Bad Footballers

I always find it rather amusing when superstar athletes make bad plays or have a poor showing. The majority of the time I notice this when watching golf. Every once in a while, someone will hit a horrible shot, and I'll think to myself, "Wow, that looks like when David (my brother) and I played"

Well the feeling of schadenfreude was in full effect for this week's UEFA Champions League semifinal first leg matches. On Tuesday, Liverpool were hosting Chelsea and took a 1-0 lead late in the first half. In the second half Chelsea searched for an equalizer but could never find one, that is until the fifth minute of added time (think bottom of the ninth, two outs, two strikes) when Salomon Kalou crossed the ball in front of goal and John Arne Riise got low, met the ball, and magnificently headed it into the goal. The problem, Riise plays for Liverpool. His fantastic strike was delivered past his goalkeeper and into his net, giving Chelsea the tying goal (and it's an away goal, which will affect the tiebreaker if the aggregate is tied after the second leg). You can get killed in South America for doing something like that. Luckily he lives in Europe, and he does have the second leg next week to redeem himself.



Finishing a close second for embarrassment of the week was Cristiano Ronaldo. He and Manchester United were in Barcelona for their semifinal first leg. Before I say what happened, know that Ronaldo is one of the top three players in the world right now, and without question the player of this season. He has scored 37 goals in all competitions (think 40+ TD passes) and just about everything he has kicked or headed as wound up in the net. Well in the third minute of Wednesday's match, United were awarded a penalty kick. These are made about 90% of the time because keepers really stand no chance of stopping a shot from 12 yards. They must guess a direction, dive that way, hope the ball is kicked that way, and still be able to catch it or palm it away. As the kick taker, you just need to kick the ball on target with any sort of power and accuracy and hope its not one of the 10% that are amazingly saved by the keeper. Well, Ronaldo forgot about that whole on target part, as his kick grazed the outside of the post and was no good. Did I mention there were more than 90,000 fans of Barcelona cheering as if they won the competition after he missed it? Brilliant.