What a fabulously rich week of football foolishness this has been.
The sore loser prize, yet again, goes to Alex Ferguson.
"Typical Germans," the Manchester United manager fumed after one of the most delectable volleyed goals from Bayern Munich winger Arjen Robben blew down the house of cards that Ferguson's once dominant squad risks becoming. It must be dawning on Ferguson by now that having Wayne Rooney alone does not make a winning team.
His World War II-era rant was directed at Bayern players he blamed for the 50th-minute sending-off of Rafael da Silva. "They got him sent off, everyone sprinted towards the referee," he said, as if his players would never, ever, do exactly the same thing given half a chance.
Typical Ferguson. Decades of success at United have earned him the right to do, if not see, things his own way. But the truth is that only one of the Bayern players, midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, who badgered referee Nicola Rizzoli was German. The others - Franck Ribery, Ivica Olic and Mark van Bommel - are French, Croatian and Dutch.
Had Ferguson plugged the weaknesses in his squad as quickly as he finds someone other than himself or his players to blame for their defeats, then United would likely still be defending the battered honor of English clubs in the Champions League, rather than staring at the prospect of a season with only the League Cup in the trophy cabinet.
Until the fullback's inexperience betrayed him, Rafael played well, hounding Ribery out of the picture. It was a big gamble for Ferguson to throw the 19-year-old Brazilian into such an important match against such seasoned opponents. Rafael might have better handled the high pressure had Ferguson played him more often, instead of 35-year-old Gary Neville.
Just as Arsenal's Arsene Wenger has placed too much faith in youth, part of Ferguson's undoing this season has been his slowness to pension off old-timers. The seeds of United's Champions League quarter-final exit were planted by the jaded side he fielded for the first leg in Munich, where it tamely lost 2-1. Neville and Paul Scholes, also 35, both showed their age.
Besides, "typical" German, French or whatever means little or nothing now in a sport transformed in the 15 years since the European Court of Justice outlawed quota restrictions on European players. Can Arsenal's gritty 2-2 first-leg recovery against FC Barcelona be called "typically English" when there wasn't a single Englishman in Wenger's starting 11?
A question which leads us to this week's silliness prize. That goes to all those who huffed and puffed that English clubs are now in decline because none of them reached the Champions League final four for the first time since 2003.
That conclusion is flawed partly because it is based on a mistaken perception that English clubs were previously very dominant. They weren't. They've been European club champions just three times in the past two decades (United in 1999 and 2008, and Liverpool in 2005). Real Madrid and Barcelona together won six times over that period, AC Milan won four times, and was a losing finalist another three times.
Bayern president Uli Hoeness, gloating after the defeat of United, was right in his assessment that English clubs have felt the squeeze of the global financial crisis, tax hikes and the weakened British pound. But United, which this week announced the recruitment of Mexican striker Javier Hernandez, as well as Arsenal, Chelsea and newly wealthy Manchester City still have plenty of spending power. And the Premier League will be heavily represented by its players at the World Cup this June and July.
A Champions League final four from Italy, France, Germany and Spain is a slight swing of the pendulum away from the Premier League but nothing more. Hoeness' prediction, reported in London newspapers, that "English football will not play the same role as before" was wildly optimistic. One could almost picture Ferguson reaching again for his phrase book of typically German insults.
Finally, this week's prize for self-confidence goes to Real Madrid players for believing that they will beat Barcelona in their Spanish league "clasico" this Saturday and for claiming that their superstar Cristiano Ronaldo is at least as good with a football as god, a.k.a Barca's Lionel Messi.
As anyone who saw Messi's single-handed destruction of Arsenal this week can attest, such comparisons are truly foolish.
John Leicester is an international sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jleicester(at)ap.org.
