Subscribe: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
A great week for Inter, Blackpool and the football team from Cape Verde, while Portugal, Cardiff and Manuel Pellegrini all had bad weeks. These stories and more feature in this week’s the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which can be heard on our weekly podcast. Vocabulary support can be found for the words in bold at the foot of the post.
The Good
A great week for Jose Mourinho and Inter Milan as they beat Bayern Munich 2-0 in the Champions League final to complete an historic treble – the first Italian side to win the domestic league and cup double and the Champions League. it was the first time Inter had won the Champions League since 1965 and the first Italian team since 2007. Argentinian striker Diego Milito was the hero with two well-taken goals to sink the Germans who were simply unable to break down the Italian defence. In addition to Bayern, Inter also defeated Chelsea and Barcelona on their way to the title so a well-deserved treble for them indeed.
A fairy tale, in the English football league at least, as Blackpool F. C. become the smallest club ever to qualify to play in the Premier League. The team from a famous seaside resort in the north west of England, booked their place in one of the World’s top leagues by overcoming Cardiff 3-2 at Wembley despite falling behind to an early goal. The ‘Seasiders’ are managed by the charismatic Ian Holloway, known for his interesting and often humourous press intevews and have gained a lot of plaudits for their positive attacking style of play. They are already favourites to be relegated next year, but well done to Blackpool and if Hull could survive for two seasons, why not Blackpool?
The Bad
With only weeks to go before the kick off to the World Cup in South Africa, Japan’s campaign is really taking a turn for the worse as they were beaten 2-0 by arch-rivals South Korea on their home turf. This was the second time this year this has happened, as they also lost to South Korea 3-1 back in February when they finished third out of four teams in the Easy Asia Championship. The team was booed off by the crowd at the final whistle and recycling their manager from the 1998 World Cup campaign, Okada, seems to have backfired. The team also came in for criticism from another ex-manager, Troussiere, who coached Japan to the knock out stages in 2002. The Frenchman basically accused Okada of being naive and tactically inflexible, and given the poor display, his words have some truth to them. Next up for Japan is England in Austria as they limp towards the Finals in South Africa.
Another side limping towards the World Cup finals is Portugal who, complete with Ronaldo in their side, managed to only draw 0-0 with Cape Verde a team ranked 113 in the world. Four years ago it was the much-fancied Czech Republic who failed to make it to the second round while France failed to do so four years earlier in Japan. Could it be Portugal’s turn?
The Ugly
Related to our top story, treble-winning Inter manager Jose Mourinho told the sporting world that he would be leaving the Italian side to manage Spanish giants Real Madrid. I suppose that when you have just won a treble you can get away with anything but Real still had a manager at the time in Manuel Pellegrini who though coming second in La Liga this season had still managed to amass a record 97 points. Classless from Real Madrid and Jose Mourinho – an ugly pairing if ever there was one.
Vocabulary
to break down: To score a goal against a well-marshalled defence
to sink: To defeat
fairy tale: (in football) an amazing story, usually when an underdog 9a weak team) does well in a cup competition
book a place: secure a spot, get promoted, get a place in a competition
gain plaudits: when you gain plaudits, people say you have done well, you have done a good job, people applaude you
arch-rivals: huge rivals, a team that is your biggest adversary
backfire: go wrong, end in tears, when something backfires the original plan leads to disaster
limping: To not play very well – it means to walk rather painfully
