By Myles Palmer
Arsenal 2 Bayern Munich 2
I have just four comments about this game.
1. Arsenal and Italian referee Stefano Braschi were mugged by crafty Bayern divers.
2. Lee Dixon would have headed away Mehmet Scholl’s equalising free-kick. Or nipped back and forward on the line to put him off.
3. When Tarnat made it 2-1 after 56 minutes I would have taken Kanu off and put on a midfield player, probably Lauren.
That score, 2-1, should have been a signal for 4-5-1.When Henry tired I would have replaced him with Wiltord.
Clearly, it is hard (and perhaps controversial) to take off a striker who has made a brilliant goal and scored a fabulous second goal himself.
4. Ljungberg is much more likely to score coming in from the left.Onto his stronger right foot. So I would have switched him and Pires during the game.
BASICALLY, the first half was far too easy for Arsenal.They were surprised and confused by how easy it was. Their football was much slicker, faster, more fluid, more ambitious- exactly as I had expected.
Bayern were not at the races. Their only shot of the first half was in the 40th minute.
Arsenal bossed the game, got the second goal, which Henry set up sweetly for Kanu (54), thought it was all over, lost concentration – and bang! Tarnat scored within 60 seconds after a dubiously awarded free-kick was not cleared.
After that goal Arsenal lost shape, focus, nerve. The weaknesses in the side, which had been largely hidden, became obvious.
Then, when Scholl made it 2-2 ten minutes later, a big hole developed in their pattern of play. Henry and Kanu were isolated from the rest of the team. There was nobody to link them because Kanu is too static. The best link is Bergkamp, who did not come on. The second best link is Pires,who was replaced by Wiltord in 76 minutes.
If Arsenal had scored the second goal before half-time, or passed the ball around for ten minutes, they would have won.
Bayern had obviously planned to go in 0-0 at half-time.
Then Thierry Henry scored a brilliant goal after three minutes. He dummied a Pires diagonal ball, Kanu took one touch, played him in with a sublimely disguised reverse pass, and Henry pounced like starving vulture, sweeping his first time shot past Kahn with great panache.
Henry is usually a cool, laidback player, even when he scores. But he raced away to the corner flag like a demented man, screaming his head off.
He had not scored for six games.He knew how pivotal this game was,and how vital the first strike was. So that goal left him more pumped up than we have ever seen him.His eyes were bulging and he was pummelling his enemies with both fists!
Manic? Just a little bit !
Amazingly, Bayern then carried on playing negatively, as if nothing had happened.They did not respond by trying to get the goal back.
It was : Damage Limitation Mode, chaps.
Bayern produced the most feeble first half performance I have ever seen by an Arsenal opponent in Europe. Solna were better, Sparta Prague were better, Donetsk were a lot better.
However, Hitzfeld’s single substitition had a bigger effect on the game than Wenger’s two subs, Wiltord and Lauren, who contributed nothing.
He brought on Paulo Sergio to double up against Ashley Cole, Arsenal’s novice left back, who was making his first Champions League start.
Cole had started brightly and positively. But he tired and showed his inexperience. He wound up pushing opponents from behind in the second half after making them chase him in the first.
So the defence shifted over to cover Cole, and that stretched Arsenal on the other side, which was where the move for the second goal came from – their right flank.
Luzhny had one of his worst games at right back.He annoyed fans by refusing to shoot when Pires found him on the edge of the box, preferring to dribble towards the corner flag. But he won a corner from which Arsenal almost scored. Pires took the corner, Henry flicked on, and Adams got power on his header, which hit Linke on the head and deflected onto the bar (37).
Bayern were craftier than Arsenal because they refused pointblank to play them at their own game. They walked onto the field and disappeared for 40 minutes. Their approach was rope-a-dope and Arsenal and the ref allowed themselves to be mugged.
Bayern Munich is a famous club with a great history and a poor team. I don’t rate them. Milan, Deportivo La Coruna, Man United and Real Madrid are much better.
So I don’t think they will win the Champions League.I really, really hope they don’t win the Champions League. I thought they were dishonest and boring. I believe that Arsenal could play them again, any time, anywhere, and beat them.
Bayern today are far inferior to Hitzfeld’s Borussia Dortmund side which beat twice beat Man Utd 1-0 in semi-finals where everyone in Britain said United should have won and missed a lot of chances. I was in a minority of one back in 1997. I thought Dortmund were the better side in
both games.
Is this sour grapes?
No. Arsenal were the better side, scored two excellent goals in open play,hit the post and had a viable double penalty shout for a push on Keown and a clear handball in the same attack.
But maybe there is a very fine line between being cagey professionals and crafty cheats.
For me, Bayern Munich were on the wrong side of that line. And that is not sour grapes or something written in the heat of the moment.
I was at the game and I watched the highlights and I watched the 90-minute video today. I didn’t realise how clever their diving was until I saw the video.I didn’t realise how sustained their diving was until I saw the video.
Bayern did not really play, even when they came forward in the second half, and hardly had a shot. Manninger did not have a real save to make all night.
In hindsight, the main feature of the night was Bayern’s diving. Elber dived shamelessly.
They just dived to win free kicks. They dived to waste time. They dived to get the ball back. They dived to break up Arsenal’s rhythm, to create a stop-start game. They dived to con the ref.
Adams conceded only one foul in the whole game and that was a bad call by Braschi. Elber backed into Adams and the ref fell for it (86). Adams was furious, tried to pick up Elber, and almost ripped his shirt off.
But Bayern’s diving worked. They got two free kicks and two goals and a point.
And nobody said much about it. Just proves you can fool most of the people all of the time.
Freddie Ljungberg, who was better than any of the Bayern players, would not get into their side because he does not dive. He rides tackles, stays on his feet, goes for goal bravely.
He beat three defenders before Sforza took him out with an NHL bodycheck (27), for which the Swiss was booked.He got onto a Vieira pass and fired just wide with his weaker left foot (48)
Yes, Ljungberg does kick the man sometimes, not the ball.But he is a model of sportsmanship compared to the Munich muggers.
If you look a long-term view, a historical view, you might say that Arsenal, having taken two years to learn the alphabet of the Champions League, are at the GCSE stage now.
So maybe it was no surprise to see them turned over by a cynical old team with four A-levels.
6th December 2000.