Campfire Football

There are some really interesting match ups in the Europa League. I would say they are less predictable than the Champions League ties. Some exciting sides still alive so who can get to the Elite Eight?

Giroud and Delle Alli got on their bikes. Lio Messi put on his weekly magic show. Mendy's curler crushed Atalanta's hearts. Stuart Dallas embodied Ronaldinho. Some great goals but some difficult 90 minutes to sit through for the reward.

Darren Drysdale is a referee in the English League (L1 & L2). He recently became famous for squaring up face to face with a player before giving him a yellow card for abusive language. He will receive a ban, no doubt, but it's a thankless job, being a football referee. They take abuse at all levels so something needs to change.

So far my predictions are intact, just. Liverpool are not a terrible team overnight, Dortmund get by as Erling Haaland blitzes Sevilla. Mbappe bags a hat trick against Messi's Barcelona, and Juve stumble but survive.

The Champions League is back! This round of 16 is tasty and the matchups are mostly quite difficult to call. But I've decided to put my mouth on record here and see how clairvoyant I really am.

There were so many games with story lines this weekend. Too many, almost. I mention the Liverpool "crisis" but spend some time running down some of the goals of the weekend. There were some pearls out there which deserve a YouTube search.

I end with the Bayern Munich vs Arminia Bielefeld round up, because that was quite a bit of fun.

Domestic cup matches across Europe this weekend, and most matches were poor. Atalanta beat Napoli 3-1 with some class and quality, but that was almost it.

Thankfully Everton and Spurs served up a 9 goal thriller to make up for the rest of it.

I'll offer my perspective on the 9 farcical goals that were scored on a defensive level, and supplement that with some audio clips from Jose and some pundits.

VAR is not ruining the game. The misuse of the tool has been the main problem. It seems as if the officials feel a need to get involved, slow the game down, and nitpick highly subjective decisions, when they are supposed to wield this power to overrule egregious calls.

Some audio clips from Scott Parker, David Moyes, Craig Burley, and Frank Leboeuf to supplement my views.

I guess we all saw this coming. It wasn't fun for me as a Chelsea fan who has admired Lampard for years. He gave a lot to the club in his brief tenure. So how did it all end? There were warning signs from last season, 5 key matches that sealed his fate, disagreements on recruitment with the board, and the looming cloud of 200 Million Pounds spent on players who were not delivering. Good luck to Thomas Tuchel.

Welcome back to Campfire Football! I was out with a computer failure for 2 weeks. Horrible time to miss one football story after another. But I am back!

Today, a little recap of Drunk Football in the 2020/2021 season from around Europe, Granada vs Barcelona (3-5 Thriller) in the Copa Del Rey, and a word on the racial abuse players have received online.