By Myles Palmer
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Arsenal 2 Borussia Dortmund 0
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Freddie’s back – and that’s bad news for PSV, Leeds and Auxerre !
It was shock to arrive and find Freddie starting the game.
But Arsene knows who lashed Lazio and who jiggered Juventus.
Edu was unfit but the manager did not tell the Swede he was playing until the morning of the game.
When Dortmund came out they looked a bit naff in their baggy yellow shirts and tubular black shorts.
But they are a clever, disciplined, tenacious team.
Their style is Bundesliga but sharper, tighter, a lot of passes backwards and sideways, a lot of passes to wide positions.
Economical. They don’t waste possession, don’t give you much.
Auxerre and PSV will struggle to score against them. I can see Dortmund drawing three of their next five games.
First half, it looked as if Arsenal had one dribbler too many.
Without Edu, who mostly prefers to pass, rather than run with the ball, a delicate balance had been disrupted, with Henry,Wiltord and Ljungberg all dribbling a bit.
So it didn’t look like they would open Dortmund up.Four times the final pass was overhit and it was 0-0 at half time.
The first goal was Bergkamp’s first of the season.
A Luzhny throw, Wiltord to Gilberto, slid forward into Wiltord’s run, flicked to Dennis, bang – deflected off Metzelder’s leg for 1-0 in 62 minutes.
Then Seaman caught a corner and threw it to Wiltord and he carried the ball into the Dortumd half and found Henry, whose volleyed pass released Freddie, who looked a yard offside on the TV replay.
Freddie swerved round Jens Lehman on the edge of the box, skipped neatly over the keeper’s legs, knocked it in with his left foot – and did his little forward roll.
Nobody does it better!
Superswede, the two-touch terror, is special man
who plays a specialist role in an extraspecial team.
To play a comeback game against lowly Reading last week, and then start against the German champions, and score your trademark goal, as if you’ve never been away!
The lad is different class. He made my night.
Bergkamp was pulling out all the stops.
It looked like : This is my last chance to win the European Cup,we really need to win this game, so I don’t care who I have to kick or knock over.
It’s always fun to watch one of the great artist-technicians switching into warrior-mode.Dennis can be one helluva gladiator when he wants to be.
Just enjoy him while he’s here cos you won’t see another like him.
A wholly dedicated footballer and one of the most unselfish superstars you will ever see.
Discerning Dutch fans will want to see him in Eindhoven.
They realise that as soon as DB10 stopped playing for Holland they failed to qualify for the World Cup.
That ain’t coincidence. His goals and passes did a lot to get them to many previous tournaments
DIDNT GILBERTO MAKE SOME GREAT TACKLES?
The big Brazilian will get better every month. In some ways hereminds me of the great Paul McGrath.
Arsenal seem to be perfecting the fine art of winning tight games.
Its not easy to be comfortable in tight games, not easy to be confident, to be yourself, to be sure it’s all gonna work out well.
Arsenal v Dortmund was tight for 62 minutes.And then,suddenly, it was all over.
So Eindhoven, really, is the next frontier.The away hoodoo, the jinx that must be banished, exorcised.
What a challenge! Confront your biggest problem, wrestle with it, nail it to the floor.
Win a Champions League away game – and change your life forever !
Overall, Tuesday night was a league game, a Champions League game, a FIRST Champions League game of the season.
It wasnt as exciting as Juventus or Leverkusen games, but it was a perfect result.
ARSENAL won, got Freddie back, and saw Auxerre and PSV draw 0-0 .
What more do you want?
ARGENTINIANS are doing better in the Champions League than they did in the World Cup.
Saviola scored a great goal in a 3-2 win against Bruges, Aimar scored a beauty, Crespo got two for Inter, and even Veron got one against Maccabi Haifa.
Liverpool crashed 2-0 in Valencia, where Dudek made three great saves in the second half. It could have been 5-0.
For me, Gerard Houllier tinkers far too much. You don’t play Cheyrou on Saturday and Riise on Tuesday.
You don’t do that in September. You don’t do it with youn g players in September.
You don’t start Diouf and Heskey up front if they have never played together.
You don’t drop Michael Owen, even if he is off-form. Owen has a psychological edge over Ayala.
It’ s a team game and Valencia have great teamwork.
Organisation, technical soloidity, a wealth of good habits.
Bottom line,Valencia are the best team to never win it, the best of the wannabe teams,
They have the same consistency of selection and performance that Nottingham Forest and Liverpool used to have.
And Houllier, bless him, is the polar opposite of that. Huge squad, new players every summer, chopping and changing, no consistency.
How can you pass to John-Arne Riise if you don’t know where he is?
Back home at John Lennon International Airport the players must have been shell-shocked.
But they know that Houllier blew it. The Valencia debacle was what Lennon would call instant karma.