Slingshots were nowhere to be seen in the UEFA Champions League as the four Premier League challengers continued the recent trend of English supremacy. Yet a David did emerge in the small Scottish footballing outpost of Paisley to knock out a Goliath in Celtic FC and show just how long a week can be in football. uefa.com brings you the standout stories of the last seven days.
Team: Manchester United FC
Liverpool FC may have grabbed headlines and attention by thrashing Real Madrid CF in midweek, but it is their misfortune that the no-frills victory of arch-rivals Manchester United over FC Internazionale Milano could yet live longer in the memory. By edging out Inter with a goal in each half, Sir Alex Ferguson's quintuple-chasing team set a record of 21 matches unbeaten in UEFA club competition. The English, European and world champions' last defeat in continental competition came away to AC Milan on 2 May 2007, when they lost 3-0 in a UEFA Champions League semi-final second-leg tie. The statistic ignores United's 2-1 reverse at the hands of FC Zenit St. Petersburg in the UEFA Super Cup last August. Juventus had established the record of 20 games unbeaten in the early 1970s.
Player: Steven Gerrard (Liverpool)
Liverpool's talismanic captain appeared to have run out of gas – and heroic rescue acts – when he limped out of the Reds' recent defeats by Everton FC, in the FA Cup, and by Middlesbrough FC in the Premier League. But he was back to superhuman strength in Tuesday's 4-0 dismantling of nine-time European champions Real Madrid at Anfield. Gerrard marked his 100th appearance in European club competition by scoring his team's second and third goals as they wrapped up a 5-0 aggregate win, his typically emphatic penalty being followed by a side-footed half-volley past Iker Casillas.
Goal(s): Lukas Podolski (2), Anderson Polga og, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Mark van Bommel, Miroslav Klose, Thomas Müller (FC Bayern München)
Collective praise this time for the Bayern side who, in rattling seven second-leg goals past Sporting Clube de Portugal in their first knockout round second leg in Germany, registered the biggest margin of victory in a UEFA Champions League knockout tie. Throw in the five unanswered goals in Lisbon which preceded this 7-1 mauling, and you also have the largest aggregate win in the competition's modern-era history.
Injury: Ramón (PFC CSKA Moskva)
If CSKA Moskva end up winning the UEFA Cup this season, they should keep the coveted silverware out of reach of midfielder Ramón. The 20-year-old Brazilian is clearly no respecter of metals precious or otherwise after injuring himself trying to kick a lump out of a glass – which, no less sensibly, he had mistaken to be a piece of aluminium. CSKA coach Zico explained that "Ramón saw something on the floor in his flat and decided to kick it." The resulting injury kept the youngster out of CSKA's first-leg meeting with FC Shakhtar Donetsk in the UEFA Cup Round of 16.
Number: Four
Four, as in 'Big Four'. The label given to the group of four clubs who seem each year to represent England in the UEFA Champions League now carries increasing weight in the competition itself. As happened last season, so Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal FC and Chelsea FC are again through to the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals. Where will it end? Well, last year with two English finalists after three of the cartel had contested the semis. Indeed, five of the last eight UEFA Champions League finalists have been English, with Liverpool featuring twice and the other three clubs once apiece.
Returning hero: Joey Didulica (AZ Alkmaar)
Injuries may be part and parcel of football but Dutch championship pretenders AZ Alkmaar could have done without the self-inflicted broken hand suffered by goalkeeper Sergio Romero last week. The No1 damaged himself punching a dressing-room door after his mistake had led to the winning goal in AZ's Dutch Cup defeat by NAC Breda. Romero's act of madness, however, resulted in a long-awaited opportunity for former Australia goalkeeper Didulica, which he seized by keeping a clean sheet in the Eredivisie leaders' 1-0 victory at NEC Nijmegen last Sunday. It was certainly a happy return for the 31-year-old Didulica: not only was it his first top-flight appearance since October 2006, but his shutout also extended AZ's unbeaten run in the league to a record 24 games – equalling the sequence set in their title-winning campaign of 1980/81.
Excuse: John Heitinga (Club Atlético de Madrid)
If with fatherhood comes responsibility, then nobody has bothered to tell new dad John Heitinga. Atlético's Dutch international defender was quick to pass on the blame for his tired legs in the second half of last week's derby draw at Real Madrid to three-day-old daughter Jezebel. "Since she was born I haven't been able to sleep, and being kept awake these last three nights was the reason I had nothing left in my muscles." Daddy, for his troubles, was hauled off with ten minutes to go at the Santiago Bernabéu. His fatigue, a temporary affliction; the name Jezebel will last a lifetime.
Quote: Wayne Rooney (Manchester United)
Wayne Rooney's relationship with his first and boyhood club Everton may never be the same again following his eight-digit transfer to Old Trafford. But his upbringing on the blue half of Merseyside will guarantee the usual 200 per cent effort whenever Liverpool are in opposition. With Liverpool's visit to United looming on Saturday, the striker told reporters after the Inter game on Wednesday: "I am very excited. I grew up an Everton fan, my whole family are Everton fans and I grew up hating Liverpool."
Underdogs bite back: Saint Mirren FC
Seven days earlier they had been on the receiving end of a 7-0 thrashing by Celtic FC in Glasgow. However, as if to prove exactly how long a time a week in football can be, it was Saint Mirren who were dishing out the humble pie in Paisley on 7 March. Billy Mehmet's 55th-minute penalty secured a remarkable rebound victory for manager Gus MacPherson's underdogs while knocking league leaders Celtic out of the Scottish Cup at the quarter-final stage.
Lament: Gazzetta dello Sport (Italy)
Things have come to a pretty sorry pass when you have to resort to pantomime language to get your message across, but that was the predicament facing Italy's famed football pink, the Gazzetta dello Sport, on Thursday morning. So it was that the front-page headline 'Maledizione' screamed at readers after the country's remaining three UEFA Champions League representatives exited the competition in midweek. This particular 'malediction' was experienced by hundreds of thousands of supporters as Inter, Juventus and AS Roma all succumbed to English rivals. It will take more than a genie in a bottle to get them back in contention for Europe's élite club prize.
(From Website : http://en.uefa.com/footballeurope/news/kind=2/newsid=810249.html)
