Mixed Up Euros

Watched both of the Champions League quarterfinals first leg matches–Monaco over Chelsea yesterday via TiVo and today’s scoreless draw between Porto and Deportivo–and while enjoyable, especially Monaco’s effort, both felt a bit off. What was very surprising to me was that yesterday the commentators were, accurately IMO, pointing out that Chelsea were not playing the kind of overly rough football for which English sides are often criticized but in today’s match both teams played exactly that kind of ruffian style, bad tackling and bad sportsmanship, and yet neither of the presenters made any point of it. Monaco came off as superb when they scored the last two goals while a man down and totally frustrated Chelsea (playing with an added attacker after Zikos’ red card) but the two Iberian sides today were barely able to make one scoring attempt each the whole 90 minutes.