Cups runneth over

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.