The UEFA Champions League is home to the highest caliber of football in the world. This is only kind of about that. Welcome to the highs and lows of the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals.
It's good to be the Emperor. Since reassuming control of the club where he played the bulk of his career, Fatih Terim, who is known in Turkey as the İmparator, has led Galatasaray to a level of success they haven't seen in more than a decade. With players who match Terim's attacking instincts, Gala, only two years removed from a disappointing eighth-place finish in the Turkish Süper Lig, is back in the Champions League quarterfinals for the first time since 2001. Its roster features big names like Dutch midfielder Wesley Sneijder and ex-Chelsea Champions League hero Didier Drogba. Terim's reputation, damaged by Turkey's failure to qualify for the World Cup in 2010, has been restored, so much so that he has been linked with the opening at Inter Milan. But the quarterfinal round of the Champions League is rarefied territory, and even an Emperor can find himself an underdog when he runs into the "Special One."
The man who once stopped a civil war was helpless to stop a ball.
It wasn't just Didier Drogba. Everyone in an Ivory Coast shirt was helpless. Nigerian midfielder Sunday Mba's 78th-minute run from midfield ended with him running out of options. So he had a shot. The ball took just enough of a deflection off an Ivorian defender to leave the keeper, Boubacar Barry, with no chance.
But even if Ivory Coast's 2-1 elimination loss to Nigeria in the Africa Cup of Nations over the weekend was surprising as an upset, it should have been predictable as an inevitability. If not that match, then maybe the next or the next would have seen the Ivorians out. Ever since losing the 2006 final to hosts Egypt, Ivory Coast has been the heavy pre-tournament favorite for every ACoN. And each time it has failed to win.
Here’s a look at the numbers behind some of the biggest sports stories this past month. Send us suggestions for next month’s edition by tweeting at @michaelkruse with the hashtag #GrantlandStats.
Number of Seattle Mariners who combined to pitch a no-hitter June 8 against the Los Angeles Dodgers: 6.
Number of no-hitters pitched this year so far at Seattle’s Safeco Field: 2.
Number of times a New York Met had pitched a no-hitter in the team’s half-century history before Johan Santana did it in early June: 0.
Here is a photo of Fernando Torres holding the 2012 Champions League trophy and the 2012 FA Cup. Since 2008, Torres has won the European Championship (in '08), the World Cup (in '10) and these two trophies. Saturday, in Munich, he was on the field when Chelsea completed one of the most improbable Champions League runs — coming from 3-1 down against Napoli and defeating a heavily favored Barcelona in the semifinals — since Liverpool came from behind against A.C. Milan in 2005. He looks happy. So why does this 28-year-old with a full trophy cabinet sound so damn sad?
Do you believe in miracles? No, me neither. But sometimes sports gets awfully close to changing my mind. Let me tell you about the Chipolopolo, Zambia's national football team, which just won the country's first-ever Africa Cup of Nations tournament on Sunday.
Zambia beat Ivory Coast on penalties, 8-7. This was an Ivory Coast side that has been called that nation's golden generation. It featured a lineup studded with stars who ply their trade in Europe's biggest leagues, including names such as Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou of Chelsea, Arsenal's Gervinho, Newcastle's Cheick Tiote and Manchester City's Kolo and Yaya Toure. Zambia didn't have any big-named players like that. However, after Sunday's final, you wondered whether something even bigger was possibly on their side.
