Last two standing. For the muddied oafs of winter, this is the cruellest week. So near, yet…. Defeat in a semifinal, they say, is the hardest to bear. There are a lot of them about. Today soccer stages its two FA Cup semis. In the European Champions’ League, Arsenal played the first-leg semifinal this week, the second next; ditto Middlesbrough in the Uefa Cup. And at rugby union, the European club game’s defining Heineken Cup also stages two momentous semis this weekend. Death or glory, relief or jubilation — and cruelty. For neutral students of (in equal measure) both round ball and oval — they do exist, I can testify — I suppose the two most resonantly clamorous confrontations are today, in each instance between the red and the blue: at soccer, the sensitive should look away now as Premiership champions and champions-elect Chelsea meet champions of Europe Liverpool; and across the water at rugby, the inter-Prov turf war between Munster and Leinster will rattle the rafters and curdle the blood in Dublin.
Cup an ear eastwards from auld Lansdowne Road, mind you, and I daresay the din of the donnybrook there could well be drowned out by the reverberating tumult at Old Trafford, so-called ‘neutral’ amphitheatre for the day. For home consumption and relish, it might be a case of the talents of Lampard and Terry in the blue against the zest of Gerrard and Carragher in the red — but the belligerently intriguing subplot, its text in Latin, will be between the coaches Mourinho and Benitez. Daggers drawn in the dugout. Each has been in England just two years, and already now their clubs have met in all possible competitions, each contest imbued with ever more provocative pith. Today is their tenth collision. Grudge match is too tame a term. On the face of it, Mourinho’s Chelsea hold a significant edge: in the nine matches so far, Chelsea have won four times in the Premiership, and again in last year’s Carling Cup final; and while the four matches in the Champions’ League have ended in three draws and a single win for Benitez’s reds, that semifinal victory allowed Liverpool to go on and win outright the most prestigious club trophy of all, while this season’s two draws in the group stage condemned Chelsea to their fateful meeting with the prancing thoroughbreds of Barcelona. Faint hearts this afternoon should opt for shopping, or give the lawn its first trim of spring.
Or simply head down the M6 tomorrow for Villa Park and enjoy some less vengeful olde-tyme sentiment. There, ageing neutrals all expect a revealing show, even for 20 minutes or so, from West Ham’s 40-year-old ancient Teddy Sheringham. Deft of touch and a visionary for angle, space and placement, it has always been a rewarding pleasure to watch Teddy about his work; ever above the hectic frenzies, he was not even fast when he made his debutant’s curtsy in the League for Millwall in 1984 (before some of his current confrères were even born). His second best game is poker, obviously; you can tell. Sage and artful dodger, one of Sheringham’s former colleagues told the Guardian the other day that the crux of the old boy’s success had always been ‘the knack of knowing when to get injured — around November so he could get in a sneaky week in the Bahamas’; another reckoned it was ‘because he’s never married — so he’s never had no stress’.
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