2012-13 Season Review – In case you were in the Stone Age last year

If you want to know what bitter-sweet feels like, ask Jupp Heynckes. Every time the poor fellow wins the Champions League, it turns out he’s out of a job for next season. It happened with Real Madrid in ’98, when after delivering the club’s first European Cup since 1966 he was promptly sacked for a ‘poor’ domestic season. Because, well, the Champions League doesn’t count, see? So, the ex-Borussia Monchengladbach striker roamed from Benfica to Bilbao to Bayern (as an interim manager first, ask Rafa, he’ll tell you what it means) to finally come back to win the Bavarian giants their fifth Champions League title, and also a record breaking league title which they wrapped up basically at the winter break, and threw in some domestic cup success just to be sure. So, obviously, Pep Guardiola will be the Bayern Munich manager next season. Wait.. What? Ha! And you thought the players are nervous before the final. Jupp is probably a puddle of jelly by the time the game kicks off.

In other news, the Germans are coming. Or so they say, because the showpiece event in European football was contested by their teams, who on the way, demolished the erstwhile ‘big guns’. Dortmund went from being the hipsters’ pet, to too mainstream within four months, which has to be some sort of record. One day they’re cursing Real Madrid for always getting the easy draw, the next they’re outraging over Bayern’s blatant tapping up of their favorite team’s best(?) player.

While Bayern made light work of the best in Europe, except of course,the mighty BATE Borisov, one of only two teams to beat them this season, Chelsea went and achieved a unique and completely insignificant distinction. By virtue of winning the Europa League, they technically held both major European trophies at the same time, for about eight days. Meanwhile, Benfica lost another European Final, their sixth since the great Bella Guttman said they’d never win anything in Europe again.

Race, sort of, for League Titles

The league titles in England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and even France to a certain extent, were basically one team jogging to the finish line, with the rest locked in a slow cycling race to finish as far behind as possible. The only thing worse than Barcelona’s defense of their goal, was Manchester City’s defense of their title, who managed to finish second only because Chelsea enforced a transition upon themselves, and Arsenal were, well, Arsenal. AVB stated at the beginning of the season that Spurs should aim to win the title. It was only in March that we realized he had pronounced “fourth place” wrong. All this meant, Sir Alex could finally retire having made Manchester United the 20 time league champions. Almost by default.

In Spain, Tito Vilanova probably knew he’d be taking a three month break mid-season, so he wrapped up his league title by December. Most of Barcelona’s matches were like every year, attack vs defense. Except, it was their own defense that their attackers were up against. As if they said, let’s see if you can leak more goals than we can score, that should be fun! Cue results like a 5-4 win, against Deportivo. Away matches like this one left many fans nauseated, irritated and sometimes even partially blinded. And that was just from the ugliness of their kit. The performances were exhilarating and excruciating in equal measure, and the Catalans ending the season having being top of the table for every single game week. But a lot of the pressure was taken away by Real Madrid’s inability to win away from home. Mourinho blamed everyone and every thing and turned the club into a proper circus by the end of the season, while Cristiano Ronaldo spent the second half of the campaign recovering from his sadness. Although he never revealed the cause, sources close to the striker have confirmed that as suspected, it was because Pepe stole his can of hair-gel and refused to give it back. The bald Portuguese said he liked how it felt on his head and helped keep him cool when he was in the ring, err.. I mean, on the field. Atletico deserve special mention for threatening to come second for a large part of the season, before they faced Real Madrid, and as is customary, lost. None the less, it was a great season for them and their coach Diego Simeone. Real Sociedad were the surprise package who sneaked into fourth place on the final day of the season, edging out Valencia who were beaten by the manager they sacked last season for getting them third place, Unai Emery. This was the only place that provided a bit of drama (other than the relegation spots, but more on that later) in an otherwise boring season in Europe’s top leagues.