With 37.5 per cent of the Champions League quarter-finalists of the English variety, the BT Sport people were more than entitled to have a spring in their step as we entered last-eight territory.
Sometimes, though, you’d be wondering how much homework their pundits do ahead of their gigs, like, say, when Joleon Lescott previewed Chelsea’s first leg against Real Madrid taking place on Wednesday .
“I think the way they’re playing at the moment . . . yeah, they look like they can go all the way again.”
This three days after the oligarch-less Chelsea were mullered 4-1 at home to Brentford.
No matter, we’ve all skipped homework in our time, although maybe not quite as much as the BT lads.
Rio Ferdinand could, perhaps, be forgiven for knowing as much about non-English teams as the rest of us do about quantum chromodynamics, but Owen Hargreaves really has no excuse having plied his trade outside Blighty for no small spell with Bayern Munich.
And still he talked, largely, like Atlético Madrid were the Dog and Duck.
“I think City are going to be comfortable today,” he sniffed in his Manchester City v Atlético Madrid preview, when the last thing you’ll ever be against Atlético Madrid is comfortable, even if you win 7-0.
“This City team have no one to fear,” Rio agreed, before half suggesting that Liverpool will beat them at the weekend, an eventuality that would see the latter take a further step towards a quadruple, a prospect significantly more alarming than even, say, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s suggestion this week that our planet is banjaxed.
Wayne Rooney, on his Monday Night Football appearance 24 hours before, had the good grace to concede that City or Liverpool winning the Premier League and/or the Champions League, the former an inevitability, the latter a distinct possibility, was enough, in so many words, to make him come out in a rash.
Rio’s a bit too slick to be admitting anything of the kind, and also wears suits that fits him, but Wayne was more revealing about the game of association football on his Monday Night Football cameo than Rio has been in his entire BT career.
No matter, first half, City 0, Atlético 0. “I think it’s what we all expected,” said Rio at the break, Jake Humphrey saying “hold it there Rio, you suggested this would be a cruise for the boys in light blue”. Kidding. Jake just nodded, like Rio had just defined quantum chromodynamics, as Jake tends to do.
Before the game Pep Guardiola had addressed the issue of his habit of opting for wacky team selections and tactics for major Champions League games. “I overthink a lot, that’s why I create stupid tactics. Tonight I’m going to do incredible tactics – we play with 12!”
He was as good as his word, playing 10 plus Kevin and De Bruyne, when one of Kevin or De Bruyne would be more than plenty. And then the pair of them teamed up to score.
Over in Lisbon, meanwhile, Liverpool went two up before Darwin Núñez pulled a goal back, the Uruguayan evidently unencumbered by parents who instead of reading baby name books, picked up On the Origin of Species.
Need it be said, Ronnie Whelan still wasn’t happy, some even suggesting that he’d filled the “time capsule” section of his census form with “Liverpool might well have won 12-1, but that goal they conceded was SHOCKING”.
He almost sounded contented, though, when Luis Diaz made it 3-1, the Colombian’s start to his Liverpool career somewhat suggesting that the club’s recruitment department is quite good at its job.
Back in Manchester, it finished 1-0.
Had Owen a new-found respect for Atlético’s storied rearguard capabilities?
“I think City will go to Madrid and win by more.”
No.
Diego Simeone, you’d have a notion, will have his his Dog and Duck XI up for the challenge.
