The Tavern’s postponed celebration finally came at 11:20pm -nearly 9 hours after the fact -busy-ness forced a self imposed media blackout until a late replay of the Champions League gameday 4: Leverkusen at Zenit St Petersburg. Wobbly 1st half from Leverkusen, they got into gear 2nd half with Son astonishing everyone with 2 absolutely brilliant goals.
The first goal came in the 68th minute, a devious set piece (originally constructed for the first Zenit match 2 weeks ago) that caught Zenit by surprise. The 2nd came just 5 minutes later, but enough of me trying to describe all this world-class-ness, let’s watch:
and another angle of the first goal:
and here’s a choppy youtube of his 2nd goal:
Bayer grinded out a vital 2-1 victory. Leverkusen haven’t made it through to the round of 16 yet, but are getting closer. They widen their lead on top of Group C with 9 points, Monaco lost 1-0 to Benfica and are in 2nd with 5 points.
Meanwhile, more midweek Tuesday action in the English Championship, Bolton took down visiting Cardiff 3-0 with Lee Chung-Yong getting involved and notching the assist on the first goal, let’s go to espnfc:
Darren Pratley embarked on a drifting cross-field run and although he neglected to feed Feeney, Lee Chung-yong’s first-time cross found the winger inside the area and he swept beyond David Marshall for the opening goal.
Jae is starting a new hashtag concerning a certain Kim Bo-Kyung:
Kim Bo-kyung made the bench (gasp) for Cardiff but not the pitch #freekimbo
— Jae (@ArmchairRegista) November 4, 2014
K-League Note: I’m very impressed with Martin Rennie’s work ethic, the manager of the new Seoul E-Land FC has been clocking in major hours. This according to his blog post about his insights into scouting: “Last week alone I watched eighteen 90-minute games live.”
I’ve shared my methods to scouting pro football/soccer players in this blog post. Post: http://t.co/fJRbHEPNTw pic.twitter.com/QUAPWaGKEs — Martin Rennie 마틴 레니 (@Renniecoaching) November 3, 2014
He’s been out and about watching some games with Lee Young-Pyo (I think is pictured in Martin’s tweet), who he managed in Vancouver during Lee’s last 2 seasons. Martin’s been scouting all around to construct a viable team to compete in the K-League Challenge when the season begins in March. Despite being a busy man, he found time to give a TED talk in Seoul last week -the video should be available soon. There’s some optimism among some that this new team can be a blueprint for how to run an effective football team in Korea and drum up excitement needed to bring fans into the stadiums.
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