I know it's off the usual topic, but I'm sure most of us will be watching the game tomorrow night. Any thoughts? My head tells me Barca will own the ball, leaving ManU chasing ghosts all night and rarely getting the ball to Rooney and Hernandez. But my heart hopes that playing in England and exerting its emotional and physical edge will give ManU a chance. Barca 2 -1
I can see it being closer than the 2009 final, but I honestly can't predict football these days, it's getting more erratic. The smart money is on Barca, but I hope United beat them so people will shut up about them. Also, if I see one more BBC blog that basically says "Barca are amazing, but United can beat them", I'm going to scream.
I fancy Barca for this one. Man Utd this season have not really impressed me. All of their rivals in the league had a bad time of it this year. Arsenal did their usual bottling act, Liverpool started horribly under Hodgson and Chelsea had their awful dip in form under Ancelotti. If any of those teams had avoided their blip then Utd would not have won the title.
The secret of Barcelona is they are a football TEAM. They play a passing game that flows throughout the Team, its like watching a training session of keep ball, but Barcelona use it to move and pass at speed to get near their opponents goal were they then use their individual skills to get the ball into the box. You could see from when they were taking corners that they knew high balls into the box would not get them opportunities with the height of most of their players against Uniteds.
It was an interesting game to watch, ending about as expected. ManU tried to come out and stamp its authority on the game in the first ten minutes, but they had to play with 100% effort and concentration to keep up that intensity, which Barca could easily absorb. ManU never had a chance. Maybe the great Arsenal team of 2001/02 could have beaten the current Barca team, but that's it.
I think the write-ups on the BBC are a bit OTT to be honest. They're hailing it as if it was the best Barca performance ever, but I've seen them play better than that (not that they weren't class). Messi wasn't as brilliant as they made him out to be either, Iniesta and Xavi deserved as much praise. All this said though, they are a step above any other team out there, which means we'll have a few years of Barca-worship and predictable Champions League results to come. Maybe if Mourinho can really stamp his mark on the Madrid team next season they could be a challenger, but I can't see it.
The BBC always hype up the CL final if either Barca or an English team is involved, well they got 2/2 this time so the hype was to be expected. But yes it was overkill. Barca are an undeniably great team, and the shocking this is that the majority of their squad are at a young age, so will therefore be around for years to come. Scary.
8 of them are also Spanish - compare that to United, Chelsea or Arsenal. Might be a reason why they won the World Cup last year, do you think?