Worshippers at the altars of the Spanish and Italian domestic top flights will be feeling a twinge of envy as they steal a glance at the Premier League finale this weekend.
Worshippers at the altars of the Spanish and Italian domestic top flights will be feeling a twinge of envy as they steal a glance at the Premier League finale this weekend. Real Madrid and Inter Milan are unspectacularly running away with their respective leagues, thanks to the failures of their traditional rivals. In England, however, two heavyweights have fought each other to a standstill after 37 rounds of a thrilling contest.
Unlike a boxing match, however, the lack of a clear winner will not lead to a ‘judge’s decision’, but rather to a Manchester United victory, thanks to their superlative goal difference. Going into Sunday’s climax this remains the most likely outcome, and while Chelsea fans may argue that their rivals’ advantage comes by virtue of being footballing flat-track bullies, they cannot claim ignorance of how the system works.
Newcastle fans will believe United always knew it would come to this, which explains why their relentlessly attacking play garnered 11 goals against the Teesiders in two league games this term. Cristiano Ronaldo gets his obligatory mention because he scored five of them.
Anyway, in sport there has to be an eventual winner, or there’s no point, right? Well, perhaps winning isn’t everything. There is, after all, very little time in football between a victory and the next match. Whoever is quaffing the bubbly on Sunday night will have to sober up pretty sharply: the Champions League final is just 10 days away. Any fan will tell you that the league doesn’t lie when it comes to identifying the best side, but if both teams are honest, the game in Moscow still represents the bigger prize.
A contest decided by the victor in a one-off match feels much better than one decided by United’s ability to navigate the potholes at Wigan’s JJB Stadium, and anyway, both sides have lifted the Premier League trophy within the last two years. We know that Alex Ferguson is desperate for his second European Cup, and the smouldering ambition at Chelsea since the Russian’s arrival has created enough pressure to turn West London into a black hole.
But what if it does end one trophy each? There’s still no clear winner. Surely then we could accept they are two different, but very much equal teams.
Still desperate to have a winner? Well, we could always just add up the goals each team scored in the games they played against each other…
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