Quarters review : Last couple in Tango

By: Adam | April 12th, 2008

My apologies for being late to publish this article. But when your monitor doesn’t work you are left with keyboard and CPU which are still insufficient for any review. We had seen how teams fared on Tuesday’s matches. Lets see how teams performed on Wednesday.

MANCHESTER UTD. vs ROMA - 1-0
This was supposedly be the revenge for Roma but it turned out to be a cakewalk for Man Utd. Man Utd. didn’t play full strength (yes Rooney and Ronaldo nowadays are a half of their strength team) so did Roma (Totti forms their significant part of team). For neutrals it was an enjoyable game. It was a complete box to box entertainment. But Roma never looked like a team that can proceed to Semis. They had the their chance to mount significant amount of pressure in 1st half when Mancini won the penalty for Roma even though Wes Brown had got the ball. I thought De Rossi will get the goal for Roma (on assumption of his perfect penalty in WC final) but he blasted one in the Row “z” of the stadia rather than any of corner of the net. Did he take any penalty classes from Baggio and Beckham? Had it been 1-0 that time, I’m sure Roma would have piled huge amount of pressure on Man Utd. And who knows by half time it would have been 2-0. Unfortunately we don’t live in the world of “If’s and but’s”. 1st half ended with nothing significant after that penalty. In second half Manu started to play with more fluidity and Roma seemed to falter under pressure. Finally unthinkable happened for Roma when Tevez got one in. At that moment I thought its over and it certainly was.
Turning Point: Penalty miss.
Man of the Match: Owen Hargreaves. Covered every blade of the grass.

BARCELONA vs. SCHALKE - 1-0
This match had least amount of interest. Everyone thought that the tie is over since Barca comfortably steered victory in Germany. But I expected Schalke to make some headlines given Barcelona’s current situation (i.e. mess). Unfortunately I was proved wrong once again. In my humble opinion, it was one the most boring game (ofcourse along with Chelsea-Fener game) in quarters. Early in the first half Bojan supplied a cross in the box and Toure got one in. That kid Bojan is making lot fuss now a days. And I’m sure he will have bright future. Like 1st leg, Schalke lacked cutting edge. Kuryani had couple of opportunities but he failed to capitalize on them. 2nd half was also uneventful and game ended 1-0.
Turning Point: Toure’s goal
Man of the Match: Bojan. I thought he was really fantastic as well as livewire.

So we have 4 fantastic teams in 2 mouthwatering contests. One is beauty while other is beast. Finally my initial prediction proving itself right when I had predicted 3 of the 4 semi finalists are favorites to win the coveted trophy (back in the month of September).