Wednesday, May 23, 2007

6 ft 7 in

Your name is Rafael Benítez and you coach one of the best club teams in the world. You are in the biggest club championship game there is. You are losing 2-0 and there are 15-20 minutes left. You have left the second top goal scorer in the Champions League sitting on your bench. He is 6 ft 7 in and his name is Peter Crouch. For some reason you have not played him all game. Why would you do that?

AC Milan 2 Liverpool 1

Steven Gerrard: "You've got to take it on the chin, move on and try to pick yourself up, but at the moment it's heartbreaking. We gave everything but it wasn't to be tonight."

Filippo Inzaghi: "These are the evenings that remain with you for all your life."

4 comments:

rc said...

Not a fan of Crouch, but you are correct, he does have quite the knack for scoring goals in big games. Not sure how you leave him on the bench for that long. Kuyt was alone all night long, and did the best he could, but with Gerrard withdrawn all the way to the depths of the midfield, a small tactical change may have paid some dividends to Liverpool. In the end though, AC Milan has so many weapons, and the Liverpool defense did a fairly good job all night. It could have been a lot worse for Liverpool.

Anonymous said...

maybe he was sick??

Unknown said...

I don't think he was sick :-) Maybe there is bad blood with the coach, who knows. I really thought that Liverpool had the run of play for a lot of that game, certainly the first half. They couldn't hang with Inzaghi in the back though - he flirts with the back line real well and found a really nice hole on that second goal.

Anonymous said...

I just go with what you said...nod and smile along....