Opinion
Football, you horny sow
Our author had almost written off football. The Champions League semi-final between Inter Milan and Barcelona lets an old love flare up again.
There are these soccer games that will be remembered sustainably. Even today, the 1970 World Cup semi-final is considered the best in World Cup history between Italy and Germany. Everyone can say where they were when Mario Götze 2014 shot Germany to the World Cup title. And in years you will remember the Champions League semi-final between Inter Milan and Barcelona. The first leg in Barcelona was thrilling a week ago, but what both teams showed on Tuesday in the time-honored Giuseppe-Mazza Stadium was nothing more than Epochal, an “Ode to football history”, as the Spanish newspaper “Marca” wrote. A battle of two teams that face each other with completely opposing game philosophies and advertise for sport, which is now often in the background.
On the one hand, Milan, a team in which half of the squad in other countries would now be in partial retirement – FC Bayern and Thomas Müller could certainly contribute to this. In Italy, however, they seem to have arrived in the best football age. How can it be explained that a 37-year-old central defender saves his colors into the extension in added time and runs across the square for over 120 minutes like a young deer? How different can it be explained that a 36 -year -old goalkeeper in the Bundesliga delivered his best game of his very illustrious career?
Inter Milan against Barcelona: The clubs can hardly be more different
On the other hand, a team that has breathed new life through a German trainer and delighted with their wit. Hansi Flick has shaped the most exciting team in Europe from a bunch of talented players. A team that is carried by Lamine Yamal, a 17-year-old whose talent seems immeasurable and inevitably to compare with Lionel Messi. A team whose defense chief Pau Cubarsi, is an 18-year-old who caused a penalty, but exudes the calm and serenity of a 35-year-old. A team that is again a big promise to Spanish football if she continues to develop her talents.
No, you don’t have to love football. Not more, you want to say these days. Too much goes wrong, whether at the European continental association UEFA or the World Association FIFA. The competitions are increasingly bloated, keyword World Cup with 48 (and maybe soon 64) participants. Incidentally, the award to countries whose handling of human rights is rather optional. In addition, competitions whose football is minimal is, except for the wallet of the associations, keyword Nations League or club World Cup. At the same time, more and more investors who are shopping in the teams and justify astronomical salaries and transfer sums. The misconduct in world football of the past two decades has been long and mostly, so you have to say it as a traditional fan. There is the boredom of the Bundesliga, which has produced the same master with Munich in the past twelve years, only a marginal aspect.
It is symptomatic that two teams deliver perhaps the best semi-finals of the Champions League story that are trapped in all this ugliness of sport: Inter Milan passed into the possession of Oaktree last year, after the previous owner had not paid debts of $ 400 million in the US investor company. Since the takeover, there has been speculation that Oaktree Inter wants to sell again – two billion euros for a rained. Football is degraded to the speculation object, another unfortunate aspect of developments.
For 120 minutes the ugliness of sport takes a back seat
In addition, Barcelona, whose debt mountain is now larger than its own stadium. At the end of June last year, President Joan Laporta estimated the association’s net debt at 560 million euros. The short and long-term liabilities amount to 2.626 billion euros. Even the Spanish league became too colorful at Barca and refused the game license for Dani Olmo and Pau Victor – which were then approved by the Supreme Sports Court of Spain.
For 120 minutes, the thoughts of everything that can certainly be stored in football came into the background on Tuesday evening. The drama of the course of the game with the early two-goal lead for Milan, a barcelona, which appears up as opened, in halftime two, which turned the game in a lightness, as well as the Milan equalization gate in added time and the winning goal in extra time. All of this put something in the foreground that should always be there: the sport itself. A game that put you in ecstasy. A game in which the emotions weighed like a sea. A game in which you are sad when it is over and yet is happy to have been there. A game that you will remember in years.
Source: Stern

I am Pierce Boyd, a driven and ambitious professional working in the news industry. I have been writing for 24 Hours Worlds for over five years, specializing in sports section coverage. During my tenure at the publication, I have built an impressive portfolio of articles that has earned me a reputation as an experienced journalist and content creator.