Tuesday, May 19, 2009

A Championship Weekend in European Football



The big news this past weekend was that three leagues crowned their 2008-09 title winners. Inter Milan earned its fourth straight Scudetto after Udinese beat A.C. Milan 2-1 on Saturday. For Jose Mourinho, this was his fifth championship in three leagues, and is the only coach to win both Serie A and the EPL. Considering how Manchester United booted Inter out of the UEFA Champions League this year, this Scudetto, the side's 17th, might feel a bit bittersweet for some of Inter's faithful.

Meanwhile in England, Manchester United sewed up it's 18th English top flight title (11 in the EPL and 7 in the old First Division) thanks to a 0-0 draw with Arsenal on Saturday. Finally, Barcelona FC locked up its 19th (some say 20th) La Liga championship thanks to Villarreal's victory over Real Madrid on Saturday. With their respective titles locked up, Manchester United and Barcelona can focus their attention solely on their May 27th meeting in Rome, Italy for the UEFA Champions League Final.

Here in the states, the Dynamo came close to beating RedBull New York on Saturday night, but Chris Wondolowski's goal in the 78th minute, the MLS's 7,000th goal, did not do it for the Dynamo thanks to John Wolyniec's equalizer in the 88th minute.

It's going to be an interesting summer in Italy as the coaching merry-go-round has already started spinning with Juventus' sacking of Claudio Ranieri on Monday.

Don't forget to check out the latest MLS Talk Podcast, and the latest episode of World Soccer Wrap: Serie A.

Be sure to check out the blog posts at Soucie on Soccer, there's some interesting ones on how to implement Promotion/Relegation into the MLS.

Some weekend video:







1 comment:

Pros said...

My name is Alex Prosperi and I work in Communications at ESPN. I ran across your blog and would like to know if you would be interested in receiving media releases and other ESPN information pertaining to soccer.

If so, please provide me with your email.

Thanks and have a great day,

Alex