On The Ball with Mark Wheat: Weekend Goal Fest
by Mark Wheat
December 16, 2013
On the Ball with Mark Wheat is a new Monday feature on The Current that celebrates the connections between music and soccer, with an eye to the past weekend's results. Listen Mondays at 7 p.m. as Mark plays the music selection of the week.
It was a weekend in the EPL to silence the haters — those who say there's not enough scoring; in the three games I watched, there were 17 goals!
My beloved Manchester United bounced back to form with a convincing 3-0 away win against Aston Villa, but it was their two fiercest rivals who really blew the usual goal tallies away: Liverpool with 5 and Man City with 6!
It might seem bizarre, then, to focus this week's blog on goalkeepers! In my final two years at high school, I was the first-team choice in that exalted position. I was never VERY good, especially in catching crosses, but I did excel in saving penalties and I never used to move before the ball was kicked. It amazes me, then, to see the top-flight goalies do this all the time; invariably, they pick which way to dive before the kicker hits the ball. A perfect example of this was in the City game: Arsenal's Wojciech Szczesny bounced on his line, feinting to go both ways before diving to his left as Yaya Touré watched him and gently tapped the ball to Szczesny's right — it looked ridiculous! It was another example of penalty-takers taking advantage of this goalie folly; some now even hit it straight, knowing that the keeper will not be there when it crosses the line. It makes me crazy!
Tottenham's goalie Hugo Lloris must have been going crazy on Sunday, too, watching his defense leave huge holes that were regularly taken advantage of by the in-form striker right now, Louis Suarez. He's leading the league with 17 goals and Liverpool certainly wouldn't be in their second place without him. He was one-on-one with Lloris three times, which should be almost as certain a goal as a penalty situation, but the keeper saved every time! He also made two splendid saves in the play that resulted in Liverpool's second goal when Henderson expertly slotted in the rebound from his second parry. Tough luck, Lloris, you picked the wrong team to be on, as Tottenham failed to have ONE shot on target all day — and they were at home!?!
The humiliating home loss for Spurs cost André Villas-Boas his manager's job; he joins West Brom's Steve Clarke as the weekend's other sacked boss.
We also wanted to keep the theme going by giving shout-outs to one of the only players in the EPL who has a Minnesota connection, (tell us if you know any others!), as our friends at NBC did this week.
We're going to try to get an interview with Cody Cropper ourselves for another edition of OTB. He's set to make his debut in goal for Southampton this week, and if he does well with them, he might be in Brazil next year with the USA. I love how he describes USA coach Klinnsmann: "very nice and quite eccentric, but not in a bad way."
The goalie who England were expected to take to the World Cup this year, Joe Hart, is sitting on the bench right now for Man City and his replacement, Costel Pantillimon, couldn't really be blamed for any of Arsenal's three goals, especially Theo Walcott's second, a stunningly good strike. It would be nice for England if he came into better form this season. But for this week's song, we have to salute Man City: Not only did they demolish the league leaders, they now have a record-breaking (at this point in the season) 47 goals. That gives them a goal difference of 29, while United's is 6 — ouch?!.
City also had their best away result of the season in mid-week, beating the European Champions Bayern Munich, coming back from being 2-0 down to win 3-2. That still left them in second place in the group, which meant a tougher draw in the next round, which was made today. It will be fascinating to see them take on the mighty Barcelona, who are not quite firing on all cylinders yet this season. Arsenal have City's win to encourage them as they take on Bayern, Chelsea must face their old striker Didier Drogba who now plays for Galatasaray and United seem to have the easiest draw against Olympiakos.