Tuesday, 22 May 2007
So here it is, the ultimate grudge match. Will Milan avenge losing one of the greatest cup finals in history to a plucky Liverpool side who never gave up? or will history repeat itself, allowing liverpool to claim an impressive 6th champions league victory, equalling Milan's record for second place, with Real Madrid still holding the record at 9, and not looking like extending this record any time soon.
The highly esteemed Alan Hansen is 100% confident that liverpool will win, and claims that this is because Liverpool have improved by vast amounts in the last two years whereas Milan are probably not as good as they once were. Therefore if the worse Liverpool side won before they should do so again.
Sadly Mr Hansen has been talking an uncharacteristic amount of shit lately. Usually he is spot on about things but if you look at his recent columns you'll know hes beginning to lose it. One must only look at his post FA cup analysis, claiming that only winning half the trophies on offer, with about half the squad injured for th eentire season, should be considered a failure of a season from Chelsea's point of view. Many teams have tried to win trophies by throwing cash at the problem and almost all have failed; it shows a serious misunderstanding of how football works to think that any team would be upset with only winning 2 of 4 trophies, particularly with the issues Chelsea have had this year. This time Alan Shearer is spot on, and by putting Hansen in his place so openly he is doing wonders to his reputation as a football analyst. If this keeps going Shearer will soon be the more respected of the Alans... right now he is in many people's eyes already.
Similarly Hansen's drab logic on why Liverpool WILL 110% win the champions league is not without issue. I think most people who watched the last final will agree that Liverpool were not particularly great, despite the romantic notions Hansen has come up with, but rather that Milan assumed they had it won at 3-0 and just stopped playing. When this happens anything can happen. Similarly for Hansen to be correct assumes Milan will just not turn up on wednesday and I don't believe this will be the case.
It can go either way, but to favour Liverpool would be an unusual choice at best.
