Posted on 05/18/2012 2:47:30 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
LONDON—Words can barely describe the jaw-dropping season finale staged by England's Premier League last weekend, but that didn't stop every pundit, Twitter wag and pub crawler in Britain from searching many beers into Sunday night for new ways to say "best season ever."
The day started at 3 p.m. with seven of the league's 20 teams still playing for something important: not just the championship, but also to secure berths in a prestigious Europe-wide competition and the right to stay in the Premier League at all, under rules that annually demote the weakest teams.
It wasn't settled until minutes before 5 p.m., when two improbable late goals delivered Manchester City—the world's only underdog lavishly bankrolled by an Abu Dhabi sheik—its first title since the late 1960s. Former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher described the feeling that swelled up in City supporters when he told the BBC: "I just swore a lot. I cried, I cried like a baby." Celebrating in a Santiago, Chile, bar, he "may have tried" to rip a TV off the wall.
Observing the mayhem from my usual perch at the Gunmakers pub in London's Marylebone, I left the television undisturbed, but marked a personal milestone of my own: I've made the switch from American football to real football. After years of trying to sneak away from the National Football League—with its weaponized linemen, bounty-hunting defenses and periodic bursts of action to break up the commercials—I am finally, completely finished with it. You may be ready for some football, but I'm so bored with the NFL.
As an American, this puts me at loggerheads not just with my countrymen—this year's Super Bowl was the most watched program in U.S. history—but also my colleague and boss, Wall Street Journal deputy editor in chief Gerard Baker.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
ET,
Thanks for posting that video clip; that is quite an exciting game. What I find interesting and engrossing is that the ball remains in play unless it goes out of bounds or until it crosses the end zone.
“Maradona Good. Pele Better. George Best.”
That is very inspirational, Eurotwit. At Anfield, it’s almost like being in church.
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