You couldn’t ask for a better pair of games to finish off the football season. First up was Saturday’s FA Cup final, where Steven Gerrard’s 35-yard thunderbolt tied the game for Liverpool in injury time, before goalkeeper Jose Reina made no less than three saves in the penalty kick shootout to turn back underdog West Ham.

Then on Wednesday came the European Champions League final: Barcelona‘s crackling 2-1 win over truly gutsy Arsenal. The north Londoners, who came in with an amazing 10-game shutout streak in Champs League play, played a man down almost the entire game after having goalkeeper Jens Lehmann ejected early in the first half but clawed back to take the lead later in the half, then held off Barca for another 40 minutes, before the Catalans struck twice within four minutes to claim the world’s top club championship.

So now it’s all about the World Cup, kicking off June 9 in Germany. (Well, there’s also Italy’s developing referee/match-fixing scandal, which has already seen the resignation of the entire board of directors of Italian champion Juventus).

This article appears in May 19 • 2006.

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