The Daily Bee: Roma Lose 6-2, Cleverly Setting Themselves up for Dramatic Second-Leg Comeback

Good morning, Fear the Wall! Happy Friday.

Roma Set Themselves up for Second-Leg Comeback

After the final whistle sounded inside of Old Trafford, with a seemingly-lopsided 6-2 scoreline in favor of Manchester United, the favorites, you could be forgiven for thinking that AS Roma are pretty much guaranteed to be eliminated from the Europa League, and that the red devils will advance to the final.

But what is a four-goal deficit to AS Roma? It’s only one more than the deficit they overturned for their famous comeback against Barcelona, surely an easily-replicable feat. As the saying goes, and many people are saying this, a four-goal lead is in fact the most dangerous lead in football. And not to forget: Roma scored two away goals. So all they need to do to make the final is score four goals, get a clean sheet, and then BOOM! On to the final in... Gdansk, Poland. Wait, that’s where the final is going to be? That’s the most “Europa League” destination it could possibly be.

Paco Alcacer DOESN’T Score Against Arsenal

To be honest, I was only watching the match because I wanted to see Paco Alcacer score a goal against Arsenal. While this didn’t happen, it was at least an interesting game. Villareal were very much the better side in the first half, and managed to score two goals to take a commanding lead. While the Spanish had a chance to really bury the Londoners after Dani Ceballos was sent off, they instead let the Gunners crawl back into the match after a penalty.

ESPN Ranks Europe’s Top Ten U-21s

Normally I don’t like sharing these types of posts because they’re mostly just popularity contests, but I think this one is at least worth mentioning because it features two Borussia Dortmund players, Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland, as the two best players in the world aged 21 years or younger. Jude Bellingham also made the list, coming in at 6th.

A surprising omission from the list is Alphonso Davies. While he’s had something of a down year, and is certainly nowhere near his form from last season, I still think he at least deserves a spot.

Marco Reus Asks Lukasz Piszczek to Stay in Dortmund

Poor Lukasz Piszczek, man. All he wants to do is retire to his native Poland so he can run his youth academy. But he’s like that old hard-boiled detective in a crappy ‘80s movie that keeps needing to come out of retirement to solve one last case. If BVB could just find a suitable right back as a replacement, Piszczek could be sipping Margaritas in Cancun. But for now, the 35-year-old is still Dortmund’s best right back, and Marco Reus knows it.

Think about it this way: Marco never, ever tweets about anything. So for him to come out and ask Piszczek to extend another year shows he must really want it.

The Daily Buzz

Write a crappy 80’s movie starring Lukasz Piszczek as an old, hard-boiled detective who comes out of retirement to solve one last case.