Valencia CF

Wish I had more time, so here’s a short one …

I thought we played sufficient against Atletico Madrid on Wednesday. We weren’t great, but we weren’t bad.

Silly first goal, with the ball rolling in off Cleber’s leg. A goal is a goal, though …

Great shot by Mata for our second. Beautiful pass by Banega to the young striker, who rifled it past Falcon for the deciding tally.

Still, although the midfield looked strong (despite errant passes all over the field), our defense is such utter crap.

Helguera is done. The guy can’t even clear a ball off his line. Too often, he’d gift the ball to the Atleti attackers because he couldn’t kick the ball out of his zone.

Miguel is fat. Albiol is still kind of raw and I’m not convinced by Caneira.

Still, we lost but we’re through … and who do we get?

Barcelona.
Fun fun.

I strongly believe Ronnie Koeman’s going to go all out in this tie. He’s going to want to beat his old employers and bring Valencia something from this wretched season. I still see us in the final. I’m confident. Besides, Barca’s going to be concentrating on the league and on the Champions League. They can give this one to us, right? ‘Maletin’ anyone? (Look that one up. I haven’t the time to explain what a ‘maletin’ is right now. Basically, it’s a suitcase full of money, given by a team to another to … help them out … Phil Ball of Soccernet.com fame did a wonderful article a few years back on it … tried to find it but again, haven’t the time).

For all of you in Valencia or planning to go to the Turian capital, the second leg is March 19th, the final day of the wild Las Fallas festival. I had the pleasure of going a few years back and I STRONGLY recommend it.

I was lucky to see Arsenal play Valencia in the Champions League the last day of that year’s festival (called ‘La Nit de Foc,’ the night of fire when the giant papier-mâché structures are burnt to a crisp), a John Carew double sending our boys to the quarters in dramatic, heart-stopping action. The stadium went wild, the city reveled in the last day of the ceremonies, dancing in the streets, drinking wine, setting off firecrackers and burning the large Fallas down to the ground all around the city.

Those were the days, huh?

Let’s see if Mr. Koeman can conjure up some old Fallas magic against his former squad.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 6:45 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.