Home and abroad, football was on the menu this weekend, being served in all flavors. Here at WWLTW, though, we like it best in one particular flavor, namely, the ‘weird’ — and, thankfully, we did have just enough of that.
Join us feast, then!
SPURS CLAIM GLORY
The 2016/17 English Premier League season may still be a handful of games away from ending, but from the perspective of Tottenham Hotspur, business for the term is already effectively concluded, and the formal wrap-up itself couldn’t come sooner. Let’s face it: Spurs have only ever had two objectives every season since the North London rivalry with neighbors Arsenal was first conceived: boast an advantage over the Gunners across the two league games the pair would contest and, arguably more importantly, finish above them as well. And while the latter has been a foregone conclusion for sometime now with all the steam Mauricio Pocchetino’s men have loaded into the final laps of the season, the former only got confirmed on Sunday when the Lilywhites nailed the old enemy 2-0 at home. For second-placed Spurs, of course, it isn’t the narrowing of the gap between themselves and leaders Chelsea after their ninth successive league win that matters; it’s the increase in the number of points by which Arsenal trail them. And that’s why Chelsea can keep the title for all they care — for Spurs, the campaign is over four matches early, crowned with the one accomplishment they have sought for over two decades. All hail the champs!
RONALDO NO LONGER WANTS IT ALL
Cristiano Ronaldo has been accused so very often during his illustrious career of craving the spotlight a bit too much, occasionally seeking personal acclaim to the loss of his poor teammates and the collective. There’ve been a lot of instances where people have pointed this out as a serious flaw in the Portuguese’s game, indeed, but his performance over the weekend against Valencia hardly qualifies to be reckoned among those numerous references. Rather than score a penalty that would have doubled Madrid’s lead and, even more crucially, increased his own count of goals in said encounter, Ronaldo magnanimously contrived to miss from the spot just to make it possible for fellow forward colleague Marcelo to bask in glory with a late winner. Some truly selfless work from the legend for once, eh?
GOOD WEEKEND: KWESI APPIAH
They say good things come in pairs, and coach Kwesi Appiah received quite the package on the eve of his official assumption of duties in his second spell as Ghana boss. If there was any subject that Appiah may have feared would prove a bothersome, recurrent theme during the next few years when he runs the Black Stars, it is the question of whether or not he would return Kevin-Prince Boateng and Sulley Muntari — the certified bad-boys promptly banished from the national team for helping ruin Appiah’s experience at the Fifa World Cup during his first stint at the helm of the Stars — to the Ghana fold. Well, if, as WWLTW imagines, the prospect of recalling Boateng and Muntari doesn’t really appeal to Appiah, both players’ ingenious, headline-grabbing ways of departing the pitch for their respective clubs in Europe over the weekend without even requiring substitutions pretty much resolves that double headache.
BAD WEEKEND: EA SPORTS’ FIFA
The globally-loved simulation game is based on real-life football and tries to replicate it as much as possible. For once, though, reality borrowed from the popular video game’s repertoire of skills when Manchester United star Ander Herrera copied a move a lot of ‘FIFA’ players could easily identify with — namely, standing on the goal-line in an attempt to prevent a direct freekick from going in — only to ditch the idea and join the wall mere moments before Swansea City star Gylfi Sigurdsson blasted the ball into the goal through the very space the Spaniard had vacated. Bad advert for EA Sports, yes, and especially considering the fact that the well-worn ∆/Y combo usually applied in ordering walls to jump failed to work when United boss Jose Mourinho tried it on that occasion.
