call me a doddering old fart but i can’t fathom what all you youngsters see in that whippersnapper quaresma. and comparing him to govou you fall right into my lap.

my son has tried to convince me that quaresma is the greatest thing since c. ronaldo (you see, they go way back, the Q fan club…) but the “amazing” youtube compilations he shows me are 90% comprised of 5-second clips of schoolyard tricks, with no indication of what they resulted in… which was most certainly nothing. there are half a dozen nice crosses and a few strong shots, always the same ones; i could almost say almost the same ONE… the crosses all “au cordeau” and all the shots off the outside of his left foot. looks pretty one-trick-pony to me.

now i’ve seen this quaresma fellow play on 2 or 3 occasions and was singularly unimpressed. all that fancy footwork, only to be dispossessed by… bonnart???

and though kilometers covered is not as important a stat as all that, i think he could make an effort in this direction: watching the match i my living room, getting up once for my slippers and once for the WC, plus kissing the tykes goodnight at halftime i covered about as much ground as he did over those 90 minutes… he spends almost the whole game in a rectangle extending from the left corner flag to the edge of the penalty area, and stretching back to about 10 yards from the midfield stripe. at one point he trots over to spend 5 minutes in the identical zone on the right. and since the teams change sides at haltime, you can legitimately say he’s been to all four corners of the field… so in that way you can compare him to sidney!

chelsea has quite a few players who may go far in the CAN (kalou, drogba, essien, mikel) but that ends on the 10th, so it’s not like they’ll still be tuckered out 2 weeks later.

they have the highest prestige/real quality ratio too… beating them would give us more credit than due. porto or seville would be thankless jobs, inter and MU would be the toughest nuts to crack.

there not easy

And I disagree with the “bring the big teams” mentality.

Lyon needs to avoid injuries, cards, etc…

Let Liverpool, Roma or Arsenal try to eliminate Milan, Barca or ManU.
Let them eliminate themselves a little and have a somewhat easier round.
The, when they’re mentally tired (maybe physically, but that’s another matter), when some players are suspended because it was a tight series, when they feel over confident from facing “only” Lyon after beating more of a favourite, then and just then, kick their asses and go for the Cup.

So yes, let’s all hope Lyon draws Porto.