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French clubs in Europe, John Terry vs Wayne Bridge, Portsmouth’s troubles and Thai politicians lose out to female footballers. These stories and more feature in this week’s good, the bad and the ugly section of the podcast. Vocabulary support can be found for the words in bold at the foot of the post.

The Good

It’s been a good 10 days for French clubs in European competition as Lyon and Bordeaux scored impressive wins in the Champions League and Lille and Marseille made progress to the last 16 of the Europa League. We spoke about Lyon’s 1-0 defeat of Real Madrid in last week’s show and in this week’s set of Champions League games, top of the table Bordeaux won in Greece at Olympiakos. Laurent Blanc’s side look as if they will retain the French title this season so they can focus their efforts on a possible surprise Champions League cup run. Good for French clubs in Europe.

Good for women’s football in Thailand as the profile of the game is raised in a game featuring the Thai Cabinet and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva in Bangkok last Sunday. The women’s team were convincing winners, putting seven goals past the politicians. Now, I’d like to see some other politicians running around the pitch helping spread the popularity of women’s football.

The Bad

It has been a very bad week for Chelsea both on and off the field. Their players have been warned about their off-the field behaviour after the scandals involving first, John Terry and then Ashley Cole. Cole, of course, is out for three months with an ankle injury and he was joined on the injury list by goalkeeper Petr Cech who could face up to a month out of the game. He was injured in the defeat by Inter Milan in the Champions League first leg and his replacement Hilario had a nightmare in the 2-4 home defeat by Manchester City this weekend. Not only did this game dent their title hopes they also had two players sent off – Ballack and Belletti. A bad week indeed for the Blues.

Bad in South America as another player is assaulted. Following the shooting in the head last month of Paraguayan striker Cabanas, and four months ago of former Argentinian defender, Caceres, this time another Argentinian player Neston Gaitan was attacked by two men, one with a broken jug, and was injured in the neck and back. The attack, which happened in a club in Iquitos, Peru, followed a dispute a week earlier when the player had defended his girlfriend who had been insulted by one of the attackers. Bad bordering on ugly.

Ugly

Speaking of ugly, Portsmouth have finally been placed into administration, that is they have been taken over by an external organisation to mange their financial affairs as they are so much in debt – thought to be around £70 million. The club will probably be docked 9 points which would almost certainly confirm their relegation from the Premier League this season. As if that wasn’t enough, the Premier League authorities this week discovered that their clubs have amassed more than half of the debt owed by all the clubs in Europe, which is a shocking state of affairs. The Premier League needs to act quickly or its ‘product’ will be damaged even further.

Vocabulary

scored impressive wins : Won well, comfortable won the match

made progress to: Qualified for the next round

injury list: A list of players who are unable to play due to being hurt

had a nightmare: To play really badly (To have a mare)

dent their title hopes: To damage a team’s chances of winning the championship

a dispute: An argument, a quarrel

be docked: To be penalised, to lose points

have amassed: Have gathered or collected