🎶 THE BIG CUP … 🎶
While Football Daily has no intention of spoiling the finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm for any devotees who haven’t watched it yet, we’re giving nothing of any significance away by revealing its title is No Lessons Learned. We only mention it because it seems pertinent as Arsenal take on Bayern Munich in Big Cup later, on the latest step of their first foray into the competition since being humiliated by the German champions in 2017. It is fair to say that, unlike the misanthropic Larry David, Arsenal have learned plenty in the interim, as their lofty Premier League status and place in the quarter-finals suggests. However, it is in Big Cup that the biggest club in England never to have won the biggest of European pots that the Gunners have suffered consistent, varying degrees of embarrassment and this season they have another chance to put things right.
In Bayern they face a wounded animal who, despite – or perhaps even because of – their well-documented vicissitudes on the domestic front, ought to be feared. Their total of six Big Cups equals Liverpool and is second only to that of Real Madrid and Milan, and in Harry Kane they have Europe’s most prolific striker by a distance, and one whose scoring record against Arsenal is literally second to none. Given the fact that he was rejected by Arsenal as a child before making his name at Spurs, it is safe to say he would like nothing better to put one over the hated north London rivals of the team where he spent most of his career. “It might sound ridiculous,” he said in 2018. “I was only eight when they let me go but every time we played them, I thought: ‘Alright, we’ll see who’s right and who’s wrong’.” While Kane will be up against a stout Arsenal defence that has kept four consecutive clean sheets, his record at the Emirates makes it seem almost inconceivable that he will not score.
After a dreary round of 16 that seriously curbed the enthusiasm of football-loving neutrals with no black swan in the fight, this season’s Big Cup desperately needs somebody to jolt it back into life. And in Tuesday’s other first leg between Manchester City and the plucky Spanish underdogs of Real Madrid at the Bernabéu, we have another clash of the kind that ought to prompt even the most disillusioned viewer to tune in. Madrid have been given permission to put the lid on the cauldron of their newly-renovated stadium in an attempt to increase the febrility of the atmosphere for a game against opponents who are unlikely to be fazed by the unusual prospect of playing in front of extremely raucous fans. And it is to be hoped all present return home safe and sound after it was announced that security surrounding this and other midweek Big Cup matches has been seriously beefed up following an apparent threat from Islamic State.
Having swatted Madrid aside in the semi-finals last season, Pep Guardiola is confident of victory but does not foresee an easy tie. “It’s difficult because beating Real Madrid two times in the same way is almost impossible,” he tooted during his press conference before a game that will feature several of the world’s current best players representing both sides. “Beating them once in this competition is difficult, imagine two in a row. They learn, they have pride. We have to try to be smart with the game we play tomorrow and see what happens in the second leg.” After one of the more dreary and monotonously predictable Big Cups in living memory, the closing stages are shaping up to be what a lovably unpleasant hit sitcom star might describe as pretty, pretty good.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Barry from 8pm BST for hot Big Cup MBM coverage of Arsenal 2-2 Bayern Munich, while Tim de Lisle will be on deck then for Real Madrid 1-1 Manchester City. And Taha Hashim is also going to be in the hot seat at 7.30pm for Republic of Ireland 1-2 England in their Euro 2025 qualifier.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It was hard [to leave] because I had got to know everyone there but they were looking for a shift in style. I still follow Stoke. They just can’t quite get back to the Premier League. The players have gone but I have loads of friends there. I had people from Stoke at my wedding, people from Newcastle too … At 2am I shut the bar” – Real Madrid loanee Joselu talks Big Cup, forwards and why every away team hated having to do it in the Potteries on a cold Tuesday night.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I initially misread Noble Francis’s missive (yesterday’s Football Daily letters). Instead of his witty reference to the Saudi-infused ‘Al Clasico’, I thought he was proposing the ‘AI Clasico’. My mind raced through ideas that artificial intelligence would propose to energise a football fanbase. I quickly landed on: a) half-and-half scarves, b) heavy use of VAR, c) an inconvenient kick-off time to accommodate stay-at-home viewers; and d) the requisite foreign neutral site to encourage even more kit-buying. There: the AI Clasico = the ill-fated 39th match idea” – Mike Wilner.
Re: the Amsterdam pea-souper (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition). May I be one of 1,057 to point out that Ajax did not progress to the final that season. It was Celtic 2-1 Inter. The final you refer to was for the 1968-69 season. Perhaps your researcher had a bit of a brain-fog” – Jim Scullion (and 1,056 others).
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Mike Wilner.
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