Real Madrid vs Man City –– A True Epic

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Let's get straight into it.

ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)

🇪🇺 Seeing a lot of Benz in our openings lately... Ballsy, smashing panenka from Karim Benzema. In what was perhaps the greatest ever Champions League semi-final first leg, City won 4-3 but take only a narrow edge to the Bernabéu. Liverpool did the business beating Villarreal 2-0 in the other opening leg. 

🇩🇪 Bayern Munich toppled Borussia Dortmund 3-1 to win yet another Bundesliga title. 

🇮🇹 Sandro Tonali scored a 92' winner for AC Milan to beat Lazio 2-1. Incredible scenes as the Rossoneri maintain a 2 point lead over Inter with just four games to play.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Liverpool beat Everton 2-0 in the Merseyside derby. They also accomplished a historic feat: the most possession in a Premier League game ever, keeping the ball for 83% of the game. Man City throttled Watford 5-1 to keep the title race at one point, while Tottenham's draw and Arsenal's win make for an exciting finish to the top four race. The two square off on May 12th...

🌍 Fancy buying a football club? Apparently Elon Musk doesn't see the appeal... Musk purchased Twitter this week for 44 billion dollars. Here's what he could've had...

Quiz Of The Week

Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are comfortably top 2 in all time Champions League goals, but where does Karim Benzema rank? 

Scroll to the bottom for the answer...

Champions League Nights 

Wednesday 3:00 PM ET –– Real Madrid (+235) vs Manchester City (+105)

Can Real Madrid pull off one more magic trick? It's been one hell of a ride thus far. Man City largely dominated the first leg, but even scoring four goals they'll rue the chances they missed. Madrid hurt City on the counter and took their chances in what was an unbelievable watch.

With Liverpool having one foot into the final after a comfortable 2-0 display (sorry if this comes back to be the worst sentence I've ever written), it is now down to one of these two sides to book its place into the final in Paris. City show dominance against everyone they play, but it is teams with countering pace and line-breaking quality (Modrić) that cause problems for Pep's team. Man City were exceptional in the first leg, but Real Madrid were equally good in executing the game plan and leaving with a result. 

It really was an incredible first leg, and the good news is we get one more bite of the cherry... This is a must watch next week.

Are Liverpool in for the Quadruple?

Saturday 7:30 AM ET –– Newcastle (+700) vs Liverpool (-240)

It's happy days for Liverpool fans at the moment... On the back of a routine 2-0 victory over Villarreal in their Champions League semi-final opening leg, news broke yesterday that Jürgen Klopp signed a two-year contract extension that sees him remain Liverpool manager for another four years total.

So far, Liverpool have won the League Cup, are into the FA Cup final, are ninety minutes away from a CL Final, and sit just one point behind Man City with five games to play. If Liverpool were to win everything, they would do what no one has done before: win the quadruple. Man City won a domestic treble in 18/19, and the legendary Manchester United treble winning side of 98/99 won the PL, CL, and FA Cup. But winning all four has never been done...

This weekend Liverpool run into Eddie Howe's unbelievably resilient Newcastle side. When Howe took over, Newcastle were 19th, with 5 points and ZERO wins. Now, they have won four of five and sit 9TH in the table. Insane job Eddie Howe has done. Newcastle will be stubborn for Liverpool, and remember, this is the same team Liverpool will hope takes something off City the following weekend.  

Dan & Billy's Betting Picks

Dan's Picks: This week is a full English: I like Newcastle to cover +2 at home to Liverpool (-150), and I really like Man City to cover -1.5 (-115) against Leeds at the weekend as well. But my mortal lock of the week is Wolves (+175) at home to Brighton. Getting crazy good value there too. 

Billy's Picks: I like a little both teams to score in the Villa Norwich game (-105) to start me off this week. Think Norwich will get one there. I also like Crystal Palace based on value alone (+205) against a struggling Southampton. I'm also going to go with another value play in the City Madrid game next week: going for the draw at (+280). Why do I feel like all these are going to lose?

Goal Of The Week 

Serge Gnabry put together this peach of a finish on the big stage to open the scoring for Bayern against Dortmund. Great technique. Beers all around.

Red Card Of The Week 

This week we're talking about a red card that wasn't: Since this call got a lot of coverage this week, let's take a look at Joel Matip's challenge on Anthony Gordon. One of our own (there's only 2 of us, so do the math) even took to Instagram to find some likeminded it-was-a-pen people. If it was a penalty, it could've been red too. 

Matip catches Gordon's foot, but was there anywhere else to put it in stride, and did Gordon step into him? Did Matip swing his arms and body or was it shoulder to shoulder where Gordon was already going to ground? What say you?

Quiz Answer: Benzema sits 4th all time with 85 Champions League goals, just one goal behind Robert Lewandowski (86).

Have a great weekend and continue to spread the Straight Red love if you want a chance to win a jersey of your choice!