Weekend Recap: Up on Top

By: Laurie | February 11th, 2008

A few results from the weekend:

Saturday

Ghana vs. Cote d’Ivoire. African Cup of Nations 3rd place playoff. I really expected Didier Drogba’s Cote d’Ivoire team to come back after their 4-1 thrashing by Egypt in the semis. They didn’t. They did manage to keep things level for stretches of the game, but Ghana surged to score two goals in the last ten minutes. Ghana 4-2 Cote d’Ivoire. To see how the game flowed, stop by and check out Daryl’s liveblog on World Cup Blog.

Bordeaux vs. Metz. Alas, this was not the day for 20th place underdogs Metz to be giant-killers. Bordeaux won 3-0, continuing pressure on Lyon for the league title. Metz, on the other hand, seems to be Ligue 2 bound.

PSV Eindhoven vs. Heerenveen Yet another goal for American goal-scoring machine Michael Bradley of Heerenveen. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough for the win, but his team did manage a 1-1 draw against Eredivisie leaders PSV. PSV remains on top in the league, Heerenveen remains in third.

Sunday

Cameroon vs. Egypt. African Cup of Nations Final. An exciting and hard-fought game that remained scoreless till the 76th minute, when Egypt’s Mohamed Zidan took advantage of a rare bobble by Cameroon’s defensive rock Rigobert Song to square the ball to a surging (and brutally unmarked) Mohamed Aboutreika, who then sent the ball home. Cameroon 0-1 Egypt. Egypt was the better team and deserved the win, but Cameroon put up a good fight. Check out Daryl’s liveblog over at World Cup Blog.

Manchester United vs. Man City Manchester United vs. Man City. This headline says it all: Soccer-City honour United dead then dent their title hopes Amazingly, nobody marred the moment of silence to honor the Busby Babes, killed fifty years ago in a plane crash. But City didn’t see it as their job to give ManU any sympathy play, either. (And they may have been helped a bit by imperfect refereeing.) But City got the job done, taking it to their cross-town rivals 2-1, damaging ManU’s title hopes and improving their own odds for that final Champions League spot.

Bayern Munich vs. Werder Bremen. When news reports describe a game as “entertaining,” that frequently means “many bookings.” That was the case in this 1-1 clash between the first- and second-place teams in the Bundesliga. Werder took the lead, Bayern equalized, and Luca Toni missed a penalty. And a good time was had by all.