattenburg. Chelsea have pursued one of two initial complaints, they dropped the case involving, presumably, Juan Mata and have pushed forward with the case involving John Obi Mikel. What has followed has exposed the English game's complete lack of conviction for eliminating racism from the game.

Mark Clattenburg, as of right now, is an innocent man. All of the information that any media outlets have access to consists of speculation. Chelsea have chosen to pursue a formal complaint that one of their players was racially abused by him. Their is a long, drawn out process involving these cases. Have we already forgotten how long the Ferdinand-Terry case took to resolve? Before this game and incident, I had always thought Mr. Clattenburg to be one of the bright, new referees in English football and thought he was always fair in the majority of his officiating decisions. Have English referees made bad calls against Chelsea? Quite a few. A blown game by a referee does not end in racist accusations; referees are human and make bad calls sometimes. However, the accusation of a referee racially abusing a player is a very serious claim.

The issue that worries me is that the media, as a whole, has almost exclusively branded Chelsea as going on a witch hunt for losing the game and as retribution for the ban and fine imposed on club captain, John Terry. Where does this cynicism originate? For years, many have looked at Chelsea as having bought their success by foreign money. Many cited that Roman Abramovich did not care about club image and was out for blood in this case. A man so hell-bent on playing beautiful football and having a worldwide brand does not care about club image? There are no voices defending Mikel; who has been nothing but a quiet, consummate professional throughout his career.

The FA and many organizations in England and involved with UEFA are for eradicating racism from the game but where are these voices defending Mikel during this time? Why are people calling for Chelsea's head if the complaint cannot be proven to be true? The media coverage of this case is filled with vitriol towards Chelsea's audacity at lodging such a complaint against a referee.

All sides are currently innocent. Let this case flow through the proper channels and reserve our judgement until the story develops further. These are very serious accusations and they needed to be treated with objectivity.

Premier League Points : Week 9

Week 9 saw Chelsea stay top but their lead cut to just one point above both Manchester clubs. Many of this past weekend's games were rather boring but the officiating in two key games has to be the biggest story for this week.

Chelsea faced Manchester United at home and would be a pivotal game in the title race. If Chelsea were to win, they would put themselves seven points clear of Manchester United in October. It would not have been an insurmountable gap but rather a substantial boost to Chelsea's title-contender credentials. Manchester United easily exposed Chelsea's flaws in it's new system with counterattacks down the flanks at pace. One such attack led to Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic being shown a straight red card. It can easily be argued that Ashley Young went to ground without being fouled, as some angles show, but it could have just as easily gone the other way and it did. What followed was tragic; Mark Clattenburg single-handedly killed a cracking match. Fernando Torres was sent off for being fouled by Johnny Evans. I understand that referees are trying to crack down on diving but this was an egregious error. Yet, at nine men, Chelsea still bossed the game and looked to win if it were not for the dreaded offside goal that was allowed. Javier Hernandez was not called offside, nine times out of nine he would have been, and scored the match winner. Dreadful officiating in one of the biggest games of the season. Fergie will be happy that Clattenburg insured that United got all three points. The allegations and formal complaint filed after the match against Clattenburg will be addressed separately.

The Liverpool derby. This game is only rivaled, in my opinion, by the Liverpool-Manchester United derby game in terms of intensity and hatred between the two teams. What was shocking, besides the bad officiating, was the complete lack of any defensive cohesion by either team. I guess both coaches told their defenses to take the first half off. Liverpool looked the better team over the course of the second half and are still having problems in front of goal. The glaring error came at the death and Luis Suarez's game winner was shockingly called offside. It, in essence, was the opposite of the Chicharito goal against Chelsea. How it was disallowed must be infuriating to the red side of the Mersey.

And now for something completely different...Southampton did not look completely terrible against Tottenham.

The Idea of the Dream Matchup.

Today was the championship match in the UEFA Champions League as the top two European club teams faced off. Manchester United, the most popular and most hated soccer club in the world, came in to this match having just won their third straight English Premier League title and as defending champions in the UEFA Cup. FC Barcelona was this year's champion in Spain's La Liga. Christiano Ronaldo of Man U won Player of the Year, while Lionel Mussi of Barca finished second in the voting.

The Detroit Red Wings just beat the Chicago Blackhawks in overtime to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals. They will meet the team the faced last year, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Last year, the Red Wings beat the Pens in a harder-than-thought-but-ultimately-easy six games. The stories for this series include the leading scorer in the season and playoffs with Evgeni Malkin, co-leader in the playoffs and face of the league Sidney Crosby and their fight for playoff MVP, Marian Hossa who rejected a 7-year offer from the Pens to sign a 1-year deal with the Wings so he can win the Stanley Cup and a city in Detroit who while the economy has been disastrous, the team continues to be a symbol of pride. Basically, it's the face of the league against the glamour franchise for the past 15 years.

The subject of dream matchups has been much discussed in the NBA as everything has been focused on Kobe vs LeBron. The Cavs and the Lakers finished as the top two teams in the NBA and it seemed like an inevitability that these two would meet in the NBA Finals. So much so, that Nike and Vitamin Water have already started to prepare with their own Kobe vs LeBron ad campaigns. However, funny thing happened along the way, the Orlando Magic lead their series with Cleveland 3-1 and are a win away from ruining the dream matchup. Meanwhile, the Lakers just finished a hard earned victory tonight over the Denver Nuggets and they now lead 3-2 in that series, that should end up going seven.

So there in lies the issue, how beneficial is the dream matchup and more importantly, if it doesn't come about, is the real matchup good enough? Let's take a look back through all sports for the past decade to see how they have faired in getting their dream matchup.

The NBA should be first as it seems most people think the league will stop at nothing to get their series. Last season, they had the biggest rivalry in league history resume with the Lakers-Celtics series and it still wasn't the highest rated series even on ABC; that honor belongs to the final Shaq and Kobe Lakers in 2004 when they lost to Detroit. Of course, no one ever moved the meter in ratings like Michael Jordan, who was able to make Chicago-Utah in 1998 the all-time high for the NBA in ratings. However, with the San Antonio Spurs being the dominant team in the decade, along with a particularly weak Eastern Conference turning the NBA Finals into formality, ABC has still been unable to do will with ratings. The best ratings tend to occur in years an East team win, since it's not expected.

The NHL has had more trouble finding their dream scenario. The best ratings the NHL has received this decade was the Devils-Stars series in 2000 which averaged a 3.7. Detroit and Pittsburgh is currently the dream matchup because of the players on the Pens and the history of the Red Wings. It also doesn't hurt to have two markets that will do ratings in the 30's for the Cup finals. The NHL has been too often stuck with the Anaheims and the Carolina's in their finals. They have, however, had three years of a Canadian team in the Cup finals helping their CBC ratings. Still, no series has come close to getting the one game rating Game 7 in the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals had when the Rangers beat Vancouver. While not a dream matchup, since Detroit was the West's number 1 seed that year and Toronto made the Western Finals, that game ended up being the highest rated NHL game in North America and hasn't been topped yet.

Since the Super Bowl never fails in the ratings and I would assume 200 million people will watch the Champions League final regardless who's there, the World Series is the last one that has to worry about dream matchup. Baseball back even twenty-five years ago would get ratings between 23 and 32 on average and Game 7 of the 1986 Mets-Red Sox series got a 38.9, very Super Bowl-like. Even more Super Bowl-like is that Philadelphia and Kansas City in 1980 is the highest rated World Series.

But now, the World Series now has to worry about outdrawing the NBA Finals. They need the dream matchup more than anyone, but can never get it. The closest they came was in 2003 when the Yankees faced the Red Sox in the ALCS and the Cubs faced the Florida Marlins in the NLCS. If the Cubs would of held their lead, a series with the Yankees would have been tremendous because of the Cubs title drought and their position as a national team, like the Yanks and Sox. The best series matchup in the 2000's has to be the 2004 World Series between the Red Sox and the Cardinals, but that ended way to early. The only other dream matchups since the strike were both series between the Braves and the Yankees.

It's obvious that this decade in sports have been unsuccessful in creating the matchups the causal sports fans want to see and it appears that they simply won't tune in and get to know new stars. Does this mean that if the NBA Finals is Denver and Orlando, no one will tune in for Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard? I don't know, but I do know the NBA doesn't want to find out, even if they can only keep one of them in. Because as we learned today from the Champions League final, if the two best teams and the two best players are involved, the world will stop and watch.