Soccer Watch
By Nick Barbaro, Fri., Feb. 21, 2014
It's not soccer, but the Gaelic Games, this Saturday at Onion Creek Soccer Complex, should be fun. Men's teams will be practicing the ancient Irish sport of hurling (the kind with a ball and wooden bats), while our Celtic Cowboys Ladies Gaelic Football team takes on "a bunch of wenches from Dallas who need to have their swollen egos put in check" is what it said on the email I got, but I guess the ;) emoticon got lost in my spam filter or something. Free. Noon, Feb. 22; 5650 E. William Cannon (just east of Pleasant Valley).
Registration is extended for the Third Annual Copa Esperanza, a 7v7 tournament presented by Austin Coed Soccer Association, Saturday, March 1, at Northeast Metro Park in Pflugerville, benefiting Villa Esperanza. $25 per player; register at www.acsasoccer.org/copa by this Sunday, Feb. 23.
Road teams won all four games in this first week of the European Champions League knockout stage: Barcelona went into Manchester City's El Etihad and took apart the supposedly best team in the Premier League, winning 2-0, while Paris St. Germain, the latest mega-spending Arab plaything, destroyed Bayer Leverkusen in Germany, 4-0. On Wednesday, Bayern Munich won at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, 2-0, and Atletico Madrid throttled AC Milan, 1-0. The other eight teams play next week; those European games are on Fox Sports just about every week now through the spring: Tuesday through Thursday, 1:30pm.
