Great article i came across last night:
Barcelona provide the lesson Control will always beat kick-and-hope
Craig Foster
April 27, 2008
After two Champions League games of wildly contrasting quality during the week, the conclusion must be that the finest football is still played on the Continent. Barcelona put on a masterclass against United to show how far English clubs still have to go in mastering a more sophisticated style of football.
The old English long-ball style no longer works internationally. It's the reason why England will be watching Euro 2008 with the rest of us.
The English Premier League has been reshaped at the top through foreign players and coaches, yet even they retain the worst elements of bash and crash.
The net effect is that Premier League clubs, Arsenal aside, have to alter their style in European competition, while the likes of Barcelona and Milan do not, because they have evolved a style that carries itself easily and successfully into any arena or competition.
United, on the other hand, went to Spain and looked like an English team trying to play like a Continental one - except they forgot that when the ball is won it should be kept.
They ended up with 35 per cent of possession and played 294 passes to Barcelona's mammoth 766, a football humbling which would have embarrassed Alex Ferguson, the one British manager trying to adapt to Continental methods.
It seems that when a superb team puts on a masterful display without scoring - or more precisely without capitalising on the opportunities they create - all the post-match talk is about their inability to complete the moves and the defending of United, but what about the pure quality and sophistication of Barca's play?
Here's a team that's out of form, and with Eto'o, Deco and Messi having played collectively very little football in the lead-in, yet it played so comfortably with the ball, showed such beautiful expression of the passing game and kept the ball away from United more artfully than any team has done for some time.
Forget that a goal was not forthcoming - had Eto'o not lately become a shadow of the player of yesteryear, there certainly would have been several - but marvel in the finest footballing performance of any team in Europe since the displays of AC Milan last year.
Recognise also the brilliance of Messi, the outstanding player on a pitch with hundreds of millions of euros of talent.
Yet when any team defends a result away and progresses over two legs, most will pronounce that the tie has been approached perfectly and the manager is a genius.
For me, this is fine if you are a lesser club playing sides with far greater technical skill and, in so doing, admitting an inferiority to another team.
But how does one reconcile that approach with a club the size and reputation of United? This was the greatest surprise; that Manchester United, who will almost certainly seal the Premier League title this weekend if not the next, were prepared to lie down and concede to the Catalans the territorial - and, I would say, the philosophical - superiority, and be content to sit behind the ball and defend and hope.
This is now a pattern with English clubs, with Chelsea and Liverpool regularly playing out boring affairs. It seems that to overcome the English tendency to play a non-tactical, physical game which no longer works, the foreign managers have had to resort to a completely opposite style.
The mystery is they must do so even with a great many foreign players who can step back into a Spanish or Italian team and adjust perfectly.
Yes, there is much to be admired in the elements which allowed United to escape with no breach of their goal. But the more defensive tactical strategies are designed for the inferior to compete with the superior - surely not for when two giants lock horns?
Think of it this way. In nature there is always the king of the jungle against whom all-comers must either test themselves and risk death, or adjust their behaviour to placate and, in so doing, admit defeat.
The list of (European) kings is now reduced to two, AC Milan and Barcelona, since in recent years Liverpool, Real Madrid, Juventus and now United have succumbed to the era of caginess, the decade of the backwards step.
And for those who offer the famed away leg as justification for fear, I cite the corresponding fixture last season between the Red Devils and the titleholders Milan, at Old Trafford.
This was an epic because Milan played not to survive but to prove they were greater than anyone in the world, on any pitch in the world.
Last year's five-goal blockbuster was memorable partly because Milan's proud approach made it so, while on Thursday only one team came to play. The other admitted weakness and looked to steal an away goal.
This week's return leg will be a classic but, like Milan last year, that will be largely because Barca would never go to Old Trafford and cower.
Source: The Sun-Herald
This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/...743316928.html
