What a fantastic sporting weekend!
THIS past weekend was a dream couple of days for every sports lover – a feast of sporting action to cater for various tastes and an abundance of drama, upsets, highs and lows.
For me, the pick of the weekend’s action featured the Manchester Derby, Argentine MotoGP, Bahrain F1, Madrid Derby, action from the Commonwealth Games and the Masters.
After Liverpool’s midweek Champions League destruction of Manchester City, it looked like City’s fragility was starting to show and that they were definitely there for the taking.
Pep Guardiola would’ve been seething after the loss but had to pick up his lads ahead of the Manchester derby where his team started celebrating the win and the league title well before they actually sealed the deal. And, yes I can talk big post-game but at half-time, it really did look like United were in for an embarrassing result.
I still can’t quite believe what I watched on Saturday evening – much like most who watched one of the great football comebacks in recent history. Oh, how sweet the win was for United, a desperately needed result and performance that lacked all season and a great way to shut up the champions-elect who had to quickly forget about Saturday’s loss to their bitter rivals as they had to gear up for the return leg of their UCL battle with Liverpool.
The debate rages on about this Manchester City team – I think it’s fair to say they are definitely not the best ever! It’s also laughable that Pep keeps insisting that they can’t afford certain players – Alexis Sanchez in the January transfer window, and if anyone believes that Paul Pogba was offered to him by agent Mino Raiola that the Frenchman too was way out of his budget – seriously? This from a manager who has spent half a billion at Man City!
Back to the genius that was Jose Mourinho on Saturday afternoon – whatever was said at half-time certainly worked, although I’m not sure why it needed to have been saved for half-time – United went to their fiercest rivals, who could’ve secured the league title at their expense, yet started the game with arguably one of their worst performances of the season.
That was by far one of the better Manchester derbies in recent years and will probably go down in folklore – it had a bit of everything that we love and “hate” about the beautiful game.
FOOTBALL is an emotional roller-coaster for me and I’ve sort of relied on MotoGP as my happy place irrespective of the results.
Obviously I want Valentino Rossi to win races and his 10th title overall, but I’m just as satisfied to watch dramatically unpredictable races play out. I can’t stress how incredibly unpredictable this past weekend’s Argentine MotoGP was – the starting grid would have generated plenty of shock if you didn’t watch qualifying, then with the weather throwing a spanner in the works, it was the most unreal sequence of events that still has many of us scratching our heads.
If you didn’t watch Sunday’s race, do yourself a favour and have a look – it was an incredibly bizarre race from start to finish – a start that saw Jack Miller in pole position starting three rows ahead of the rest of the pack leading to a finish that had Cal Crutchlow (winner), Johann Zarco (second) and Alex Rins (third) on the podium.
Reigning champion Marc Marquez served a drive-through penalty for riding the wrong way back to his grid position after stalling his bike, then his aggressive riding finally resulted in him taking out nemesis Valentino Rossi which rightfully earned him a 30-second post-race penalty and finishing out of the points. This MotoGP was an absolute cracker from start to finish and has fans salivating for more!