Sporting Madness

Some of the finest things about soccer are the inventive anthems each team's fans come up with. They can reference a past triumph, immortalize a particular player, or mock rival players, teams, fans and even the referees. They're also one of the prime reasons why soccer is so much more interesting and interactive than other sports: most North American pro sporting experiences involve blasting canned music (occasionally all right), doing "The Wave" (see Drunk Jays Fans for a great takedown of that one), running stupid animations on the scoreboards (Ben Knight had a nice rebuke of those), or trying to pump people up via the stupid NoiseMeter (no outside destruction of this is needed). Songs have always been a hallmark of the European soccer experience, but they've caught on in North America as well: the Whitecaps have long used "White is the Colour" (a takeoff on the popular Chelsea song " Blue is the Colour "), and TFC supporters have come up ...

For once, the English Premier League has gone right down to the wire, with the championship, European places and the relegation battle all to be decided on the final day of the season. At the top, Manchester United and Chelsea are even on 84 points, but United have a vastly superior goal differential (+56 to +39). Thus, if United can secure an away victory against Wigan at the JJB Stadium, they will claim the title and Chelsea's game at home against Bolton will be meaningless. The Red Devils should be in good shape in their bid to claim a tenth Premier League title, as they look to have regained their form of old after last week's brilliant 4-1 victory over West Ham United , where they prevailed despite being limited to ten men after Nani's first-half suspension. However, Chelsea have also been hot lately, and they eked out a narrow 2-1 victory over United two weeks ago at the Bridge. United received some good news on the injury side this week, as Serbian central defender N...