Barca v Chelsea

[Kendall]

Chelsea were quality, if you can appreciate anything other than ultra attacking football.

Barca looked venuerable at the back.

 

[steve]

Weren't impressed with Barca to be honest and do think they are over rated. Toure waving for a yellow was a disgrace (fair play ref for booking him), Alves is a horrible fucker who simulated injury and kicked fuck out of people all night and Henry is still an arrogant cock who is an horrible nasty git when things don't go his way.

Xavi and Iniesta are good players, as is Messi although the comparisons with Maradona are daft as last night showed.

Pre match I wanted Barca to win the whole thing, but the way they played coupled with their post match comments do not mark them out as a thing worthy of praise...

 

[Bonjour]

..

Xavi and Iniesta are good players, as is Messi although the comparisons with Maradona are daft as last night showed.

...

Indeed. Had a young Maradonna been playing last night, I'd bet he would have got at least a brace.

 

[Kendall]

Messi was awful.

 

[Michey]

Messi was awful.

Didn't have a great game, compared to what he can do

But when you say "awful"", what do you compare with?


"Chelsea a big attacking threat" - we haven't seen that for many years. Going to be interesting since they will have to leave their own half now and then, it will create spaces for a superior, faster and smarter Barca midfield when it comes to creating chances and play attacking football.

But since Barca will be without Pyuol and probably Marquez it's an advantage for boring Chelski anyway. Sad thing for football.

 

[Kendall]

Awful by that standard (not necessarily his) but his delivery was poor and his shooting was worse.

Chelsea...hmmm they scored 7 goals in their last 2 CL games, thats more than Barca did, I'd call that quite potent and I see them playing with Anelka and Drogba from the start with Lampard further up the pitch.

Chelsea were involved in one of the best all out attacking games I've ever seen recently, poor day for football indeed.

 

[donny1013]

I'll base my judgement on Messi for his whole season rather than one game last night. Top scorer in the CL with 8, 21 goals in La Liga, best player in the world this season. I remember Ronaldo was anonymous in both legs against Barca last season. I think Messi will actually have more joy against Cole in the 2nd leg.

 

[Kendall]

Well I base my opinion on him over the whole season as being an exceptional player but we're talking about the game last night, in which he was far from exceptional.

I agree with your point about Cole though, it was always felt that a right footed player playing left back would do a good job on Messi

 

[mil1lion]

I actually think the result is better for Barca than for Chelsea though, because Chelsea didn't get an away goal. Thats why i was surprised by the way Chelsea played. We know Barca aren't great at the back, so i thought Chelsea might actually look to get a goal or two. But on another day Barca would have scored a couple (Eto'o, Hleb, Bojan) and Henry would have won a penalty. Its just one of those things, and Barca have to focus on Saturday night now. They still have a great chance in winning the League and Champions League. I can see them scoring a couple at Stamford Bridge in the return leg.

 

[donny1013]

Far from his exceptional talent yes but 'awful' is OTT. I am surprised more teams have not done that against Messi as he is always going to drift in from the right, stopping him when in full flow is the problem though. It also didn't help Messi that Dani Alves was in fact awful last night, whereas usually he is the perfect foil for him

 

[spursphil]

Chelsea managed to draw the life blood out of that game last night. Abramovich has spent millions trying to get attractive football, and we witnessed a brand of anti-football that is just dire to watch. The millions of people watching that game last night across Europe will come to one concultion, boring boring Chelsea.

 

[Goldman]

There's no point me really arguing with you Warick, or whatever your name is.

As we can go back and forth about great games from each league. I never said that one game made our league the most entertaining. I was just countering your argument that we english dont produce attacking football in the CL. With probably the game with the most attacking football in the whole CL tournament.

I personally feel our league is the most exciting to watch. (I do also watch a lot of games from the spanish league too, which i enjoy mostly.) There is no doubting its the strongest, having 3 teams in the CL semi's two years in a row is pretty conclusive.

So if you dont like our football, dont watch. Simples.

 

[Warik]

Cech is not better than Casillas, but other than him yes.

Diego Lopez of Villarreal is at least near Cech quality-wise in my opinion. Sure he had a stinker in the QF second leg but Cech also had one if I recall. He also plays with a worse defense infront of him.


Anyway:

Penalty or not? In my biased opinion yes as Bosingwa pulls Henry off balance enough to enable Ivanovic to nick the ball away.

Let's face it probab ly more of a penalty case than the one on Saturday which ushited got.

 

[mil1lion]

re goalkeepers - Dont forget the performance by the Getafe keeper (Stojkovik) a few weeks ago either. He looks a top keeper for sure. He had an even better display against Barca (even though they lost) than Cech.

 

[RobinLeonard]

Diego Lopez of Villarreal is at least near Cech quality-wise in my opinion. Sure he had a stinker in the QF second leg but Cech also had one if I recall. He also plays with a worse defense infront of him.


Anyway:

Penalty or not? In my biased opinion yes as Bosingwa pulls Henry off balance enough to enable Ivanovic to nick the ball away.

Let's face it probab ly more of a penalty case than the one on Saturday which ushited got.

It's not a penalty! Not in a million years, he is off balance anyway and Bosingwa barely even touches him.

 

[kcmei]

I Dont understand why so many people defend chelsea. For the entire game they were camping for barca mistakes. They were not trying to play football. Its a shame as morinho would say they parked a bus in front of goal. The only chance chelsea had was the drogba one on one and that was from marques mistake

If chelsea win the champions league in this way it will be very hard to take

 

[milkman]

This is why I find the Champions League so boring, it tends to be with an English team vs a foreign team.

So many of them are boring 0-0s!! Maybe this wasn't a 'boring' 0-0 but still no goals!!! If you bet on every first leg of the CL knockout rounds to be 0-0 I reckon you'd win a hell load of money!

 

[Warik]

It's not a penalty! Not in a million years, he is off balance anyway and Bosingwa barely even touches him.

You sure?

Pretty stone wall when you consider what penalties are generally given for nowadays tbh.

 

[SpurSince57]

This is why I find the Champions League so boring, it tends to be with an English team vs a foreign team.

So many of them are boring 0-0s!! Maybe this wasn't a 'boring' 0-0 but still no goals!!! If you bet on every first leg of the CL knockout rounds to be 0-0 I reckon you'd win a hell load of money!

The last final between outsiders was Porto v. Monaco, and you can bet that won't be allowed to happen again in a hurry!

The whole thing pisses me off and I really can't raise too much enthusiasm. The Group Stage is supposed to make it 'more exciting' but what it actually does is make it almost certain that the clubs 'everyone wants to watch' go through. I read a story a couple of years back that claimed G14 were pressing for the second group stage to be reinstated.

What we've ended up with is a situation in which only clubs from the EPL, la Liga and Serie A have any real hope of winning the thing—and I'm not too sure about Serie A now. Milan getting their revenge over the Scousers a couple of years back may have been its swansong. As for anyone else… I think even Bayern will struggle to seriously compete.

Kick the group stage and seeding out of the window, make it a straight knock-out.

I'm looking forward to the UC SFs tomorrow far more. I don't think anyone would have predicted that line-up. They should both be cracking games.

 

[Kendall]

I love it. Its a real tactical battle.

If you want to see end to end frantic play, go and watch sunday league.