OPEN A BOTTLE OF CLARET
While a church bell clanged intermittently and bits of tumbleweed blew across the pitch at the Emirates Stadium, the Allianz Arena hosted a ding-dong battle that pretty much had it all on Wednesday night. For the second evening in eight days, it was left to Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to pull out all the stops and provide the box-office entertainment as Arsenal once again Arsenaled their way past Sporting in a bore draw to earn their place in Bigger Cup semi-finals. More or less picking up where they’d left off at the end of the first leg, Bayern and Madrid served up a gourmand feast of slapstick goalkeeping, a see-sawing scoreline, much better goalkeeping, near-misses, goals of an at times absurdly high quality, several red cards and no end of post-match salty Spanish tears and recriminations. While Madrid have little or no chance of pipping Barça to this season’s La Liga title, they certainly thrashed them in the ungracious Bigger Cup exit stakes.
