By Chris Wright
Here’s our semi-drunken conclusions from last night’s Champions League Final…
1. Dortmund went with “wing and a prayer” approach to defending. Indeed, their back four was so slap-dash that Klopp’s men were lucky not to be out of the game by the hour mark. Ultimately a lack of organisation cost them the big prize.
2. From top to bottom, on the night Bayern Munich were better than Dortmund in every aspect.
3. Given it was a bit of a fluke they made it through the semis anyway, we get the feeling we’re not going to see this incarnation of Dortmund reach the Champions League Final again anytime soon. When it came down to it they played like a team lacking confidence in their pedigree.
4. At €40 million, Javi Martinez is far and away Bayern’s record signing (at least until Mario Gotze clambers aboard) and he looked worth every single penny of it last night. Colossal.
5. The two goalkeepers were absolutely superb when called upon, with Dortmund’s Roman Weidenfeller pulling off the pick of the saves – though save of the night must go to Neven Subotic, whose clearance to deny Thomas Muller/Arjen Robben was truly sensational…
6. It’s difficult to believe that he’s still only 29, but it warmed our cockles to see wee Philipp Lahm lifting the trophy for Bayern last night – the club he joined as an 11-year-old back in 1995. Props are too due to Arjen Robben, who has fallen short in all three of the last major tournament finals he’s played in. Scoring the 89th-minute winner in a Champions League Final is a fairly good way to banish those kind of demons.
7. On that subject, having the victorious captain go up the stairs last really makes lifting the trophy an awkward ordeal. One of the many insidious cancers eating away at the moral fibre of our beloved sport. It’s time for UEFA to act.
8. Speaking of UEFA, Mario Mandzukic has got some serious grovelling to do to them this morning…
9. After the six months he’s just had, we can only imagine that when Jupp Heyckes got home he lit a cigar, poured himself a large snifter of kirsch, went through to his study, shut the door behind him and was all like…
10. Anatoliy Tymoshchuk is the new David May: front and centre in all of Bayern’s celebration despite playing roughly zilch minutes of Champions League football this season…
11. Assuming he’s back at Chelsea by then, we’re going to be staring down the barrel of a Guardiola vs Mourinho UEFA Super Cup in Prague on August 30th. That should be fun.
What say you Pies fans? Agree/disagree? Draw any conclusions of your own? Let us know all about it…