By Chris Ryan at
Michael Reagan/The FA via Getty Images
During what would be a doomed FA Cup final performance at Wembley Stadium on Saturday, Manchester City fans sang for their doomed manager, Roberto Mancini. The divisive Italian still had a place in the hearts of the club's supporters, even if he had fallen out of favor with City's relatively new front office regime (the transplanted Barcelona duo of Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain) and, most important, the club's chief executive, Khaldoon Al Mubarak. When Wigan's Ben Watson headed in a 90th-minute goal to give the undersupported, underfunded underdogs an FA Cup victory that pretty much justified all the "romance of the Cup" propaganda that goes along with the competition, the world (at least the football-watching world on Twitter) rejoiced.
Seemingly the only people cheering for "the people's club" (as City is known) were the people who had always been doing so — the fans who had been born or bred into fandom. Manchester City will finish second in the Premier League this season. They won the league last season, and finished third the season before that. Yet there is still a sense that, despite truly outrageous amounts of money spent by City's owners, outside of their core fan base this club isn't loved. Or perhaps better put, they are not admired.
This wasn't how things were supposed to go. There were blueprints in place to build Manchester City into a global football giant, equal in stature, if not quite historical significance, to Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and their neighbors, Manchester United. After bombing out of the Champions League and losing the Premier League some time around Valentine's Day, the FA Cup was a last chance for City to put a silver lining on an underwhelming season. Considering how well-documented Manchester City's attention to detail is (they famously have 30-page color-coded documents about 15-year-old prospects), things had gone quite off the rails.
In case you were busy on eBay trying to unload your Tim Tebow Jets jersey, here's what you missed in sports last weekend:
The San Antonio Spurs dispatched the Los Angeles Lakers, 103-82, to advance to the Western Conference semifinals. Lakers center Dwight Howard, who was ejected from the game after getting two technical fouls, said after the game, "Gotcha! Oh, man, that was hilarious! Classic Howard. I was all like, 'T me up! I totally want to never play basketball in a Lakers uniform again,' and they totally did! Joke's on them! I'm pranking people left and right! L.A. is Prank City!" When asked if this meant he was going to re-sign with L.A., Howard's demeanor quickly shifted. "Absolutely not," he said. "This has been the worst year of my life."
Stephen Curry drained six 3-pointers as the Golden State Warriors beat the Denver Nuggets 115-101 in a pivotal Game 4. "Do I feel threatened by Curry? Absolutely not; my legacy is intact," said TNT analyst Reggie Miller after the game. Miller then wiped the steam off his bathroom mirror and examined his temples. Were they grayer than the day prior? "Perhaps," Miller said to himself, "but that just means you're getting wiser. More mature. And some punk kid in Oakland can't take that away from you."
In case you were busy because no one at the game of Celebrity you were playing could get Lark Voorhies, here's what you missed in sports on Monday:
Chris Paul scored his team's last eight points, including an acrobatic runner with 0.1 seconds remaining, as the Los Angeles Clippers edged the Memphis Grizzlies, 93-91, to take a 2-0 lead in their playoff series. "I don't know how he does it," Clippers head coach Vinny Del Negro said after the game. "Seriously. He seems to have a really good understanding of floor spacing and leadership. Is there like, a book he read? Because if so, could anyone tell me the name of it so I can throw it on my Kindle? It would be greatly appreciated."
The Chicago Bulls evened up their series with the Brooklyn Nets with a 90-82 win at the Barclays Center. The Barclays Center is not to be confused with Bar Clay Centre, also located in Brooklyn, which allows patron to both paint their own pottery and sample delicious Belgian ales. Team officials denied rumors that Nets guard Deron Williams, who went 1-for-9 in the loss, mixed the two up before the game. But afterward, there were a suspicious number of shoddily constructed clay trophies strewn about the Nets locker room with "Wurlds #1 PG," and "Chris My Paul," scrawled on them.
In case you were busy scaring little children by reciting Mariners hitting stats from the past decade, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday:
The Utah Jazz were eliminated from the NBA playoff picture after an 86-70 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. But don't worry, people of Salt Lake City, you still have a critically acclaimed production of the classic musical West Side Story playing through April 21 at the Capitol Theatre. The Salt Lake Tribune raves, "This touring production of the 2009 Broadway revival hits on most cylinders."
Who will be taking the last spot in the Western Conference playoffs? Why, it's the Los Angeles Lakers, who not only qualified, but in beating the Houston Rockets 99-95 in overtime, were able to snag the seventh seed in the West. "It's quite an achievement," said Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni after the game, "that a team no one believed in overcame all the odds to make the playoffs. If you had told me when I took over this team that was stuck in a mire that we would be seventh in the West …" D'Antoni then drifted off and shook his head, before Lakers center Dwight Howard tiptoed up behind him and dumped a small cup of red Gatorade over his head.
"No hay mas que hablar." This was the cabdriver's response to my friend, who upon entering the taxi had given our destination simply as, "Al estadio, por favor." I laughed to myself as we settled in for the ride, partly because I had spent most of the past two days looking for exactly "this" person — the kind of Madrileno who accepts Real Madrid not merely as a matter of fandom's course but as axiomatic — an inevitability. The kind of person who knows not only where you're going probably before you do, but also where you should be going if you're not already going there. Of course it would be the cabdriver.
The story of the Premier League this weekend, told in five goals. Get some.
Jason Puncheon
It says a lot about this season of the Premier League when the goal that may very well have delivered the title to Manchester United (it's February, mind you), was followed by a celebration in which the goal-scorer pretended to wipe his own ass. It's a bittersweet symphony, this life.
By Chris Ryan at
John Peters/Man Utd via Getty Images
The story of the Premier League this weekend, told in five goals. Get some.
Jordan Henderson
We all know about The Kobe Assist. I'm starting to wonder if there's such a thing as the Suarez Assist. This happens when Liverpool forward Luis Suarez drops his head and tries to dribble through three or four defenders at a time. Like a homing beacon, more and more defenders come to the ball. Now Suarez, for all his qualities, is not Zidane. He's not pirouetting around players as much as he is clawing through them. Once he gets to the box, he's a piranha. But something happens when all this attention is focused on Suarez: Other players are left on their own. And as Suarez insistently tries to weave through this growing armada of defenders, the ball tends to ricochet away from him, off defenders. And a few times this year, it's bounced to another Liverpool player who has somehow benefited from Suarez's selfishness. In this instance, Jordan Henderson is the main beneficiary.
The story of the Premier League this weekend, told in five goals. Get some.
James Milner
This match had me thinking about money. The £62 Arsenal charged visiting City fans to visit their (more or less) £400 million stadium. The approximately £70 million spent by City to Arsenal for players like Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri, Kolo Touré, and Gaël Clichy. I thought about what the Premier League table would look like if Robin van Persie had gone to Manchester City instead of Manchester United. I thought about the letter, written on Arsenal letterhead, sent to the Premier League from Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool, and Manchester United, demanding more stringent financial regulation in the free-spending top flight of English football — a salvo against the seemingly unlimited investment pouring into Chelsea and City. I thought about the rumor that bottom-dwelling QPR were going to pay Marseille striker Loïc Remy £96 thousand a week to help them out of their relegation battle, while Arsenal haggled with Theo Walcott over whether the England international should be making £90 thousand, and wondered how in the world Arsene Wenger was going to keep even this sub-par group of Gunners together. It was quite an interior monologue, honestly.
The story of the Premier League this weekend, told in five goals. Get some.
Adel Taarabt
QPR got its much-needed first win of the season on Saturday against Fulham. They owe the three points, largely, to the performance of Moroccan attacking midfielder Adel Taarabt. After the match, new-ish QPR manager Harry Redknapp — the man charged with saving QPR from being relegated — called the Taarabt a "top, top player." He also called him a "fruitcake," and compared him to Paolo Di Canio.
The story of the Premier League this weekend, told in five goals. Get some.
Robin van Persie
Robin van Persie's injury-time game-winner against City in the Manchester Derby. As free kicks go, hell, as RvP free kicks go, you won't be playing this over and over in your head. Not like this thunderbolt against Fulham from the Dutchman's Arsenal days ...
Sometimes a manager loses it and reaches a point where he must admit that perhaps the game has passed him by. Like a golfer who suddenly gets the yips he must accept that, whatever it was that made him capable of doing the things he once did, it ain’t in him no more. None of it. Arsene Wenger looks increasingly like a man whose best days are long behind him. The Arsenal manager has now gone seven years without winning a trophy, and even a heavily labored 1-0 win against Queens Park Rangers on Saturday — thanks to a goal that looked suspiciously offside — did little to suggest that things will be different this season. We are still in the thick of autumn, yet Arsenal already look as if they will be a footnote in the story of how this season’s Premier League title was won. After consecutive losses against Norwich and Schalke, Wenger admitted last week that, with less than a third of the season behind them, his team has hit a wall. You wonder if any of it matters to the longtime Arsenal boss, who said last week that qualifying for the Champions League was more important than winning a trophy. Wenger, who has an economics degree, has turned Arsenal into a money-making enterprise, making a profit in an era when Chelsea and Manchester City continue to rack up record losses. But he is now in danger of becoming a parody of himself, a man who elevates everything over the result itself.
A new English Premier League season starts tomorrow, unless your name is Joey Barton, in which case it starts in mid-November. Barton picked up a 12-match ban after trying to start a fight with half of Manchester at the end of last season, and as a result he’s going to be pretty quiet for the next three months. If your name really is Joey Barton, then take some advice. Don’t go to Marseille! You really won’t like it there. Stay home, retweet some Nietzsche, and play EPL fantasy football!
And if your name isn’t Joey Barton, here’s some more useful advice; do not pick Joey Barton for your fantasy football team. But you should definitely pick a fantasy football team on the EPL’s website, because it’s free, there are some decent prizes to be won, and because you clearly have plenty of time on your hands, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. So, here’s your handy guide to Fantasy Soccer success:
1. Christian Watford, Indiana
Call this The David Freese Rule. Anytime you actually do something that hundreds of thousands of people dream about doing from a very young age, you go to the top of Rankonia. Down two, clocking running out, playing at home against the no. 1 team in the country. If this was March Madness, Indiana would have been rocking so hard it would vanished into a parallel universe. Check how Watford freezes after his release like the Statue of friggin' Liberty, a beacon, saying, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled Hoosier masses."
Sod the tactics. In this week's podcast, the Men In Blazers bear witness to a new era of EPL footie, where goals rain heavy and defense is a mere afterthought. The gentlemen examine why so many teams are leaking so many goals this season, praise Robin van Persie's class, consider Steven Gerrard’s medical mystery, and dig deep into John Terry’s downfall via the 7th century theological musings of a karma expert.
Plus, Michael offer listeners some advice he once received from his father — never hunch in the rain.
Michael Davies and Roger Bennett host Men In Blazers on SiriusXM Ch. 92/207, Mondays and Fridays 9 a.m. EST. Follow them on Twitter at @embassydavies and @rogbennett or check out meninblazers.tumblr.com.
