You Ask, The Professor Answers (A Q&A Session with Jason Parks)

#Want

In last Wednesday’s edition of the Fort Frances Times, I had the chance to chat with Jason Parks of Baseball Prospectus about the world of baseball prospect development. But along with a general take of things, there were a few questions that had to do with certain players that couldn’t quite fit into the article. As such, here is my full chat with Professor Parks about those topics brought forth by myself and a few others who had asked questions via social media.

Can we expect the same progression/outcome out of DJ Davis as compared to Anthony Gose? And will we ever see a Gose/Davis/Who Cares about the third guy because he doesn’t need to catch anything outfield like Mike Trout and Peter Bourjos are with the Angels if both Davis and Gose become major league full-timers?

I would hope that Davis doesn’t take the same kind of career progression as Gose, because Gose was very up and down. I mean, there are still scouts that want to put him on the mound and don’t believe that he’s going to be able to  hit enough to stay up at the major league level.

Davis is also a raw guy, and that’s where it gets real complicated for me. I want athletes in baseball and I want to steal the athletes away from football and basketball, but the only problem is that when you are able to actually do that, the players who have been able to do that are not always very good baseball players especially when it comes to hitting.

I’m of the belief that hitting is most certainly heavily influenced by neurological function, and it’s something that I think develops at a very early age. Hence the scouting mantra that hitters hit or you can either hit or you can’t hit, it’s really that simple.

You can’t teach a player how to hit because you can’t teach the neurological function of recognizing the ball and reacting physically. It’s a trigger that happens that is developed at a much earlier age, and if you don’t have a deep-rooted focus on baseball I think you either need to have extreme hand-eye coordination and physical gifts, or you’re not going to be able to perform at a very high level, at least when it comes to bat to ball relationships.

When it comes to a guy like Davis, I have mixed feelings about him. I love the athleticism, I love the promise, but I’m not sure he is a guy that will be able to hit upper level pitching once he gets there based upon what I’ve seen scouting the guy.

I wouldn’t put him in the outfield with Gose quite yet, and I would encourage a third outfielder, just in case.

Is it safe to say that the Jays pick of Anthony Alford has backfired at this point? Despite his documented troubles last season he has chosen to pursue football over baseball. And even if he does eventually decide to pursue baseball full-time, will the loss of developmental time prove to be too much of a hurdle for him to become a big leaguer?

I think he was destined or likely to fail even before he was forced into that decision because he hasn’t been focussed on baseball enough.

People forget this but the great Bo Jackson, who was the best two-sport athlete of all time and maybe the best athlete of all time, played baseball his entire life. Bo Jackson wasn’t a guy who played football and just decided to play baseball because he was super athletic. Bo Jackson had been playing baseball in structured leagues since he was a little kid and he played in little league, high school, and college.

I mean he was doing a lot of other sports too, and he was a freak, but Bo Jackson played and focussed on baseball. He wasn’t just being an athlete and being a football player who was also playing a baseball a bit. As I was talking about with Davis, and I’ve mentioned this when I’ve talked about Bubba Starling as well, there may not have been enough baseball play to develop certain baseball neurological functions, as they relate to read and react.

It’s a very difficult act and I believe that function is a necessity,  and I believe not getting into a developmental system or playing baseball and focussing on that a very young age can be detrimental to those pursuits. So no, I don’t think he is going to develop.

The Minnesota Twins system is obviously looking very good right now with Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton leading the way. How close are they to possibly overthrowing the Cardinals as the top farm system in the game?

It’s completely possible because the Cardinals are likely to lose Michael Wacha, they’ve already lost Matt Adams, Shelby Miller, and Carlos Martinez, and guys like Oscar Tavares and Kolten Wong are next, That leaves them with a system that has little bit more risk to it with guys like Tyrell Jenkins, as they were very top-heavy to begin with..

I would not be surprised with the Twins have the top system in baseball in 2014, and when I do the rankings in the off-season, I wouldn’t put it past them the Twins to be number one.

They just got Kohl Stewart in the draft, who I thought had the best prep arm, Sano is obviously becoming some sort of beast, and Buxton is someone who I can rank as the number one prospect in baseball right now and make a real valid case for it.

You have two top ten prospects there, and let’s not forget they still have a lot of other prospects in their system, like Eddie Rosario who’s a really talented guy, along with some young arms like Jose Berrios. Plus we haven’t mentioned the guys they have brought in via trades like Alex Meyer or Trevor May.

The Twins have a really deep system, and it might be the top system in baseball.

What are your thoughts on Carlos Perez, and if there is any chance of him being called up by the Astros at some point. And also, what is up with Daniel Norris so far with Lansing?

I think there has been some roadblocks with both players, and there is a reason for this.

This is something that is a good overall point to make. Player development doesn’t have  a road map. Every player is an individual and every player will go through their own individual journey to the major leagues, and once they reach the major leagues they will all have to go through all those adjustments that you have to make at that level.

The way they wanted it to be scripted isn’t followed by that route, and there is going to be a period of depressed production and enhanced production. A lot of it is context related, and you have to look at where the players are playing, the talent they are facing, and they are working on specifically.

In the minor leagues it’s not always about going out and saying ‘Let’s see what kind of number I can put out.’ When it comes to pitchers, they can sometimes get beat up a little bit, and that could be because they are working on refining their change-up and a hitter knows that is coming. When it comes to dealing with catchers, they usually go through a slow developmental process, and it’s a position that is both emotionally and physically taxing.

There is always something specific going on, and it’s never as specific as a player not performing well. It’s never that simple.

Among the group of Wil Myers, Kyle Gibson, Nick Castellanos and Christian Yelich, who do you think will make an impact first in the big leagues and who do you think  has the most upside?

I think Yelich does on both accounts. One of the reasons for that has to do with opportunity. The Marlins suck, but there’s also opportunity there, as they have a very young squad. Yelich is a guy that come up at a very young age and let it rip without having to look over his shoulder.

That’s the problem with a lot of these young guys who are breaking in to good teams. They have to fill an immediate need and they need to start producing immediately, as they can’t afford to give away at-bats. With the Marlins being a bad team, they have a perfect opportunity to give reps to a young player like Yelich.

I also think he has the most bat-to-ball ability out of anybody. I think he’s a future .300 hitter who can maybe hit 15-20 home runs a year and maybe have 35-40 doubles a year. He’s a very talented hitter, and he has a chance to be a really good future number three type of hitter in a major league lineup for a very  long time.

Two pitchers who are just getting called up are Gerrit Cole and Zach Wheeler. What are your thoughts  on both them and who do you like more out of the two? I believe you are a pretty big Cole guy from what you have said in the past.

I am a big Cole guy and one of the reasons that I am a big Cole guy is because I know raw stuff is there. Raw stuff  is something you can’t really teach, and while you can always refine things a little bit, you can’t give someone that kind of stuff.

He hasn’t been dominating at the minor leagues and there are a lot of reasons for that. Part of it has to do with the way that the Pirates go about developing pitchers, as he wasn’t even allowed to uncork his full arsenal until this year. At times, he’s been working more on pitch location rather than flat-out rip and grip dominating, and I think he’s going to be a better major league pitcher than he was a minor league pitcher.

I like Cole a little bit more than Wheeler, but it’s not that I don’t like Wheeler. I think Cole has a better change-up and he has a better overall feel of command, but Wheeler has nasty stuff too. He has a very good fastball, he has two good breaking balls, and he has some form of a change-up coming.

I think he will eventually settle into a number two role with the Mets behind Matt Harvey, while Cole can be the ace of the rotation for the Pirates with Jameson Taillon coming under him.

A Chat with Thomas Dobby on the Championship Playoff Final

For my column in the Fort Frances Times this past week on the Champions League final and the npower Championship playoff final (the full version of which can be read here), I had a ton of left over information from my chat with all four main members of the old Footy Show podcast that I wanted to use but was unable to put in the story itself.

So, instead of letting it go to waste, I have decided to post those conversations in full here on my blog for everyone to read, as all four members brought a ton of great insight that I wanted to share with everyone, even if you are a footy fanatic like me or just a casual fan.

After chatting with Brendan Dunlop, Kristian Jack, and James Sharman on both the Champions League and League Championship Finals, I figured that with the Championship Playoff Final taking place today, I would talk with the man who I learned more about the Championship from than anyone else, Soccer Central and Fox Soccer News Producer Thomas Dobby, who is pictured here with his dad Stephen at Brammall Lane, which is the home of his favourite club Sheffield United.

During the course of the late great Footy Show podcast, Dobby had his own segment from time to time called Championship Corner, where he filled listeners in on what was happening in the lower leagues and where I got to learn a ton more about what was taking place outside of the Premier League as I became more of a diehard footy fanatic.

Also, if you are a long-time listener of podcast, you will also know that Dobby was responsible for most of the titles in the highly hilarious David Seaman Collection, in which any off-colour or double-entendre that was uttered on the show was turned into an adult film title that starred the former Arsenal keeper. During the course of our chat, we each came up with a couple of titles, but none of that conversation will be in this piece, mainly because I would like Dobby to still have his job and my mother also might be reading this. 

Lucas: With the Championships itself, how long have you been following it for? Has it been for the most part, even though they are not there now, since Sheffield United has been involved?

Thomas: Yeah, after we went down in 2007 I started following it way more, but before we came up in 2006 I followed the results then and what not.

But then when we went down out of the Premier League was when I really started to follow the league a lot more closely week in and week out, and then since we went down to League One (in 2011) I still really been keeping up on the Championship scores, standings, news and notes, and all of the thousand firings every season.

Lucas: Obviously the Premier League is what everybody is going to be interested in watching, but do you find yourself getting more interested in watching the Championship as the years have gone on?

Thomas: Yeah, I am, and I think that’s because the brand of soccer is so exciting for a neutral. It’s one of those leagues where, while it’s cliche in sports to say on that any given day a team can win, but in the Championship it really is like that and the bottom club could beat the top club.

There’s a lot of goals in the league and there’s so many great teams, that in a 24 team division it’s such a dogfight to try and get out of. You see it every year with the teams that relegated from the Premier League and how it tough it is for them to come back up because it is such a grind over 46 games and with 24 teams that all have the same goal of trying to get up.

That’s what makes it so thrilling, because anybody can win on any given day and in any given season really.

Lucas: As a self-described masochist (see Dobby’s Twitter bio for more)

Thomas: Yes. (Laughs)

Lucas: As a fan of Sheffield United, you’ve seen your team in the Championship playoff finals before, most recently in 2009. How nerve-wracking, devastating, and enthralling is it to be in that race for promotion as a fan when your team is in the mix for a playoff spot, or to have a chance to earn an automatic promotion like your club did in 2006?

Thomas: That’s the thing about the playoffs. It’s fun to watch if your a neutral, but if your team is involved, and we’ve seen it this year in the semi-finals, your emotions go from such a high to such a low and vice-versa so quickly.

Being in a final like this, you know that this is one game and if you win it, your among the big boys again. You’re in the elite, you’re getting those 38 Premier League games, all of that money, and all of that exposure as every game these days is on television.

They call it the most important game and the richest game in sports really, because it’s worth upwards of 50-60 million pounds to a team to come up, and what that can do for a club in the lower leagues to solidify their financial state if they spend the money right is unbelievable.

So you know that, and that’s all in the back of your head as a fan thinking ‘We want to get back to this elite level and if we win this we are there, but if we lose, we have to do this marathon all over again.’

And the odds are you are not going to be back in that position the next season, because it’s so tough.

Lucas: In trying to explain this to a North American sports fan, can you really compare the playoff race to anything over here, or is it just too different?

Thomas: You really can’t, and as a whole, I think the relegation and promotion system is so unique to European soccer and such a defining characteristic of it.

For all of the great North American sports, and I’m an a fan of all four of the major ones to different extents, it really misses that because what it does it really makes every game important all season. You can’t just tank and go for a high draft pick like teams do in the NBA or the NHL, because you’re scratching and clawing to survive, and as we’ve seen over the last few years it’s more interesting at the bottom of the table for teams trying to stay up and solidify their spot in the league instead of the race at the top for the championship.

Lucas: When it comes to Monday’s game, does the fact that both Watford and Crystal Palace have been involved in the top flight in the past add any intrigue to you as a fan?

Thomas: I think it does, as it’s teams that we have seen in the Premier League era. For Palace it’s been a bit longer, and there’s such great storylines with both of these teams that I think the Premier League is going to be better off with either one of them.

I think it’s kind of a dream final in the sense that you have Ian Holloway managing Crystal Palace on one side, who thrilled people at Blackpool and played such expansive stuff and is a great quote. For anybody in the media and for any fan, they want to see Ian Holloway in the Premier League, as he’s the kind of guy that you have to watch his press conferences because you know that at any time he could say anything great.

Whereas Watford has Gianfranco Zola leading their team, who is absolute Premier League legend who made his name at Chelsea, and he’s one of those guys who is kind of doing it right in starting in the lower tiers and trying to work his way into management, and he’s done an amazing job with Watford.

Neither of these teams were picked to be challenging for promotion, so for either of them for it’s going to be a fantastic season, while for the other it’s obviously going to be crushing at this point.

It’s really good to see though those traditional teams again that we’ve seen up before. We remember Watford and they had a dreadful season the year they went down (2006-07), so we don’t remember them for good things. But they have those yellow jerseys, the Elton John connection (who once owned the club), and Vicarage Road is a great ground, so for me, I think I would prefer to see Watford back out of the two sides.

But I think with Holloway, it almost overtakes everything else in just having him back up than even the team.

Lucas: And with Holloway himself, he left Blackpool mid-season to take over at Crystal Palace, so that’s bit of an interesting storyline to add to it as well.

Thomas: That was interesting, as he had kind of done it right as he stayed down there with them and tried to bring them back. But they were just conceding too many goals and he saw an opportunity here when Dougie Freedman left from Crystal Palace to take over at Bolton.

When he took over, Palace were right up there near an automatic promotion spot, so he was taking over a good situation. They faltered a little bit, but they came back on nicely with a win in the playoffs over Brighton, which I didn’t expected, so here they are on the cusp.

Lucas: Staying with Palace, how good is Wilfred Zaha?

Thomas: Good enough to justify the move to Manchester United, and while it was for around 10 million pounds (with another 5 million pounds possibly being added to that total based on Zaha’s appearances and achievements), I think that it could turn to be quite the steal.

You just hope that he’s not going to a big club too soon, as he could get in the lost in the shuffle there a little bit, but hopefully David Moyes will see this as an opportunity to groom this guy and work him in slowly.

He could be an England great based on what he has done so far in such a short amount of time. He’s only 20 years old and if he doesn’t let the pressure and the big lights of Old Trafford get to him, he could be a great player for England in the coming years.

Lucas: I just realized as you were talking there, how strange is it going to be to say when it comes to Manchester United signings ‘If David Moyes can mould them?’

Thomas: Yeah, I know, it was weird to say it. (Laughs)

Lucas: Besides all of the talk about Zaha though, Crystal Palace is more than just a one-man team right?

Thomas: No, they’re not. Their leading scorer this year was Glenn Murray (who is out of Monday’s match with a cruciate injury), who had 30 Championship goals, which is just a staggering number. They do play 46 games, but that’s almost a goal-a-game ratio, which is incredible for that league.

He’s carried them offensively to Wembley, and they’ll need to score goals again against Watford, who have had their struggles sometimes in keeping the ball out of the net. They conceded 58 goals this year, which is the highest amount of the top six teams this year other than Crystal Palace who gave up 62, so both score a lot and concede a lot.

That should make it a tantalizing match for the neutral again, because the goals should flow.

Lucas: With Watford, I know a lot of the stories that I have read about them is the fact that they have a lot of guys a long on there from Udinese as a result of their ownership connections. Do you recall any team that has come up in the past that has had a number of players on their roster that are on loan from another team?

Thomas: This is an odd one and I don’t remember such a situation where you have so many loaned players, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter how you get up and with whom because it just opens those possibilities that I mentioned before when it comes to the revenue that you can gain by being in the Premier League.

Their first thing would be trying to keep (Udinese striker) Matej Vydra, who was the player of the season in the Championship with 22 goals and who also scored a couple of goals for the Czech Republic during the last International break. The biggest thing will be trying to keep him, but he’s going to be attracting some interest some from top-half clubs in the Premier League.

But for them right now, the main focus is just to get up and figure it out from there. They have the summer to do that, and if you have that carrot out there of Premier League football, you’ll be able to attract all kinds of players.

Although, as we saw with teams like Q.P.R. and Reading last season, that didn’t work out.

Lucas: With this class coming up to the Premier League next season with the winner of the playoff final, Hull City, and Cardiff City, I have read some opinions that have said this might not be the best group of teams that have come up in awhile. Obviously, it’s way too early to say with the summer transfer window coming up, but would you agree with those that say that the group coming up is weaker compared to some other seasons?

Thomas: I can see that, but it’s tough to gauge right now, because you really don’t know what is going to happen in the off-season.

But I will say that Malky Mackay has done a great job since taking over at Cardiff, and that is a team that has been on the cusp of coming up for a long time, so I think they will be okay.

Hull has Steve Bruce in charge, who is an extremely experienced manager and his been in the Premier League before, and he knows how to do and how to keep a team up.

At the same time, you may want to call it a weak class, but last year we called it a very strong class with Reading, Southampton and West Ham United, and despite winning the Championship title Reading went down, but West Ham did very well despite people thinking that they could be a bit of a yo-yo team. So I think it’s still early to judge at this point.

Lucas: You talked about the managers earlier, and when I was talking previously with Brendan Dunlop, he felt that no matter who won this game on Monday, he felt that both Zola and Holloway will eventually be in the Premier League next season. Do you see that happening, or does it depend on who gets fired and what teams have those openings? (This question was asked prior to the announcement that Tony Pulis was leaving Stoke City last week.) 

Thomas: I think that it’s more likely to happen for Zola to be fair. I think that with Holloway, owners and chairmen are a little bit maybe scared of his brash style and what he represents, and I think his best chance would be if he comes up with Palace.

But I don’t see a ton of managerial openings right now. I mean, obviously there are the big clubs, but none of these guys are getting a Manchester City or a Chelsea job that the big names are linked with, and I have a huge feeling that (Wigan manager) Roberto Martinez is going to get the Everton job.

So when you look at the teams that are up there, Sunderland has Paulo Di Canio who might not last the summer because of his outspokenness, but I don’t think they would want to go from a Di Canio to a Holloway because you would have an apples and oranges type situation there.

With the other teams that just stayed up in Aston Villa, Fulham, and Southampton, I think they are happy with the guys that are in place there (Paul Lambert, Martin Jol, and Mauricio Pochettino respectively). Plus, Alan Pardew has a 70-year contract with Newcastle and Chris Hughton has done a good job at Norwich.

I just don’t see that many openings just yet, but if we go ahead six weeks into the season next year when a team is struggling, maybe we will see one of those guys come in.

Lucas: Finally, what kind of game are you expecting between these two sides?

Thomas: Well if you look at their matches this season, Watford beat Palace 3-2 away on the very first day of the season and then later in the year they drew 2-2 at Watford, so there was nine goals between the sides in two matches.

You hope it’s an open game, but the problem is that in these playoff finals, the teams know what is at stake and sometimes you see teams being a bit cagey and trying not to make that mistake and not concede.

With the way these teams have played and with the amount of goal that they concede, you hope that it would be open, but I have a sneaking suspicion that because of what is at stake you might see a nil-nil game at halftime and the teams will be pressing in the second half and looking for a mistake to capitalize on.

It will be an entertaining game regardless.

My thanks to Thomas for taking the time to chat with me before he flew off to London last week to cover the Champions League final. To learn more about what it’s like to be a fan of a lower-league side, you can read about Dobby’s adventures in being a fan of Sheffield United in this piece he wrote back in 2011. 

A Chat with James Sharman on the Champions League and Championship Finals

For my column in the Fort Frances Times this week on the Champions League final and the npower Championship playoff final (the full version of which can be read here), I had a ton of left over information from my chat with all four main members of the old Footy Show podcast that I wanted to use but was unable to put in the story itself.

So, instead of letting it go to waste, I have decided to post those conversations in full here on my blog for everyone to read, as all four members brought a ton of great insight that I wanted to share with everyone, even if you are a footy fanatic like me or just a casual fan.

Following chats with Brendan Dunlop and Kristian Jack, our next stop on our Footy Show alumni travelling tour is with long-time host James Sharman, who is seen here with a incredibly dapper hat in an interview with DJ Jumping Jack Frost. Sharman is now one of the anchors on Soccer Central in Canada and Fox Soccer News in the States, with the program airing at 11 p.m. eastern time in Canada on Sportsnet World.

Lucas: This weekend in London will see two big games in the span of three days with the Champions League final and the Championship Playoff final. Do you think there will be a bit of an extra buzz around London with those two big games in a couple of days?

James: Yes, absolutely. London is a major league city, they like major league events, and when there is something that big and that many people gathering from around the country, or from Europe in the case of the Champions League final, there’s going to be a buzz.

Now, it’s such a crowded city anyway, so will you know that there’s people coming in from around the country or around Europe? It’s tough to say, but certainly you’ll be seeing the Germans in particular gather quite early and helping the beer consumption sales, shall we say, go through the roof.

It’s a big league city and they welcome that kind of environment, so it will be great.

Lucas: With the Champs League final itself, I know a lot of people were hoping for an ‘El Clasico’ final with Messi vs. Ronaldo and Barcelona taking on Real Madrid, but with two German teams going to head-to-head is it going to make the matchup just as tantalizing if not more so?

James: You know it’s funny, because for awhile I was hoping to see an ‘El Clasico’, but in recent weeks I’ve kind of gotten bored of it as we’ve seen it over and over again.

I was thinking that we would see at least one Spanish team get through in the semi-finals, but now we got the two German teams and we saw a couple of weeks when they played in the league just how much these two sides hate each other.

These teams are just dripping with drama and tension and I think that is fantastic. I think it’s going to be not a better spectacle like the ‘El Clasico’ is, but it will be a better football match with more drama and more intrigue, and from the standpoint of the fans it will be more fun to watch.

That being said, ‘El Clasico’ is still ‘El Clasico’ and I know FIFA would have loved to have seen that, but in the end I think football is the winner as we have two exciting teams that love to attack and can also defend very well as well.

The table is set I think for what should be a fantastic affair.

Lucas: So your not expecting this to be like what happened in 2003 when Juventus and AC Milan had what was called a horrible match when both Italian sides played to a scoreless draw that was decided on penalties?

James: Not with these two teams. Obviously, when there is this much at stake and bragging rights carry a lot of weight in the football world of course, they might be a big cagey to start. But both of these teams love to attack and while I don’t think we are going to see an open game, we will be seeing goals scored that’s for sure.

Lucas: So it would be similar then to what we saw in 2008, when Chelsea and Manchester United played in the last final that featured two teams from the same country?

James: Yeah, I think you’re probably right there and that’s probably closer to what we might see.

These two teams know each other really well and sometimes that does neutralize the two teams. But, when you look at the attacking options on display they are the best in the world outside of a couple of Spanish teams.

It could be low-scoring yes, but it’s not going to be like that Milan and Juventus game where there were two teams that based everything on their defence and that led to a dreadful spectacle on that day.

Lucas: There was also a lot of discussion after both Bayern Munich and Dortmund had defeated Barcelona and Real Madrid in the semi-finals that there could be a changing of the guard from the Spanish sides over to the German sides. Is that overblown or is there something that there might be some truth in?

James: There’s some truth in that but it’s certainly overblown. Those two Spanish teams are going nowhere, and I’m really confident that Barcelona are only a couple of players away from being back to where they should be. As for Real, it’s a bit different with Jose Mourinho leaving and if Carlo Ancelotti comes in how will he change that set-up, but they aren’t going anywhere because they have so many world-class players.

Spain has had a bit of a hiccup this year and they will bounce back, but certainly the story now is that these German teams are being discussed amongst the elite in Europe, and so they should be.

They’ve overtaken Italy, they are close to if not already overtaking England at this point, and they might be ahead of Spain in the future, who knows. But to say that Germany is set to become the top country in European football is still a bit premature, as I think those Spanish teams have a lot longer still to answer that question, and I think they will be back next season with some gusto.

Lucas: Moving ahead to Monday, obviously a Watford and Crystal Palace matchup may not get the pluses racing for the casual observer. But for those two teams, this is probably one of the most important games, if not the most important in the club’s history.

James: It’s fascinating as well when you look at both teams. Palace have been a great story this year, and they have been up before so they know what to expect, plus they have a very talented player in Wilfred Zaha who could be playing for Manchester United next season after they signed him in January.

But Watford to me is the big story. It’s a strange situation this year as they’ve got this loan deal sorted with Udinese, and a lot of the players that have gotten them to where they are may be leaving in the summer to other clubs or back to Serie A unless something permanent can be figured out.

You could be seeing them with just 11 players on the book for next season, and they are not a very rich club, so this could be a very fascinating story to follow. I’m not sure I like that I’m comfortable with a team getting players like that to get that promotion, because you would like to see the nucleus of that them reaming when they enter the Premier League and to see if they can stay up.

I guess we will see how good Gianfranco Zola really is as a manager, as he’s failed in the past at West Ham United and he’s done a good job at Watford so far, but this is a fascinating sub-plot to this one.

Lucas: When I was talking to Thomas Dobby about that, he couldn’t recall a team having a chance to be promoted where they had a bunch of players on loan from another club. Have you yourself ever seen anything like that?

James: Not at all, as this is a brand new model we are seeing here. You have to give them credit as it’s a smart model, but I’m somewhat troubled by it.

Hopefully it works because I like Watford, as they are a good proper football club. I love Gianfranco Zola, how could you not, and I want to see them succeed. But I think out of all the clubs this summer, outside of the big ones with the big money, that could be the club just to see what will happen this summer.

Lucas: Does the fact that both Watford and Palace are former top division sides add a little bit of intrigue for you as an observer for the match on Monday?

James: Not too much. I mean, they’ve both spent some years in the Premier League, but it’s not like if a Leeds United were coming back up as they were a perennial Premier League team for a long time.

When it comes to both teams, I don’t dislike them or love them, but they are what they are. They’re mid-table average size clubs that might enjoy the Premier League for a few years, but there’s no added intrigue for me.

Lucas: You mentioned Zola already, but to possibly have Ian Holloway back up in the Premier League is something would be very interesting as well.

James: If you are going to root for a team to get back into the top flight, maybe Ian Holloway is the guy that will push you towards that direction. There’s no one more fun in post-match press conferences, he’s loved by his players, and he also coaches a very attractive style of football.

It’s almost like what happens when he is behind the microphone overshadows the fact that he is a really good manager. He did a really good job last time of course at Blackpool, and I hope that it works out for him this time.

Lucas: Obviously it’s probably way too early to ask this type of question, but there have been some people out there who have said that the teams coming up from the Championship this season in Cardiff City, Hull City, and the playoff final winner, might be a little bit underwhelming compared to those in the past. Do you think there is some truth in that or is this something that we have to wait and see what happens in the summer transfer window?

James: We’ll have to wait and see as these teams can be remodeled and refitted so quickly in the transfer window. I think that Cardiff will be under a lot of pressure to preform because Swansea have done so well. They aren’t a rich club of course, so we shall see what they do.

I think that Cardiff will be fun to watch next year though, as those derbies with Swansea will be very hateful ones, and I think every league needs a little bit of hate in there to add a little bit of intrigue.

It’s going to be hard for those teams, but the way that Swansea have performed since they have come up should push these clubs in the right direction.

Lucas: Now, I’m not going to ask you for a full-blown prediction here, but what are you expecting from both of these games?

James: Well the Championship final is going to be cagey with high-intensity and lots of drama. It really is a crapshoot to try and pick a winner here, but it seems like Watford might have some help from above this year, and maybe the gods are smiling on them once again on Monday.

As for the Champions League final, I think that is going to be a wonderful final with way more pressure on Bayern Munich, and we saw last year for the first in my memory where a German team crumbled under pressure, and that team was Bayern Munich against Chelsea of course.

I have an inkling that it could be Borussia Dortmund, and that would be fantastic for not only that team but for European football, because we have a new player in town and they are the real deal as European champions.

If it is Bayern Munich losing, then there is going to be that stigma attached to that club  of choking on the big stage, and that’s something that new boy, Mr. Pep Guardiola will have to eradicate.

My thanks to James for taking the time to chat with me prior to this weekend’s matches. For those that are interested, you can also check out this roundtable discussion on the Champions League final that James was part of on Soccer Central earlier this week.

A Chat with Kristian Jack on the Champions League and Championship Finals

For my column in the Fort Frances Times this week on the Champions League final and the npower Championship playoff final (the full version of which can be read here), I had a ton of left over information from my chat with all four main members of the old Footy Show podcast that I wanted to use but was unable to put in the story itself.

So, instead of letting it go to waste, I have decided to post those conversations in full here on my blog for everyone to read, as all four members brought a ton of great insight that I wanted to share with everyone, even if you are a footy fanatic like me or just a casual fan.

After chatting with Brendan Dunlop already, our second guest is Kristian Jack, who is the soccer analyst for The Score television network and was the genius behind the Formation Geek on The Footy Show. Though our chat last week quickly turned into a discussion of this Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, none of that will be featured in this post, mainly because I implied that James Jakes to win the Borg-Warner Trophy at one point.

Lucas: We’re coming up on having two major games in the span of three days in London, which is the second time this happened in the last three years with the first occurrence happening in 2011. In London itself, do you think there is going to be a lot of extra buzz because of that or will there be a feeling of ‘Oh, there’s two games happening at Wembley,” instead?

Kristian: I think it will probably be more like one-and-a-half games. I think whenever a city hosts the UEFA Champions League, that is enough buzz as it is for a city. The Championship Playoff final on the Monday is a big deal when it comes down to it happening, but I don’t think it will be given much thought within the football community and in the city until everyone wakes up on Monday morning, the Germans fly home and everyone says ‘Oh, who’s going to make the Premier League today?’

Lucas: With the Champions League final itself, I know a lot of people were hoping to see a Real Madrid and Barcelona final, but with the fact that there is two German teams instead make this just as good of a matchup if not better on paper?

Kristian: I think it definitely helps the fact that you have two fantastic clubs there, but what I would say though is that I think it is a shame that two teams from the same country are meeting, only because I think that they know each other so well and there would maybe be an element of both of them nullifying each other a little bit more rather than having a go and showing what they can do with their attacking prowess.

I think the final will be a good final, but I don’t know whether it will be a great final, and we will find that out. Maybe I’m a little bit more of a traditionalist, but I just like to see two teams from different countries meet in a final, and that’s why even before the semi-final draw that we wouldn’t get an ‘El Clasico’ for example because they know each other more than Bayern and Dortmund know each other.

Obviously it’s a fantastic final and it carries it’s weight, but it would have been nice to see a Spanish team versus a German team.

Lucas: Earlier, I was talking to some guy named Tendon Punlop (Soccer Central and Fox Soccer News anchor Brendan Dunlop), and he had mentioned the fact that…

Kristian: (Laughs) How unfortunate for you.

Lucas: (Laughs) Oh it was terrible, we started talking about Phil Brown halfway through for no clear reason.

Kristian: Oh dear….

Lucas: (Laughs Uncontrollably) Anyways, with the two teams from the same country being in the final this years, we discussed the fact that with the two sides kind of knowing what the other one does, that it could be similar to what happened in 2003 when AC Milan played Juventus in the final. Is there a fear of that happening again? I personally never saw the match live originally, but from what I have read about it afterwards it sounded like it was pretty dire.

Kristian: I would hope that never happens again in the history of football, because it was one of the worst games ever played.

When you have so much on the line in something like a World Cup final or a Champions League final, there’s always a element where something like that could happen where two teams would be very nervous, but I think that we have seen a dramatic change in football in ten years.

We’ve seen the need to retain the ball better, counter attack well, and there’s a lot more attacking talent out there than those teams had that day. I would be very surprised if it ends up being a boring nil-nil draw like that.

It may end up being nil-nil, but I don’t think it will be boring, there’s far too many skillful players out there who can find space and make can make room for others to make sure that things can happen.

Lucas: Obviously there’s a lot different storylines heading into this game, especially with the fact that Bayern has been running red-hot through Germany this year and they are going against a Dortmund team that had won the last two Bundesliga titles before this season. Do you fact that these two teams have been going back-and-forth in Germany in recent years is going to add a bit of an extra edge to this game as well?

Kristian: Yeah I think it will, especially because one year ago Bayern Munich hosted this final and lost to Chelsea, and it was the exclamation point put on an absolutely disastrous season for them.

They got destroyed by Dortmund by the league and they were embarrassed by Dortmund in the cup final, where they were run completely ragged by them. Everyone’s now talking about this new Bayern Munich team and them conquering the world, but we only have to go back one year and say that they weren’t conquering anything.

Obviously this season things have changed with Bayern running away with the league quite easily and beating Dortmund in the cup as well, and they are now the big brother, but they still have to prove it.

I think Thomas Muller said it this week that if they lose this game, they will be fairly recognized as a label of losers and they cannot be seen to look that way, despite winning the domestic title over Dortmund quite convincingly.

Lucas: It would be like what happened to Bayer Leverkusen in the Early 2000’s right?

Kristian: Yeah, exactly.

Lucas: With Dortmund themselves, some would say that this could be a surprise team to get the final, especially as a casual observer. But Dortmund themselves, as you can probably attest to, have a very strong history so it’s not really a major surprise to see them again up there, is that correct?

Kristian: It’s not a major surprise, but I would still say that is a real surprise. They won [the Champions League] in 1997, but in 2005 they were hours away from bankruptcy.

They had to change everything about the way that they scouted and developed players,  and they were no longer able to go out and spend the ridiculous amounts of money on garbage and mediocre Brazilian players, so they had to go out and go about it a different way.

This is their second year back in the Champions League group stages, and last year they didn’t get through the group stage itself. This year, they had a far harder group than they did the year before and they won their group over Manchester City and Real Madrid.

So for them to get where they’ve ended up I think is a bit of a surprise, particularly in the nature of the way they had to go through it by defeating Real Madrid in the semis, almost getting knocked out by Malaga in the quarter-finals, and their round of 16 games against Shakhtar Donetsk were entertaining but showed a few things defensively that they’ve got to be worried about.

It’s a wonderful story, but I do think that it is a surprise that they’ve got this far.

Lucas: With the two German clubs defeating the two Spanish sides in the semi-finals, there was a lot of talk about this being a changing of the guard in club football. How much of that has truth in it toward there now being a power-shift towards the German sides now in club football, especially with Pep Guardiola coming in at Bayern Munich next season and that seemingly buying everyone under the sun it seems, or is it more overblown than that?

Kristian: I think it goes to show you just how far German football has come. I think they’ve been precariously close to the dominant Spanish team over the last few years internationally, and I would of loved to have seen them have a chance to play Spain in the final of the Euros last summer. But they didn’t get chance as they lost to Italy in the semis, and Italy seems to have that hoodoo over them to get in the way.

In 2008 in the European Championship final, when Fernando Torres scored the goal to win 1-0, Germany learned a lot from Spain in that game as they sat and watched on the sidelines. They’ve learned a lot on how to recruit players, movement into space, passing, counter-attack football, and defending like that as well from a possession point of view.

I think it’s just a sign of how close they’ve come to Spain. Is it the end of an era? I don’t think it’s the end of an era in terms of Spain dominating as I still think that they have a lot of wonderful players going forward and they’ll still continue to have Barcelona and Real Madrid taking over a lot of these big European competitions.

The one thing I would say though, and I covered this on my blog that it was the end of an era for Barcelona’s complete and pure dominance (which can be read here). If you lose 4-0 followed by 3-0, the history books will say for years to come that this was the end of their complete dominance.

Are they going to win again next year? They may, but it’s going to be under a different rule, a different teams, and a different strategy, because you cannot say ‘Well we dominated the game for a long stretch of time,’ and then say ‘Oh hold on, aggregate wise we lost 7-0 in a Champions League semi-final.’

Lucas: Moving away from that game for now, on Monday will be the Championship playoff final at Wembley between Watford and Crystal Palace, which for the casual observer is probably not a big deal. But for those teams and their fans, it’s a massive game just for the financial bonuses that can come with it.

Kristian: There’s lots of ways at looking at this, because with the new television deal kicking in for the Premier League next year, they are going to get even more money than any other Premier League team in the past.

But for me, the big story is the managers. You’ve got Ian Holloway at Palace and Gianfranco Zola at Watford, who are two very different kind of managers. Everyone looks at Zola and thinks that the way he is as a person is the way that he was as a player, and that’s not true. He’s very measured and smart football man who has worked very hard in a very difficult job at Watford getting players in through the Udinese route.

It’s going to be an enormous game, and I think the other thing we’ve seen too is that teams that have done well in this game in the past have done well in the Premier League.

Last year, West Ham rightfully came up and they never even looked like going down. The year before that, Swansea crushed Reading in the final, and look how good they’ve been. We mustn’t forget Blackpool the year before that (2010) when they won, and I know that they got relegated, but they should not of got relegated as they were one of the most entertaining teams in awhile.

Okay, Burnley were awful the year before that (2009) as they got relegated, but the year before that (2008) Hull won and they stuck around for a couple of years. This is not just a ticket for 38 cup finals next year, this is a lottery ticket that can keep them up in the Premier League for some time if they are managed properly.

Lucas: Does the fact that these are two traditional sides with both Watford and Palace having been in the Premier League before make this more of an exciting game as well?

Kristian: I don’t know about that. With Palace and Watford both being up in the Premier League before, they are both certainly recognized brand internationally, and they are both London-based teams, though Watford is very north of the capital, so that certainly helps.

But would it have been a lesser game if Brighton had played Leicester? I don’t think it would of, and I think as we’ve seen over the last few years, the Premier League has such a strength with their branding internationally that no matter what team comes up, they can really hold a candle to a lot of things and people will watch it no matter what it is.

How many people knew about Swansea City two years ago, Blackpool three years ago, or Burnley before that?

Is it good for the Premier League that these teams have been there before? Sure, but I don’t think it makes too much of a difference.

Lucas: With the teams that are coming up next year, there has been some talk that Cardiff City, Hull City, and whoever wins the playoff finals are not as strong as some of other sides that have come up in recent years. Is there truth in that, or is it way too early to assume that these teams will go right back down and struggle?

Kristian: Yeah I think it is too early to say that. I’ve been an advocate for some time that two teams should come up and not three, but the stats would disagree with me, as I that have come up in recent years through the playoff final have done very well in the Premier League.

Now there’s two reasons for that. One is that these teams are managed very well when they come up. They don’t chop and change a lot of it, and their management structure looks at their players and say ‘We believe that we can compete in the Premier League, and we aren’t going to make massive changes.’

If you look at this year for example, Queen’s Park Rangers made a ton of changes and they ended up getting relegated, while Southampton made a couple of changes and they got to 40 points and were not in danger of going down.

The second reason is that the Premier League itself isn’t that good. Talent-wise, from top-to-bottom, it’s diluted a lot and there a lot poor and not very talented teams in this Premier League that can lose to any team on any given week of the year.

There’s a real chance for any of these teams that come up this year to look at their team and think ‘With good management structure and with a couple of extra players added in there, there’s a good chance that we can get the 40 points that we need for survival.’

Lucas: We’ve touched on both games already, but I was wondering if you can give a prediction as to what kind of games you are expecting in the Champions League final and the Championship final as we wrap things up.

Kristian: Well, I think that the Champions League final will be very entertaining from my point of view. Whenever I can watch a game from a tactical point of view, you can see the movement the players are going to make, and especially with the fantastic players that both teams have.

The story for me will be if Bayern can get by and disappear from that label of losers, and I think that they will be too strong for Dortmund on the day. I think they will probably score early and then score late to win by a couple of goals.

The Championship final is fascinating. We’ve talked earlier about the type of games you get to see in these big games, and there’s so many examples of entertaining matches in this game.

Everyone always talks about this being the most expensive game in the sport, and you would think that if any game in the world would be nervous, cautious, or cagey and it would go nil-nil to penalties, it should be this.

But it really isn’t. There have been so many games that have been really entertaining, and I think that these two teams will be the same. Watford, in terms what they went through and how they defeated Leicester, was really entertaining, and for Palace to go to Brighton and score two goals there was also impressive.

I think we are going to see some goals and it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch.

My thanks again to Kristian for taking the time out to chat with me prior to the big matches at Wembley. For Kristian’s thoughts on the beautiful game, you can visit his blog at 4-2-3-1.com.

Also, Kristian has teamed up with Adrian Bradbury in a fundraising project to help support Gulu United, which is a soccer club in war-torn northern Uganda. If you have some spare funds, feel free to donate to United for United and help support a great cause.

A Chat with Brendan Dunlop on the Champions League and Championship Finals

For my column in the Fort Frances Times this week on the Champions League final and the npower Championship playoff final (the full version of which can be read here), I had a ton of left over information from my chat with all four main members of the old Footy Show podcast that I wanted to use but was unable to put in the story itself.

So, instead of letting it go to waste, I have decided to post those conversations in full here on my blog for everyone to read, as all four members brought a ton of great insight that I wanted to share with everyone, even if you are a footy fanatic like me or just a casual fan.

Our first guest is Brendan Dunlop, who apparently was once a shoe salesman by this photo I found over the internet in between doing three jobs on the Footy Show podcast and having to put with being called ‘Punners’ on a regular basis.

Since that photo was taken, Brendan has gone on to brighter things as the anchor for Fox Soccer News in the United States and Soccer Central in Canada, which can be seen on Sportsnet World every night at 11 p.m. Before he flew over to London last Friday to cover the Champions League final for the show, I talked with him at length about the two big matches  that will be held at Wembley Stadium in the coming days.

Lucas: So you’re off to London in a couple of days for the Champions League final, and along with that will be the Championship playoff final. I’m suspecting you will know a little bit more once you get there, but I’m guessing the buzz around then will be pretty mental?

Brendan: I’m assuming the buzz in the city will be mental, yes. I think it will be a little bit of confusion considering that it’s not the Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo super-clash that we were anticipating, since we didn’t get it last year and many thought the soccer gods would give that to us this year. That wasn’t the case, and those two teams (Barcelona and Real Madrid) simply weren’t the best teams this year.

I don’t know how much of a bad-blood or old-age anti-German feeling there might be to the city, but I think for the most part the only bad thing is that we are not seeing Messi vs. Ronaldo. That’s what I’m expecting to hear from the people.

Lucas: The matchup itself though between Bayern and Dortmund has become pretty heated over the last couple of years in Germany, and I’m guessing the game itself, even though it’s now ‘El Clasico’, should still be pretty entertaining.

Brendan: I’m expecting it to be. We saw in their final game of the season against each other in the Bundesliga (on May 4) which was just after they booked their places in the Champions League final, that it was as bad-blooded and chippy as a German ‘Super Clash’ would be despite the fact that both teams rested their starters.

Hopefully that translates over. Obviously these two teams know each other well, but they are also both very well managed. On paper and payroll wise Bayern is certainly the better team, but Dortmund have proven themselves not only in getting out of the Group Stage in the ‘Group of Death’ but also in the knockout stage when they beat Malaga in dramatic fashion in the quarter-finals that they are certainly no push-overs.

These two are pretty even in my mind and I expect them to throw the kitchen sink at each other, which luckily for us will mean a good game.

Lucas: You had mentioned earlier how everyone was hoping for the Messi/Ronaldo matchup. A lot of the talk after both semi-finals was about how it was ‘a Changing of the Guard’ in club football, especially with Bayern Munich defeating Barcelona? Do you think that’s a bit overblown or is there some truth in that?

Brendan: I think there is some truth in that, but I think it’s also a little bit overblown because as media we like to sensationalize everything. I don’t expect Barcelona and Real Madrid to be absent from the semi-final stage next year, and that to me would be an official changing of the guard.

I think that Spanish football, as we saw with Malaga this year, it’s stronger than just those two big teams, which it has been for quite awhile. Although German football has made great strides in the last few years, and I know that Schalke got to the semis two years ago in circumstances that they themselves would admit were a bit of a fluke, I still think that Spanish football is in a class still above German, but not by much.

The fact that Dortmund have proven that they can hang with Bayern despite the differences in their pay scale, that to me says a lot about the parity in German football. With the exception of last year when Dortmund won again, for the last eight seasons Bayern have won the title, lost it the next year, won it again and then lost it again the next year, and it shows that there is a good parity to that league.

I think that the two leagues are still on two different playing fields, and while I would give Spain the edge, the fact that there is such a level of parity in the Bundesliga itself leads me to have to tip my hat to what German football has been able to do.

Lucas: Do you still think though that the parity in the Bundesliga is going to remain especially with the rumours of Bayern buying everyone under the sun and (former Barcelona manager) Pep Guardiola coming in to manage them? Maybe this year’s point margin is a bit of a fluke, but it seems to me that Bayern could be on the verge of running rampant.

Brendan: Yeah, they really could be on the verge running rampant, but as I’ve talked about with what has happened in the last eight years, Bayern has been able to attract some of the top talent during that time. Be it Franck Ribery when everyone thought he was going to go to the Premier League or the big two in Spain, or be it Arjen Robben who was bit of an outcast at Real Madrid but probably could have slotted himself back into the Premier League quite easily.

Now, with Robert Lewandowski possibly staying in Germany by going to Bayern Munich this summer, they are always going to be able to replenish better than the other guy, but that doesn’t always work for them. When you look at the last 20 years and how many European finals they have been to, and with those two Champions League losses in the last five years in particular, those moves don’t always translate to silverware.

Bayern will always be the big money team that has the sexier names and that buys the best players, but that just drives the other clubs to replenish and Germany has done a very good job of that over the last 25 years.

Lucas: A couple days after the Champions League final will be the npower Championship playoff game in London, and while on the surface a Watford and Crystal Palace match might not get neutral excited as they would be for the Champions League final, this game could potentially be even bigger for the two clubs that are involved from a financial aspect.

Brendan: It’s the most expensive game in football and that is going to add a lot of excitement to it for that reason. But for me, the most appealing thing about this year’s Championship Playoffs for the first time in a long time were just the managers alone.

The fact that you had Gus Poyet (Brighton & Hove Albion), Gianfranco Zola (Watford), and Ian Holloway (Crystal Palace) all with the opportunity to be in the Premier League, which is something that Poyet has never done before as a manager, was something that really intrigued me.

I look at these two teams, and all that I’m really thinking about is the fact that I would rather have Ian Holloway back in the Premier League next year than Zola. When you look at the teams on paper, I think that Watford has a better chance of keeping their squad together and competing next year, whereas with Palace, even though they had a very good season, if you remove Wilfred Zaha from that equation than what do you have?

I don’t think Palace will have as strong of a side next year, but they will have a very entertaining manager delivering soundbites, and as the selfish media person that I am that’s what I’m looking forward to.

It’s a big match for both sides, but it’s also a huge stepping stone for both managers, and while both of them cannot be in the Premier League with these sides next year, I do think they will be in the Premier League together before too long.

Lucas: Do you think the fact that these are two former Premier League sides adds a little bit of intrigue to this match as well as both teams have a chance to return to the top flight after a bit of absence?

Brendan: I think it does. When you think of all of those teams that have played in the top flight before and have disappeared into obscurity like Leeds United, Charlton Athletic, and Bradford City, it’s good to see a bit of a resurgence from those sides.

I think it makes it a bigger deal in the country, and while I don’t think it is a big deal for Premier League fans internationally as it is for people like us, but from a local standpoint those fans are definitely feeling the high right now that they probably didn’t think they would get for awhile.

I also think that this is the appeal for us as North American fans of the promotion and relegation system. They can disappear for a bit, but if they work hard enough and the chips fall in the right places they can come right back.

Lucas: I know this is way too early to ask, but I’m just looking on paper right now at the teams that are coming up with Cardiff City, Hull City, and whoever wins the playoff final, and it may not seem like the best group coming up. Would you agree with that, or it still way too early to say? Though in listening to old Footy Show podcasts, you praised Hull a few years ago when they had Phil Brown as manager and Jozy Altidore up front.

Brendan: I loved Phil Brown (laughs).

I think that Hull have overachieved this season to be honest, and I think they are going to have a tough time next year as well, but it all depends on how they approach things in the off-season. I mean, the fact that Cardiff want to get Salomon Kalou says to me that they are serious about competing.

I think that that Swansea and Norwich have set the bar really high for teams like that. You can’t just come up like Reading and not add anything, but you also can’t come up and throw money around at soon-to-be MLS designated players as QPR did.

The promotion game, and by that I simply mean coming up and staying up, really has changed a lot in the last five years and has become very exciting. There’s not many one-and-done teams when you look at what’s happened in the last five years, and I think that really says a lot about where the approach to playing in the Premier League is going, and it’s driving them to have to be better and to spend and play more responsibly.

You can’t just go run-and-gun as Blackpool did and you better have more than just Charlie Adam as far as quality is concerned to stay up in the top flight.

Lucas: While I won’t ask you to give a full prediction on who you think will win, but what kind of game are you expecting on Saturday for the Champions League final?

Brendan: I really hope that Bayern and Dortmund is run-and-gun and that we get a really high-scoring affair where they are pushing each other’s buttons and each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

But the cynic in me and the person who watches MLS games in the flesh and who has supported Portugal for my entire life, I am nervous that we won’t get that. I’m nervous that because of the magnitude of the game these teams will play it safe and more conservative, and as time goes on they will take less risks.

That is something that I think we saw with Bayern and Chelsea last year, but I think Bayern approached that game until the 85th minute with the felling that ‘We’ve got this’, and lady luck wasn’t wearing Bayern red at the end.

I really hope that Bayern and Dortmund have a high-scoring affair where they both play to their styles and the best team wins, and I really think that it will be Dortmund.

Lucas: It sounds like your sort of predicting the 2003 final between Juventus and AC Milan.

Brendan: Well I don’t think we’re going to get that disgusting stalemate, but I do think that whenever you get two teams from the same country, there’s an over-analysis that happens, which sadly makes the game play out that way.

I really hope that with these two teams we won’t get that, and with the way that emotions boiled over in their recent league game, you realize that these two teams with just as much as bad blood as you expect them to be, and hopefully we see that competitiveness.

Lucas: Finally, do you have any sort of predictions for the Watford and Crystal Palace match?

Brendan: I don’t really know if I could pick a winner there and that’s because I haven’t watched Watford much at all. That’s not to say that I’ve really seen Crystal Palace front to back that often either, but I have paid more attention to them just to see what (Manchester United signee) Wilfred Zaha does.

The fact that Palace are in this situation right now says a lot, as they were in the top of the league at Christmas and looked like favourites to be an automatic promotion, but they really struggled and kind of got lucky there at the end.

So, I would think that Watford, who should have been automatically promoted themselves, probably has a bit of a mental edge and playing wise they have had a little bit better form this season heading into this matchup.

But, when I look at the two managers again and you look at what’s on the line, I think Ian Holloway knows what it is all about. He says that Blackpool experience has made him not just as a manager and as a Championship manager, but to be better suited to handle situations like this.

Gianfranco Zola to me, I always thought has been overachieving as a manager. That might not be fair for me to say, as I haven’t watched enough Watford games this season, but the fact that he has a side in the Championship final right now with the limited experience he does and the questionable decisions that he made while at West Ham, I think I’m able to make that comment.

However, I’m open to have someone play Devil’s Advocate and I’m willing to listen to their counter argument.

My thanks again to Brendan for taking the time  to chat with me before he headed across the pond. For those that are interested, you can check out his visit to the UEFA Fanfest in London with fellow Footy Show alumni Thomas Dobby here. 

Previewing the 2013 Champions League and npower Championship Playoff Finals (With Some Help From The Footy Show Gang)

Writer’s Note: A heavily condensed version of the piece is being published in tomorrow’s edition of the Fort Frances Times, as much of this article had to be taken out due to the amount of space that we have in our sports section.

However, as I had the chance to chat with James Sharman, Kristian Jack, Brendan Dunlop, and Thomas Dobby for this article, I didn’t want to let the amount of work I put into this column go the way of the dodo bird. Especially since I was able to once again chat at length with all four members of the greatly missed Footy Show podcast.

So, with two of the biggest soccer matches of the calendar year on the horizon, I present to you my long-winded rambles on Saturday’s Champions League final and Monday’s npower Championship playoff final. Hopefully, some of you will enjoy it. 

One last note, this article was written prior to the conformation that Mario Gotze would miss Saturday’s game due to injury. For the purpose of this post, I have decided to leave things as they were when I originally wrote the article prior to Wednesday.

Soccer finals highlight a busy sports weekend

With the way that the sporting calendar is lined up, the final weekend of May proves to be one of the most eventful and exciting over the course of the entire year.

Locally, the Emo Walleye Classic will be held on Friday and Saturday in what will be the official kick-off for many anglers in a busy summer of fishing tournaments throughout the region.

On the national stage, the top team in all of major junior hockey will be determined on Sunday night as the 2013 Memorial Cup winner will be crowned in Saskatoon.

And with it being Memorial Day weekend south of the border, the Indianapolis 500 is only a few days away as the biggest race on the Indy Car calendar will be held on Sunday.

However, on an international stage, the two biggest events of the weekend will occur in London, England, as historic Wembley Stadium will play host to two of the biggest soccer matches of the entire season in a 48-hour span.

First up will be the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday, where two of the top clubs in of Germany will battle it out to determine the best team in all of European club soccer.

On one side is Bayern Munich, who posses one of the most talented sides in recent memory and have dominated all comers this season, and on the other is their rivals in Borussia Dortmund, who have made a surprising run just to get this point.

Having demolished long-time European kingpins Barcelona in the semi-finals, many have already anointed Bayern Munich as the new top dogs in the sport, although they have fallen short on the big stage before.

“One year ago, Bayern Munich hosted the Champions League final in their home stadium and they lost to Chelsea, which was the exclamation point of a disastrous season for them,” noted Kristian Jack, who is a soccer analyst for The Score television network.

“They were destroyed by Borussia Dortmund in both the league and the domestic cup tournament last season, and while everyone is talking about this Bayern team now conquering the world, we have to remember they weren’t conquering anything a year ago.

“While things have changed this year with Bayern running away with things domestically, they still have to prove it on a European stage like this,” he added.

Although Borussia Dortmund had won the last two Bundesliga titles prior to this season, their success in this year’s Champions League was considered to be a surprise by many, especially after they took care of Spain’s Real Madrid in the semi-finals.

“On paper and payroll wise, Bayern Munich is certainly the better team, but Dortmund have proven themselves throughout this competition,” explained Brendan Dunlop, who is the anchor for Soccer Central on Sportsnet World in Canada and Fox Soccer News in the United States.

“Not only were they able to get out of the ‘Group of Death’ over clubs like Ajax and Manchester City, they also showed that they are certainly no pushovers in the knockout stage, especially in their dramatic come-from-behind win over Malaga in the quarters.

“These two teams are pretty even in my mind, and I expect both Bayern and Dortmund to throw the kitchen sink at one another,” he added.

Out of the bevy of storylines in this match, one of the most intriguing is the fact that Dortmund’s highly talented 20-year-old attacking midfielder Mario Gotze will be leaving the team following Saturday’s contest to join Bayern Munich in a highly publicized 37-million pound transfer deal.

“Imagine if this game goes to penalties and Mario Gotze has to shoot. What would happen,” asked Dunlop.

“If your [Dortmund manager] Jurgen Klopp, do you let him shoot? And if your Gotze, do you win it for the shirt you are wearing in the game or for the one that you are wearing tomorrow?

“It’s a really bizarre situation, and for Gotze, it’s unfortunate that Dortmund are up against Bayern in the finals now as this is what  everyone is going to talk about,” he added.

Two days later, Wembley will again play host to a massive soccer match during the Bank Holiday, as two teams from the League Championship will battle it out to gain entry into the English Premier League for the 2013/14 season.

Though the matchup between Watford and Crystal Palace won’t get the pulses racing of a casual soccer observer like the Champions League final will, Monday’s encounter is a massive one for whoever is victorious, as they stand to make anywhere between 60-80 million pounds by gaining entry into the biggest domestic soccer league in the world.

“It’s called the most expensive game in sports for a reason,” explained Fox Soccer News and Soccer Central producer Thomas Dobby.

“If you win that game, the amount of exposure from being in the Premier League is massive, as you’re back among the big boys for 38 games next season and you are earning a ton of revenue.

“What that can do for a club in terms of solidifying their status financially is unbelievable,” he added.

For the fans itself, the nerves of a playoff final can be an absolutely gut-wrenching ride to go on, which Dobby himself as felt first-hand on a number of occasions as a diehard supporter of former Premier League side Sheffield United, who missed out on returning to the top flight in 2009 when they lost to Burnley in the playoff final.

“It’s fun to watch if you are a neutral, but if your team is involved, your emotions can go from such a high to such a low and vice-versa so quickly,” he explained.

“As a fan, you know that if your team is able to win this one game, your headed back up to Premier League and are among the top teams again.

“But if your team loses, you have to do this marathon all over again, and the odds are not very good of getting back into that same position come next season because it’s so tough,” Dobby added.

Unlike North American sports where the worst teams in the league are given a high draft pick each year, the bottom three teams in the Premier League are relegated at the end of each season, while the top two teams in the League Championship and the winner of a playoff between the third-to-sixth placed sides in the standings are promoted.

While it’s early to say whether the winner of Monday’s clash, along with fellow-promoted sides Cardiff City and Hull City, will be able to survive against teams like Manchester United and Arsenal over the course of a season, many clubs have proven in recent years that you can avoid relegation in your first year back in the top tier of English football.

“One of the reasons for that is because the clubs that come up are very well-managed and they feel that they can compete without having to make massive changes,” Jack explained.

“If you look at the massive changes a team like Queen’s Park Rangers did this year, they ended up being relegated as a result, while Southampton made a couple of changes after coming up, and they were able to survive with ease.

“The second reason you see more new clubs doing well is the fact that the Premier League is not that good from top to bottom, as there are a lot of teams who are not very talented that can lose to anybody on any week of the year,” he added.

While both games at Wembley are expected to have a lot of drama and high intensity, it’s hard to try and pick a winner from either affair, as they could go either way.

“If you look at the Championship final, it really is a crapshoot,” Soccer Central and Fox Soccer News anchor James Sharman noted.

“When you look at a team like Watford though, who have been looked down upon a bit with how they’ve built this team [mainly by using players that came on loan from Udinese in Italy and Granada in Spain], I think that the ‘Footy Gods’ might be smiling down on them with how they got to this point and they might get some more help here.

“When it comes to the Champions League final, I think that is going to be a wonderful affair with a ton of pressure on Bayern Munich after what happened to them last year,” he continued.

“But I have an inkling that it could be Dortmund who wins it, and it would be fantastic for that team and for European football, as we would have a new major player in town,” Sharman added.

2012/13 OHL Post-Mortems (Part 4) & Final Predictions

As I write this, the OHL finals has already completed it’s first game, with the Barrie Colts picking up the win in Game 1 with a 4-2 win over the top-ranked London Knights on Friday as Game 2 is set to take place on Sunday night in London.

But before I get to my late prediction for the championship series, I figured I would first say farewell to the two teams that missed out making it into the finals.

Plymouth Whalers (42-17-5-4 – 1st in Western Division/2nd in Western Conference – Eliminated by London Knights in five games)

What I Predicted:  It looks as if the West Division is seemingly Plymouth’s to lose, and the Whalers should find themselves right in the mix with London and Kitchener as the top threats to capture this year’s OHL title.

What Actually Happened: They started slow, but the Whalers really turned it on in the second half to get where many expected them, which was helped by the acquisition of MVP candidate Vincent Trocheck from Saginaw. However, a London side proved to be their undoing in the playoffs, but it could have gone either way.

What Lies Ahead: The Whalers do stand to lose some of their key guys, especially up front, but the Whalers have made the playoffs all but once in their team history, so it would be hard to bet against them playing in the spring yet again.

Belleville Bulls (44-16-5-3 – 1st in East Division/1st in Eastern Conference – Eliminated by Barrie Colts in seven games)

What I Predicted: While I think the division that they are in (the East) is tougher than their counterparts in the Central Division, I think Belleville is a legit contender in the conference this season, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up making it into the finals come May.

What Actually Happened: Almost exactly that. The matchup against Barrie really could have gone either way, but despite having the home ice advantage, it wasn’t meant to be for a very strong Bulls team.

What Lies Ahead: While the Bulls will still have guys like Brendan Gaunce, Jordan Subban, and Danill Zharkov around next year, the key will be how Charlie Graham does in the full-time starting goalie role in replacing Malcolm Subban. If he plays as well as has in the past,  the Bulls should be in the mix in the East once again.

Look at the glorious banner, don’t you just love the Cents? But who will join them as OHL title holders in the not too distant future? Well I’m about to tell you what will go down, well in my opinion anyways.

1) London Knights vs. 2) Barrie Colts: London in six (If the Colts win, I wouldn’t be too shocked, and it would take the pain away for some fans who are still upset over their loss to Windsor back in 2010. However, I picked London to repeat as league champions all the way back in September, and I’m not going to change my mind now.)

Anyways, Game 2 is about to get rolling. Enjoy the finals, it should be a dandy.