First of all, there was an insanely massive surprise last Saturday, as Wigan Athletic took on Manchester City in the FA Cup final and ACTUALLY WON. 1-0, in extra time! This disappointed me as I am a Man City fan and for the goal to just be out of Joe Hart's reach above him dug the wound deeper. However, what makes this situation even more surprising is three days later, Wigan confirmed their relegation from the Premier League to the Championship after losing 4-1 to Arsenal (and also confirmed my main men Southampton a spot in the Prem next season!). A disappointing setback for City, but they really weren't trying their hardest that day and for Wigan, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (whereas City win things a lot more often) so I do believe Wigan were the more deserving winners. Congratulations to them, and I wish they were able to push on and stay up in the league but maybe we'll see them again in a couple seasons' time!
Secondly, an amazing win happened on Wednesday - Chelsea beat Benfica 2-1 to win the Europa League, to have the amazing achievement of holding both European titles at the same time seeing as they won the Champions League last year*! I am immensely proud of the guys as they are a team I have liked for a very long time. It was a very well deserved win, with amazing goals from Fernando Torres and Branislav Ivanović (seeing as he is a defender, this was amazing! Also his first goal for the club).
Also, FC Barcelona won La Liga last week! No surprise there really, but what was really amazing was that they never moved from the #1 spot in the league table, all throughout the season. Go Barça!
Today was the last day of the Premier League season (and probably the last day for most other leagues too). It was both a sad and happy day - a few footballers have retired this season; Michael Owen, Paul Scholes and Jamie Carragher all played their last games today and one of the most famous footballers ever, David Beckham, played his last match yesterday. It's another signal to the end of my childhood, as all four of these English legends I grew up watching play for our national team. Total respect and congratulations to these guys, as they have all had amazing careers and contributed heavily to English football as we know it. However, Michael and David have both contributed to overseas teams too, playing for Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and LA Galaxy between them.
A few managers have either left, retired or been fired which is always a sad moment in football. Football legend Sir Alex Ferguson announced his retirement from being a manager a couple of weeks ago - as most people know, he has been the manager for Manchester United for over 25 years. Most clubs get rid of their managers after one or two seasons, so for Sir Alex to have been a consistent manager for so long is an amazing achievement. There is no denying he is one of, if not the greatest manager to grace football. Congratulations to him, as he is a great credit to football. David Moyes announced he was leaving his managerial position at Everton the same day Sir Alex announced his retirement; funnily enough, it was confirmed he is to become United's new manager only a few hours later! Rafael Benitez had been set to leave Chelsea at the end of this season for a while now, and there's major speculation that my favourite past Chelsea manager, José Mourinho, is set to replace him. I am really hoping he is coming back, as he was Chelsea's manager when I first started supporting them and I've always thought he was an amazing manager, pretty much level with Sir Alex (they were even rivals when José was managing Chelsea). Finally, we received the sad news that Roberto Mancini had been fired from his managerial position at Manchester City, the day after they lost the FA Cup to Wigan - also a year to the day he guided City to win the Premier League title. Guess we'll have to wait and see who becomes City's next manager...
Today, the final games of the season were played (obviously). I think the most interesting game was the 5-5 draw between West Bromwich Albion and Manchester United - it must have been a very well played, interesting and tense game. There has never been a 5-5 draw in the Premier League, so they also made history! The rest of the results were:
Chelsea 2-1 Everton
Liverpool 1-0 Queens Park Rangers
Newcastle 0-1 Arsenal
West Ham 4-2 Reading
Southampton 1-1 Stoke City
Swansea City 0-3 Fulham
Wigan Athletic 2-2 Aston Villa
Manchester City 2-3 Norwich City
Tottenham Hotspur 1-0 Sunderland
I don't think many people were expecting Man City and Swansea to lose! This was slightly disappointing as it affected Southampton's overall finishing spot, as did many of the other fixtures including their own seeing as they walked away with only one point rather than three (which they would have got if Rickie Lambert's goal in the first minute wasn't disallowed as he was ruled offside). However, I wouldn't have wanted Michael Owen to lose his last ever game, so I'm not too upset. It doesn't really matter too much where we finish, as we are still going to be in the Premier League next season and hopefully finish in the top 6, if Morgan Schneiderlin's prediction is right! Let's just say this won't be the first time he's proved people wrong...
P.S. hopefully my next post regarding football will be my announcement of getting a job at St Mary's Stadium!
*note for those who may be confused - the Championship and the Champions League are two different things. The Championship is the second tier of the English football league system, whereas the Champions League is the biggest European competition between non-national teams.
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