Ever since Craig Levein assumed the reins as Scotland manager over two years ago, we have been repeatedly informed that the focus has been on making progress, as Levein sets about building a squad of players capable of ending a 14-year (and counting) exile from the major tournaments.
Chelsea's improbable Champions league victory over Bayern Munich last Saturday inscribed on that famous jug-eared trophy the fifth different English football team to be crowned the Kings of Europe. In fact, in the last eight years, it was the third English club to be anointed into the annuls of history and also the seventh time an English club had contested the final, with 2008 being the year when both teams hailed from this tiny nation.
Roberto Di Matteo, the toast of West London. In his brief stint as Chelsea’s Interim Manager he has delivered the FA Cup and the long awaited Champions League, Chelsea’s first. At any other club in the world the chairmen would be hugging the quiet Italian tight and never letting him go. But this isn’t any other club, it’s Chelsea, and Di Matteo’s future still hangs in the balance.
The first all-Edinburgh Scottish Cup final in over a century had been eagerly anticipated by supporters of Hearts and Hibernian alike. However, as it transpired, those of a green persuasion will prefer to banish this historic occasion from their minds, having watched their side take a terrible mauling at the hands of their old foes.
This last Saturday night I found myself short of breath, my heart pounding like a Smiths hammer on an anvil and my head was spinning. I could be suffering from a medical condition but in reality it was the effects of watching the 2012 Champions league final involving Bayern Munich and Chelsea.