++ [ originally posted by swag ] ++
"Luck" is the consolation whine most often employed by losers (such as any big ManU supporters might prove case and point). It's a cop out. It's a feeble attempt to assuage the pain of failure.
It's never, "We got beat by a better team, despite the fact that the budget for our individual players was several times theirs." It's, "We should have won if not for that darn luck factor. What could we do?" <hands in the air helplessly>
Screw luck. ManU should swallow the big bitter pill of losing and inferiority that they deserve this year. No excuses. Get over it. Fess up and take it like men.
Juve fans have seen us lose enough CLs in our history. But whining about some myserious, act-of-God luck factor would never get us anywhere. We lost those games to Milan, Dortmund, etc. Nothing is going to change that, and nothing should. Worthy teams make their luck. Losers don't, complain about it, and dwell on it long after the trophy has been engraved.
If it's so simple to win the CL by "lowering" your squad's tactics to the level of FC Porto, how come no one was able to succeed at beating them?
I don't mean any of this as a personal attack, but there's been so much denial and rationalization in the CL threads here this year because Porto doesn't have the marquis players, the huge budget, doesn't come from a big money league, etc. Is it so hard to conceive that calcio is a team sport where team tactics, rather than individual performances, matter? To say that a team doesn't deserve a championship, that they fairly won on the pitch, just because they don't have enough endorsement-ready players or that they were "lucky" is asinine.