Champions League - Round of 16

the second quarter final with Ajax was a great game. semi finals with the closest rival, are we going to discard thow Liverpool chelsea games from a couple of years ago because they were similar in quality, cagey games with barely any goals? doesnt need to have goals for it to be an entertaining game. as farmer said too, I thought it was a good final, as far as 0-0 games go, I enjoyed it.

Sid that is correct,
Milan beat RedStar in the second round on spotters in 1989 that was the game that Donadoni had his jaw broken
In 1990 Redstar didnt talke part in the euopean Cup as Vojvidiana won the Yugoslav league i found out but as well all remember in 1991 they went on to win the thing beating marseilles on spotters.
i remember my dad telling me before that the 2 greatest club games he witnessed were

  1. Milans 5-0 over Madird in the 1989 semi
  2. Red Star and Bayern drawing 2-2 in belgrade in the 1991 semi and a last minute Klaus augentahler OG sending them through ( i found it on u tube there)

Its interesting now to look back on the make up of the teams of these eras,. Milans team of 89-90 had 8 italians and 3 dutch men, RedStars famous side had 10 yugoslavs ( prosinecki, Panev to name 2 … !! ) the great Steau team that won the euopean cup in 86 and was beaten in the 89 final and went 104 matches unbeaten in this period had 11 absolutely gifted romanian footballers such as hagi, Dumitrescu, Popescu…
obviously post 1991 and the advent of a free market economy all these eastern euopean players went elsewhere and with it the fortunes of their teams in Europe regressed…
the era from 86-90 was the time that due to the mass murder committed by Liverpool that english clubs were banned from euope ( united and banik ostrava in the 1990 cup winners cup was the first game back i think) and at this time the strength of the clubs in euope was a lot wider than say it is today where england . spain and germany are the strongest leagues now , for example in 1989 here was the QF line ups for the european cuo

PSV 2–3 Real Madrid 1–1 1–2
Werder Bremen 0–1 Milan 0–0 0–1
IFK Göteborg 2–5 Steaua Bucureşti 1–0 1–5
Monaco 1–2 Galatasaray 0–1 1–1

and in 1990

KV Mechelen 0–2 Milan 0–0 0–2 (aet)
Bayern Munich 3–1 PSV Eindhoven 2–1 1–0
CSKA Sofia 1–4 Marseille 0–1 1–3
Benfica 4–0 Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk 1–0 3–0

and 91

Bayern Munich 3–1 Porto 1–1 2–0
Red Star Belgrade 6–0 Dynamo Dresden 3–0 3–01
Spartak Moscow 3–1 Real Madrid 0–0 3–1
Milan 1–4 Marseille 1–1 0–32

now we are facing a situation in 2011 where we will have 4 english, 2 german and 2 spanish teams in the QFs.
the make up of the tournament unfortunalty will continue to support the stronger leages with germany. spain and england always having 4 entrants compared to say sweden or serbia’s one who will enter at the now prelim round stage ( back in the day it was open draw and all in round 1 with only the champions of each country allowed in)
whilst the champions league has been a good thing in many ways i believe that the set up of the tournament has helped contribute to the detriment of the club game in many euopean countries as now it is fact that future winners of the european cup will more than likely only ever come from either spain, england, germany or italy as this is where the stronger leagues now are and players from all over the world will strive to play in them even for mediocre sides…
its a sad thing in a way really,

1 Like

I could well understand how a neutral would have found the Liverpool-Chelsea matches in 2005 and 2007 boring. As a neutral I found Milan’s matches in 2003 boring. One good game from the last five - not exactly scintillating stuff, and three of those were 0-0.

Nedved missed the final due to a second booking didn’t he? That was a total disaster for Juve. He was outstanding that year.

It’s definitely to the detriment of widespread competitive football that the powerbase is so imbalanced alright. In fairness to Platini he has taken (small) steps to address it with the qualification criteria for the CL and in recent years we’ve had Belarussian, Cypriot, Slovakian teams in the group stages. They’re not anywhere close to being consistently competitive though and the only teams to make any sort of breakthrough have been wealthy Russian teams. Even Shakhtar with all their cash have taken a long time to get where they are and they’re really only replacing Kiev from 10 years ago who did it without spending much at all.

That Red Star in particular was ridiculously good though. Amazing to think they didn’t even have it all their own way in their domestic league though. If you restrict the flow of players between countries it does lead to better competition at domestic and European level.

Imagine if the old Yugoslavia never broke up. They surely would have won a World Cup or a Euros with the pick they would have had.

Correct, even extending it forward a few years they might have had the likes of Viduka and Zlatan playing for them instead of Australia and Sweden.

The greatest team that never was - they were unbelieveably gifted technically and would have been at their peak age wise in 1994. Even in 1998 Croatia finished third and Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) could have knocked out Holland - Mijatovic missed a penalty in the second half to put them ahead.

The players they would have had available would have made up a better team than Brazil in 1994. Eastern European football was brilliant in the late 80s/early 90s with the Dynamo Kiev/USSR teams, Romania, Bulgaria etc - it proved beyond any doubt that Communism works. :stuck_out_tongue:

Red Star were class but they bottled it in their last two matches - capitaulated at home to Bayern and only got through thanks to one of the worst goalkeeping mistakes of all time in the last minute. The final against Marseille was one of the worst matches ever played.

[quote=“sid waddell, post: 564058”]
Red Star were class but they bottled it in their last two matches - capitaulated at home to Bayern and only got through thanks to one of the worst goalkeeping mistakes of all time in the last minute. The final against Marseille was one of the worst matches ever played.[/quote]

I remember that match. Shocking it was.

Who would have been on that team? Prosinecki, Boban, Pancev?

I remember Dragon Stojkovic coming on as a sub for Marseille. Chris Waddle played in that final too. He was a very good player when you look back now.

Why didnj’t they win one so with the teams they had. They were as good in the past as they might be now i’d suggest.

Don’t understand what you are trying to say there.

Because just at the time of the split they had a great team that then split and two countries Serbia and Croatia had half great teams between them.

We’re talking here about the generation of Yugoslavian players who emerged in the late 80’s and early 90’s- it was a once in a lifetime generation. They only lost to Argentina on penalties in the quarter finals of the 1990 World Cup but were still a team very much in its early stages of formation. The great what if? is what they would have gone on to achieve if Yugoslavia hadn’t broken up.

They would have a good team now but it certainly wouldn’t be good enough to win a World Cup. The team in the early 90’s was.

They certainly had great players but you can’t discount the fact that they may all have hated each other and not gelled as well as they could as a team. Sort of a like an amalgamation club team in gaa.
I’d say the national pride of the Croatian team in 98 led to them doing better than ‘Yugoslavia’ ever would have.

The team towards the middle/end of the 90s was superb as well. Take thaty Croatia team, Mijatovic, Savicevic, Stankovic - there’s probably more I am forgetting.

There was a few more alright Farmer. They were generally able to field a full team, unlike one of the premier GGA counties in one of TASE’s “new low” threads.

Indeed.

Jugovic was another. He was a good player

when are the qfs going to be played?

As mickee said the crvena zvezda team that won in 91 had 10 Yugoslavs the odd man out won the competition with Steau in 86 and scored in the shoot out. Belodedici, the Romanian sweeper.

I remember Marseille beating the great Milan that year with a Chris Waddle cracker and then the lights went out at the Velodrome. Great days.

Those were the days when you had to beg the auld lad to let you stay up to watch Sportsnight on BBC.