First was accidently and the second was incidental. The penalty was the right call but there was no malicious intent to justify a red card.
Great win but this is still a Liverpool team that is 4th best in England and may not get to defend their trophy. I say may because I think they will be allowed in.
That said, this should be seen (and rightly so) as a major slap in the face to both Arsenal and Man. United. 8 Premierships is one thing, total football another but only one CL trophy between them? Pathetic.
Congatulaions to the Reds. I look forward to watching the game on ESPN this evening having failed to respond to my early morning wake-up call. Benitez got a bit lucky after his tactical blunder of playing Kewell and omitting Hamann, but fortunately Gerrard was in giant mode.
Just cos it’s accidental doesn’t mean it’s not a penalty; it prevented a goal-scoring chance, hence free kick. Deliberate justmeans booking / red card.
Again, malicious intent or not, the rules are clear that a foul preventing a goal-scoring chance can be punished by a red card.
I don’t think so. Basically the keeper is allowed to do whatever he wants as long as he stays behind the line before the ball is touched (Was anyone else reminded of Bruce Grobelaar in the '84 final against Roma?). However, Pirlo should have been given a do-over for his penalty, because Dudek clearly crossed the line before Pirlo touched the ball.
Congratulations to the Liverpool team, to come back from 3-0 down is unbelievable and shows serious character. Benitez has just stamped his authority on the english game as a truly great manager. In hindsight his strategy was ingenious, play like Marine for 45mins, then bring on Hamman and crush the complacent Milanese.
No congratulations whatsoever to the red parasites crawling from beneath their stones of casual football interest to declare their support for Liverpool, now that they’ve won the European cup!!
On a positive note, my marriage just about survived last night. The wife is a red :smack:
I hope you don’t mean me. I’ve been a Liverpool fan ever since they beat Moenchengladbach in the '77 finals. I’m German and I have always hated 'Gladbach and Bayern Muenchen, so I became a fan of Liverpool and have been following them ever since.
Well, just finally checking in here as I got around to watching the FA Cup final last night and had the Liverpool result spoiled for me in another forum where some daft German chick, in a thread about Oguchi Onyewu, of all people, just blurted out the result.
Anyway, in the FA Cup I was a bit mystified to hear them say toward the end that Wayne Rooney was MOTM. In what turned out to be a defensive battle (ManU shut down Arse, and Arsenal was fortunate enough to keep the Red Devils off the board), shouldn’t a defender have been MotM? And how many players on the eventual losing side have been given that honor? I thought that Ronaldo caused the Gunners defense more or as many problems, is the designation limited to the English?
Also, is it just me, or is Patric Vieira starting to fade? He made a number of poor passes, although he was often in a decent position, and seemed uncertain in his distribution.
Again, I’ve not actually seen the CL final, but Milan seem quite the choke artists. They almost gave the previous match back to PSV in a similar manner, and IIRC they did something similar last year.
All credit to the Reds on a fine display of heart. Truly deserving I think after going through Juventus, Chelsea and then AC Milan.
I can’t beleive UEFA will be so obstinate to not let Liverpool in. In fact the rule should be changed for good allwoing the defending champion inot the next year’s competition. What is remarkably stupid is that if the champion had come from Germany, France, Portugal, Holland…anywhere else but Spain, Italy or England there would be no controversey. Liverpool is in effect being punished because they play in what is determined to be one of the three strongest leagues in Europe.
That’s one way of looking at it, another is to say that Liverpool are being punished for finishing outside the Champion’s League qualification spots.
How do you suggest Liverpool get included into next seasons competition? The Champion’s League starts with groups, each comprising 4 teams. If Liverpool were allowed in where would they fit in? Would you add 3 more teams from other countries or what?
I thnk UEFA could at least mandate a play-in tie between Liverpool and Everton, for example. I think more importantly they should just make a standing rule that the current CUp holders get to participate automatically te following season
Yeah, a play-off’s a great idea :rolleyes: They should indeed introduce the rule that the holders automatically get to defend it, but its too late in the day for that to mean anything right now. UEFA and the english FA will move heaven and earth to get Liverpool in to the champions league, if they thought they could get away with a simple fuck off to Everton or the Welsh champions or the Israeli champions or whoever they would do it without hesitation. Fortunately the rules of qualification are completely transparent, so it won’t happen like that.
To be honest, any true Red will probably tell you that they don’t really give a toss. I mean, winning a fifth champions league in such a stunning fashion they can probably live with sitting the competition out for a year. Their accountants can’t, though, so expect to see the subject bobbing around the sports pages for the next month or so.
He was outplayed by Keane (as is usual when they meet). Not sure if he is starting to fade but perhaps the Prem. is no longer the place for him. In my mind, Keane was the man of the match as he did more than Vieira did (though their roles were different) as was significantly more influential on the game.
Frankly, I’m of the opinion if you don’t make the top 4, you don’t deserve to go next year. Even if you won the whole thing. You have to earn qualification for next year, and you do that by the league, IMO.
The English FA is just trying to milk this situation so it can get 5 teams in at the expense of other FAs, so it can make more money. Other FAs won’t let that happen, especially the Spanish who had to make a choice.
Yesterday was a write-off. I am still hoarse, and disbelieving.
Surely, truly, the greatest football match of all time, ever. I can watch the replays of Dudek’s last-minute save over and over, and still I cannot believe that computer graphical manipulation has not been used, or the laws of Newtonian mechanics fundamentally violated.
From this day, whenever any team in the world, from the heights of European professional football to a local team on a patch of sand in a developing nation, find themselves three goals down, their captain or manager can pull them togther, fix them with a steely eye and say to them…
Oi! I’m from Crosby, and will not hear a word said against the sleeping giants of College Road.
As for next year, no Liverpool fan will really care for at least a week. But dozens of teams enter the preliminary qualifying rounds, most of which would actually prefer a further round against Liverpool since it would likely double their annual turnover at a stroke (if necessary, providing a significant contribution to the national Football Association in question) - including Liverpool somewhere in that process somehow seems no big deal.
But ultimately, any Red would take the Cup and bollocks to the English FA for their stupidity. We’ll win the UEFA cup instead and cheer Everton on to scrape into it as well so we can beat them on the way, instead of them embarassingly finishing bottom of their group and going out of Europe completely.
