A matchday thread for the 2 european giants. Ac Milan line-up: Abbiati, Bonera, Mexès, Nesta, Antonini, Ambrosini, Nocerino, Seedorf, Boateng, Robinho, Ibrahimovic Barcelona line-up: Valdés - Alves, Piqué, Mascherano, Puyol - Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Keita - Alexis, Messi
I'm not going to claim I know the secret behind why Barca are so good, but just watching how they press. They seem to split essentially into 2 groups of 5, the 5 attackers in a 3-2 formation and 5 back which includes Busquets. This means that they have no central midfield when they do lose the ball, something that I tore my hair over out at Wembley because more often than not, one ball would have got through most of Barcelona (and the one time we did play such a pass, we scored from it). This splitting of the outfield players seems to be quite common in modern football. In fact, we are probably the only big team that doesn't employ such a system because we do not have a high tempo closing down defensive mid and lost that in Hargreaves.
Good match to watch and Milan were fantastic defensively. Barca should have had a penalty in the 1st half when the goalie took Sanchez down. 2nd leg should be an interesting game but Milan will have to play exceptionally if they want to progress to the next round.
