Barstool's Weekend Soccer Guide
Sam’s Weekend Soccer Guide
Hi haters! Y’all miss me? Awww, don’t worry, the feeling is mutual.
Anyway, I would say I’m back to bother you with another soccer blog, but the fact is I never really left thanks to an unexpected midweek EPL game on Tuesday and an FA Cup replay on Wednesday. Regardless, here I am to do a little mental fluffing of your jogo bonito boners in preparation for what is shaping up to be a rull, rull big weekend in Lawn Fairy Land.
“Shut up, Sam. You say that almost every weekend these days.”
Right you are… and right I am!
So let’s get to it…
Lil something for the picture readers
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ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE
Last weekend’s games shook out like so:
Some of the more notable highlights, lowlights and observations…
– Liverpool. Woof.
– Arsenal, as I have mentioned previously, has officially overtaken City as the club with the second best chance of catching Chelsea as their odds have crept up to 0.00% compared with City’s 0.000000% chance. The Gunners are no joke.
– Sticking with the trend of discussing the league’s top teams, how nice would it be to have a guy like Loic Remy to come off the bench and score lit-ter-ally nothing but massive, massive goals. He did it again against Stoke last weekend to cut the “Those wackass Chelsea ballers are ‘bout to fold like Arsenal in a Champions League knockout game” chatter by roughly 75% from what it would have been over the past seven days.
– United beating up on Aston Villa combined with City using a mirror and some KY to fistfuck at Crystal Palace means United leapfrogged their cross-city rivals and now sit one point ahead of them in third place. Now if only these two clubs would just play one another sometime soon to nail clarify once and for all who has the third Champions League slot locked in and who may get dragged into a dogfight with Liverpool and Spurs… [in the biz (of thankless soccer blogging?), that right there is what we call “foreshadowing”]
– Remember that time I said now is the point in the season where motivation plays an especially important role in the outcomes of games, which I rightly used as my rationale for picking Lester to beat West Ham (ding ding ding!), but then immediately turned around and ignored by picking apathetic Newcastle to overcome a desperate Sunderland? (Idjit!)
– Everton remembered how to play soccer! Oops, too late… though it is doing wonders for Roberto Martinez’s job security.
– Seven goals and four points in two games for QPR. Congratulations, Hoops! Too bad you’re still in the relegation zone (though Hull City is within shouting distance… as are Villa and Sunderland, though those two clubs are actually showing some backbone unlike the Tigers).
– Now that we’re talking about bad teams, I’d be remiss in not mentioned Tottenham. Scoreless draw against wee Burnley? Can somebody please kick me directly in the dick right now to make the pain of being a Spurs fan go away – if only for a little while…
So first here’s another pretty lady for those of you who like that kind of thing…
But more importantly, after (roughly) 31 rounds of action, the EPL table now looks like this:
This weekend’s slate includes:
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PICKS OF THE WEEK
Don’t look now but ol’ Sammy boy has been on a bit of a hot streak recently… smart move would be to dial it back a bit butttttttt scared money don’t make money!
United (+155)
City (+165)
Draw (+250)
Welp, so here we are. But seriously, how in The Royal Fuck did this we get here? Biggest mysteries of the universe (in reverse order):
5a) Big Cat’s nipples
5b) What’s beyond of outer space
4) Women
3) Dinosaurs
2) Math
1) United in 3rd place right now
For most of the season – read: all games not involving Tottenham – United has seemingly managed to repeatedly turn certain losses into draws and draws into victories by the skin of their teeth using little more than smoke and mirrors (and David De Gea). To be sure, Michael Carrick is quietly having a fantastic season in the middle if the field. And the defense has turned things around a bit (there was nowhere to go but up after the first few months of the season). But who would have thought the club would be where they are right now with little to no production from the likes of Robin van Persie and Radamel Falcao? I’m not sure whether to be impressed or come clean about my suspicions that Louis van Gaal sold his soul to the devil.
Either way, United come into Sunday’s marquee matchup in good form, having recently dispatched with Spurs, Liverpool (at Anfield) and a somewhat resurgent Aston Villa. Add to that the club seems to be getting increasingly healthy, with that RvP bloke apparently deciding he’s ready to play again (though whether he will play well again is still very TBD). City is all sorts of banged up with Vincent Kompany recently being added to the “unlikely to play” category that already included Wilfried Bony. The loss of Kompany in particular will be talked about a lot as he is the anchor of defense, but if we’re being honest he’s been pretty damn bad so far this season so it is unlikely to hurt as much as in past years.
I’m torn on this one. Before the season I predicted the top three to be (in order) Chelsea, Arsenal and United, and a win by the Red Devils today would go a long ways towards assuring that. More importantly, United has been playing well and City has been woeful. Having said that, I can’t shake the feeling that the Sky Blues are simply the better team… and (almost) every time they have been put behind the 8-ball this season they have responded well. I expect big games from Yaya Toure and Kun Aguero, who will need to perform for them to have a shot. An early goal for United might be enough to kill City’s confidence, but assuming they can avoid that I like City to win 3-2.
[Note: a lot of people on twitter seem to think that I have something against United. In fact, I do not – no more so anyway than any of the other EPL clubs that consistently outspend, outplay and finish higher than Spurs. I respect the job that United has done as one of the early trailblazers for European soccer here in the US, and appreciate that they have invested heavily in putting a good team on the field. Doesn’t mean I have to “like” them though.]
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Bonus picks:
One fact you should know about Arsenal (-200) visiting Burnley (+550) is that anytime the Gunners play a club immediately after Tottenham play them, Arsenal without fail will always get a better result. I just did a TON of research on this and the correlation is 1:1*. Maybe it is because Spurs softens up the common foe, who knows, but facts are facts. Therefore it is already written in the stars that the Gunners will dispatch with wee Burnley this weekend. Arsenal to win 3-0.
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How about the Toffee’s recent three-game winning streak. Good for you boys. Alas, this weekend Everton (+190) visits Wales for a game against a tough and in-form Swansea (+145) side. Gimme the Swans all day every day and once this Saturday in this one. Swansea to win 2-1.
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REST OF EUROPE
Serie A: 8th-place Milan host 5th-place Sampdoria on Sunday (2:45pm ET on beIN Sport) in a game that should help dictate whether this season ends up being a horrific stain on the Rossoneri’s record or merely an extremely embarrassingly debacle that will be forgotten as soon as Silvio Berlusconi embezzles a few more billions and pumps them into the club this summer.
La Liga: Nice solid offering in Spain this week as league leaders Barcelona travel to 5th-place Sevilla on Saturday (2pm ET on beIN Sport) in a game that Messi & Co. need all three points to ensure they remain a step ahead of 2nd-place Real Madrid, which itself has a tricky game on its games earlier that day (10am ET on beIN) against Eibar that Los Blancos will have to play without Bale injured plus “James” and Tony Kroos due to an accumulation of yellow cards. Nice of them to inject a little intrigue into the proceedings, anyway.
Bundesliga: 10th-place Dortmund visit 3rd-place Monchengladbach on Saturday (9:30am ET on GolTV – maybe? I am not actually sure if that’s true or not. In fact can anybody confirm whether GolTV a real channel?) in what is likely the best matchup of a rather tame weekend in Ze Land of Ze Deutsch.
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MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
CONCACAF Champions League doesn’t have quite the cache of its UEFA counterpart, and rightly so given the level of competition and attention it receives (even from some of the clubs that participate), but I’ll be damned if the second leg of Wednesday’s semifinal between Montreal and Costa Rican side Alajuelense wasn’t some entertaining sports watching. Not the greatest soccer, of course, but couldn’t be beat for drama as Montreal pulled out a “magical” 4-2 loss — Soccer! — which sent them through to the final on away goals.
Canadia + soccer = Julie Stewart-Binks pic
So congrats to the Impact for making the CCL final. If they could somehow pull off an upset over Mexico’s Club America (good luck with that), they would be the third MLS team to win the tournament and first since the LA Galaxy in 2000. Yay!
One suggestion to Montreal: maybe try to bottle a little of whatever it is you are doing in CCL and apply it to your MLS form… just a thought.
This week’s schedule looks like:
Game of the week – based on historical animosity anyway – is clearly Seattle Sounders visiting LA Galaxy on Sunday (7pm ET on Fox Sports 1). LA has had a rough start so far, winning a grand total of one of its five games, not that Seattle has done too much better with two wins in four. That said, this is arguably the most star-studded matchup the league has to offer, and has produced some great games in the (recent) past. Hopefully this weekend’s game will live up to expectations.
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Aight, it’s Friday and there’s beer to drink (and ponies to bet on for those of you/us attending the Arkansas Derby… can’t wait to NOT bet a single grey horse all damn weekend) so don’t let me keep you. One quick reminder though that next week we’ve got leg 1’s of the Champions League quarterfinals come up – or as I like to call it: naptime for the EPL – so I’ll be back to bother you again on Tuesday. Try not to miss me too hard.
One for the road
Note: if you ever are DYING to read words about soccer, the link to my latest post can always be found on my twitter homepage (just an FYI)
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