Villarreal vs Man City | Bayern Munich vs Napoli
Lyon vs Real Madrid | Manchester United vs Otelul Galati
Kun Aguero is a nice guy and all that, but none of you knew he could tie his hair up in a bun, did you? Jajaja, el sombrero se ve raro … (weird hat). Anyway, Mario Balotelli will return tonight after completing his three-match ban so let’s hope our poor friends at Villarreal are ready to fight Manchester City till the end. Anything can happen in futbol!
Said Mancini : “Madrigal is a very difficult pitch to play on, a lot of big teams have had problems here because the supporters are very close to their team. If we want to win we’ll have to produce a strong performance and even if Villarreal are missing four or five players we know it will be a difficult game.”
And here’s Napoli coach Walter Mazzarri biding his time and enjoying a smoke on the bench during his squad’s training session last night. Italians are molto cool… you’re half-expecting a blue scooter to arrive at the stadium to pick him up! Anyway, Walter is still in awe of Bayern Munich ahead of their clash tonight – but hopefully he won’t have to smoke too many ciggies during the match from all that stress!
“Just think that [Bayern] are a club who provide five candidates out of the 50 for the Ballon d’Or. I don’t know how many Barcelona have, but I think only they and Bayern can have this kind of record. When we went to Manchester, it was the same situation and you know what happened. I am curious to see how the lads perform in a stadium which, even if we had only come here to play a friendly match in pre-season, would have given our players goose bumps.”
Lastly, here’s Karim Benzema pretending to be interested in what the UEFA official has to say at yesterday’s press conference! Strategically, they picked him because Madrid are facing a French team (Lyon) for a spot in the Champs League second round, and he’s the best candidate to address both sets of media. But that doesn’t mean Mourinho will be picking Benzema over Higuain tonight (yadda, yadda, that’s all the Spanish newspapers want you to care about… Madrid’s dilemma ‘upfront’!)
“With such a build-up of matches, it seems to me that it’s good for them and for the team to do this kind of rotation, because they can get worn down mentally and physically. The two are in form. We’ll have to make a choice and I’ll live with the consequences.”
