From the Red Star-Bayern match - now that is an atmosphere, even if most of the crowd were probably murdering, fascist scumbags http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gpfHmyHsIE
Interesting article by James Lawton on Barcelona
It is on a flood tide, gushing into every corner of the game, lapping and foaming and submerging some of their most compelling rivals of the quite recent past.
The fawning frenzy has reached the point where you have to wonder whatever happened to the requirement - of history, this is, rather than the blather of the day - to at least attempt to step outside the moment.
When you do this you have to be more than a little shocked that even a judge as normally hard-headed as Graeme Souness has lined up in the chorus. âThey are the best club team I have ever seen,â declared the great Liverpool and Scotland midfielder after Barçaâs victory this week over an Arsenal side who sadly never began to produce anything of their best.
Souness is for various reasons not a man to pick out for an argument but the trouble here is that he did not merely say that Barcelona were sublimely gifted in many departments of the game, that they had wonderful skills and an ability to apply pressure that would commend itself to the average wolverine.
He said they were the best, the nonpareil of all club teams who had passed his gaze since he started watching the game. This was at least a step back from the assertion of Cesc Fabregas that Barça are the âbest team in historyâ, a verdict that kicked into touch the Real Madrid side who won the first five European Cup finals.
Souness was a mere seven years old when Real completed that first extraordinary run along the peaks of the European game, when players such as Alfredo di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas, Francisco Gento, Jose Santamaria and Raymond Kopa produced such an exquisite combination of strength and beautiful coherence, scoring 18 goals against eight while establishing untouchable brilliance in those final games. He has no such defence, however, when relegating the Milan who 21 years ago were the last team to successfully defend the European title to the slipstream of todayâs Barcelona.
No one could question Sounessâs admiration for the performance that overwhelmed Arsenal at the Nou Camp this week but when we take at least one step back it is surely hard not to believe that the Milan team of Arrigo Sacchi would have started firm favourites against Pep Guardiolaâs Barça.
Indeed, an analysis of any depth would also give the Liverpool side with whom Souness won three European Cups in the company of Kenny Dalglish and Alan Hansen and, in the last one in 1984, Ian Rush, a better than fighting chance.
With the addition of the Welshman, of whom it is reasonable to believe that he would have buried the chance that Nicklas Bendtner squandered this week when in the last minutes he had the chance to put Arsenal through to the quarter-finals, that makes four great Liverpool players. Do Barça have more?
Lionel Messi is sublime, of course. Andres Iniesta and Xavi are midfielders of superb craft who walk into football history with their accomplish-ments at club and international level. But take away this trio and what do you have left? Players of skill and a fine understanding of the team concept, no doubt, but how many of them walk into a world XI?
Letâs look at the Sacchi team that won in 1989 and 1990.
Sacchi had five great players, however you draw the definition: Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Ruud Gullit, Frank Rikjaard and Marco van Basten pass every test, however forensic, and then there was Alessandro Costacurta, a defender of heart-breaking resolution who in 20 years won seven scudetti.
Four years after the supremacy of this team Fabio Capello brought another to thrash Johan Cruyffâs Barcelona - arguably the most authoritative performance in a final since Di Stefano and his men eviscerated Eintracht Frankfurt at Hampden Park 34 years earlier.
We are talking about some indelible points of history, here, and however beguiling it may be, Guardiolaâs Barçaâs imprint is considerably less dramatic.
They played beautifully against Manchester United in Rome in 2009, but apart from the fact that their opponents were hardly the ghost of the team that had beaten Chelsea a year earlier, it was also true that Barçaâs presence in the final owed a huge debt to some appalling officiating in the Stamford Bridge semi-final.
Last year Jose Mourinho parked his Internazionale airbus and invited Barça to prove quite how great they were.
On Tuesday night they inflicted on Arsenal a statistical and artistic landslide. This made even the pulse rate of a man as knowing as Graeme Souness race - but where would he have been if Bendtner had taken his gift near the end of the night?
Somewhere less emphatic, you have to believe, about the identity of he best team he had ever seen.
Good article alright.
He definitely has a point about Barcaâs lack of truly great players compared to that Milan team, but this is missing the point that the magic of this Barca is that the team is much better than the sum of its parts. The style they play the game is so defined and refined they nearly have it to perfection. They can survive the loss of their two first choice centre halves and replace them with a midfielder and another lad who no one rates and still give up zero attempts on goal against a more than decent team.
They have relatively few imported big money signings compared to other great teams, especially of modern times, and thatâs because itâs all about the team and system rather than the individuals. I was too young to really have noticed what way that Milan team played the game and Iâd say most of us here are the same unless ye have watched full matches on video or something. Canât believe they were as good to watch even if they were as effective as Barca.
You also have to take into account that 7 or 8 of the same team has also won the Euros and World Cup at international level with the same style and on top of that lot they have the best player Iâve ever seen and certainly one of the best ever in Messi.
If they win the European Cup again youâd have to say theyâre the greatest team ever. They probably do need to win it again to convince most people though.
the inter milan team of last season are much better than them you headcase & roma were better than them
thats last season alone- they are too brittle to be a great team
Every great team has lost games you silly eejit.
Donât agree with your first sentence but do agree with the rest.
Only a British journalist would argue that Ian Rush was great but imply David Villa isnât. Hansen was a very good defender, but it would be absurd to suggest heâs âgreatâ but Puyol isnât. Pique is young but is a superb player also. Likewise Busquets.
There is an argument to be made that Barca are a team on the cusp of greatness in a historical context but longevity isnât as possible as it was years ago and even Sacchiâs Milan didnât manage to sustain their era over that long a timeframe.
I also think the point on how they play the game is very relevant. Theyâre playing a completely different breed of football to anyone else and they are playing a style of football that would have been hugely successful in any era. No overt reliance on physicality or fitness at the expense of finesse.
a shit arsenal team should have knocked them out
great teams like the great milan teams wouldnt have relied on a ref decision that most people thought was harsh & the opposition missing a sitter to beat such a poor team
they also struggle vs well organised team, they cheated their way past chelsea & were out of their depth vs inter
yeah didnt he come out straight after the game and slate the outcome? would take the aarticle with a pinch of salt.
Barca, and by extent the Spanish team, have changed the way football is played and show how it cna be succesful with small talented players, which is against the grain of the English way. that Milan team of 89 had some average players in it as well as the superstars. the likes of Colombo, Massaro, Evani werent exactly superstars of the time. but they had a way of playing and played well defensively while having great attacking play.
Iâm suprised he didnt come out talking about Ronaldo being better than Messi too, which seems to be the thing now with followers of the English game, and those who want to bag Barca. how the team is built around him, how he can only play in one style, how he has never done it internationally, how he has never done it on a wet wednesday night in Stoke etc. Barca will have hteir detractors in some areas at the moment, but in time they will be remembered as one of the best. we should appreciate what we are seeing in them.
david villa is a great strikerâŚ(he has been with every team he has played). puyol can also be put in this company⌠he been brilliant for both barca and spain for yearsâŚ(he wouldnt have lasted as long otherwise). pique is well on his way to being one of the great centre halves as well.the same with busquets who is only 22. dani alves, i am sure, is at leasdt as good (if not better than milans right back as well). so in short lawton is talking horse manure.(though barca probably have to win at least anotgher one champions league, to say they are better than that milan team) the bulk of this barca team won a wc with spain something the ac miklan players could not do with italy.(oh yeah spain have won the euros as well.)
they all looked pretty shit against inter last year
only for volcanic ash they would have gotten over inter last year⌠they had to bus it instead of flying. also inter had a goal allowed which was clearly offside⌠youd want to get that eye checkedâŚ
the volcanic ash didnt stop barca been so poor in their home leg
What drugs are you on ya nutter? They played Arsenal off the park, did you see the stats? How you can state Arsenal should have knocked them is beyond any rational reasoning. How did they cheat against Chelsea? And itâs ludicrous to say they were out of their depth against Inter, it was a great defensive effort from Mourinho to stop them.
Itâs quite clear from your ramblings that you donât have a fucking clue what you are on about, itâs highly amusing.
player harshly sent off when arsenal were winning & bedner missing a sitter- if he wasnt such a fuck up they would be out
they are brittle
Arsenal never managed an attempt on goal ffs. And the people who wank over the premier league would have you believe they are the 2nd coming of the Ajax team from the 70s and total football.
It was only due to outrageous good fortune and Barca trying to walk the ball into the net that the score had any semblance of respectability.
Barca are clearly the best team in Europe at the moment, I donât see them as being brittle at all. Especially when they have Pique and Puyols to come back for the 1/4 finals.
arsenal are pretty shit & scored 3 goals against them
Arsenal only scored 2 goals against them
its obvious. the all seeing eye is a retardâŚ
Yeah I meant to agree with farmer that it was an âinterestingâ article. Just thought he raised some good points even if I disagreed with them. The point about Milanâs five great players is a fair one but the point about Liverpool is seriously stretching it.
Gas to see Tase being destroyed by Sandymount Red and asyouwere there as he ludicrously tries to base his whole argument on one or two games. Itâs like novice centre halves Abidal and Busquets keeping Arsenal from having a shot at goal.
I wonder what kind of team Fergie will put out tonight. Its crucial to start this game on the front foot and get an early lead and build on it. The longer it stays 0.0 the more the fans get nervous.