Barcelona only have three players who would get into the United team.
Iniesta, Xavi and Messi.
On TV it has all been about Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the best players in the world.That’s understandable because TV is a mass medium and a visual medium. TV can show you what two superstars can do.
But football is a team game and tonight’s final in Rome is between two excellent teams who both score loads of goals.
Barcelona score more than United but the holders have a far better defence,
Even if Marquez, Dani Alves and Abidal were all playing tonight, Man United would have the superior defence.
Iniesta says they are scared of Rooney because he’s so strong and aggressive.
He says: Yes, Ronaldo is fantastic but we are accustomed to playing against tricky, fast-dribbling Latin players.
To them, Rooney is a different animal: stocky, very fast, hungry and energetic, a whirlwind, a one-man tornado.
For me, the two biggest appetites are Xavi and Rooney.
Rooney’s appetite is gigantic.
So is Xavi’s. A magisterial inside forward with a half-back’s toughness, Xavi is a matador at the hub of their short-passing style. Anderson will be tackling Xavi and hustling him, but Xavi is probably cute enough to play round Anderson all night long, especially if Anderson gets the first yellow card of the game.
Today we are told Barca coach Pep Guardiola will play Busquets, a novice, in CM and Yaya Toure at the back. I wouldn’t do that. If my defence was unavailable I would NOT break up my midfield to patch up my back four. I can see why Guardiola did that against Drogba but I’d play Puyol and Pique at centreback. Yaya Toure is very strong but positionally suspect at CB.
I love Spanish football and don’t mind if Barcelona beat Manchester United tonight. If they win, good luck to them.
I watched the video of the 1994 CL final in Athens this morning. It was a game like this one, where the key attackers were playing wide, so they could cut in to shoot on their stronger foot: Stoichkov for Barcelona was on the right, and Mijotovic was on the right for AC Milan. Maldini was at CB for the suspended Baresi.
Early on, 12 or 14 minutes, Guardiola hit a long ball wide to Stoichkov on the right, and the Bulgarian surprisingly volleyed it across the box to Romario, Maldini went for it., Romario shot wide under pressure. If that shot had gone in, maybe it was a different game and a different result.
After 22, the first goal came from pressing, which I define as attacking when you don’t have the ball.
The incident was a bit like Paris, where Gilberto’s square pass to Hleb led to Eto’o taking the ball off Hleb and breaking and Jens Lehmann bringing Eto’o down and being sent off.
In 1994 in Rome, Nadal headed Rossie’s goal clearance neatly to Sergi on the touchline, Savicevic robbed him, waltzed inside Nadal, evaded the covering Guardiola in the box, and scuffed a looping ball across to the far post where Daniel Massaro knocked it in.
And AC Milan walked it after that.
Capello’s Milan pulverised Cruyff’s Barcelona, smashed them to a pulp, beat them by 4-0.
Desailly, the powerhouse, was at the centre of that monumental victory in which Barcelona’s team of bantamweights were totally overwhelmed by muscle and pace. Two of the next three goals came from pressing, from winning the ball high up the field.
If United play a high line, press fiercely and score as early as 22 minutes, they will win but not by 4-0. In a tight, cagey game, they can win 1-0.
Both teams will be nervous in the tunnel and nervous when the game starts and it will be a tight match. But more open that the two Chelsea-Barcelona legs in the semi-final.
Wayne Rooney could be United key gladiator, like his mate Stevie G was in Istanbul. He could be the standard-bearer, the piston that keeps their juggernaut rolling down the road towards a historic treble
I got Sky for the 1996-97 season and soon started watching a lot of La Liga games. That season was Fabio Capello’s first in Spain, Bobby Robson’s first, Ronaldo’s first, and also Rivaldo’s first.
Capello’s Real Madrid were champions, beating Robson’s Barcelona by 92 points to 90 over 42 games.
I’ve watched a lot of Barcelona in the last 12 seasons and seen some amazing football.
One of my closest sporting associates doesn’t like their motto, More Than a Club. He says that is bollocks, they’re just a football team like any other. But I don’t mind Barcelona having a political and social dimension to their Catalan identity. Spain is a big country with very different regional cultures.
And having been in Barcelona from May 14 to 22, I like the city and the team even more.
PS : I hope the 22+ players don’t make as many mistakes in the match as I’ve made in this article…