Thursday, March 06, 2008

Dark Night In Europe

It was a real disappointing night in Europe for our entire Albiceleste representative in the second night of the last 16 Champions League Round.

Both Gabriel HEINZE and Fernando GAGO were starters for Real Madrid but they could capitalize on playing in their home ground against Roma. The Italian side won 2-1 (4-2 on aggregate) to progress further. Gonzalo HIGUAIN was on the bench but did not see any action.

As expected, playing against Chelsea in Stamford Bridge must have tall order for Greek side Olympiacos. Cristian Raúl LEDESMA was in the starting line up but was replace in favour of Fernando BELLUSCHI in the 54th minute.

Perhaps the most disappointing result for me came happened in Portugal as I did some expectation on seeing Porto progressing further. Despite putting plenty of pressure against Schalke from the start of the match, it took the home side almost 86th minute to score the all important equalizer in this match.

A neat pass from Lucho GONZALEZ saw Porto’s talisman Lisandro LOPEZ who turned around and
fired an unstoppable shot into the roof of the net to level the score line 1-1 on aggregate.
Both Mariano GONZALEZ (54th minute) and Ernesto FARIAS (58th minute) came as a second half substitutions.

After playing for an extra 30 minutes the match was finally decided on penalty from which Lisandro LOPEZ missed his shot while earlier Lucho scored first and the German side won
4-1 in the shootout.

3 comments:

johnny said...

Too bad about Porto. I watched the match and they had a number of chances but couldn't get it done. I have not watched them play often in the past. I was very impressed with Lisandro Lopez. A very athletic player with some nice skills. That Schalke keeper was on fire.

Roy said...

Too bad Porto, indeed. Beautiful goal though, but it went to the dreadful penalties. The only Albiceleste players we have left are: Messi, Mascherano and Inter(though lets face it, it will be difficult for them to go through).

In other news, Sorin started training with HSV, so thats good news. Can't wait to see him back in action.

John said...

Here are some news from the UEFA Cup.

Looks like Martin DEMICHELIS and Bayern have got one foot in the next round after their 5-0 thumping of Anderletch.

Jose SOSA also saw some action as he came in the second half for Hamit ALTINTOP.

The Belgian side had Nicolas PAREJA and Lucas BIGLIA in their starting line up.

With Oscar USTARI, Cata DIAZ & Lucas LICHT in the starting line up, Getafe are also one step away from the next round.

They defeated Angel Di MARIA's Benfica 2-1 away.