Here's hoping

[Steve]

It was a decentish final. Liverpool did better than I expected to be honest. They held Milan without question for the first 45 mins until the rather unusual goal just before half time.

Liverpool are not used to conceeding and one of their strong points is getting clean sheets, so they are not used to being a goal down, and that is where they fell apart.

All credit to Milan though and a nice piece of silverware to add to their collection.

I do generally feel that the weakest area of football nowadays is the refereeing and that is an area that seriously needs revamping. The crucial decisions in matches should not be down to one person who no matter how good they are cannot see everything.

My point here is that in the added on time was announced at being 3 minutes and when we moved into extra time, there was messing about and the usual time wasting... but the ref called the match at 2:42 seconds into extra time!! Its unlikely the score would have changed in the 18 seconds (plus the time that should have been added on for the time wasting), but did the ref have the right to go against the official time awarded!!

Going back a bit to the 2002 world cup when England were knocked out of the cup by extremely poor referring (and that is what it was... goal not given when it was a goal for England and goal given when it wasn't a goal for Portugal, etc (as seen by replays)) that referee who was Swiss ended up being hounded by England Fans at his home!!!! A national newspaper in the UK published his home address.... LOL. Always best to be a bit careful especially when dealing with the rather psychotic English fans!

Steve