THE WINNERS OF THIS WEEK (article in English and Españo)

During this week we have had many European competition´s game and now it is time to make a revision to remark the teams or players whose actions represent the Head of the sport, the triumph, leaving the negative side, the Tails, for the next article.

About the Champions League, we should remark the Bayern Munich´s game at Lisbon, where it showed again its tremendous punch and that it can be considered as one of the main favourites to win the Champions Leagues- it is clear that this team is another team when the phenomenal Ribéry can play, because the French is now a mature player and he is showing an excellent performance-this season his numbers are 11 goals and 13 assists in 27 games(Bayern is a lucky team, because it is not easy to have in the squad a great quartet formed by Franck Ribéry, Bastian Schweinsteiger-8 goals and 9 assists, Toni-14 goals and 8 assists, and Klose- 20 goals and 9 assists-). In relation to the UEFA Cup, the names that we must emphasize are: the "modest" Ukrainian team Metalist Kharkov, which continues its dream, showing that it was not casual its victory in the first round of the Uefa Cup over a team with character, quality and prestige as Besiktas, and in fact since this round, it has not had any defeat in the Uefa Cup, beating team like Galatasaray, Benfica, Sampdoria and Olympiakos. The Metalist´s season is meritorious, because the Miron Markevich´s team does not have stars and in fact if we look at the squad, the truth is that we find simply good but modest players like the strikers Jaja Coelho-he was unlucky during his Getafe´s period- or Marko Devic, the Brazilian midfielder Edmar or the Argentine defender Jonathan Ramón Maidana. Anyway, it is a team without big names but with a lot of strength (it has only received 2 goals during the Uefa Cup´s competition), whose next objective is to defeat in the next Uefa Cup´s round, its maximum rival, Dynamo Kiev (these two clubs are having a beautiful duel in the league of Ukraine and in fact next 4 of March they will have the decisive duel to decide the League´s champion). As we have mentioned Dynamo Kiev, it is moment to remark the play of a young striker during the Thursday´s game against Valencia, because the level showed by the young Artem Kravets was incredible, since he was a constant synonym of mobility, dribbling, vision of the game, speed and definition (he scored the 2 goals), showing that we should follow his developments, since he can be a very important and famous player soon, we will see….

Other protagonists were Bülent Korkmaz, the new coach of Galatasaray- after the disastrous match against Kocaelispor last Sunday(Galatasaray lost 2-5), the German coach Michael Skibbe was sacked and Bülent arrived as the substituted to the Ali Sami Yen´s bench and he started very well, qualifying the Istanbul´s team to the next Uefa Cup´s round after a vibrant game played against Girondins Bordeaux (4-3 was the final score)(it is sure that Galatasary, whose squad is really good, will have good record since this moment, being for me a serious candidate to win the Uefa Cup)- and Craig Bellamy, the Manchester City striker, who took advantage of Ireland and Robinho´s assists (the Brazilian made a good play during the second goal) and he scored the 2 decisive goals to qualify his team to play the next round against the amazing Aalborg BK. Finally we must also emphasize the goal of Leonardo Vitor Santiago-the Ajax´s striker after a good individual play, could score the decisive goal in the 88 minutes of the game Ajax-Fiorentina- and the definition of Claudio Pizarro-the player from Peru is showing that maybe Chelsea committed a mistake when it dispensed with the play of this good striker, who is always a guarantee and specially during the important games, when the team needs his performance as for example this Thursday at San Siro where he took advantage of the Diego and Boenisch´s assists and he scored 2 goals with his head to counter the Pirlo (penalty) and Pato´goal (the Brazilian scored an excellent goal) and to qualify Werder Bremen(Pizarro has scored 28 goals in 17 games during this season)- .

Cheers,

J&F