Barcelona started off unsurprisingly as the livelier side and most of the game was played in Real Madrid's half. Initially I felt that Real Madrid employed a decent enough tactic - man mark the Barcelona's midfielders and don't allow them to pass. But it is to the credit of Barcelona midfield generals that they were unperturbed by such personal attention and went about their job with ease. One thing I observed was, to prevent the man-marking Madrid players from intercepting their passes, they were hitting their passes hard, and what ball control the Barca players displayed!! Hard hit passes are damn difficult to control, and the Barca players were controlling it as though it was as natural to them as Didier Drogba diving.
Ah, this reminds me how they've grown and become more lethal than that team which played against Chelsea 2 years ago. Chelsea then, had closed down on the Barca midfield players stifling them, and the hard-hit passes were not a part of the Barca armoury back then, thus, becoming ineffective against such a tactic (though they went thru to the finals in the end). The beauty of hitting passes hard is, even if you get a small space in between the opposition players, you can squeeze a pass through fast enough before the opposition has time to intercept it. But passing is the easier part, controlling it perfectly is one hell of a job, and Barca players showed us how to do it with grace and elan yesterday.
Coming to the match, it all started with the lovely curling shot by Messi which bounced off the post, not dissimilar to the disallowed goal of Ronaldo in the recent friendly against Spain, only that this one was much more elegant and difficult. Then you had the first goal coming from the work of the magical twins - Xavi and Iniesta. There seems to be an eerie sort of telepathic communication between these two, and it came to the fore once again yesterday, Iniesta hitting a hard through ball to pick out Xavi. It missed Xavi by the littlest of margins, but a failed attempt to intercept it by Marcelo presented Xavi with a tap in chance, which he did perfectly, avoiding the onrushing Casillas. The next goal came from super play from David Villa. A long cross across the pitch from the right channel found Villa free on the left. He still had work to do taking on Ramos. He slowly pushed into the box, went to the byline and crossed, which Casillas could only get a hand to, and the ball fell kindly to Pedro who had made a run into the box shaking away from his marker Marcelo, and he made no mistakes in tapping the ball in. All of this within the first 20 minutes of play, and Madrid, who had hardly mustered any attack of their own, except a deflected shot of Di Maria, found themselves staring down a possible big-margin defeat. Barcelona stepped off the gas for the rest of the first half, and except for the Ronaldo free kick which was agonisingly close, there were just 2 other talking points in the first half.
The first was the Ronaldo - Guardiola incident , in which Ronaldo was a bit unlucky I feel. The ball went out of play, kicked out by a Barca player and Pep was at hand and took the ball. Ronaldo requested Pep for the ball, but Pep was reluctant and was looking at the referee to direct him whom to give the ball to, when it was clear that it was a Madrid throw in. Thus when Pep turned his hand away from Ronaldo and threw the ball towards the general direction of the referee, an already frustrated Ronaldo slightly pushed Guardiola. All the brouhaha which followed was unfortunately aimed at Ronaldo, though one can say it was equally Pep's fault too. From a different perspective, one can say the way Barca players reacted to that "act of disrespect" by Ronaldo towards their coach clearly shows how much they love their coach which is a good sign to see in any sporting team/setup.
The second one was the penalty claim when Ronaldo was supposedly brought down by Valdes. Well, in today's non-video technology aided decision making process in football, lots of blatant penalty claims go unrewarded. But yesterday's was definitely not an obvious one. I could not gauge properly as to who had a touch of the ball, but although Ronaldo had a clear control of the ball, I felt Valdes did get a touch of it, and it would have been harsh if the penalty had been awarded to Real.
The second half also started with Barca appearing as the livelier and more dangerous side, inspite of the introduction of Lass Diarra in place of the ineffective Ozil to break up Barca's midfield play, and they were again rewarded with 2 goals in the opening 15 minutes. Two sublime through balls by Messi, overshadowed by Villa's excellent timing of his run for the first goal, and supreme finishing for the second, put the match beyond Real madrid's grasp. What followed was Madrid doing damage control coupled with Barca stepping off the gas again. A few attempts by Real to keep ball and eke out chances resulted in nothing. Apart from a few free kicks from dangerous positions, Barca defence dealt with the paltry & insipid Real Madrid attacking threat comfortably. Arbeloa, a defensive full back, was brought in place of Marcelo, an attacking full back, which clearly showed Real's intention of shoring up its defence rather than have a go at Barca and try to make a good fist of this match. Barca was quite happy keeping possession rather than try and create more chances. Only Messi was trying hard to get a goal for himself, trying many of his mesmerising zig-zag runs which all ended up with nothing. On one such occassion, he had a perfect opportunity to set up a free unmarked Villa for his hat-trick, but chose unwisely to shoot, with no returns. Then came the Barca substitutions - all 3 goal scorers replaced with Krkic, Keita & Jeffren. Krkic had 2 good opportunities to get on the scoresheet but couldn't convert any - one, a stinging shot but straight at Casillas who parried it away, and the other, losing balance when he was put clean through. But he made amends (as though that was necessary) by providing a neat low cross after some good work down the right channel taking on Arbeloa, which Jeffren promptly buried past Casillas, triggering celebrations all around Nou Camp. There was still time for further humiliation of Real Madrid when Messi was hacked down from behind in a distasteful, unsporting manner by a lunging Lassana Diarra & a frustrated Sergio Ramos. Ramos then went ahead and pushed Puyol on his face who came to confront him, and was promptly red carded by the referee. Thankfully Messi was back on his feet, and though he was limping, no major injury appears to have happened to him.
Messi's theatrics :
Theatrics and play acting is something you associate Ronaldo with, rather than Messi. But yesterday, it was Messi's turn to show his abominable side. The play acting during his flare-up with Carvalho was particularly abhorrent and unbecoming of what he stands for, and was deservedly yellow-carded for it.
Star of the Show :
Eduardo Iturralde Gonzalez. "Err, who's he?" you may ask. He was the referee yesterday, and it was a near perfect performance from him and the linesmen, from getting the decisions right to the handling of tense situations. In today's world where referees & linesmen get a lot of stick for even average performances, we must also acknowledge their performance when they have a good day out on the pitch. Kudos to Senor Gonzalez and the linesmen for giving us an opportunity to talk only about football and not snarl at controversial decisions which have almost become omnipresent today.
What went wrong for Real Madrid?
Well, according to me,
- Not parking the bus. The man-marking strategy was a total failure - Barca players had to take care of only 1 opposition player. Beat him, and you gain acres of space to do your magic, or worse - in case of strikers, run off your marker's shoulder - that way you beat offside trap as well as your marker at the same time.
- Ozil, Benzema and Ronaldo always stayed up front hoping for a quick counter attack, and never dropped back to support their defensive midfield of Khedira & Alonso. Thus, though on paper Madrid were a 5 man midfield, Barca's 3 were able to boss easily.
- David Villa. He has settled into this team very quickly and seems to be in sync with his teammates, probably as he'd played with them regularly in the national team, unlike last year's expensive flop Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Villa's clever runs away from his markers & beating the offside traps did the most damage to Real yesterday, apart from, of course, his stupendous finishing ability.
- Absence of Higuain. Looking at yesterday's match where Real hardly had any meaningful possession, it might not have been as great a factor as the others. But he is better than Benzema in many ways. He is quicker (which is a major trait if you want to play conter-attacking football), has played more with this team (and thus has a better understanding with his teammates than Benzema), and is definitely more confident with the ball and in front of the goal than Benzema. He has become an important part of this galactico team, and has proved that he has that zing in him which can produce a magical moment which could alter the course of a match. Well if Benzema also has that magic in him, he still has to prove it - in La Liga atleast.
- Playing both Khedira and Alonso in the midfield. Well, none is a tough tackling midfielder, which is exactly what you need to disrupt Barcelona's play. Inter's Cambiasso last year and Chelsea's Essien 2 years ago were successful in doing so. I expected Mourinho, him being acknowledged as a "master tactician" by many, to play Lassana Diarra instead of Khedira in the midfield. In hindsight, I don't believe it would have been very effective anyways, as evident from the next point I am going to make, but still it would definitely have been much much better than playing Khedira in that position. I wonder what has happened to Fernando Gago, though. When last seen, he had the right build to have made this game more physical.
- The referee. No no, I'm not saying his decisions were against Real Madrid, nay, I must say this was one of the bestest refereeing I have seen in recent times, which deserves to be showered many more praises if you add the fact that this was a very very high tension, high pressure match with the crowd breathing down the ref's neck. But brandishing yellow cards for even the softest of fouls actually plays into the hands of the pass and move peppered with many one-twos style of play of Barcelona players. A slight misjudgement while tackling, and you end up in the ref's books. When playing with such a referee on the field, you tend to be less physical and less confident while tackling, fearing that you'll be carded. The Xabi Alonso & David Villa yellow cards were perfect examples, which even in the Champions' League would have been just an uncarded foul, unless it was a repeat offence by the fouling player.
All in all, a very good match, and though it is still early to say who'll win the La Liga, more so with only 2 points difference between the two sides, it must be agreed that Barcelona are deserved leaders at this stage of the season.
No comments:
Post a Comment