Obviously soccer (from now on called by its proper name – football) is the finest sport on God’s green Earth. Today, we had the second leg of the UEFA Champion’s League second round. Before I get into the big news, I’ll recap the day’s other games. Arsenal became the first English team to beat Milan at the San Siro with a couple of late goals. Manchester United comfortably backed into the quarterfinals against Lyon, who were good two years ago and then ceased to be relevant. And apparently, Barcelona played and beat Celtic.
Those four games totaled four goals. Meanwhile, Fenerbahce and Sevilla played a barnstormer where the teams shared five goals between them for the second time in a row. Two weeks back, Fenerbahce won 3-2 and I was fretting that those two away goals would be disastrous. Apparently, even I underestimated the team I’ve followed since consciousness invaded my soul and brought forth the brilliant existence that is me. A few years ago, even last year, this team would have folded after conceding twice in the first ten minutes. But the character and devotion to attacking football never faded and they deservedly made it to extra time.
In regular time, play was equal with Sevilla scoring their first two on unbelievable and unforgivable goalkeeper mistakes. After pulling one back, Fener conceded again – this time on a balık (literally, fish) goal off a deflection. Fener shaded the second half and deserved the goal that equalized on aggregate. During extra time, we were hanging on for dear life as for some reason last-ditch defending seemed to be the philosophy-of-the-day. By this time, I had abandoned pretending to participate in work – as if my fist pumps twenty minutes earlier didn’t send the message – and thankfully the meeting was over when penalties rolled around. And man, oh man, when Daniel cry-baby Alves’s penalty was saved by Volkan It’s-about-f’ing-time-you-did-something-good Demirel, I was on cloud nine – plus ten, eleven and twelve.
I guess I have a difficult time explaining my feelings right now and maybe it hasn’t osmosed completely but suffice it to say I’ve had a huge smile on my face for a while now, which hasn’t happened since I conned IBM into giving me a job with a good salary. While the so-called big boys insist on playing drab European fixtures, true football lives in fixtures like Fenerbahce against Sevilla. Even Michel Platini – Supreme Leader of UEFA – chose to travel to Seville when he had other, supposedly juicier ties he could attend because everyone knew this would be good old-school, attacking football. When it comes to the knockout rounds in the Champion’s League, you just don’t see 5-5 aggregates going into extra time, which is testament to the show the two teams put on over 210+ minutes. I’m just glad my team was victorious. Yaşa Fener!
In other news, at the time of writing, Clinton seems to have taken Ohio with a large margin and the race is neck to neck in Texas. More on that later. McCain looks to have locked up the Elephant nomination which is bad news because as much as I don’t like Mike Huckabee’s views I really enjoy listening to him. What a great public speaker. Brett Favre retired which is getting lots of airplay but I can’t say I care. He’s fun to watch but I’ve been sick of him for a while. And, finally, I noticed I haven’t actually posted a picture of Jessica Alba, which seems unfair since I declared the battle of the Jessicas.
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