2012 Champions League Final – Simulation and Preview
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The dice were fickle but the cards were kind to the Munchen side in a simulation match using APBA Soccer tonight, when Bayern Munich won the European Champions League Final. Mario Gomez drilled a 116th minute Penalty Kick past a flailing Petr Cech to defeat London’s Chelsea 3-2.
click on the scorecard below to see it at full size
The red text is play-by-play of Bayern possession, the black text is Chelsea. Scroll down to see play-by-play of extra time.
The deciding Penalty Kick was awarded when Chelsea’s Frank Lampard made an ill-timed tackle on Franck Ribery while within the penalty area.
Chelsea had one last chance to tie the game when, in the 126th minute, Fernando Torres’ shot looked bound for goal until Bayern’s Manuel Neuer made the save of his life to keep the German side ahead for good.
The match featured offense and dramatic moments throughout, but, except for a 6 minute stretch in the 2nd half when Chelsea scored both their goals, Bayern Munich dominated the pitch.
Bayern was ahead 2-0 in the 78th minute when Chelsea’s Goalkeeper Cech made a nice outlet to Frank Lampard. Lampard’s shot from nearly 40 yards away was Chelsea’s first shot-on-goal of the day and it found Neuer well out of position for such a strike.
Chelsea was able to tie the match 4 minutes later when Ashley Cole scored on a shot from Area D. Bayern scrambled to find a winner in the closing minutes of regular time, but couldn’t do it. Fortunately for the Germans, Ribery was able to draw the foul in extra time that setup Gomez’s winner.
I tried to play the game using the lineups that I feel will be the most likely choices for their respective managers in real life:
BAYERN: Neuer (GK); Gomez, Ribery, Kroos, Muller, Robben, Schweinsteiger, Timoschuk, Lahm, Boateng, Contento
CHELSEA: Cech (GK); Drogba, Sturridge, Mata, Lampard, Kalou, Mikel, Luiz, Cole, Bosingwa, Cahill
Some might question why I left Fernando Torres on the bench to start the match, since his APBA card is fantastic. If I were just trying to field the best APBA lineup, Torres would have started the match in the XI. However, in real life, Drogba and Torres have never started at the same time and have only been on the pitch together a handful of times. DiMatteo, Chelsea coach, prefers to have the strikers each play on his own.
I did bring Torres into the match in the 66th minute, however, when Chelsea was down 2-0 and only 18 minutes later the game was tied 2-2. Torres had 3 of Chelsea’s 5 shots in extra time, too, but was unable to find the back of the net.
Click on this scorecard to see the play-by-play for extra time, as well as to read my notes from in-game.
This preplay simulation of the game to be played in the morning was great fun. Thank you to APBA for releasing these cards for free and giving us the opportunity to play out this game before the real game.
Briefly, about the team ratings: Though it was dismaying that APBA didn’t give any guidance on how the two teams should be rated, I had to do something in order to play the game, so I rated Chelsea a 3 (team) and 2 (defense) and gave them 4 clutch points. I rated Bayern a 5 (team), due mainly to the fact that they are playing in their home stadium, but also gave them only a 2 for defense, since their back line is without Alaba and Badstuber and their defensive mid, Gustavo, is out as well. With such a distinct home field advantage, I gave Munich 6 clutch points.
If you want a free copy of these two teams for use with APBA Soccer, go to the APBA Games website, where you can download the cards for free.
APBA and Strat-o-Matic Football Newspaper Article from Feb., 1983
Apparently, things haven’t changed much for tabletop-gamers in the last 30 years. Or, maybe I should say, tabletop-gamers themselves haven’t changed much.
In “It’s Friendly Win-at-all-Cost In Brainy Football League” written by Mary Kane and published in the Pittsburgh Press on Feb 5, 1983, the members of the Blawnox APBA Regional Football face-to-face league (BARF) get portrayed as slightly obsessive, eccentric, “brainy” fans.
From the article:
Jack Tatum, the former Oakland Raider defensive back who had a notorious reputation among Steeler fans as a dirty player, got his just reward in the BARF league.
Schade put him in a glass of water and left him in the freezer for two years.
‘Then we put dirt in it and planted an onion,’ Schade said. ‘Someone in the league tried to draft him once and we just laughed.’
I would be interested to follow up with the participants of the BARF league, to see where life has taken them and the league since that day. The article names David Smith, John Powell, Art Farina, Jim Bennett, and Bert Schade, all ages 27-32 at the time, which would put them in their late 50′s-to-early 60′s today. The league was based in Blawnox, PA.
If anyone knows how I can get ahold of these APBA Football players, please drop me a line at paul@pauldylan.com.
England vs. Germany, 1915
From the Library of Congress, this poster was printed 51 years before anyone ever said “Two World Wars and One World Cup.”
Speaking of the 1966 World Cup, I’d like to replay that tournament someday. My next World Cup project will be 1998, however, to be played with Mea Copa and Classic Soccer. In the meantime, I have plenty of other projects to keep me busy.
EDIT: Thanks to @redditsoccer for this tweet tonight:
World War I, British soccer team with gas masks. bit.ly/Jpnusp #football
— redditsoccer (@redditsoccer) May 19, 2012
If you can’t get on Reddit from where ever you are, here is a direct link to the picture.
Followup to Jim Hugh Moss story
When I first put together the story of the execution of James Hugh Moss, former Negro League ballplayer, and the accompanying media coverage of Eula Mae Thompson, the intention was to try to tease out the details of what really may have happened the night Coleman Osborne was killed in Chatsworth, GA, August 5, 1927.
After publication, Larry Granillo of Baseball-Prospectus did more research and helped round out the story, finding further information on the fate of Eula Mae Thompson (including interesting details of her involvement with a second murder after her release from prison).
The one thing that was missing from the story of the ballplayer’s life was any details of his ballplaying career. Thankfully, Gary Ashwill of the excellent Agate Type blog has helped bring some of Moss’s career to light.
What Ashwill finds is that Moss was hardly a Negro League star, in fact, he really only had a cup of coffee at the top level of play. More importantly, however, Ashwill makes this statement:
Larry Granillo, in the comments to his post on Moss, added this: “I would love to know that we can verify at least one fact about his career. It just goes to show how hard Negro Leagues info is to come by and just how great it is to even have the data that we have, incomplete as it is.”
In fact, I think Moss’s case demonstrates the exact opposite of what Larry’s saying here. Keep in mind that as a baseball player he was an extremely marginal figure, essentially the equivalent of someone who pitched part of a spring training game and then spent a few seasons in the minors. The Negro leagues were not some vast impenetrable mystery. It’s often possible, even with limited resources, to dig up quite a bit of information, even about minor players like Moss.
Thank you to Gary Ashwill and Larry Granillo, both, for the work you’ve done to contribute to this story. I’m greatly interested to see what the next contributor may find, too.
Free APBA Soccer cards download: 2012 Champions League Finalists Chelsea and Bayern Munich
The 2011-12 UEFA Champions League Final between Bayern Munich and Chelsea should prove to be a good one.
APBA Games seems to think so, too, and has given fans of APBA Soccer a terrific surprise today by releasing “Pre-play” versions of both teams available as a free pdf download.
APBA doesn’t yet have team rating/defense rating/clutch points for either team posted, but hopefully the community of APBA Soccer players can come up with something that works. Bayern should have a fairly distinct homefield advantage in this one, I would think.
Here is a link to the APBA Games post and the pdf available for free download:
2011-12 UEFA Championship Pre-Play Cards
