A Beautiful Thread for the Beautiful Game

That is correct.

As for the Europa League quarter-finals, it's: Arsenal x Napoli, Villareal x Valencia, Benfica x Eintracht Frankfurt and Slavia Praha x Chelsea. The winners of the former two face each other in one of the semis, the winners of the latter two face each other in the other semi.

Vitória SC 3-1 Boavista

After last week's dull and painful loss in the derby at Braga (may we never speak of it again), we showed a solid effort this time around and things went well for the most part.

In the early minutes, Mattheus scored with a header. The team did relax a bit in the last 15 minutes of the first half, which probably gave Boavista some confidence. In the second half, they equalized, but we hit them back less than 4 minutes later, thanks to Davidson.

Less than 15 minutes after that, our CB Pedro Henrique scored after the free-kick, and Boavista lost motivation and gas to keep up. We remained in control and could have scored one or two more, if Boavista's GK hadn't saved a couple of shots.

Moreirense will play against Benfica tomorrow, so, the battle for the 5th place might get more intense if they draw or lose.

My predictions are: Juventus, Barcelona, Liverpool and Manchester City for UCL Semifinals; and Valencia, Napoli, Benfica and Chelsea for UEL semifinals.

Real Madrid got an agonizing 2-0 victory over Celta Vigo. Evidently, Florentino will need much more than the return of Zidane to put things back on track. Also Atlético lost 2-0 against Athletic Club, which will surely help Barcelona if they win their match.

They need new players. Better focus on ending the season in a mildly dignified way while they make the shopping list.

The Euro 2020 qualifiers began today: Brief recap of today's matches (more shall happen in the next few days, needless to say):

Group I: Kazakhstan won 3-0 against Scotland (goals here). A mixture of Kazakhstan playing well and Scotland sinking to a new low, according to some of the latter's supporters; Cyprus comfortably won 5-0 against San Marino (goals here, including a brace by Sotiriou). The more popular match today was Belgium x Russia, which ended with the former winning 3-1 (goals here, including a brace by Hazard, and a red card for Golovin).

Group C: Northern Ireland won 2-0 against Estonia (goals by Niall McGinn and Steven Davis (penalty), while the Netherlands comfortably won 4-0 against Belarus (goals by Depay, Wijnaldum, Depay again (but a penalty this time) and Van Dijk).

Group E: Slovakia won 2-0 against Hungary (goals by Duda and Rusnak), while Croatia had to sweat to recover the goal suffered at first to win 2-1 over Azerbaijan (goals by Sheydaev, Barisic and Kramaric).

Group G: Israel drew 1-1 with Slovenia (goals by Sporar and Zahavi); North Macedonia (the UEFA website still lists them as FYR Macedonia, but that will probably change in the near future) won 3-1 against Latvia (goals by Alioski, Elmas, Isajevs and Elmas again); Austria lost at home against Poland, due to Piatek scoring some 8 minutes after being subbed on. Poland's goal scoring department won't have a problem after Lewandowski, that's for sure. Szczesny also saved Alaba's powerful shot near the end to avoid an equalizer.

Edited by Quag15 on Mar 21st 2019 at 9:56:59 AM

Alright, I have a request for UEFA: can our NT's matches be played strictly on the Nauryz eve from now on? Maybe with the Independence Day thrown in for a good measure?

Seriously, though, I really hope this is not one of those rare good days when the whole team is on a roll and such performances would become a lot more consistent. I've seen our NT play at the Nations League and then there were no indicators that such a result is achievable now.

Damn, those goals were genuinely beautiful...

Edited by Millership on Mar 22nd 2019 at 12:51:38 AM

It also helps that Astana Arena is quite the fortress (especially against Scottish teams; I remember when Celtic went there in the past and lost).

More qualifiers' matches:

Group A: Bulgaria drew 1-1 with Montenegro (goals here), in a match where Bulgaria's equalizer shouldn't have been a penalty, rather a free kick. Complete fuck-up by the ref there; England comfortably destroyed Czech Republic by 5-0 (goals here, including a hat-trick by Sterling, who is the first England player since Jermain Defoe some 9 years ago to score a hat-trick in a competitive match (iirc).

Group H: All home teams lost in this group: Moldova by 1-4 against France (goals by Griezmann, Varane, Giroud, Mbappé and Ambros), Andorra by 0-2 against Iceland (goals by Bjarnason and Kjartansson), and Albania by the same amount against Turkey (goals by Burak Yilmaz and Calhanoglu). Things might be more or less set in this group with these results (namely, France winning the group and Iceland and Turkey duking it out for the second place).

Group B: Luxembourg conceded first, but turned it around and won 2-1 against Lithuania (goals by Cernych, Leandro Barreiro and Gerson Rodrigues). As for us...

Portugal 0-0 Ukraine

We were tactically clueless against an Ukraine that almost parked the bus (and yet were closer to scoring a goal than us), with us doing the same shitty crosses and the rare shot outside the area (if only Bruno Fernandes wasn't injured; he'd pull that sort of thing off). Fernando Santos is doing worse than Allegri in Serie A with Juve somehow, and Ronaldo probably felt a bit pissed off tonight. On the other hand, the team needs to stop focusing on getting balls to Ronaldo, because the Ukrainian defence (and their GK Pyatov, who was MOTM, imo) pretty mcuh blocked him out.

The match also saw the debut of Brazilian-born Dyego Sousa. I don't know what could he add to the national team, but he deserved the call-up in light of his current season with Braga (he's one of the current top scorers in the Liga).

I hope we really change things around against Serbia 3 days from now. But as it is, maybe it'll be time to think of someone to succeed Santos and make the team move forward and be more creative (both metaphorically and literally).

Shevchenko, on the other hand, will be satisfied with this result (he's been their NT coach since the post-Euro 2016 days).

Outside of Europe, there are other things going on: Angola qualified to the African Cup of Nations, leaving Burkina Faso out, so, that's nice.

Also, in a preparation friendly for the Copa América, Argentina lost at home by 1-3 against Venezuela, in spite of Messi's return to the NT (Jhon Murillo's goal being a highlight). Congratulations, MyFinalEdits.

Edited by Quag15 on Mar 22nd 2019 at 10:03:27 AM

Thanks. I would be happy if it wasn't for Dudamel having announced that he's not planning to manage the team past Copa América, or even before. Apparently, something has happened between him and the FVF.

EDIT: Ahhhh, of course, figures. It turns out that two certain people who are respective supporters of Maduro (the dickhead who is destroying Venezuela) and Guaidó (the supposed "real president" who has done nothing to actually save the country) have visited Dudamel and the players while they were training. Supposedly, this was because both political sides want to support the national football team no matter what; the problem is that this clearly taints the team because this will inevitably politicize football. It's already infuriating enough for us Venezuelans that the country's politics is in ruins. Now they try to shove it into matters that have nothing to do with politics.

Edited by MyFinalEdits on Mar 22nd 2019 at 7:46:38 AM

I'm sorry to hear that. That absolutely sucks and should not have happened. Let's hope some sense will be brought back at the FVF. I have read rumours that he wanted to quit right away, is this true or will he truly stay until Copa América, at least?

More Euro 2020 qualifiers:

Group D: Georgia lost at home by 0-2 against Switzerland (goals here), while the Rep. of Ireland won at Gibraltar by 1-0 (goal here). If, in the case of the former, the Swiss are satisfied, in the case of the latter, manager Mick McCarthy (he arrived in November last year) said in the post-match interview, and I quote, "I pretty much hated every minute of that!" Sounds like the Irish will have to do a lot of work, in light of McCarthy still getting to grips with the team.

Group F: 3 2-1 wins, all at home, by Sweden against Romania (goals by Quaison, Claesson and Keseru), Malta against Faroe Islands (I can only find Malta's second goal, a penalty scored by a Steve Borg), and Spain against Norway (goals by Rodrigo, Joshua King (penalty) and Ramos (penalty)).

Group J: 2 2-0 wins, one away, by Greece against Liechtenstein (goals by Fortounis and Donis), and one at home, by Italy against Finland (goals by Nicolo Barella and Moise Kean). Both Italian players scored their first NT goal, and Italy's last 15 goals have been scored by 15 different players. Finland played well, nonetheless.

The other win was a 2-1, by Bosnia-Herzegovina against Armenia (goals by Rade Krunic, Deni Milosevic and Mkhitaryan (penalty)).

In the African Cup of Nations qualifiers, while Burundi have achieved qualification to a major tournament for the first time ever, after drawing at home against Gabon (who have thus failed to qualify), there was heartbreak for Mozambique, who drew 2-2 away against Guinea-Bissau. Due to head-to-head criteria, it's Namibia who have qualified alongside Guinea-Bissau.

If Mozambique had won 2-1, both them and G-B would have qualified. This does not help the sadness and near despair of a nation that is currently dealing with the disaster caused by the cyclone Idai in the city of Beira and the surrounding areas.

Apparently, Poland is experiencing an "epidemic" of flu, with 8 players currently exhibiting symptoms, including Milik and Piatek. It's possible that it is swine flu, after Milik's Napoli teammate Fabián Ruiz was hospitalized earlier in the week.

Edited by Quag15 on Mar 23rd 2019 at 3:01:10 AM

That will depend on the FVF's decision (they have yet to approve Dudamel's resignation).

I see.

More Euro 2020 qualifiers. Lots of matches today:

Group E: Wales won 1-0 against Slovakia (goal in the first minutes of the match by Daniel James); Hungary won 2-1 against Croatia, in much the same way the Balkan side had won against Azerbeijan 3 days ago (goals here).

Group G: Israel beat Austria by 4-2 (goals here, including a hat-trick by Eran Zahavi and a Book Ends brace by Arnautovic), Poland won 2-0 against Latvia (goals here), and Slovenia drew 1-1 with North Macedonia (goals here).

Group I: All home sides lost here: Kazakhstan took a beating from Russia by 0-4 (goals here, including a brace by Cheryshev, who seems to be the type of player that performs better for country than for club), San Marino lost by 0-2 against Scotland (goals here), and Cyprus lost by the same amount against Belgium (goals here; Eden Hazard got his 100th cap for Belgium tonight, btw).

Group C: Northern Ireland won 2-1 against Belarus (goals here), and, tonight's big match, the Netherlands lost at home by 2-3 against Germany (the first four goals here, plus the killing goal by Nico Schulz, near the end of the match). Germany got their revenge for the Nations League matches against the Dutch (and their subsequent relegation to League B), in a sense.

The last time the Netherlands had lost a match at home against Germany was back in 1996, apparently.

The African Cup of Nations qualifiers are all done. Here's a list of the qualified teams. 3 debuts (Madagascar, Burundi, Mauritania), plus the return after nearly 4 decades by Tanzania.

Edited by Quag15 on Mar 24th 2019 at 3:14:09 AM

Surprisingly, during this time some clubs are playing official matches. In Argentina, Newell's got eliminated from the Copa Argentina by a lower-division team. Hell broke loose, given some unfortunate violent incidents from Newell's fans (it doesn't help that, next season, the looming risk of a relegation will start soaring over them, due to their low statistics in recent seasons).

Same with San Lorenzo, which on top of barely having won any matches it has had six points deducted due to some irregularities, and cannot sign new players in the next market either.

It wouldn't be a Copa Argentina without some giant killing and shenanigans taking place. Sad for San Lorenzo, though.

More qualifiers tonight:

Group A: England continues to be on a roll, as they procceded to smash Montenegro away by 5-1 (goals here, including a brace by Ross Barkley), while Kosovo drew 1-1 with Bulgaria (goals here).

Group H: Turkey comfortably beat Moldova by 4-0 (goals here, including a brace by Cenk Tosun), France beat Iceland by the same amount (goals by Umtiti, Giroud, Mbappé and Griezmann). Giroud is now the third top scorer for France of all time, surpassing Trézeguet. Andorra lost at home by 0-3 against Albania (goals here).

Group B: Luxembourg dramatically lost at home by 1-2 (goals here, with the dramatic part being the own goal suffered in stoppage time). As for us...

Portugal 1-1 Serbia (goals and a controversial ref decision here).

With the exception of a few things (such as the great goal by Danilo), Murphy's law almost applied in full force. Tadic scored a penalty in the first minutes of the match, By the half hour mark, Ronaldo had to be substituted (possible hamstring injury), but Danilo scored that banger near half time (though Serbia got close to scoring again in the final minutes of the first half).

The second half was more dreadful. A lack of ideas vs. a strong and focused Serbian defense (and they could afford to keep Luka Jovic on the bench, so, they didn't used their full attacking/counter-attacking power). Their GK was, like the Ukrainian GK 3 days ago, on point tonight.

The ref controversially did not give a penalty or a corner due to a handball by Rukavina, and, a few minutes later, did not gave a penalty after Pepe went down (though I guess this second decision was fair karma, due to Pepe doing a vintage cuntery foul against Tadic). There is no VAR in the qualifiers, so, this was a case of severe amateurism on the part of the ref.

Either Fernando Santos changes his call-ups a bit (Dyego Sousa doesn't deserve any further call-ups, imo; Pizzi was also poor in this international break), as well as his tactics, or we'll crash out in humiliating fashion sooner or later and he'll have to leave.

Edited by Quag15 on Mar 25th 2019 at 3:05:36 AM

Last day of this international break's Euro qualifiers:

Group J: Armenia lost at home by 0-2 against Finland (goals here); ; Italy comfortably smashed Liechtenstein 6-0 (goals and red card here), with the latter being down to 10 men by the end of the first half. Quagliarella returned to the national team after years of absence (it's a long story), and, due to his goals, he is now Italy's oldest goalscorer ever (he's 36, having surpassed Christian Panucci, who was 35 many years ago), in what can be described as a heartwarming moment after all he went through. Moise Kean also scored in a consecutive match, so, Italy's past, present and future worked perfectly tonight (even if it's against a punching bag like Liechtenstein), and Roberto Mancini^note The last time the Italian NT scored six goals in a single match was a qualifier match for the 1994 WC against Malta in 1993; Roberto Mancini himself scored a brace in that match. is making them slowly rise again. Bosnia drew 2-2 with Greece (goals here), in a match filled with controversy (e.g. Pjanic's red card, which probably shouldn't have been given)

Group D: Switzerland choked their 3-0 lead and drew 3-3 against Denmark (goals here; all Denmark goals were scored in less than 10 minutes(!)), while the Rep. of Ireland won against Georgia thanks to a free-kick goal by Hourihane).

Group F: Romania comfortably beat the Faroe Islands by 4-1 (goals here, including a brace by Keseru), while Norway drew 3-3 with Sweden (goals here), in a match that featured controversial moments - lack of VAR and all that - and last minute drama, just like the other match pointed out above involving a Nordic team with red in their flag); Malta predictably lost at home by 0-2 against Spain, even if the source of the goals is a bit unlikely: a brace by Morata (this was his first goal tonight; can't find the other one).

EDIT: Ok, found Morata's second goal.

Edited by Quag15 on Mar 26th 2019 at 3:28:23 AM

Real Madrid continues hovering through the halls of La Liga as a restless ghost, having lost 2-1 against Valencia last Wednesday and now winning with agony 2-1 against Eibar. It's definitely going to be one long, humiliating end of season for a club that had chances of winning at least one trophy during nine years in a row (before this season, the last time they had prematurely ended their prospects was in the much-reviled 2008-09 season).

And Barcelona beat Atletico 2-0 with Suarez and Messi scoring. At this point, it's gonna take a couple miracles for los Azulgrana to not be the champions this season.

First UEFA Champignons League (the prize is the world's largest mushroom) quarter-finals today. Liverpool managed a 2-0 win over Porto with goals from Bobby Firmino and Naby Keita, while Tottenham beat Man City 1-0 with a goal from Heung-min Son - but Harry Kane went out of the match after he got his ankle trod on by Fabian Delph, and might miss the rest of the season (and will almost certainly miss the return leg in Manchester next week).

The other two quarter-finals - Man United-Barcelona and Ajax-Juventus - are tomorrow. Two away wins seems more likely than two more home wins, but anything is possible in football.

Well, now we've had the other two first legs in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals. Ajax managed a 1-1 draw at home to Juventus, with David Neres equalising at the beginning of the second half after Juventus went ahead at the end of the first half courtesy of, well, take a wild guess. Man United scored the only goal of their match at home to Barcelona... unfortunately for them, it was in their own net, courtesy of Luke Shaw.

The Europa League quarter-final first legs were today. Arsenal beat Napoli 2-0 with goals from Aaron Ramsey and an own goal from Kalidou Koulibaly. Valencia needed two second-half injury time goals from Gonçalo Guedes (who also scored their opener) and Daniel Wass to get a 3-1 win at Villarreal (whose goal came from a Santi Cazorla penalty). A hat-trick from João Félix and a goal from Rúben Dias gave Benfica a 4-2 win over Eintracht Frankfurt, whose goals came from Luka Jović and Gonçalo Paciência. And Chelsea won 1-0 at Slavia Prague with a late goal by Marcos Alonso.

By this time next week, we'll know the semi-finallists in both competitions.

Edited by mlsmithca on Apr 11th 2019 at 12:13:54 PM

Thank you for the updates last week. I was absent from this place for some days, due to other things on my mind.

Barcelona comfortably beat Manchester United by 3-0 (4-0 on agg.). goals here, including a brace by Messi.

As for Ajax, they continue on a roll. Juventus lost at home by 1-2 (2-3 on agg.) against them. The Dutch side returns to the semi-finals of the CL for the first time since the 1996/97 season. Ronaldo scored first, but Van de Beek equalized both the match and the tie 6 minutes later, and, in the second half, De Ligt scored what ultimately gave them the win (goals here). Juventus did woke up after that, but they seemed to not have much of a gameplan beyond "hey, cross to Ronaldo".

It's likely Ajax will get decimated in the summer transfer market (such is the fate of Dutch and Portuguese clubs), but they'll certainly be fondly remembered, for both their current quality and their dynamic passing game.

How do you see their chances against either of the English teams?

I had said Manchester City would prevail. But honestly, after their first leg (1-0 loss against Tottenham), and having seen the surprising results in the current edition overall, I can't tell anymore.

Meanwhile, Astana conceded this banger from Ordabasy's forward Jangylyshbai in the 5th tour of Kazakh Premier League. Considering where it's scored, there are doubts if it was deliberate.

Heck of a goal by any standard, though.

Well. As Sir Alex would say, "Football. Bloody hell." Liverpool romped to a 4-1 win over Porto with goals from Sadio Mané, Bobby Firmino, Mo Salah, and Virgil van Dijk, with Éder Militão scoring Porto's goal between Firmino and Salah's goals for Liverpool. Liverpool advance 6-1 on aggregate to face Barcelona in the semi-finals.

As for the other semi-final.... well. Sterling opened the scoring for Man City after just four minutes, then Heung-min Son scored a brace in the following six minutes to give Tottenham a 2-1 lead, and then Bernardo Silva and Sterling again made it 3-2 by the 21-minute mark. Sergio Aguero added a fourth for City in the second half, Fernando Llorente pulled one back for Spurs about fifteen minutes later, and then everyone thought Sterling had completed his hat-trick in injury time only for the goal to be ruled offside. Final score: Man City 4, Spurs 3. Spurs advance on away goals to face Ajax in the semi-finals.

So much for City's quadruple.

Yeah, couldn't find the links to the goals as I was writing.

Edited by mlsmithca on Apr 17th 2019 at 5:11:54 AM

The kind of goal we all dreamt of scoring at least once at school. Not sure if it was practiced beforehand or really lucky, though.

And you're right, because Manchester City fell in spite of winning 4-3 against Tottenham (4-4 on agg. away goals in favour of the latter). Tottenham began to win, then Manchester City recovered and were ahead in the second half, then Llorent scored for Tottenham. Raheem Sterling scored in stoppage time, but... VAR invalidated it due to off-side. Goals here. Heartbreak for Pep, big relief and happiness for Pochettino, and a great achievement for Tottenham (first time ever they reach the semi-finals of the current CL format).

Porto began well, but failed to convert their chances, and Liverpool punished them clinically and ruthlessly. Porto 1-4 (1-6 on agg.) Liverpool (goals by Mané, Salah, Eder Militão, Firmino, and Van Dijk).

Semi-finals are Tottenham vs Ajax and Barcelona vs Liverpool.

'd with the exception of the links.

Edited by Quag15 on Apr 17th 2019 at 2:09:15 AM

I'm really hoping that Barcelona gets a treple (last year was a sad year for Messi, World Cup, Champions quarter-finals and all that), but I'm worried about Liverpool. While I don't consider them a threat in particular, well, Roma wasn't either last year and we all saw what happened there.

Barcelona needs some serious midfielders ASAP.