A Saturday Night In May In Madrid: Bayern v Inter

Congratulations to Inter Milan, who qualified for the Champions League final despite losing 1-0 at the Nou Camp. While you might hear the usual nonsense about how no team has won consecutive Champions Leagues, is there any correlation between Champions League/European Cup winners and World Cup winners?

The only time that the same country provided both the European Cup winner and the World Cup winner was in 1974, when Bayern Munich and West Germany did the honours. There's a bit of an issue with South American teams winning seven of the thirteen World Cup finals tournaments since the start of the European Cup/Champions League, but Spain (courtesy of two Real Madrid wins and Barcelona's 2006 triumph) have had three Champions League wins in World Cup years when European teams have won it, followed by England (Aston Villa), Germany and Italy (AC Milan) with one each.

Which leads - in a very roundabout way - to the the following position: it is unlikely that the country that provides the winner of the Champions League will win the World Cup. Judging by the current odds, that's bad news for defending world champions Italy. Incidentally, there have been two German/Italian finals and Germany have won them both - Hamburg beat Juventus in 1983 and Borussia Dortmund beat Juventus in 1997

No football tips for tomorrow (Thursday is not a traditional football day as far as I'm concerned), although I hope that both Fulham and Liverpool win through to the Europa League final as it'll make odds compilation a lot easier. Moving on to the horses, Eterna finished 8th at Southwell and so the torch of losing is hereby passed to Haasem, running at Brighton in the 5:30pm.