My Sporting Weekend: Barca, Kings Of Madrid

My Sporting Weekend 16-17^th of April 2011:

Warm-Up's:

Evo-Stik League South (Football):

Sheffield FC V Loughborough Dynamo, This was quite a close game with neither teams having many chances on target. Sheffield had quite a good start, having lost of possession, but after conceding on 21 minutes to a low curving shot by Dynamo's Luke Edwards from outside the area Sheffield started to give away easy possession and ended the half pretty poorly. They did start the second half well, keeping hold of the the ball and moving it forward fast, but they couldn't get any shots off. While Dynamo were down to 10 men, after a player was off with a nose-bleed, FC's Steve Wooley scored with another curving shot from outside the area. For the final 10 minutes or so Sheffield pushed more players forward looking for the winning goal, but after winning multiple corners they still couldn't get a shot on target, and the game was played out to a 1-1 draw.

During the game Sheffield were always looking to get the ball forward as fast as possible down the wings, with quick free kicks and the full-backs receiving it short from the keeper, but the crossing was very poor, with most being cut out by the first defender, and the ones that got through Dynamo's keeper, easily picked the ball out of the air unchallenged.

FA Cup Semi Final's (Football):

Manchester City V Manchester United, The first half was pretty even with equal possession and both teams having about 5 shots, with United's Dimitar Berbatov having the 2 best chances, but Joe Hart made a good save for the first, and Berbatov putting it over after a Nani cross for the second.

7 minutes into the second half, after a bad clearance from Edwin van der Sar and a mistake from Michael Carrick, Yaya Toure got control of the ball on the edge of the area and opened the scoring after sliding his shot under the United keeper. United then found it hard to get in the game as City had more off the ball, with their best chance coming on 65 minutes when Nani hit the bar from a free kick, after a good save from Hart. Things then got worse for United when, on 72 minutes, Paul Scholes received a straight red after a high foot studded Pablo Zabaleta on the thigh. After that City played the game out for the 1-0 win.

To an extent City didn't really miss their injured playmaker Carlos Tevez, as in his last few games he has failed to make an impact on games, and his replacement Mario Balotteli also didn't do that much during the game, but it was United who missed their suspended player, Wayne Rooney, more, as they seemed to have that link between the midfield and the strikers missing, as well as Rooney's ability to track back and break up opposition play.

UBS Chinese Grand Prix (Formula 1):

Pole sitter Sebastian Vettel had a poor start with both Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton overtaking him by the first corner. The 3 leaders then kept close and Vettel overtook 2^nd placed Hamilton on lap 14 using DRS, and when Button and Vettel pitted Button stopping in the wrong pit box, letting Vettel past him. After they cycled through the 1^st set of pit-stops, surprisingly, Nico Rosberg was leading and Hamilton was down in 5th behind Filipie Massa. After another set of pit-stops, a bit of a lull in the middle of the race, Hamilton then had a great finish to the race, with his 3 stop strategy giving him fast lap times on his 4th set of tyres and he easily went past 2nd placed Massa, before catching and overtaking leader Vettel with 5 laps to go. Sergio Perez and Nick Heidfeld had a running battle, over a couple of laps, that started with some clean overtaking and finished with Perez knocking Heidfeld off the track and receiving a drive-through penalty, Heidfeld eventually finished in 12^th and Perez finished a lap down. Mark Webber was having a poor weekend after qualifying in 16th, but during the race he made good use of new tyres and had a great end to the race to finished in 3rd, again with KERS problems. After his pit-box mistake Button finished in 4^th and Rosberg finished in 5^th.

This was easily the best race of the year with the field not spreading out too much early on in the race due to the drivers using different pit strategies, as well as the ability to use DRS on the final straight.

Barclays Premier League (Football):

Arsenal V Liverpool, Arsenal pretty much dominated the first half having most of the possession, as well as having quite a few good chances, as well as some good crossing, but they couldn't get many shots on target. Liverpool defended well and their young full-backs fitted in well, hardly making any mistakes, but they found it hard to keep hold of the ball, and only forced 1 save from Arsenal's returning keeper Wojciech Szczesny. Liverpool played better at the start of the 2nd half, but within 25 minutes they had lost both Jamie Carrager and Andy Carroll to injury, first Carroll landed awkwardly and twisted his knee, but played on for 20 minutes or so, and inbetween this Carragher clashed heads with teammate John Flanagan and had to be stretched off after loosing conciousness. Arsenal then tried to change the game by bringing on Arsharvin and Bendtner, but they didn't make much of a difference and Liverpool kept pushing forward to get the winner when they had the chance. 8 minutes of injury time was shown and I then had to turn off, and during injury time both team won and scored penalty's, overall a draw was probably a fair result as Liverpool were quite organised without the ball and were quick to get back into position, and Arsenal found it hard to break them down in the second half. All of Liverpool's young players, Jay Spearing, and Flanagan played well, and look excellent prospects for the future.

Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (IndyCar):

The race had a clean start, and their was not not much overtaking, due to the tight nature of the track. The 1st major incident of the race came on lap 24 when Helio Castroneves caught Justin Wilson's back-end and spun him out on the hairpin and 1 lap later Simona de Silvestro spun on the same corner and caused the first full course caution of the race. During the caution Marco Andretti took out Sebastien Bourdais at the end of the pit lane, after not seeing him come up his outside, ending both their days. On lap 61 E.J. Viso made contact with Danica Patrick and then the wall, breaking his right rear suspension in the process and also ending his race. On lap 63 Wilson was involved in another incident, this time locking up the back wheels and spinning himself out into the tyres, but he got himself going and eventually finished 7 laps down in 22nd. Will Power was looking strong again, but on the restart on Lap 67, teammate Helio Castroneves took him out going into the first corner, ending both their chances of podium positions, as well as Scot Dixon who also sustained damage, but Oriol Servia made a good move to avoid the collision and got himself back in the race and finished 6^th. With 15 laps to go Mike Conway had a fantastic restart getting up to 4th after the 1st corner, before overtaking Dario Franchitti, Ryan Hunter-Reay (who was having issues and didn't finish the race) and Ryan Briscoe within 2 laps to take the lead, and to eventually get his first IndyCar victory.

Main Event:

La Liga (Football):

Real Madrid V FC Barcelona, The worlds best footballing team met the worlds best counter-attacking team for the 2nd, of 5, El Classico match of the season, in Madrid. The game was sold out and on the streets before the game touts were looking for 500 Euros a ticket. After missing 11 league games through injury Barcelona's linchpin in defence Carles Puyol was back, after 2 months of Pique playing with several different defensive partners. Real Madrid had prepared for this game by letting the grass grow at the Bernabau to try and slow down Barcelona's ball playing ability, as well as training with 10 men all week in anticipation of getting a player sent off, and this payed off as they played a bit better after they went down to 10 men. They also started with center-half Pepe playing in the defensive midfielder role, with the more attacking Mesut Ozil missing out, allowing the full-backs, Marcelo and Sergio Ramos to get forward as much as possible. It was a tense and tight opening to the match with each team only having 1 shot each on the first 20 minutes, but after Real forced multiple corners the game started to open up and the crowd started to get involved in the game. Just before half-time each team had a good chance each, first Lionel Messi pulled out a fantastic run playing 2 1-2's with team mates, before Iker Casillas made a fantastic reaction save, and then Christiano Ronaldo had a header cleared off the line by Adriano. During the first half Barcelona had most of the possession, but it was Real who had the best chance's, forcing Victor Valdes into making 3 saves.

5 minutes into the second half Raul Albiol wrapped his hands around David Villa's neck, before dragging him down to give away a penalty and the inevitable happened Real were down to 10 men. Messi then went on to convert the penalty, for Barcelona to take the lead. Nearly straight away Ozil came on for Real, replacing Karim Benzema and Seydou Keita came on for Barcelona replacing Puyol, who was obviously lacking match fitness. The Real substitution made it seem as if they had given up on the game and within 10 minutes they had also taken off regular starters Xabi Alonso and Angel Di Maria, most probably to stop them picking up injury's that would rule them out of the cup final on Wednesday, and they dropped into a more solid 4-4-1 formation. But on 80 minutes Real won their own penalty, after Dani Alves caught Marcelo with his leading leg, he went down, and Ronaldo converted to bring the scores back level, during the last 10 minutes both teams had a couple of chances to win the game, but it finished 1-1.

Losing a player did not make that much difference to Real and as Barcelona relaxed they came back into the game. Pepe was probably Real's best player being involved with most of their chances, as well as getting back and covering his defence. It now looks like the league is Barcelona's but Real can still have a big say in what other trophies they may win this season as they now meet again 3 more times over the next few weeks, in the final of the Copa Del Rey, in Valencia, and over 2 legs for the Champions League semi-final, where the winner will either meet Manchester United or FC Schalke in the final at Wembley.

Cool-Down's:

Sheffield Eagles got their 4^th win on the bounce away at Dewsbury on Sunday and hopefully they can extend the run when they travel to Batley on Easter Monday, but it will be a tough task as they also have 4 wins from 5, and have only lost 1 home game this season, to Leigh in the Northern Rail Cup.

Yorkshire had a disappointing result in the County Championship, losing at home to Durham, after beating Worcestershire in their first match and Adil Rashid will also have been disappointed with only taking 1 wicket after taking 11 in the opening match. Back after 15 months out, after picking up a back injury while on England duty in South Africa, Durham's Graham Onions had a good match getting 6 wickets, and hopefully he will be able to get back in the England set-up by the end of the summer.

Sheffield United had another loss and now are bottom of the Championship 8 points adrift with 4 games to go, and look certain to go down, what a shame.

My Sporting Weekend

Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Barca, Kings Of Madrid

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