Sporting Madness

It all comes down to this. On the final day of the season, with the English Premier League title on the line , Chelsea will host Wigan Athletic at Stamford Bridge. They sit top of the table with 83 points, so three points from a victory will clinch it for them. If they draw or lose, however, Manchester United could sneak by them. The Red Devils host Stoke at Old Trafford, and are only one point back of Chelsea. A draw does them no good thanks to Chelsea's superior goal differential, but if they win and the Blues drop points, it will be United who are champions of England. Adding to the drama, all of Sunday's games take place at the same time, 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific. I'll be live-blogging both the Manchester United and Chelsea games and throwing in updates from other ones from time to time. Come join me here then to see how the EPL title is decided! EPL Title

Thanks to Chelsea's 2-0 thumping of Liverpool earlier this morning, Manchester United head to the Stadium of Light with their backs against the wall. They must beat Sunderland to have any hope of remaining in the title race. Kickoff is at 11 a.m. Eastern/8 a.m. Pacific. Join me in the live blog below! Manchester United - Sunderland

The English Premier League title race continues towards its exciting conclusion, and this second-to-last week features two matches that might just decide it all. First, Liverpool host league-leaders Chelsea at Anfield, and then Manchester United travel to the Stadium of Light to face Sunderland. Chelsea have 80 points from 36 matches, one more than United, and are also well ahead on goal difference. In the last week of the season, they'll host Wigan, which should be a relatively easy win; thus, their performance today will be crucial. United have a bit of an easier schedule, on the road against Sunderland today and then at home against Stoke next week, but they could win out and still lose if Chelsea take both of their games. I'm planning to live blog both of today's clashes, so stop by here for that. The first one, Liverpool and Chelsea, will kick off at 8:30 Eastern (5:30 Pacific) and will be live-blogged in this post; the second one, United and Sunderland, kicks off at 1...

[Photo from BSketti ] The Guardian is reporting that Roy Keane may return to English football as the manager of Championship side Ipswich Town. This is a terrific move in my view. As I wrote back when he left Sunderland, Keane has shown his managerial chops before, especially in the Championship; he took a mediocre side up to the Premiership and then held them there. I speculated back then that backroom intrigue involving owner Ellis Short may have been involved in his exit from Sunderland, and it appears that that may have been the case . Keane was far from perfect as a Premier League manager, especially in the transfer market, but he was learning and there's a good chance he'll be able to do well there in the future. This looks like a good situation for Keane as well. Jim Magilton was just fired , but the team isn't actually in bad shape. They're ninth out of 24 Championship squads at the moment and have some decent talent, including 22-year-old Argentine winge...

After a couple of weeks off thanks to the interlull and some scheduling issues, Premier League Punditry will make its triumphant return today. We'll kick things off at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. Join us in the live blog below then! Premier League Punditry 04-05-09

Plenty to talk about in this week's instalment of Premier League Punditry, including the Carling Cup and the slipups of Liverpool and Aston Villa. Join us in the live blog below! Premier League Punditry 03-01-09

Just a quick note that today's edition of Premier League Punditry will be at 6 p.m. Eastern instead of the usual 1:30 p.m. due to work commitments. I'll be hosting, and Amrit and Phil from There Is No Original Name For This Sports Blog will be joining me. Come talk all things soccer with us!

Photo: Former Sunderland manager Roy Keane [Getty Images via The Independent ] It was rather surprising to see Manchester United legend Roy Keane step down [ ESPN Soccernet ] from managing Sunderland last week. Keane achieved some outstanding success with the Black Cats, even though many don't seem to acknowledge that at the moment. When he took the team over in August 2006, they were sitting in the relegation zone of the Championship (for non-English football fans, that's the level below the Premier League). In that season, he took them from the bottom to the top, and earned not only promotion to the Premiership, but also the Championship title. He was named Manager of the Year at the Championship level, and deservingly so. Keane also had success with Sunderland in the Premier League last season and managed to keep them out of the relegation zone for much of the year. They pulled off a 15th-place finish, which is rather good for a just-promoted side (see County, Derby fo...

Most of the time, an athlete being called a one-man or a one-woman team is pure hyperbole; a compliment to the superstar player, but an insult to their teammates and an exaggeration of their role. It's extremely rare to actually see one person win a game in a team sport by themselves. Even some of the best athletic performances of all time that come close to this status eventually fall short: the example that comes to mind is Diego Maradona's performance against England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup , where he scored possibly the greatest goal of all time (slo-mo version with classical music here ) as well as the most controversial one (consider yourself lucky if the words "Hand of God" don't evoke sporting memories). Maradona needed very little help on either goal, as it was a mishit clearing attempt from England's Steve Hodge that produced his "divine intervention" rather than a pass from a teammate, and he dribbled through most of ...

Fabio Capello held his first press conference as the manager of the English national soccer team Monday, and there were some unexpected results. Capello declined to give any players assurances of a spot, which seems to be a good decision: they don't play a friendly until Feb. 6 and don't have a competitive game until World Cup qualifying starts in September, and the landscape of who's available and qualified could alter dramatically in that time. This is one of the advantages of bringing in an outsider, as he can evaluate the players and the program on their own merits without legacies and reputations clouding the picture. Capello certainly has the credentials to make an impact. He won 14 titles with his previous four clubs (Milan, Roma, Juventus, and Real Madrid), and took Milan to an unexpected 4-0 Champions League triumph over Barcelona back in 1994. He won the Spanish league title with Madrid last season, but was then sacked after a fallout with management, likely ove...

According to a Reuters story today, Jose Mourinho has ruled himself out of contention for the England national soccer team manager's job. As I laid out in an earlier post on my Journal blog, Mourinho was far and away the best candidate for the job: he had enjoyed fantastic success with both minnows (FC Porto) and giants (Chelsea), and had also proven himself capable of both managing superstar egos and getting the most out of limited talent. He is also perhaps the only person adequately prepared to survive the storm of scrutiny that goes with the England job, which is unparalled in professional sports. In fact, Richard Starnes muses that it may have been the prospect of this scrutiny itself that led Mourinho to decline. If the self-anointed "Special One" who played the media like a fiddle during his time at Chelsea can't handle the prospect of even more invasive media coverage, who possibly can? Of the remaining candidates , Martin O'Neill and Jurgen Klinsmann s...