Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Clash of 2 giants

Nothing to crow about over the week-end results with 6 winners, 2 losers and 1 voided. Swansea and Liverpool proved to be 2 badly-inspired selections.

The highlight of the week-end for me was the Peter Crouch goal against Man City. Clearly my vote of goal of the year and it will be hard to find a better one. There's everything in his goal; control, vision, precision matched with the perfect shot. For someone his stature, that was astonishing. Crouch is a good footballer and not just a header of goals.

The other highlight was Tiger Woods' win after over 2 years of drought. That must have been a monumental hurdle to get that first win after all the scandals, and I believe he's ready to rumble on. However, his odds to win the Masters is currently way too short, as his problem is now to come up to par with the current best golfer of the world, Rory Mc Ilroy (sorry Luke Donald, you're number 1 in the rankings but I would pick Mc Ilroy any day for a major tournament). The duel between Tiger and Rory will be fascinating to watch in a couple weeks' time.

This week starts the countdown to the Dubai World Cup meeting on Saturday; this will no doubt be the strongest meeting ever held in the desert, particularly with the big guns from Ballydoyle marking their presence. De Kock, Godolphin, Ballydoyle and the Asian contingent, that's where the winners look to be coming from when looking at the preliminary entries. I'll get to the meeting in due time.

Champions League football is on offer this week and Barcelona travel to Milan on Wednesday for their first leg quarterfinal match-up. With Real Madrid having a comfortable 6-point cushion in La Liga, Barcelona are definitely eyeing the UCL as their major prize to conquer this year. Milan can handle good teams at home as witnessed by their 4-0 thrashing of Arsenal in the previous round. I certainly think the scoreline was flattering for the hosts as Arsenal did spurn quite a few good chances to score. Barcelona might or will not be so forgiving. These are 2 European giants but with a clear difference in class. I see Barcelona qualifying no problem after 2 legs and I believe they have it in them not to lose at the San Siro; hence they are my selections.

To qualify: Barcelona
Draw-no-bet: Barcelona

No comments:

Post a Comment