Barstool’s Weekend Soccer Preview – The “Cup Finalpalooza 2016” Edition
Sam’s Soccer Safe Space For Stoolies – Weekend Preview & Pick’Em
Hi haters & joltinjon,
The regular seasons have now come to a close, and despite a decidedly tame last week or two it was still one helluva campaign. Aside from all the actual competitions going on – Copa America, Euro 2016 and Olympics (the latter of which is borderline dead to me this time around) and International Champions Cup – this summer’s transfer window promises to be one of the most interesting on record.
Leicester’s moves alone will be reason enough to pay attention, then there are the obscene sums of money the likes of Chelsea and United are going to throw at their respective non-Champions-League-achieving problems (not unrelated: Paul Pogba and James Rodriguez’s agents are touching themselves in anticipation), and finally there’s everybody’s favorite parlor game: “which little person midfielder is Arsenal going to sign next?”
Speaking of “transfer rumors”, I personally haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate all the bullshit “gossip” that a lot of reputable media sites – staring directly at you ESPN and FOX – write stories and post tweets about starting roughly a month ago and continuing until the transfer window mercifully shuts in (what feels like) mid-October. Sixty percent of these “rumours” are made up to get clicks/sell newspapers (in the UK where those are still a thing), 35 percent of them are planted by agents, 20 percent are hogwash, 15 percent are lies and 700 percent are utterly useless.
Bit of advice: anytime you hear about a player is going such-and-such club according to unnamed sources, go ahead and ignore the shit out of that – unless of course our boy Brou Brou is involved, in which case whatever The Man says goes.
But enough of that nonsense (quite literally), let’s take a look at the games the soccer gods done seen fit to bestow upon our eyeballs this weekend….
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CUP FINALS
As alluded to in the title of the blog, we got a whooooooole mess of cup finals coming at us, most of which are scheduled for Saturday and the large majority of which will even be watchable on your television box! Hoo-ray! Below is an extremely hi-tech, digitized, fancy graphic put together by Barstool’s A/V department depicting the kickoff times and stations (where applicable):
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PICKS OF THE WEEKEND
Palace (+425)
United (-135)
Draw (+250)
Is LVG coaching for his job in this one? There seems to be a lot of disagreement on this question. “Foe me, zee answur iz jess,” if I were to answer in an LVG accent. David Moyes was shit-canned the millisecond United was eliminated from contention to play in the next season’s Champions League. LVG’s saving grace is the fact the club has a good chance of lifting what would be their first trophy since 2013. That seems like yesterday to a Tottenham fan, sure, but for United that ain’t cutting it. IF the Red Devils pull it off, I’d say the odds are maybe 40/60 against him being given another season. IF, however, United finds a way to lose to Palace then
That puts United fans in a real pickle. On the one hand, pretty much every single one of them that I see on the twitter machine wants LVG gone. On the other hand, winning the FA Cup ain’t nothing.
United come into tomorrow’s game as healthy as it has been all season, and not only that but emerged from the morass that was this season with possible upgrades both at the back (Borthwick-Jackson) and up top (Rashford – in addition to Martial, not instead of). There is no logical reason they should lose to a Palace side that hasn’t played a competitive match since January.
But that’s just it. What people don’t realize – and in fact I only realized it myself about five minutes ago – is that Alan Pardew’s wily old ass recognized that Palace wasn’t going to be able to keep pace with those clubs contending for Europa League slots, so he instead told his boys to start sandbagging it months ago. The club is now almost fully fit and, unlike United players who are fresh off a desperate but ultimately failed push to grab a top 4 slot, as well-rested as any club heading into an FA Cup final in recorded history.
Prediction: Palace to win 2-1.
Postscript: should this actually play out it would be a real kick in the pants for West Ham as it would mean Palace would snag the NIT+ (presented by Sevilla™) League slot the Hammers would have gotten if United, which is already assured a place in that competition, had won. Derp derp.
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Other picks (non-EPL/UCL games should be taken with grain of salt):
• The DFB Pokal (German Cup) a perfect example of how silly soccer can be sometimes. Pep announced he was leaving Bayern months ago, but is sticking around to finish out the season. As a long-time soccer fan this doesn’t seem all that weird to me but as a long-time American sports fan it is absolutely fucking bananas. And guess what, that’s not even CLOSE to the weirdest thing about this game. That distinction goes to Mats Hummels, who will be playing his last game for Dortmund before…………. joining Bayern. Dude is probably going to get booed by fans of both teams. Not sure how he could even live with himself.
Okay, maybe that’s going a little far, but there is no denying the fact this puppy is gonna be a bit awkward. Anyway, Dortmund did not finish the season particularly strong, nor did they have any luck against zee Bavarian giants during the regular season… butttttttttttttt nothing would suggest Pep is better prepared to begin his new job with City like going out with a whimper. BVB to win 3-2.
• PSG is playing – actually it doesn’t matter who they are playing. Is it another French team? Okay then. PSG to win 3-0.
• One could argue that the Coppa Italia is of slightly less importance to Juventus than it is for Milan, which would snag a Europa League slot with a win but would miss out entirely on European competition next season if they lose. Unfortunately Juve is too big, too fast and has too much Pogba and Morata for Milan to handle. Could the Rossoneri pull out a win in regulation? Nahhhhhhhh. Could they scrounge out a draw after regulation? I wouldn’t put that past them, but still nahhhh. Juventus 2-1.
• Sevilla were rather fortunate to walk away with the Europe trophy on Wednesday and are probably still hungover from celebrating the win. Barcelona to win 3-1.
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WYNALDA’S WEEKLY (T)WITTICISM
E-Dubya! Droppin’ truth bombs on us! However, this statement would carry more weight if it wasn’t coming from a guy who habitually tweets hardly intelligible, uninterpretable sentence fragments and then refuses to explain what he means when asked, even going so far as to imply that those people who don’t understand are the dummies. Pro tip: if you don’t like when people misread or misinterpret your tweets, try jussssssssst a little harder to use words and phrases that are less misreadable/misinterpretable. Just a thought.
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MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Rivalry week! Errrr, wait, excuse me, I guess I’m legally obligated to call it Heineken Rivalry Week, which actually makes a lot of sense given how watered down and often funky tasting some of the matchups are. (Chicago versus Houston? Huh.) But whatever, let’s just roll with it.
This is actually a biggggggggggggg weekend for our best friends over at FOX, who are televising the FA Cup followed almost immediately by the totally-legit-and-not-manufactured-at-all-sounding Hudson River Dærby (or NYCFC versus Red Bulls, if you’d prefer) on broadcast television. Soccer fans have given the network a lot of shit over the years, and rightly so given some of the BS they have tried to pull, but I gotta give them credit for coming around a bit lately.
Anyway, as for the New Yawk versus New Yawk/Joysey matchup, last season it felt like people were trying jussssssst a little (or a lot) too hard to make this a thing… having said that, from what I can tell all the way over here in Flyover-Land, it seems as though there does seem to be some legitimate enmity amongst the two fanbases, which is at least a good start towards turning this into something that eventually blossoms into a real, live rivalry. So I guess what I’m saying is that it’s still early days, but so far so good.
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Friendly reminder: we got a make-pretend USMNT game coming up involving a “transitional squad” that will play Puerto Rico – too broke to pay its bills but ain’t too broke to host a soccer game, heyoooooooo! Which I fully respect, tbh – on Sunday (11am CT on FS1) in a game about which I could not possibly care less. As far as when you should start paying attention, next Wednesday might be a good time as that’s when Jurgy & Co. play Ecuador on our first official Copa America tune-up.
[Note: for anybody who missed it, HERE is a brief yet comprehensive recap of the EPL season]
Holler,
Sam U.L. Army