Riise:Liverpool::Senderos:Arsenal

You know the funniest part of this video?



It's not that Riise scores an own goal—that might not be funny at all if you are a Liverpool fan (although I'm not sure if we have any around here)—it's that within about 4 hours of the end of the match, this video (or some incarnation of it) had already been posted to youtube 35 times, and probably counting.

The second best part of the video?

It was such a spectacular failure that ESPN even teased it on SportsCenter. Yeah, the four-letter has been tossing the beautiful game a bone with the odd goal in the Top 10 plays of the day more and more recently, but to actually tease it, and do so with a non-Latino anchor in the ESPN Deportes update? That's truly uncanny.

But the third and maybe best best part of the goal was after they showed the highlights on SportsCenter. The anchors went to the Closing Number, which was something about John Smoltz being on the cusp of 3000 Ks, then coming out of the bumper ESPN's Robert Flores, who was anchoring the broadcast, made an offhand comment about Riise's blunder, saying: "Feel bad for that, uh, the Chelsea player... the own goal."

I'm positive that's it verbatim because I rewound the Tivo. Could it have been just a simple blunder? Eh, probably not because he tacked on a gratuitous: "The sickest man in Chelsea right now" while the other anchor tried to hide his look of horror and summon the next program to start by sheer force of will.

You know, it might almost be forgivable getting a team wearing red and a team wearing blue mixed if not for the fact that the former, Liverpool, is nicknamed The Reds, while Chelsea is nicknamed the Blues.

Seriously, this is not even par for the course for a SportsCenter anchor. Last round there were blatant mispronunciations of both "Fenerbahce" and "Steven Gerrard," but this is a whole other level of bad.

By the way, in 8 visits to Stamford Bridge under Rafa Benitez, Liverpool has managed to score all of zero goals.

[Update: Well bastards from some combination of ESPN or UEFA don't want you to see the above video. That's okay, the call on this one makes it all the better.]

Read more on "Riise:Liverpool::Senderos:Arsenal"...