What we learned this week… It’s the dream Champions League final – Paul Scholes against Sergio Busquets

FA Cup Semi Final- Manchester City v Manchester United, Paul Scholes

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By Nick Price

The final gives us what we all wanted: Paul Scholes against Sergio Busquets

So the Champions League final is set, and it’s one that most of us would preferred to have seen as the (just about) best team in England take on the indisputably best team in Spain. It’s far better than seeing Jose Mourinho – who would likely have parachuted into Camp Nou flicking the Vs up to the home fans while wiping his behind on a Catalan flag, such is his charmful way, had his Real Madrid side pulled off the ultimate comeback on Tuesday – and his cynical, soulless brand of football at Wembley.

Not only will we get to see Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney, Xavi, Ryan Giggs, David Villa and Javier Hernandez trot about doing their fancy stuff, we’ll also get the curious sight of the world’s worst midfield tackler taking on football’s best dramatic performer as Paul Scholes and Sergio Busquets lock horns (and fall over clutching their faces).

The veteran Englishman has never been a good tackler, but his quiet demeanour and exemplary play have seen this facet of his game overlooked by English pundits, who laugh off his attempts to break his opponents’ legs. “Hohoho,” they chortle as he flies in five minutes late to win a loose ball, “tackling is the only thing he can’t do.”

Usually WWLTW hates bad tackles in games, but this column would actually quite like to see Busquets on the receiving end of a few ‘mistimed’ challenges from the ginger ninja, for the Spaniard is so loathsome that he presumably came out of the womb crying and waving an imaginary yellow card at the midwife.

That is, of course, presuming that Scholes doesn’t get himself sent off in the first 30 seconds of the game for brushing Busquets’ shirt, causing the sour-faced gutless coward to tumble to the floor in tears.

Barcelona are the best team in the world: at passing, scoring, dribbling, diving, feigning injuries and crying

Pep Guardiola’s side are, without doubt, the greatest football team in the world. There is no two ways about it, they simply are the best team around (though they are beatable, as such, ahem, “titans” as Hercules, Real Sociedad and Arsenal have proved this season). So why do they feel the need to feign injury and cry and moan like a bunch of Sunday league scumbags?

Dani Alves, Busquets, Pedro and Javier Mascherano are among the very best in the world in their respective positions – but that alone is evidently not enough for them, for they seek to make it as hard as possible for a referee to do his job by indulging in the most underhanded of tactics. WWLTW dealt with the first three of that quarter of petulant, diving, sobbing, and downright despicable wimps last week, but the latter of the group has come under the spotlight this week after he heinously simulated a foul, which saw a legitimate Real Madrid goal chalked off.

The Argentine midfielder, despite Cristiano Ronaldo’s laughably hypocritical and ridiculously short-sighted comments that he has only learned the dark arts since signing for Barcelona, always had that element of proud dirtbag about him in the Premier League.

But why doesn’t Guardiola put a stop to this excessive cheating which puts a giant asterisk next to his side’s name whenever they are discussed? Gutter tactics are becoming as associable with Barcelona as their incredible passing play, their control over the ball, and the individual brilliance of Xavi, Iniesta and Messi.

They are by no means the worst proponents of cheating, but they have no need to drag the club’s name through the mud by going down whenever an opponent has the temerity to get within a foot of them. It’s embarrassing, and detracts from the class with which the side display when they have the ball in attack.

They’re like the Harlem Globetrotters with their exhibition-quality brilliance, and they simply don’t need to resort to such cowardly tactics to be successful – doing so only makes them widely loathed when they should be universally loved.

Cheer up, Sergio… | … you’ve got the chance to dive your way to another medal

What we will learn this weekend…

An Arsenal player will fly studs up into Ryan Shawcross as retribution for the Stoke man’s foul on Aaron Ramsey last year. The Gunner will not be sent off and Arsene Wenger will claim not to have seen it, despite it taking place two feet in front of him. Tottenham will get their Champions League hopes up as Everton do them a favour by beating Manchester City, before they blow it again by being bamboozled by Blackpool. Ian Holloway will then go on to say something silly – maybe about a dog or a farm yard animal, I don’t know it’s him who’s crazy – and we’ll all have a good chuckle about it. Mick McCarthy will be as gruff as ever, probably muttering “chuffing hell” for 90 minutes, as Wolves mess up once more in their derby against West Brom.

Michael Owen is the most cynical man in football

The Manchester United striker recently defended his decision to leave Newcastle via his utterly boring Twitter account (WWLTW would get more stimulating conversation out of a duck than Michael Owen, who is deludedly trying to convince the world that he is still a top-class footballer), and hit out at fans who booed him for ditching the club – for whom he pocketed enormous amounts of cash while sat largely on the treatment table – when they were relegated in 2009.

That embarrassing episode came soon after he had harped on about being too big a name to lower himself to the level of training with players in a lesser team that could offer him first team football.

“I won’t drop down the leagues and whether I would even want to drop down to a poorer Premier League team … I don’t know,” he told the Guardian. “Yes, I could score goals, but I would probably get less opportunities and less enjoyment. I think I’d rather play less and train with top players, rather than playing every minute of every game, getting three or four touches and not enjoying it.”

All well and good, Michael: some players – like your old team-mate Raul – want to show what they’re still made of on a weekly basis, while others, well, aren’t all that bothered. 

But it seems that even Owen’s own manager has forgotten he exists as Sir Alex Ferguson publicly declared that the permanently crocked striker would start against Schalke, before naming him among the substitutes and seeing him scarcely get a touch as a late introduction.

However, knowing Owen’s cynical streak – this is a man who had a training video in which he delightfully ridiculed a 13-year-old goalkeeper who he nutmegged –  he probably doesn’t give a damn about not starting. Given that his contract at Old Trafford runs out at the end of the year, WWLTW imagines that he has already put ‘participated in Champions League final-reaching squad’ into the next catalogue he has to hawk around to find himself a new employer at the end of the season.

Word to the wise, Owen, your new team-mates come August will probably be looking at you and thinking: “I’d rather play less and train with players better than Michael Owen than play every minute in a team with him.”

Cristiano Ronaldo will make an excellent Jose Mourinho one day

Irritating? Check. Undeniably brilliant at what he does? Check. Massive hypocrite? Check. Top-class moaner? Check. Giant ego? Check. The Portuguese attacker ticks all the boxes to become the next giant moron of management.

This week he said something that could have been lifted straight from his boss’s brain when he complained that Barcelona were unbeatable because referees the world over had collectively decided to prevent teams from stopping them.

“We knew we could beat Barca, but the referee didn’t let us,” Ronaldo cried, while slicking his hair back, stood legs akimbo as he prepared to smash a free kick straight into the wall.

“Once again it was the referee that didn’t allow us to dictate the outcome.

“The referee in the first match Wolfgang Stark took away our chances of playing the final. Whoever knows anything about football knows that Barcelona get preferential treatment.

“Barcelona are a difficult team to beat because they get outside help. Next year they should give the cup directly to them.”

It’s a theory only slightly less mad than the one peddled by idiots who claim that Osama Bin Laden isn’t actually dead. There’d be so many people involved in a plot like that that one of them would eventually slip up and spill the beans – it just isn’t true, despite no matter how much flimsy evidence you can clutch at to support it.

A whole organisation of referees being complicit in such a conspiracy is as likely as al-Qaeda releasing a video proving that Bin Laden is still alive as he recounts that Arsenal have had a rubbish season and have not won a thing (though skeptics could rightly say that such a statement could have been recorded at any point over the past six years, but you get the point).

“Yes, Cristiano, the moon is made of cheese” | These pair love a conspiracy

Darron Gibson isn’t that bad, but he isn’t that good either

The Irishman, who showed Owen how it should be done on Twitter by setting up an account and swiftly sodding it off, proved his critics – that’s the entire footballing world – wrong, kind of, by setting up Antonio Valencia and getting the second against Schalke, becoming something of a pin up for Manchester United fans and easily impressed journalists up and down England and throughout the world.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Darron Gibson has as much chance of starting against Barcelona at Wembley as he has of turning up in a Barcelona shirt and ousting Xavi from the midfield at Camp Nou next season.

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