CSKA Moscow 1 - 1 AS Roma
This game was an upgrade on the weekend's Crystal Palace against Liverpool tie.
The hosts, playing in red and blue, were probably advantaged by the inhospitable atmosphere* and the horrible weather. Arguably inferior in terms of possession play, they certainly looked more dangerous on the attack, thanks to the pace of players like Manchester City's recent nemesis Doumbia. He and Alan Dzagoev both had decent opportunities swept away from their boots by the Roma defence at the last moment in the opening stages.
Roma, meanwhile, were second best in Serie A last season, and are still powered by the ageing core of Daniele De Rossi and Francesco Totti, with pacey reinforcements in the shapes of Gervinho and Ljajic. A potential frailty, in former England left-back Ashley Cole, was left out.
But there the comparisons must end, as they are unfair to the two teams playing in the Champions League tonight. And because, unlike Liverpool's captain, Francesco Totti is still proving his worth at the highest level. Also, Roma are making a go of challenging for the title again.
It being -6 degrees in Moscow possibly contributed to Roma starting slightly slower than they did in their opening group stage game, when they were 4-0 up after half an hour.
Sorry to keep dragging on about the differences between Sunday's game and Tuesday's, but one thing Liverpool could have used was someone who could get a free-kick on target.
Totti was the man who gave Roma the advantage. If either they or CSKA won, Manchester City would need to beat Bayern Munich to stay in the competition.
Radja Nainggolan had a great chance to put Roma 2-0 up after 60 minutes, having beaten the static, headbanded Berezutski, who has been a mainstay of the Russian national team since at least PES 2008. See also: Ignashevitch and Akinfeev. (For completists, Arshavin is at Zenit now, Pavlyuchenko at Lokomotiv Moscow, and Zhirkov at Dynamo Moscow. In 2008, Roma keeper Morgan De Sanctis had just tried to buy himself out of his Udinese contract using the Webster ruling so that he could sign for Sevilla, which was ultimately probably a bad idea.) Even in minus 8, Roma were proving attractive to watch.
A couple of enjoyably bizarre decisions helped close the game. One is depicted above, Alan Dzagoev making a woeful attempt at a scissor-kick with a handful of minutes left, to keep the game at 1-0. It looked then like CSKA and Manchester City were on their respective ways out of the competition.
Except, Rudi Garcia had elected to bring on three substitutes by the names of Juan Manuel Iturbe, Kevin Strootman, and Miralem Pjanic. Three midfielders CSKA could have done with. Three midfielders who are good at creating goals.
Luckily for CSKA, they combined to create them a nice goalscoring opportunity. Iturbe kept losing the ball, and on the one occasion he managed to avoid doing so, Strootman wasted his pass for him. It ended up at the feet of aforementioned defensive veteran, Vaseli Berezutski.
Berezutski crossed the ball. It flew past everyone, including De Sanctis. It was the last kick of the game.
* This game was played Behind Closed Doors. Though, as Vincent Kompany noted, FIFA still have some Special Keys for these Closed Doors, which they give to various members of the UEFA Football Family, some of whom may have been audibly favouring CSKA. Aaand the final game of the Behind Closed Doors Sanction has been commuted to some years down the line, giving CSKA time to replace Leonid Slutskiy with Fully Reformed Football Man Malky Mackay, after he's won the UEFA Europa League with Wigan. Unless the results of the still-pending inquiry into Mackay's texts get him sacked first - like they did at Palace, before he'd even been officially appointed - in which case he might be better off applying to a more modest club. Torpedo Moscow's fans were allegedly guilty of racist abuse this weekend.
And then it was time to make dinner, and ponder which tie to watch this evening. Di Matteo's potential second biggest game as a manager, since his much-lauded Champions League win with Chelsea, against them in charge of a shaky Schalke? City Reserves vs Bayern II? Or Sporting against Maribor, one of the final chances of the season to indulge my fondness for all things Slovenian, and perhaps a chance to see Zlatko Zahovic's son again?
Manchester City 3 - 2 Bayern Munich
Even before the teamsheets were announced - Schweinsteiger, Dante, Müller and Götze on the bench; Rode and Höjberg unfamiliar names in the starting line-up - this game was already deprived of some big names.
Whilst other football fans were watching the first half, I was scouting the unfamiliar names.
Pierre Højbjerg plays in midfield. He's made 12 Bundesliga appearances in this season and the one before, and played in the second team before that. He's also played for Denmark's senior team since May, and he's just 19 years old. His name sounds like that of a certain former Forest striker, who was also quite good. This Pierre proved adept at holding the ball up in the middle of the park, which is quite impressive for a 19 year old.
Leopold Zingerle is Bayern's reserve goalkeeper, on the bench tonight because their own novelty stopper Pepe Reina is unable to make it due to prior commitments. Tom Strong is also liable under the Trades Descriptions Act, thanks to untranslateable German illness Syndesmosebandriss, so Leo steps up. He probably won't be too fazed, as he sat on the bench in a similar situation last season. (I say similar, but that time the opponents were Actually Good Real Madrid.)
Preferred to Scott Sinclair on the City bench were striker José Ángel Pozo, who scored after coming on in a similar situation earlier this season (the 7-0 win against Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup), and midfielder George Glendon. The City youth teams have their own, long, Wikipedia page, which tells me that, aside from the mid 40s for some reason, almost every 'squad number' between 1 and 90 is taken. I haven't found much online about Glendon, but seeing as Pozo is number 78, and he's played and scored for City, I reckon Glendon (#73) must be at least the new Roque Santa Cruz (now captain at Malaga).
This game was an upgrade on the weekend's Crystal Palace against Liverpool tie.
The hosts, playing in red and blue, were probably advantaged by the inhospitable atmosphere* and the horrible weather. Arguably inferior in terms of possession play, they certainly looked more dangerous on the attack, thanks to the pace of players like Manchester City's recent nemesis Doumbia. He and Alan Dzagoev both had decent opportunities swept away from their boots by the Roma defence at the last moment in the opening stages.
Roma, meanwhile, were second best in Serie A last season, and are still powered by the ageing core of Daniele De Rossi and Francesco Totti, with pacey reinforcements in the shapes of Gervinho and Ljajic. A potential frailty, in former England left-back Ashley Cole, was left out.
But there the comparisons must end, as they are unfair to the two teams playing in the Champions League tonight. And because, unlike Liverpool's captain, Francesco Totti is still proving his worth at the highest level. Also, Roma are making a go of challenging for the title again.
It being -6 degrees in Moscow possibly contributed to Roma starting slightly slower than they did in their opening group stage game, when they were 4-0 up after half an hour.
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| CSKA's conditioning staff can discern VO2 max on sight |
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| No disrespect intended, Steven |
Radja Nainggolan had a great chance to put Roma 2-0 up after 60 minutes, having beaten the static, headbanded Berezutski, who has been a mainstay of the Russian national team since at least PES 2008. See also: Ignashevitch and Akinfeev. (For completists, Arshavin is at Zenit now, Pavlyuchenko at Lokomotiv Moscow, and Zhirkov at Dynamo Moscow. In 2008, Roma keeper Morgan De Sanctis had just tried to buy himself out of his Udinese contract using the Webster ruling so that he could sign for Sevilla, which was ultimately probably a bad idea.) Even in minus 8, Roma were proving attractive to watch.
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| Roma stubbornly refused to put the game to bed |
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| Dzagoev also wasn't interested in scoring |
Except, Rudi Garcia had elected to bring on three substitutes by the names of Juan Manuel Iturbe, Kevin Strootman, and Miralem Pjanic. Three midfielders CSKA could have done with. Three midfielders who are good at creating goals.
Luckily for CSKA, they combined to create them a nice goalscoring opportunity. Iturbe kept losing the ball, and on the one occasion he managed to avoid doing so, Strootman wasted his pass for him. It ended up at the feet of aforementioned defensive veteran, Vaseli Berezutski.
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| 1-1 |
* This game was played Behind Closed Doors. Though, as Vincent Kompany noted, FIFA still have some Special Keys for these Closed Doors, which they give to various members of the UEFA Football Family, some of whom may have been audibly favouring CSKA. Aaand the final game of the Behind Closed Doors Sanction has been commuted to some years down the line, giving CSKA time to replace Leonid Slutskiy with Fully Reformed Football Man Malky Mackay, after he's won the UEFA Europa League with Wigan. Unless the results of the still-pending inquiry into Mackay's texts get him sacked first - like they did at Palace, before he'd even been officially appointed - in which case he might be better off applying to a more modest club. Torpedo Moscow's fans were allegedly guilty of racist abuse this weekend.
And then it was time to make dinner, and ponder which tie to watch this evening. Di Matteo's potential second biggest game as a manager, since his much-lauded Champions League win with Chelsea, against them in charge of a shaky Schalke? City Reserves vs Bayern II? Or Sporting against Maribor, one of the final chances of the season to indulge my fondness for all things Slovenian, and perhaps a chance to see Zlatko Zahovic's son again?
Manchester City 3 - 2 Bayern Munich
Even before the teamsheets were announced - Schweinsteiger, Dante, Müller and Götze on the bench; Rode and Höjberg unfamiliar names in the starting line-up - this game was already deprived of some big names.
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| The injured, the suspended, and Richard Wright |
Pierre Højbjerg plays in midfield. He's made 12 Bundesliga appearances in this season and the one before, and played in the second team before that. He's also played for Denmark's senior team since May, and he's just 19 years old. His name sounds like that of a certain former Forest striker, who was also quite good. This Pierre proved adept at holding the ball up in the middle of the park, which is quite impressive for a 19 year old.
Sebastian Rode joined in the summer from Eintracht Frankfurt. He started in the centre of midfield, making his Champions League debut, but was substituted after 25 minutes for 70s disco star Dante, after Mehdi Benatia had got himself sent off, in the process of giving City a penalty. Poor Sebastian.
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| A career Rodemap (25 minutes in Manchester not shown) |
Gianluca Gaudino is 18 years old, and made his debut in the Super Cup against Dortmund in the summer, before claiming another three league appearances so far this term. He's the son of Maurizio Gaudino, who played for Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and, in the 1994-95 season, Manchester City. City ultimately got relegated that season as Blackburn Rovers won the title - an inauspicious end to a year that had started with Gaudino Senior in the German World Cup squad, and City in the UEFA Cup. A more recent claim to fame for the Gaudino family is that it was Maurizio who Boris Johnson infamously rugby tackled in an England vs Germany charity football match. After CSKA's late equaliser against Roma, Gaudino Junior wouldn't be able to send his Dad's former club out of the competition tonight, but at least he had a chance of making in an impression on the highest European club stage.
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| This happened eight years ago |
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| Zing |
City waited until the 68th minute to utilise the substitution system, bringing on their best player, Pablo Zabaleta. By then, Bayern had already got a man sent off in a feat of supreme showboating, Manuel Neuer had forfeited saving the resulting penalty, and the attackers had found time to perfect two training ground routines: a Xabi Alonso free kick crept through a gap at the end of the wall created by Dante; and a Robert Lewandowski header from the edge of the area, which wouldn't have been a Robert Lewandowski header, had Robert Lewandowski not been much stronger than the City defence.
City-with-Zabaleta were a changed proposition. What happened next is quite simple: Agüero seized on two very poor kicks from the boots of Xabi Alonso and Jerome Boateng, both of which allowed Agüero to move into the space between the centre backs, and slot the ball past Neuer, and into the goal machine. Zing!
Three hours of football, and three moments of very questionable last-minute defending, finish with City somehow bridging the three point gap to CSKA and Roma. Joleon Lescott is licking his lips.
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