Worldwide Derby Weekend Wrap Up

This has been a fantastic weekend to hate somebody and wish him ill almost everywhere around the world.

As Daryl pointed out earlier, this weekend’s fixture calendar was overflowing with big derbies and heated rivalries including three different flavored clasicos, inter-city and intercontinental matches. Time for a quick wrap up.

Marseille 0 PSG 0 Swine Flu 1
The Clasico in France didn’t even need to take place to produce big headlines – and to give some fans a reason to clash. Our Marseille Offside was all ready and dressed up and delivered an in-depth preview, while the PSG Offside had a liveblog ready and waiting, but it was not to be.

On Saturday PSG confirmed that attacking midfielder Ludovic Giuly and defender Mamadou Sakho had contracted swine flu, further reducing what was already an injury depleted PSG side. The French Federation considered postponing the match, but eventually gave the go ahead. When news broke that midfielder Jeremy Clement and other staff members were infected as well, the game was eventually postponed and a new date has yet to be set, with both clubs now arguing why they love or hate Wednesdays.

River Plate 1 Boca Juniors 1

Sharing is caring and in this edition of the Superclásico River Plate and Boca Juniors pretty much shared it all: the great goals, the points, the red cards and the eventually still disappointing position in the Argentinean Apertura.

River’s Marcelo Gallardo opened the scoring with a beautiful free kick 29 minutes into the match. Boca goalkeeper Roberto Abbondanzieri had saved a penalty kick from River’s Ariel Ortega minutes earlier, but was helpless in this case. In the 63rd minute Boca striker Martin Palermo leveled the score after being subtly set up by Juan Roman Riquelme. It first just looked like the ball accidentally bounced off Riquelme’s foot to me, until the replay revealed that there’s probably no such thing as accidental with Riquelme. No derby is complete without at least one red card and sandwiched in between both goals River’s Villagra and Boca’s Caceres were sent off by referee Laverni.

Be sure to check out Brett’s Boca Juniors Offside and wait for him to give us 5 reasons why he was wrong after all. Or depending on your allegiances you may visit Christian’s River Plate Offside to discuss whether this match was a step in the right direction.

Fenerbahçe 3 Galatsaray 1

This one almost passed us by. One way you can help us to prevent this from happening again is e.g. by taking over the deserted Fenerbahçe Offside. The game started off the way it usually ends, with a proper fight between the players. Based on reports about the temperamental and high tempo game that followed, it sounds like something worth trying as a veritable pre-match warm up routine to prevent boring and overly tactical 0-0 draws from ever happening again. In the end, Christoph Daum’s Fenerbahçe continued their fine form this season with a deserved 3-1 victory – finished off in style by Daniel Güiza.

Club America 1 C.D. Guadalajara 0
I tuned into this match early in the first half at which point America were already 1-0 up. It didn’t take long for me to lose my stream. I eventually tuned back into the match about three minutes from time. America were still 1-0 up, a team in yellow was frantically attacking and the TV station kept cutting to people in yellow leaving the Azteca. For a few minutes and thanks to my lamentable lack of knowledge about the Mexican game, I was led to believe that Guadalajara were the team in yellow looking for an equalizer. So from the round about 7 minutes I got to see of the match I would say Guadalajara did not put up much of a fight. Our Guadalajara Offside blogger Andrea more or less confirmed that assumption. But she does it with much better reasoning and video highlights, so check out her blog.

That’s it from me. Feel free to add your thoughts on all the derbies I probably missed via the comments. The rest of the traffic should go to the team blogs, which don’t always get the readership they deserve, as we are after all sometimes a little bit too obsessed with beach accessories.

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Category: English Premier League, French Ligue 1, Mexico, North America, South America