The Hours

My weekend pretty much went down like this: Drink way too many Newcastle, Killian's and black-and-tans on Friday night, spend Saturday and Sunday letting my body recover. But I had a choice in how to rehab. Take in the fresh air? And deal with 80,000 drunk Hoosiers and overhyped pop stars mixed with severe weather damage that could have killed me? No thanks. Lay on the couch? Why, it was only the best seat in the house for fifteen-and-a-half hours of soccer over two days. Guess which choice I made?

Saturday
Noon—2 pm: DVR recording of Wednesday's Champions League match between Inter Milan and Villareal, ESPN. Milan 2-1. Great game. Almost every time an Italian side and a Spanish side get together, it's a joy to watch. Maybe they should combine the two leagues.
2 pm—4 pm: Newcastle-Tottenham, FSC. Newcastle 3-1. A scrap in the rain. Typical English spring weather. And what is going on with Tottenham these days? Can you say nosedive?
4 pm—6 pm: Dallas-Chicago, ABC. Dallas 3-2. Great first half by Chicago, but a terrific fight back by Dallas. Game winner to hometown Dallas boy Kenny Cooper on his debut. The quality of this match is pretty high. Looks more like midseason than the first game of the year, at least until Dallas makes some subs in the 2nd half and the wind goes out of Chicago's sails. Chad Barrett's opener for Chicago makes the third game in a row that a goal was created by an attacker shooting at an angle across the face of the goal and the keeper was unable to hold on, allowing an opposing forward to tap in. Barrett's goal is almost a mirror image of Diego Forlan's tally for Villareal.

Break for dinner and a nap. Sweet, sweet sleep.

8 pm—10 pm: Bonanza! Flip back and forth between the Final Four and Birmingham-Chelsea, FSC. 0-0. Also have streaming video of Kansas City-Columbus running on my computer. KC 3-1. Only drawback is that this year, MLS has docked their viewer in a pop-up window, so I can't blow it up to full screen and watch from across the room like I did last year. Compensate by cranking the sound up so that I'll know when something exciting happens. Basketball gets boring pretty quickly, so I focus my attention on the soccer games. Kansas City looks good. Chelsea looks bad. Well, bad for Chelsea, anyway. They could still destroy most of the other teams I'm watching.
10 pm—11pm: Fox Sports World Report, FSC. Canadian highlight show. I get 30 great minutes of English, Spanish, German, and French highlights from throughout the day, and then they inexplicably start the same highlights over again at 10:30. Weird. Barcelona-Real Madrid looked like a decent game. (Sarcasm, people. Sarcasm.)
11 pm—1 am: Los Angeles-New England, ESPN2. New England 1-0. A rematch of MLS Cup 2005 ends up the other way around, with the visitors coming out on top. Clint Dempsey scores a nice goal and comes up with a rather disappointing celebration. LA looks drained. Not surprising, considering the emotions of the night: prior to kickoff, they received their championship rings and honored their late GM, Doug Hamilton, who died recently. But excuses aside, this game is sloppy, and looks a lot like the first game of the season.

Sunday
11:30 am—Noon: Schalke-Hamburg, FSC. Had this on in the background while I ate and got dressed. Not much to see.

Venture out into the world for groceries. Bright light, bright light!

4 pm—5 pm: Paris St. Germain-Bordeaux, FSC. PSG 3-1. I only see the second half, so I miss all the goals. Boo. PSG is either really good, or Bordeaux is really bad. Lots of Brazilians play in France.
5 pm—7 pm: Back to double duty. Arsenal-Aston Villa, FSC. Arsenal 5-0. DC United-New York Red Bulls, mlsnet.com. 2-2. As Arsenal demolishes Villa in the background, I'm mostly focused on DC-NY. NY goes up 2-0 early on a Youri Djorkaeff free kick and a horrid display by United's defense that gifts Edson Buddle a goal, but United hit back in the second half. Alecko Eskandarian and his fancy new headgear (see above) come back from a long concussion-induced injury layoff to score his first goal since MLS Cup 2004, a superb volley from 7 yards, and a few minutes later Facundo Erpen fires a wormburner that gets a fortunate deflection. I wish United could have kept the mo' going and gotten the winner, but I'm happy to see them claw their way back.
7 pm—7:15 pm: Tried to watch Houston-Colorado on my computer, but my eyes had had enough, so I decided to give them a rest. At least until next weekend.

Tony Quinn/Wireimage.com