As the world turned on their television sets in anticipation of an exciting evening (read night in India) of football at the Stadion Eden in Prague, the Super Cup final between Bayern Munich and Chelsea FC (the winners of the Champions League and the Europa League in case you were wondering) turned out to be a rather sordid, scrappy affair.

While the press had a field day in the build up to the match, terming it a battle of footballing ideologies between Jose and Pep, it was a very confused brand of football on display. As the Germans looked confused between employing a slightly amateurish form of the tiki-taka and hocking the ball forward for Mandzukic, Chelsea started with Torres on what could be one of the most important days of his career before the transfer window closes on Monday (Chelsea don’t have a match this weekend). And while El Nino did in fact deliver, sending a message to his gaffer, he immediately went back to displaying his sluggishness when in front of a goal with only Neuer to beat.

The 21,000 strong crowd was raising the roof in the 8th minute when Torres latched onto a Schurrle pass to drill home, with Viktoria Plzen’s players taking special notice of the gaps in Munich’s defence (Bayern and Plzen are incidentally in the same CL group). Bayern remained rather subdued in the first half with Pep calling out the occasional instruction in what could only be his improved German vocabulary since the players seemed to understand and plug the gaps. Mourinho on the other hand had his choicest surly look on display and often had a few choice words for the referee.

The second half began with a moment of incandescence from the Germans when Toni Kroos teed up Ribery and the UEFA Player of the Year delivered. The rest of the half had a few exciting moments in Ivanovic heading into the cross-bar, Dante slipping in front of the goal and Torres still not managing to capitalise, Robben shooting aimlessly and Ramires’ red card in what was definitely the stupidest challenge of the night.

In a classic case of cometh the hour, cometh the man, Eden Hazard received a Luiz pass on the edge of the German box in the 3rd minute of ET and proceeded to dribble across 2 defenders and slot home an awkward bouncy ball into the net. The Germans had clearly forgotten their ball-spotting skills elsewhere. Bayern left it to the 120th minute to equalise via Martinez, taking the game into penalties.

While the fans held their collective breaths, Alaba scored, Luiz scored, Kroos scored, Oscar scored, Lahm scored, Lampard scored, Ribery scored, A.Cole scored, Shaqiri scored and Lukaku missed, allowing Bayern to avenge their 2012 CL Final defeat and win the quadruple.

MOM: Cech, who started with a white jersey and ended with a brown one.

Adios!

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