A Tough Day

The football world today was fraught with disappointment, tough games, and unexpected results.  Many teams sacrificed top league spots today, but still others showed a bit of improvement.

First of all, it has been confirmed that Gian Piero Gasperini has been fired by Internazionale and has been replaced by Claudio Ranieri, former coach of such clubs as Juventus, Chelsea, Roma, and Valencia.  Hopefully, Inter's "issues" can clear up and they can start to perform as expected.

Elsewhere in Italy, AC Milan faced Udinese today and managed a tough 1-1 with goals coming from Antonio di Natale and Stephen El Shaaraww.  This puts Udinese in third place for the league, tied with Juventus and Genoa, and leaves AC Milan still looking for their first win this season.  Wait, weren't these guys last year's champions? What's going on here?

Could the Spanish giants have real trouble this season?

The game between Real Madrid and Racing Santander which ended at 0-0 certainly did not help the title seekers toward their goal.  The obviously unfit Cristiano Ronaldo failed to make a lasting impression and the entire team performed poorly to be honest.  This is just the kind of result that allows Barcelona to take the league away from Real Madrid.


Except, things didn't go as expected for last years La Liga champions either as Barcelona were held to a 2-2 tie by current league leaders Valencia.  Valencia showed a strong and clear strategy that simply picked apart the usually cool and smooth Barcelona machine and didn't allow them to build up play by passes.  This, coupled with a few quick counter attacks left the Catalans on the back foot for the whole night.  This season is definitely not a two horse race.

Atletico Madrid showed some strength as they beat back last place Sporting Gijon with a 4-0 victory.

And Juventus found trouble against Bologna as their game ended 1-1.  In this encounter the Bianconeri saw Mirko Vucinic score a goal and later be sent off for a bad foul at the end of the first half.  Then they fell to a quick strike early in the second and dropped their first 2 points of the season.

Hargreaves returns from injury in stellar form

In the Carling Cup, a group of largely Chelsea youngsters saw off Fulham in a tough 0-0 result that the blues won 4-3 in penalties.  Again Manchester City had a strong showing as they eased past Birmingham City 2-0 thanks to the return of Owen Hargreaves and a late goal by Mario Balotelli.  And Liverpool showed some signs of their old selves and saw off Brighton 2-1.

Not much is on tomorrow as AS Roma take on Siena in the Italian Serie A, Espanyol faces Getafe, and Real Betis meets Real Zaragoza in La Liga.  All these games except the Espanyol/Getafe game are going to be available on ESPN3.  Cheers until tomorrow!