Subscribe: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Good for the three London teams in the Champions League, bad refereeing decisions in England and Alex Ferguson in the ugly section again. These and more stories feature in our football review of the week for learners of English who love football.
Good
Great performances by the three London sides in the Champions League this week. Chelsea won comfortably 2-0 at home against French side Marseille while Arsenal won 3-1 away in the intimidating atmosphere of Belgrade against Partizan. Tottenham’s first ever Champions League season is proving to be an exciting one and they won 4-1 against Dutch champions Twente though they needed three penalties to do so. Central figure was Rafael Van de Vaart who made one, scored another, missed a penalty and was sent off. It’s never dull at the White Hart Lane.
Bad
After last season’s refereeing debacle between Sunderland and Liverpool in which the home side profited from a deflected goal off a beach ball, surely something like this couldn’t happen again? Well, thanks to the inexperience of referee Stuart Attwell, there was more controversy this season. Attwell did not clearly see the incident but allowed a goal by Kuyt stand when it appeared that the Sunderland defender had not cleanly touched the ball from a free kick. Perhaps that is a little harsh on the referee because Turner, the defender, may be covering up his mistake, while neither Torres nor Kuyt covered themselves in glory when it comes to respecting the spirit of the game. A bad day all round.
Ugly
Sir Alex Ferguson refuses to speak to the BBC here in England despite all managers being contracted to do so. Now after suggesting that a previous comment about Fernando Torres was taken out of context he has decided to not speak to any media outlets for a month. Why does the Premier League allow him to keep doing this? Ugly.
Vocabulary
Central figure: The main character
dull: Boring
debacle : A mess, chaos
a little harsh: The criticism is not really deserved; tough
being contracted to do so: The managers have agreed to talk to the press
