Unkindest stage of all

HAVING paid the ultimate penalty in Moscow last year, John Terry might beg to differ with the conventional football wisdom which holds that the penultimate carries more pressure.

But you can understand the logic of it. For the losers, a semi-final falls into the category of so near and yet so far away. For the winners, there’s still at least a few weeks in store for dreaming the greatest dream even if, as the Chelsea captain won’t need reminding, you might yet slip up spectacularly when you reach the final hurdle itself. And so we arrive at the penultimate stage of the 2009 Champions’ League, with all four remaining contestants still entitled to believe that they are the ones who will march on Rome. With both ties finely poised after the first legs, this is one of those welcome moments where the long, drawn-out Champions’ League reverts to its old knock-out European Cup status, with just 90 or 120 minutes of football – and okay then, possibly penalties to boot – left to determine the finalists.

The absence of away goals from the first legs also adds to the tantalising sense of a clean slate, with Manchester United’s one-goal advantage going to the Emirates tonight as narrow as it seemed unlikely after the first-half battering which they meted out to the Gunners at Old Trafford.