Meet Patricia Carlucho. She is one of Uruguay's rising stars, at age 25 she has a long road ahead. Professional dancer, fitness instructor. Another beauty from El Rio de La Plata....
The Santiago Bernabéu will be giving their greatest idol one of the greatest ovations ever as Raúl González Blanco will say farewell to the Real Madrid faithful ...
Champions League is the greatest club tournament in the world, but this semifinal matchup has more flavor than just these two sides.
This tie is a matchup between two teams from leagues that really want to send out the message that they, too, deserve the spotlight of the big boys.
Bayern and Lyon want to make the statement that the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 are the two most exciting leagues in the world right now. Forget the Premiership. Forget La Liga. Forget Serie A. The Bundesliga and Ligue 1 have produced some incredible talent and have also found themselves in some intriguing race at both ends of the table. Although Marseille have truly cleaned up that mess, that was far from that case about a month ago when Montpellier was in the thick of it. From top to bottom these leagues have been competitive in both Champions League as well as Europa League; especially the Germans.
These are two of the more dangerous teams in Europe and no one is giving them credit for it. Or at least this is the way they are portraying Tuesday's match to be. For many, this tie is the undercard to the main event. To be honest, they are doing themselves a great injustice.
Bayern Munich, based on their form right now could beat Barcelona and Inter. Lyon, although the argument would be tougher to make, we could say that they would give either team a run for their money in a 90-minute encounter. Scary would be putting lightly the form that Bayern have right now in Europe. Arjen Robben is a player that should be considered for FIFA World Player of the Year. He has finally shown the world what he can do when his temper is in check and when he can play within a team.
I think Florentino Pérez' decision to ditch him had something to do with this.
Lyon will have to play better than they did against Real Madrid when they step onto the pitch at Stade Gerland. Claude Puel himself said that the team need to be "enterprising" if they plan to see themselves with a shot at heading back to the Santiago Bernabéu in a few weeks.
Lyon will be missing Jeremy Toulalan and that will be a mighty big blow if they expect to keep Arjen Robben and the boys off the scoreboard. Franck Ribéry will be missed by the Bavarians, but there are other players offensively who have taken the baton from him throughout the season.
Ivica Olic and Franck Ribéry celebrate after Bayern Munich scored the game-winner against Manchester United (AP)
It was 1999, in reverse at the Allianz Arena. Bayern Munich as well as Louis van Gaal were able to mildly avenge their losses to Manchester United 11 years ago. Remember, Van Gaal was the coach of Barcelona that same year and the Red Devils eliminated the Blaugrana en route to their second European title.
In the first minute, Manchester United once again proved to everyone why they are a team that will never forgive their opponents' mistakes.
The masked man, Martín De Michelis slipped and Wayne Rooney scored his 34th goal of the season tapping a volley past Hans-Jörg Butt to open the scoring after only 84 seconds.
From that point on Alex Ferguson went to their 4-4-1-1 and allowed Bayern Munich to battle back in the match.
They took advantage of the spaces that the English champs allowed them. The Bavarian giants took the game to Manchester and kept going after the first goal that would give them some life once again.
An organized backline along with an inspired Edwin van der Sar helped United's road goal seem almost insurmountable until Franck Ribéry's freekick in the 77th minute that deflected off of Wayne Rooney's foot and into the back of the net.
In the end, the team that worked harder ended up winning and Ivica Olic's goal in the 92nd minute was a tribute to that persistent attitude. After what seemed to be another subdued attack and the match looked to end up being a draw; the Croatian international dashed into the box and took the ball away from Patrice Evra. He would coldly beat van der Sar for the eventual game-winner.
To make matters worse for Sir Alex, Wayne Rooney would injure his ankle and air raid sirens sounded all over English football as this injury could end up being the most talked about in the British Isles since David Beckham broke his foot back in 2002.
Meanwhile the two best teams of the past three years in France faced off and the match at the Stade Gerland lived up to the hype.
Lyon take foothold in French encounter Meanwhile Lyon and Bordeaux would duke it out in order to become the first team since Monaco to reach the Champions League semifinals.
Lisandro López and Michel Bastos gave Diego Maradona and Dunga more of a headache after his performance in Lyon's 3-1 win over Bordeaux. The former Racing man scored a brace and was a man in the box constantly being a threat to Cédric Carrasso's goal.
Marouane Chamakh equalized in the 14th minute when he headed home a beautiful cross past Hugo Lloris, who would become one of the stars of the match as he made spectacular save after spectacular save in order to keep "The Kids" in the game.
This was not the case for Bordeaux's defense, who let them down with very basic mistakes. Case and point, in the 32nd minute Brazilian international Michel Bastos would take advantage of a misplayed ball by Benoit Trémoulinas and he would drill the ball to Carrasso's back post for the eventual game-winner.
Lisandro would make it 3-1 on a penalty kick. They would now take this advantage to Stade Chaban Delmas and play try to reach the semis of Europe's most important club competition for the first time ever.
While gathering opinions from sources I came across a quote that summed it all up.
"The greatest group of players on earth were beat by a better team on this evening."
I tried to find where that came from, but I failed to find it; but it described what occured at the Santiago Bernabéu on Wednesday night.
Reverse psychology and Madrid believed the hype The team as well as the local media bought the words that Chelo Delgado and a host of others said about Real Madrid in the days leading up to the match. Claude Puel's Boys played the role of sheep in wolves clothing as they complimented Real Madrid for their lineup, their history, and their scary scoring proposition.
The usual suspects, Marca and As, were leading running into battle with the white flag not realizing that Lyon came in with one simple concept: don't fix what's broken. If this strategy worked against a fully loaded Madrid side at the Stade Gerland, why wouldn't if work for them on the road where the 12th man and the ghost of Juanito usually betrays a group of players.
They believed the hype I am proponent of La Liga, but I can also find the defects that it has as well. If there is one thing that teams 3-20 have in common is that they allow Barca and Madrid the room to roam. These types of teams are deadly in reduced space, forget about when they have acres to jaunt. The six-spot that they put on Villarreal and the epic rally against Sevilla are tarnished now that they are out of the Champions League. They do have a value in the overall scheme of things, they are in first place but that is not their primary objective- until referee Nicola Rizzoli blew the final whistle.
It is easy to bully the teams in your league, but how do you fair against the big boys in Europe? That is the biggest failure of the Madrid era.
Great teams don't play for results they play to win. This club was nowhere close to being that battling side that was on the pitch on Saturday against Sevilla during those final 30 minutes. Real Madrid looked to find a result and got burned in the end.
Great teams are also aware that there is dirty work that needs to be done. Real Madrid didn't do that. César Delgado was key in the Lyon goal as he took up the central defenders in the marks and had the ball bounce off of him perfectly to Miralem Pjanic and that leads to the next topic.
Defense wins titles When Florentino Pérez brought in Raúl Albiol he showed that he learned from his first administration. But just like Fabio Cannavaro and Walter Samuel, the personnel following through on their respective assignments are what make a defender great, too. Real Madrid's defense has shown gross breaches in their assignments and they have led to goals. They have shown that they are vulnerable, but the offense has been so explosive this season that it has masked those shortcomings.
On Wednesday, Lyon's backline outplayed their Spanish counterparts. With the exception of Guti's assist to Cristiano Ronaldo, Lyon defenders were always found in the right place at the right time. There was no way Cris would catch Ronaldo in a foot race and the Portuguese star slotted the ball right in the five-hole.
With the exception of some early threats, that was all Madrid got.
They handcuffed Guti in their defensive third and forced Ronaldo to go wide. Kaká was put in a position where he had to dish off (mostly backwards) to a teammate. They pushed up when they had to and neutralized Sergio Ramos and Ronaldo in the air.
The Madrid backline was suspect at best and Ezequiel Garay was caught in the most compromising positions a defender can be in:
Garay lost Pjanic at the top of the box when César Delgado put the ball in the box to Lisandro López. He then went to defend López thinking he would hold the ball to turn around and shoot, thus allowing the Bosnian teenager to cleanly receive the one-time pass and shoot on goal. It does sound like a condemnation of the young Argentine, but the defense as a whole did not collapse on this and act as a unit. Garay just happened to be the one that looked bad on that play. Defense wins championships. Defense loses them, too.
After that Real Madrid did little and nothing to affect Hugo Lloris. Lyon did waste two incredible counterattacks to ice the game late. Delgado blasted a one-on-one with Iker Casillas wide. That second goal would have sent the already angry Merengue faithful storming out of the stadium.
The Verdict? First of all, you have to applaud Lyon for their effort on the pitch throughout the 180 minutes. It was a team effort in every sense of the word and it taught the "ultimate team" a huge lesson in the process.
As far as Real Madrid, for the short term there will repercussions as there should be. There are 260 million reasons why Madrid fans should be angry. They did not joyfully spend that type of money in order to win the league title. There is that and the fact that their archrivals have cast a shadow that can only be dispelled by equaling the feat. But they will do it only one way- together.
Whether they do it next year or not is another story, but there is a great deal of talent. Yet the greatest lesson that was learned on this evening as the best talent out there was truly beat by a better team, whether paper says it or not.
