And justice is served. Barça drew with Chelsea 1-1 last night, and through the aggregate scores of 3-2, they are through to the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
I’m not going to put much time in writing about the game. It was not really the classic encounter expected, but nevertheless it was still quite a ‘decent’ encounter. More of a tactical chess game. Nevertheless, CampNou was damn PACKED. Fantastic environment and fantastic atmosphere, although Chelsea didn’t seem to get a very, very fiery & feisty reception that I had expected.
Anyway, I thought that I heard some section of the CampNou crowd chanting at the beginning of the match “José Mourinho, hijo de puta, José Mourinho, hijo de puta”. In addition, here’s a clip showing some crowd chanting to Mourinho“Mourinho vete al teatro (Mourinho, go to the theaters)” in a Guantanamera tune, regarding the controversy from the first leg that Mourinho made when saying that Messi was a good actor from the fact that Barcelona has a lot of good theatres. Haha……
On the match, Mourinho’s played his usual (cautious-counter attacking) 4-3-3 formation, and Chelsea it has to be said, were toothless throughout the match. Furthermore, they seemed like they couldn’t do much or create much, and there was the fact that they had to score two goals if they wanted to progress through. Sure there were some chances some them, but there were not much and Chelsea’s fight was not good enough. Barça on the other hand played with great possessive football, and throughout the entire match Ronaldinho was the star shining on the show. The ‘crack’ was doing backheel passes throughout the first half as if it was a training session! Just that Barçahad difficulty finding the back of the net. Rijkaard played the same eleven that played against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, so the double pivot of Edmilson and Motta meant that Barça’s attacking ability were limited for their front three, but it was a card played right by Rijkaard to counter against the midfielders of Chelsea (and more so containing Lampard, he was invisible to Chelsea). Just like in the first leg, it ended scoreless. The only bad point for Barça during the first half was that Messi got injured around the 25th minute (hamstring) and had to be substituted by Larsson.
Second half was more or less the same. Chelsea still couldn’t do much, and Barça kept on playing their usual game. In the end, it was one piece of action from the world footballer of the year that settled the tie. Ronaldinho scored an excellent goal in the 78th minute.
Eto’o had the ball, he passed it to Ronnie. Ronnie at that time seemed static, then suddenly burst through the Chelsea defense, barging into Terry (where Terry collapsed to the ground), fired a powerful low drive near the corner of the goal, and Cech couldn’t blocked it….GOAL.
Barça now was on the driving seat, as it was around 12 minutes to go. Chelsea got a goal back, right in the death of injury time. Terry got a dubious penalty, he ‘fell’ down when Van Bronckhorst got the ball clearly on the edge of the penalty box. Lampard slotted Chelsea’s goal.
The match ended shortly after that penalty, as time was up. This time, Barça ended up victorious … and the ghost of last year’s defeat to Chelsea could now be buried (for now). At the end of the day, I’m happy. Though I’m not so satisfied due to the fact that Barça couldn’t thrash Chelsea like they were able to as they had showed it throughout the two matches, as that would really shut Mourinho up. Furthermore, Puyol got a yellow card in the second half that meant that he would miss the first leg of the quarter-finals. But still, we’re through, and happiness is now around me (as well as for all Barcelonistas around the world, WE BEAT CHELSEA!!!!). Following pics are from various sources (Barça’s official website, SPORT, Mundo Deportivo, Soccernet, and others…):
& here’s the goal that made the night, from the best player in the world…….
Oh man. You know what? I was skimming thru your content and I was kinda set back by your football enthusiasm. Kinda not my type la even tho i usually watch football (the grand matches only la) but nice entries arrangement :)
Maybe you'd like to blog about your LIFE someday? ;)
2 comments:
Oh man. You know what? I was skimming thru your content and I was kinda set back by your football enthusiasm. Kinda not my type la even tho i usually watch football (the grand matches only la) but nice entries arrangement :)
Maybe you'd like to blog about your LIFE someday? ;)
Man, I am blogging about my life.
Actually, some posts (well, actually, many posts) are still pending to be posted (hard 2 find time nowadays). Not everything is football btw.
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