Waiting for the Hurricane as Juve hang on to 0-2

Celebrate
By Boris Mellor
April 6 2006

It’s not the first time a weather report has backfired. Michael Fish is famous for forecasting that a hurricane was not on its way, when it fact it was. He has never lived it down.

Thuram forecast a hurricane for the return match in Turin but it never turned up. Hurricanes are cruelly unpredictable - George Bush also burnt his fingers badly on a hurricane forecast – he was told one was turning up in New Orleans, and was completely taken by surprise when it did.

I don’t know if Wenger was expecting a hurricane or not but he was clearly not wearing a sou’wester. Perhaps something was lost in translation, perhaps Thuram meant there would be a lot of niggling, elbowing, and diving going on, and that hurricane is a French collective noun for such argy bargy. Not that Thuram was to be part of the pending storm, as he was left on the bench to keep an eye on the weather.

Although the Arsenal players were not wearing sou’ westers they did keep an eye out for the argy bargy. Unfortunately it did not protect Flamini from getting a card for nothing (but the referee kindly evened it out later by not giving him a card for something), or Reyes who was booked for time wasting. So useless were the camera angles that I cannot confirm or deny if Reyes actually wasted time or not. All I saw was the card, not the event.

If the match at Highbury was the beautiful game this was more a match of attrition. For a lot of the time it was a like an American disaster movie, you know the sort of thing – small talk in the cocktail lounge as the heroes wait for the impending storm. Every now and then there was a flash of lightening, but mainly from Arsenal. Perhaps Juve were playing cat and mouse, and the storm was really on its way. However on the 20^th minute it was Buffon who had to make the first serious save from Henry after a superb pass from Fabregas. Arsenal had six corners to Juventus’s none in the first half.

By letting Arsenal have the best chances in the first 60 minutes Juve possibly thought they would lull the Gunners into a false sense of security. And when they finally spluttered into life they had two shots. The second shot by Nedved, Juve’s best player by a mile, could have gone in but Lehmann did well to save it. Now, at last the hurricane arrived – Nedved, bitterly frustrated, and contender for the Sylvan Wiltord Most Offsides in a Match Gold Cup, launched himself at Eboue felling the Ivory Coast giant like a hurricane uproots a mighty oak.

The referee decided the best way to deal with a hurricane is to go directly into the eye of the storm. Nedved got a second yellow, having seen red he had to walk. Sure enough the hurricane died out immediately – with 13 minutes left the short-lived storm had died out. Now it was all Arsenal – and there could, or should, have been a couple of Gunners goals. It would have helped the nerves of the Arsenal fans, but in truth the match was finished with the exit of Nedved. Juventus never really threatened again. Arsenal had the best chances of the game, and probably deserved more than a draw, but a draw was enough to take them through to their first CL semi-final.

At the beginning of the season it was often said that Arsenal could never do well in the CL because they cannot keep a clean sheet. Now they have eight of them, including the scalps of Real and Juve, an all time record. The amazing thing is it was achieved with a back four that Wenger had not intended to start the season with. Eboue, Senderos and Flamini were not first choice defenders at the start of the season, actually one or two were not even second choice. Only Toure was first choice. As Wenger said two months ago they were joke, now they are favourites. Funny old game.