The Champion’s League is back with us again. Last night’s action gave us plenty of incident and it’s clear the Lille Vs. Manchester United game will give the media plenty to talk about for the next two weeks.

The one goal lead Man United take back to Old Trafford with them should be enough after seeing Lille struggle in the final third of the pitch last night. Lille deserved more out of the game, but United were clearly the better team. I’d expect Man United to win the second leg too and be in the draw for the Quarter-Finals and Semi-Finals on the 9th of March.

Real Madrid’s 3-2 home victory over Bayern Munich won’t be enough to see them through. The 2 away goals and home advantage give Bayern a great chance of going through but neither team are as good as they should be at the moment.

For Arsenal, loosing away to PSV was a bad blow but they are more than good enough to turn the tie around. You never know what you’re going to get from Arsenal, but on their day they are one of the best footballing sides in the World. 1-0 is not a major disaster and the return leg is poised to be the most entertaining game of the round. This one could well need extra-time.

Celtic have to pleased with the 0-0 home draw they secured last night. When you’re playing AC Milan you’d take a draw in the first leg. Any goal Celtic can score in the second leg will be an away goal so a score draw will do them. It’s still hard to see them knocking Milan out though.

Tonight’s fixtures promise plenty more talking points with Jose Mourinho taking his Chelsea side back to Porto, in a tie that shouldn’t pose Chelsea many problems; Inter Milan hosting Valencia, in an evenly matched tie that I feel the Spaniards will edge; Lyon going to Roma to show Europe that they are a force to be reckoned with this season; and in the tie of the round Barcelona host Liverpool.

The visit of Liverpool to Barcelona has already filled many column inches. Both clubs have had problems with their players; Samuel Eto’o refusing to come on as a substitute in a recent game, and a few of the Liverpool players enjoying a lively boys night out during a training camp visit to Portugal last week.

To add to the similarities both teams come into this game on the back of league defeats, and lets not forget that it’s the 2006 winners against the 2005 Champions!

Since the draw was first announced people have been very quick to write off Liverpool’s chances. The statistics however, suggest otherwise…

In three visits to the Nou Camp Liverpool are yet to concede a goal. They won 1-0 in 1976 on their way to winning the UEFA Cup, drew 0-0 in the UEFA Cup during their trebble winning campaign of 2001, and again in the Champion’s League group stage of 2002. Rafael Benitez also has an excellent track record there winning twice and drawing once in his time as Valencia manager. With defensive linchpin, Jamie Carragher, going for a hat-trick of shut outs tonight it’s hard to see any result other than 0-0. That would set up another memorable European night in Anfield on the 6th of March.

The official Barcelona squad is Valdés, Jorquera, Belletti, Oleguer, Puyol, Thuram, Márquez, Gio, Zambrotta, Motta, Xavi, Deco, Iniesta, Gudjohnsen, Saviola, Ronaldinho, Messi, Giuly.

Liverpool have traveled over with Reina, Dudek, Finnan, Arbeloa, Carragher, Agger, Hyypia, Riise, Pennant, Gerrard, Alonso, Sissoko, Mascherano, Gonzalez, Zenden, Crouch, Kuyt, Bellamy and Fowler.

I expect that Barca will play their usual 4-3-3 and Liverpool with revert back to the 4-5-1 that helped win so many vital games in Europe in 2005.

It seems Alex Ferguson is miffed with Spurs. Last weekend, when Ronaldo, ehm, won his team a penalty, Spurs replayed the incident at half time. Yes, I know they’re not supposed to do that but Ferguson is saying they were out of order for risking “inflaming the home support during a game.”

Is it not Ronaldo who inflamed the home support with his diving, sorry his winning-ness-ism? Am I wrong?

Here’s the incident for yourselves.

While I needed a bit of time to digest this information the real reason I’m a day late with this post is because I couldn’t decide if anyone who frequents this site would be interested in reading this. Please let me know if you would like to read more posts like this or if you never want to see the word football on the site again. Thanks!

Yesterday Liverpool Football Club was sold to a company called Kop Football Ltd. Kop Football Ltd. are American business men George Gillett and Tom Hicks.

For over 50 years Liverpool have been under the ownership of the Moores family, but outgoing chairman David Moores felt he no longer had enough money for the club to challenge in the modern game.

Moores has endured much criticism during the three years Liverpool have been looking for investment as the former Prime Minister of Thailand - Thaksin Shinawatra, Steve Morgan, Robert Kraft, the L4 consortium - who kept a low profile but were headed by Goal writer/producer Mike Jefferies along with Stuart Ford and Robert Kraft (with unconfirmed links to Liverpool Legend Kenny Dalglish), and Dubai International Capital , came and went.

This latest development looks like a good deal for Liverpool FC. Unlike the Malcolm Glazer takeover of Manchester United the Kop Football deal will not put any debt on the club, they have agreed to fund the development of the new stadium, they have taken on board the club’s debts of £44.8m and have promised to back the manager, Rafael Benitez, in the transfer market.

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Coincidentally I finished reading Daire Whelan’s ‘Who Stole Our Game?’ last night and was thinking about doing a post on it, when this morning I heard on the radio that Shelbourne Chief Executive Ollie Byrne had been admitted to hospital complaining of serious chest pains. The current eircom league holders have been in serious decline since the end of the season, again being hit with yet another substantial tax bill, and it would seem the pressure has taken it’s toll. Whatever you may think of Byrne, and there are many who would hold him in fairly low esteem, he has been a strong advocate for League of Ireland football and has done much to improve people’s perception of the game. However, the question has to be asked, has he done more harm than good? Will people look at the league now and think that it’s hit the glass ceiling? Shelbourne gave it a shot and failed. League of Ireland afficianados will, obviously, argue no but it might be slightly harder for the casual observer to see it that way.

‘Who Stole Our Game: The Fall And Fall Of Irish Soccer‘ charts the game in this country from the golden era of the fifties when crowds of 22,000 would cram into the grounds to the present day, where many clubs would be delighted to get even a couple of thousand through the gates. Though a bit annoyingly Dublincentric, it is a well researched and interesting, or infuriating, read that savagely exposes the mismanagement, short-sightedness, begrudgery and political manoeuvring that has blighted what could have been a thriving institution. The chapter on Johnny Giles’ efforts to make something out of Shamrock Rovers is especially prescient.

The saddest thing about the book is how often obvious mistakes were repeated and how some of the attitudes that have blighted the game are still very evident today. Football in this country is entering a new era. The success of Shelbourne, Cork City and Derry City in European competitions, albeit a relative success, has raised the league’s profile. Kevin Doyle’s rise at Reading, after a contentious transfer from Cork, has opened many people’s eyes to the quality of player currently performing over here. Shelbourne aside, clubs here are now beginning to demand reasonably good fees for their star players and the more players that succeed across the water, the bigger the asking price will get. Talented young players no longer have to travel to England to succeed at the highest level - they can learn their trade at an Irish club and still have a chance of progressing. In time, maybe, they won’t need to move abroad at all to acheive their ambitions. Yet all this progress could be for nothing, if the culture that has beset the game all these years isn’t eradicated and there aren’t many solid signs that it has been.

I’m still hopeful, even if ‘Who Stole Our Game’ has eroded that somewhat, that the game is moving in the right direction. If the money that clubs are getting for players now can be spent on youth development, as well as improving current squads. If facilites can improve. If clubs can learn to walk before they run and fans can learn to be patient - not expecting clubs to bankroll their future on short-term success. If Steve Staunton learns that the future success of the Irish international team needs the backing of a strong league and it would be beneficial to everyone if joining a middling English or Scottish side didn’t improve your chances of inclusion over staying at a successful Irish side. If we can do these things and be open to innovation when it comes, then we might see the crowds flock back once again, we might see Irish clubs competing at the highest level and the game might just have a future in this country.

There may be things worth setting yourself alight in protest at but this wasn’t one of them. To be fair, though, every football fan has probably wanted to storm Merrion square at some stage or other. In this instance the fan was furious at Dundalk’s exclusion from next years 12 team premiership and wasn’t going to take it lying down. His actions seem to have prompted the FAI to publish a statement outlining why Dundalk have nothing to complain about - though at no point do they explain why a club with no ground as yet, Shamrock Rovers, meet the criteria set out over Dundalk. Now if the Irish Government had to deal with passion like this, there’d have been a people’s revolution long time ago.