MADRID 13, OLE 1, OIL 0
Manchester City welcome Sporting Clube de Portugal to the Etihad on Wednesday, having won the first leg in Lisbon by five goals to zip, so we’ll not insult your intelligence by giving it the Big Cup big sell. But even if that risible non-event of a tie was teetering on a knife-edge, it still wouldn’t be the game of the day, because over in Madrid, Real Madrid and PSG, two genuine heavyweights with 13 Big Cup titles between them, go head to head for a place in the quarter-finals. You’ve already done the maths, we’ll not belabour the point.
PSG’s travails in Big Cup are well documented, so there’s no need to revisit them again. We will, though. They infamously shipped a four-goal first-leg lead against Barcelona, lost a two-goal first-leg advantage against Ole-era Manchester United, for goodness sake, forgot to turn up when they eventually did make it to the final, and have generally been a dependable source of entertainment for neutrals around Europe, the delicious nectar of sweet schadenfreude pumping freely from the pipeline of high amusement, as thick and unctuous and precious as oil. Charge your glasses.
Another gush threatened to slick over PSG when good-time charlie Lionel Messi scuffed his penalty in the first leg, but Kylian Mbappé dug him out of a hole by conjuring an injury-time winner out of thin air. There’s still plenty of time and scope for things to go badly wrong again, though, despite the precious 1-0 lead they take to the Bernabéu. Since that first leg, Madrid have won all three of their league matches to the cumulative tune of 8-1, while Mauricio Pochettino’s side have lost two of their subsequent three games, Neymar missing another penalty along the way. All of which suggests an over-reliance on Mbappé to have a good game, else another Big Cup fiasco awaits the French. Pochettino is currently a favourite to be the next Manchester United manager, by the way, but we’ll not belabour that point either.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“They wanted to take my home in 1990; they took it in 2014; now they want again to take my home, our home. I think this is already too much” – Shakhtar Donetsk director of football Darijo Srna drove out of Kyiv for 36 hours and saw things he’d hoped never to witness again. While that went on, he got his players to safety. Now he’s spoken to Nick Ames.
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Here’s the latest Football Weekly podcast.
FIVER LETTERS
“Re: corner kicks (Fiver letters passim). Unlike The Fiver I’m not usually one to drag out an issue that clearly raises hackles in a minority, but while running the line of an Under-11s game my son was playing in, I made a boy on the opposing team retake his corner because the ball wasn’t placed in the quadrant. Now I sleep well at night knowing that at least one scruffy youth in Greasborough is fully aware of the regulations” – John Rigby.
“As a journeyman ‘lino’ at various step levels, can I point out that no part of the ball has to be in contact with the outermost edge of the quadrant to be in a valid position, let alone sitting inside it. The required perspective is using imaginary lines looking straight down from above the ball – as long as any part of it obscures the quadrant, the ball’s considered inside. As a sphere, it wouldn’t of course necessarily have to ‘touch’ the line. See, easy, all those shouting dog’s abuse at opposition corner-takers around the grounds can finally wind their necks back in and find a something else to take their anger issues out on. Or support Everton” – Mike Kilner.
“Can I add my pet hate, which is goalkeepers kicking from hand when they are a good two or three metres outside their area. It’s bloody handball. Mind you, for those readers who only watch Premier League football, the idea of a goalkeeper kicking the ball from hand is pretty hard to believe. It certainly still happens in the National League” – Dan Levy.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Mike Kilner.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Colchester chairman Robbie Cowling says the club will donate all gate receipts from Saturday’s League Two game with Forest Green to humanitarian aid efforts in Ukraine. “All I have been able to do so far is watch the news and marvel at the kindness being shown by those people in the countries that neighbour Ukraine, such as Poland, and wonder what can be done to help those refugees,” he said.
Mexican authorities have ordered Queretaro to play home matches behind closed doors for a year after fans went on a rampage that – at the very least – left 26 people injured, three critically. The club’s owners must also sell up by the end of 2022.
Holly Valance could yet become the first former star of Neighbours to have their hand on a Premier League club’s tiller after husband and property tycoon Nick Candy entered the running to buy Chelsea for £2.5bn.
After watching Liverpool get beaten 1-0 by Inter but still qualify for Big Cup’s quarter-finals, Jürgen Klopp has some sage advice for budding young managers. “The art of football is to lose the right games,” he parped.
RB Salzburg boss Matthias Jaissle has splashed his face with cold water and reflected on his side’s 7-1 shellacking at Bayern. “It was really horrible,” he gasped. “A few teams have come here and got a battering – and it happened to us.”
Luke Shaw is open to extending his Manchester United contract but, in even more surprising news, he is still only 26.
Richie Wellens has been given the Leyton Orient job and, presumably, instructions not to take the League Two strugglers down.
And Patrick Bamford might be fit enough to play for Leeds in Thursday’s 3-2 defeat by Aston Villa after recovering from foot-knack.
STILL WANT MORE?
Sevilla boss Julen Lopetegui gets his chat on with Sid Lowe about falling for football, his Spain exit and Big Vase hopes before their tie with Taxpayers FC. There’s also a wild family photo in there too.
Sid also has plenty to say about Real Madrid v PSG in Big Cup.
The lowdown on this week’s Big Vase ties, by Ben McAleer.
This week’s Knowledge runs the rule over goalkeepers sent off for time-wasting, marathon shootouts with no saves and scoring quickly at both ends.
Chelsea fans should be wary of one suitor Woody Johnson, if his record at the New York Jets is anything to go by, warns Dave Caldwell.
And Joël Matip was the man when Liverpool edged past Inter, reports Andy Hunter.
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