All Things Soccer…
The Champions League Final was played this past weekend in Kyiv, Ukraine as Real Madrid took on Liverpool in a match that had plenty of interest as Ronaldo was looking to guide his team to a 3-peat, while Mo Salah looked to continue his incredible goal scoring season with a European title for an English club. This won’t be my typical match recap, more a commentary and opinion piece on a wild game with many noteworthy moments. Let’s get to it.
Real Madrid 🇪🇸 v Liverpool 🏴
On May 26th in Kiev, Ukraine the Champions League Final will be contested between Real Madrid and Liverpool, and based on their roads so far there should be plenty of goals and entertainment. But before we get to my prediction for this huge game, let’s take a brief look at how each team navigated their tough Semi-Final matchup.
Liverpool 🏴 7-6 Roma 🇮🇹
After blitzing Roma to the tune of a 5-2 home victory, led by Salah and Firmino both grabbing 2Gs and 2As, it ended up being a close finish scorewise as a pair of late strikes for the home side in the return leg in Rome made it look closer than it probably was as Liverpool were the better team overall. Still nobody seems to be able to stop their vaunted front three.
The UEFA Champions League held the Semi-Final draw recently after an incredible end to the Quarter-Final stage that saw Roma pulling off a huge upset over Barcelona, and Liverpool disposing of another big favorite in Man City. Oh, and I have not even mentioned a Ronaldo bicycle kick, Buffon seeing red, and Ronaldo once again proving he is one cool customer firing in an unstoppable penalty in extra time to eliminate Juventus. Bayern also progressed but it was far from easy. This put my picks at 2/4 as I did not foresee the Barca collapse or the City flop either. Let’s have a brief look at the next round as we near the end of what has been a thrilling competition so far.
The UEFA Champions League Round of 16 wrapped up recently and it was now time to see what the Quarter-Final pairings would be. But first let’s briefly look back at how my predictions fared for the previous round. There were some tough calls to be made, including choosing Real over PSG and Juventus to nip out Spurs and I ended up doing fairly well by correctly picking 6 out of the 8 matchups with only Shakhtar and Manchester Utd letting me down, but I did say that they would both be tricky ones so I’ll take it. This next round looks to be pretty straightforward to many but there is always the possibility of an upset. Here is a rundown and my picks.