Chelsea may have a magnificent away record with eight wins out
of eight games, but their pathetic home form has allowed Liverpool
to overtake them at the top of the Premier League.
Last weekend saw another away game and another easy 2-0 win at Bolton,
which stretched Chelsea's victorous away run to eight this season.
The goals difference is a breathtaking: 21-1 for Luis Felipe Scolari's
team.
Adding three of last season's away matches, Chelsea's winning series
is 11 games long with 26 goals in favour and only one against. The
last host to have avoided defeat against the Blues were Tottenham
last March. The London derby ended in a dramatic 4-4 draw.
But, at the one-time unconquerable Stamford Bridge Chelsea has been
having hard time to collect points: only a meager 11 points have
been won on home turf, compared to the maximum 24 from their eight
trips.
What's worse, bitter rivals Manchester United and Liverpool snatched
wins at the Bridge.
Unless Chelsea spread the winning habit to their home ground, the title may remain out of their reach for the third season in a row.
Still, some teams struggle at home even worse then Chelsea: Everton,
a UEFA Cup candidate, has collected a meagre six points out of 24
at Goodison. Luckily, no less than five away wins keep them on the
course for Europe.
The famous Vasco da Gama have finally been relegated as they lost
0-2 to Vitoria on the last day of the Brazilian league, but the
night in Rio may have been darker, as a desperate fan considered
jumping from the terrace.
No doubt all ten million Vasco's fans are sad but none like a man
named by the press simply as Fernando, who at the end of the match
stepped to the edge of a terrace, shouting he would jump to the
depth of 20 meteres.
The dramatic scene was followed by the multitude until firemen managed to prevent Fernando from attempting his leap. At the last moment,
as the man was preparing tp drop, a fireman grabbed one of his arms
and tugged him to safety.
"He said his life had no sense now that Vasco have gone down,"
a Rio de Janeiro Fire brigade spokesman said as Fernando was flown
to a nearby hospital, presumably to the psychiatric ward.
Vasco have become yet another big Brazilian club to be relegated,
continuing the tradition maintained over the last decade by Fluminense,
Botafogo, Gremio and finally Corinthians. In fact, Vasco will be
the one to replace Corinthians in the second flight, as their Sao
Paulo rivals were promoted back two weeks ago.
Elsewhere in Brazil, Sao Paulo captured their third consecutive
title, their sixth overall, after beating Goiás 2-0 away
and keeping a three-point advantage over Grémio.
Vedad Ibisevic, the Bosnian international at tiny Hoffenheim,
has been enthralling Bundesliga audiences week in week out with
his goalscoring exploits.
In the first 16 matches of the current season the 24-year old has
scored an amazing 18 goals and is topping the scorers' charts as
his team lead the Bundesliga level on points with the giants of
Bayern.
Although he is bound to attract interest from an array of the continent's
big guns, Ibisevic has promised to remain faithful to Hoffenheim
for another 18 months.
"I am pleased the big clubs are after me, but I plan to stay
at Hoffenheim even after the end of this season," said Ibisevic
to the German electronic media after nearly helping his team hold
Bayern at the Allianz Arena last Friday.
In the end Bayern won 2-1 thanks to a goal from Luca Toni in injury time, but Ibisevic's prowess has been praised
by the greatest gunner of them all, Gerd Muller.
"I believe Ibisevic can break my 1972 record. He has an uncanny
nose for goal in the penalty area and such gift cannot be learnt,"
said the Bundesliga's all-time top scorer, who netted 40 goals in
1971/72.
Should he beat my mark, I'll be the first to congratulate him."
Could anybody be more prolific than Ibisevic? Much more prolific?
Well, you just have to look south of the German-Austrian border.
Salzburg's Marc Janko has notched an astonishing 29 goals in no
more than 19 appearances in the Austrian Bundesliga!
Already in the first half of the season Janko (25) significantly
improved his team's individual scoring record, held until now by
Oliver Bierhoff, who scored 23 goals in the whole of the 1990/91
season.
Janko has been particularly impressive since October 19th, when
he netted 19 goals in eight games, about 2.2 per appearance. Curiously,
he was never so efficient in front of goal, having scored just 18
goals in three full seasons with Salzburg before the current campaign.
As late as last spring his form was so mediocre that he was not
even picked for Austria's mediocre Euro squad. Nowadays, Janko's
guns are blazing and there is no way of telling where his limits
may be.
While Cristiano Ronaldo is celebrating an overwhelming win in
the France Football's Golden Ball contest with 446 points ahead
of Lionel Messi with 281 and Fernando Torres with 179, his fellow
countryman Ricardo Quaresma received a different, slightly less
influential award: the Golden Thrash Bin for the worst player in
the Italian Serie A.
The winger, whose transfer from Porto to Inter was one of the most
eagerly awaited last summer, was given only nine games by José
Mourinho, incidentally his most fervent advocate until a few months
ago. And he did not do much in those few matches either.
The listeners to the Catersport program knew how to reward Quaresma
for his displays, showering him with votes: 17,11% out of the 17,544
cast. The Silver Bin and the Bronze Bin went to the previous winners
of the contest, Christian Vieri and Adriano,
respectively. The rest of the top-ten include other illustrious
names like Shevchenko, Dida and Tiago - all expensive and ultimately
not all that useful for their current teams.
The Brazilians of Internacional won the Copa Sudamericana by beating
Estudiantes La Plata by a 2-1 aggregate in a dramatic two-legged
finals.
Although the team from Porto Alegre carried a solid 1-0 advantage
from the away match, the return game in Brazil turned out to be
more emotional than expected.
The Argentinians dominated and took a 1-0 lead through Alayes in
the 65th minute, after which there was no more goals until the 90th
minute.
Since Internacional had Agenor sent off just before the end of the
normal time, Estudiantes entered the extra-time as favourites, but the old adage saying that the outnumbered team fight harder turned
out to be true one more time.
The all-out offensive payed off for the Brazilians when Nilmar smashed the ball home from close range after it rebounded from the post.
This was the first Brazilian win in the Copa Sudamericana, the Latin-american
version of the UEFA Cup, after the competition was dominated by
the Argentinians between 1935 and 1939.
