European Football Recap, Or, Carlton Cole is a Wanker

The Sports Optimator has been dragging its collective feet the past two weeks, for reasons unbeknownst to even them.  To make up for lost time, it will attempt to cram old and random news in next to newish news, and still make it seem interesting.

I know you're excited.  Though maybe not as much as this guy. 
  

First up: Some Parisians, contrary to some stereotypes, are not quite as civilized as one might like.  Football Weekly's Barry Glenndenning reports:

European football did not, in fact, shut down due to Swine Flu.  The game between Marseille and Paris St. Germain was merely postponed.  But, luckily for the fans, it was postponed late enough for them to be already at the ground...so they were still able to have their riot, and get canisters of tear gas chucked at them by the police...so their day's fun wasn't entirely ruined.

Everybody seemed to be well-armed for the affair.  One fan had a crossbow, apparently, and the police look to be well-equipped with double-barrelled flare guns.

Seriously, though, PSG hooligans seem to be some of the worst of their kind, which is certainly saying something.  Just last year one was killed by an off-duty police officer after a hate mob had surrounded a Jewish fan of Hapoel Tel Aviv.

While we're on the subject of the letter 'P,' Plovdiv, Bulgaria, has a sweet crest, is host to economic and cultural events such as the International Fair Plovdiv, the international theatrical festival "A Scene on a Crossroad", the TV festival "The Golden Chest" - not to be confused with Dimitar Berbatov's golden chest - and the bi-annual Plovdiv derby.  How quaint.  


Moving on.  The fortunes of Liverpool have oscillated wildly over the past few weeks, as everybody surely knows by now.  What you may not know, however, is that the fortunes of the Sunderland beachball have ended up in the same spot as Liverpool's Champions League hopes: in the toilet.

Arsenal's fortunes, on the other hand, seem to be on the upswing.  After two straight second-half letdowns against weaker sides (although it should be said that Carlton Cole went down for that penalty faster than Chloë Sevigny in Brown Bunny), the Gunners had their way with Liverpool (and Voronin, who, in addition to being rubbish, has the best/worst cock-rock haircut this side of Europe, and I mean the band, not the continent...  Voronin...  was he really the leading goal-scorer at Bayer Leverkusen?  The Bundesliga must be in worse shape than I thought), Spurs, and, in particularly fine fashion, AZ Alkmaar.  Eduardo should be singled out for his gorgeous back-heel to Arshavin in the run-up to the final goal, but it was Arshavin who shone brightest last night.  As Wenger said in his typical Frenglish after the game, "He gave the ball every time the fraction of the second you wanted him to give it, and that is top quality."  Hear hear.  Going back to the Spurs tie and their dismal defending (because as exciting as Cesc's solo goal was, it was perhaps not "one of the greatest goals in Premier League history"), the Guardian's Barry Glendenning points out that "no amount of Croatian lesbian-lookalikes is going to stop you shipping goals").  He has a point.  Well, two good points, actually. 

Elsewhere, Real Madrid's 2-0 victory over Getafe is being heralded as the best performance by ten men since Debbie Does Dallas.

While we're on the subject of porno, The Sports Optimator is proud to link to One of the Greatest Websites Ever: SPORNO.  We also humbly submit two of our own submissions to the effort, although the second one is not Sporno at all.  It's just wrong.  The Google image bin is a fascinating place, indeed.