Carling Cup final 2011: Birmingham City 2 Arsenal 1. If only all the soccer finals were like this one. I'm not about to say that this final had everything, but it had more than ample amounts of most of the things that any decent final should have, in particular entertainment.

The playoff system has its critics. I am not among them. I like the playoffs. I like them despite the fact that they have considerable drawbacks and that they can certainly be viewed as "not fair."

This past weekend has been, you may have noticed, the Big FAC Weekend. By FAC I mean England's FA Cup, and FAC has been the name of the game, certainly on Fox Soccer Channel. The FAC has been praised and exalted to the skies, all of this delivered in breathless, panting tones by FSC's coterie of Brits and wanna-be Brits.

It is generally agreed that the sight of players complaining about the referee's decisions is not one we want to see on the soccer field. Even worse, is the spectacle of a crowd of players hounding the referee, chasing him and yelling furiously at him.

What to make of yesterday's Arsenal vs. Barcelona game? Both teams looked good, very good, in short, alternating spells. The penultimate spell belonged to Arsenal -- during which they got both their goals. Even after Andrei Arshavin's goal, which turned out to be the winner, there was still time for a spell of Barcelona dominance that threatened, seriously threatened, to produce the tying goal.

Just this once I'm going to rank English soccer ahead of Brazilian and give Wayne Rooney pride of place in the weekend's soccer happenings for his superb goal against Manchester City.

I would have thought -- I'd bet most people would have thought -- that when you pay an athlete astronomical sums for his services, you get to tell him when he must make himself available, no?

Those who have been slagging off the English Premier League, who have been condemning it as over-hyped, a league of mostly boring games hardly worth watching -- well, they'll have to shut up for the moment. Because on Saturday the EPL produced 41 goals in 8 games -- that's over five per game!

Liverpool, having said goodbye to Fernando Torres -- whose performances of late had been half-hearted, to put it mildly -- this week welcomed a new forward in Uruguay's Luis Suarez, signed from Ajax.