Welcome to magic Saturday! A Saturday that's full of wonder and memories and well, magic. What sort of magic, might you ask? FA Cup magic of course! And Africa Cup of Nations magic! Didier Drogba magic! Salomon Kalou magic! And who doesn't like magic?
Some FA Cup magic was already served up on Friday, with Millwall eliminating ... wait for it ... Aston Villa! Maybe instead of apologizing for the whole ballLAD nonsense, Chelsea should've apologized for the 8-0 thrashing that absolutely broke the Villans - 2 wins (one of which was essentially still a loss, while the other was against second tier strugglers Ipswich Town in the FA Cup 3rd round), 2 draws, 6 losses since; now just 1 point above the relegation zone.
There's a whole bunch more 4th round FA Cup ties today then, plenty of which involve plenty of big names. Doesn't that sound magical? There will be Stoke City vs. Manchester City (7:45 A.M. EST), Gus Poyet's Brighton vs. Arsenal (10:00 A.M. EST), Manchester United vs. Fulham (12:30 P.M. EST). I doubt there'll be any magic in that last one (well, unless you're counting Sir Alex Ferguson's black magic), but the other two may yet provide a surprise. Sorry, not surprise, MAGIC!
Concurrent with all this magical FA Cup action, and thus posing a bit of a conundrum, will be two AFCON group stage matches: Ivory Coast vs. Tunisia (10 A.M. EST) and Algeria vs. Togo (1:00 P.M. EST). That first one, especially, will be hard to miss, pitting the two Matchday 1 winners against each other for group supremacy, with Didier Drogba leading the line for Les Éléphants. My boy Kalou came on as a sub in the first match, while off-n-on Chelsea target Wilfried Bony also featured.
Discuss.