Professor Champions League : Barcelona

Lenny Kravitz, suicide & Wenger: The Champions League draw analysed

Paul Simpson — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:39:00 GMT

They think it’s all over in Nigeria. One Nigerian Gooner – named only as michotech49 – posted on uefa.com: “Arsenal we win am very sure by the grace of God”.

Arsene Wenger was a little more circumspect about facing Barcelona, the runaway favourites to win the 2010/11 UEFA Champions League, again, saying: “We want to knock them out. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it possible? Yes.” The coach was more sanguine than most fans whose reaction is probably best summed up by the headline on The Gooner which read simply: “The Barcelona suicide”.

In trying to Google The Gooner, I actually typed ‘The Gonner’ which could be an omen or what the great Sigmund would call a Freudian slip. Anyway, moving swiftly on, discontent among online Gooners has reached such a pitch that one supporter dared ask: “Oh, by the way, what does Pat Rice do?” Come on, Arsenal fans, this is hardly the time to be turning on your own legends. The general mood might be summed up by Brad who posted: “O cruel footballing gods why hast thou forsaken Arsenal?”

If Arsenal are to win, they might require divine intervention. Wenger’s Plan A is to take on Barcelona at their own game – assuming his players can get the ball off them. Plan B is – well there is no Plan B really. Unless Arsenal’s defence becomes significantly more rock-like between now and February, he can’t play the kind of spoiling game with which Jose Mourinho’s Inter beat Barcelona last season. He doesn’t even have the defensive steel in midfield to play the 4-5-1 that steered Arsenal to the final in 2006. This is especially ironic because one tactical innovation with which Wenger won a lot of silverware early on at Arsenal was the use of defensive screening midfielders like Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit.

No tie is over before it has started – though even Lenny Kravitz might feel his most famous song doesn’t apply in this instance. But Wenger’s predicament underlines the competitive ruthlessness of this tournament. A poor 45 minutes against Shakhtar and an off-night in Braga have made Arsenal’s journey to Wembley significantly more arduous than it needed to be.

The other ci risiamo ties – that’s Italian for ‘here we go again’ by the way – are Lyon v Real Madrid and Inter v Bayern. Neither quite match Alien vs Predator in the 'clash of the titans' stakes, but both have intriguing sub-plots. The ties encouraged so many players, clubs and owners to join in remembrance of things past it might have been sponsored by the estate of Marcel Proust.

Will Lyon’s remarkable run of success – in three ties against los Blancos they have won at home and drawn in Madrid to progress – be ended by old boy Karim Benzema? Lyon keeper Remy Vercoutre didn’t sound that confident when he noted: “Last year they were complacent. They still haven’t got over it. We know we’re not favourites.” He has a point. On balance, with Mourinho in the dugout, Real don’t seem destined for a seventh successive exit in the last 16.

Bayern v Inter is the draw’s greatest gift to European football. Louis van Gaal’s Bayern are slight favourites but the big question hanging over the tie is whether Rafa Benitez will be coaching the Nerazzurri in February (at the time of this blog being published, we are awaiting confirmation of reports the Spaniard has left the club - ed).

The World Club Cup win (below) has done him some good but the mood in Italy was captured by the Gazzetta dello Sport headline: “Inter rules the world, so what next?” Benitez’s broadside about lack of trust and broken promises on new players won him some support from fans – one poll found most wanted the coach to stay – but owner Massimo Moratti deflected the speculation saying: “For the moment I don’t want to talk about Benitez.” The coach’s outburst recalls his famously indignant observation over new signings at Valencia: “I asked for a sofa and they bought me a standard lamp.”

Tottenham’s return to San Siro to take on the other half of Milan prompted Rossoneri coach Massimiliano Allegri to remark: “All the teams who have made it this far are good but it could have been far worse. Tottenham score freely and have quality up front, but they always give something away at the back.” Still, Allegri – and his defenders – may already be having nightmares in which they are carved apart by the lanky, jinking, blurred form of Gareth ‘Incredibale’.

Chelsea and Manchester United may feel reasonably satisfied with their draws, but Carlo Ancelotti and Sir Alex Ferguson know their ties are far from done are dusted. Copenhagen are efficient, especially at home, and are almost the polar opposite of Spurs. What they lack upfront they make up for at the back, conceding just five in Group D, not bad for a team that played Barca twice. And Chelsea will need their first choice central defenders back to face Senegalese bombshell Damien N’Doye, who looks like a young Didier Drogba.

They think it’s all over in Schalke too. On Bundesliga Talk, a writer with the poetic name of Dylan Thomas suggested: “Schalke couldn’t have had an easier opponent”. The key, Thomas correctly suggested, was whether Schalke could dominate midfield. Although the hype will focus on Raul’s return to Spain, the more intriguing clash is between two famously workaholic coaches. Felix Magath’s reputation – exemplified by his nicknames ‘Saddam’ and ‘Qualix’ (The Torturer) – is well known but have no doubt Valencia’s Unai Emery has already spent hours dissecting Schalke’s group games in forensic detail.

Claudio Ranieri doesn’t think it’s all over. Mindful that Shakhtar won the last ever UEFA Cup and very nearly did the double over Barcelona in this competition in 2008/09, he was at pains to point the stylish football the Ukrainian champions play.

Roma have become the kind of team that can lose or beat anyone depending on their mood and that may be Ranieri’s biggest concern. Shakhtar’s wily coach Mircea Lucescu will be scheming for an away goal at the Stadio Olimpico. The return in Donetsk may just help Lucescu steer Shakhtar into the last eight for the first time. Shakhar’s Romanian full-back Razvan Rat (spare us the ‘any relation of Roland” gags please) was certainly bullish: “I want to quote a famous chess player to say that to become stronger one must play against the strongest”.

It seems appropriate, then, to round off with a Mourinho-esque observation from another famous chess player, Bobby Fischer: “Genius. It’s a word. What does it really mean? If I win I’m a genius. If I don’t, I’m not.”

Danish football's Lazarus man standing on the edge of greatness

Paul Simpson — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:20:00 GMT

When you’ve literally come back from the dead, it puts football in perspective. So FC Copenhagen coach Stale Solbakken will not have been unduly perturbed by the jostling with Pep Guardiola after the Danish and Spanish champions drew 1-1 in Copenhagen.

Guardiola was angry with Solbakken for saying that Barcelona keeper Jorge Manuel Pinto (who imitated the referee’s whistle in the first leg) ought to have been banned for five games, not two. Guardiola accused his rival of manipulating the media. Solbakken replied: “It was just a Norwegian making a terrible joke.”

Having interviewed Solbakken last time his side were in the UEFA Champions League – they came third in Group F in 2006/07 – I can understand Guardiola’s confusion. Even when discussing his own ‘resurrection’ – he had a heart attack during training on 13 March 2001 and was pronounced clinically dead before his heart started beating again in the ambulance twelve minutes later – he was hard to read, so matter of fact he could have been analysing a minor tactical innovation.

Solbakken: Not afraid of Kazan, Barca or death...

Detachment, it was clear, did not signify lack of determination. Still only 42, Solbakken has now won the Danish title twice as a player and four times as a coach. A fifth title – with the Lions 16 points clear halfway through the season – seems a formality.

In 2006/07, he steered Copenhagen to their first ever Champions League group stage. The Lions roared at home – taking seven points out of nine – but lost every away game. This time, they need a point in Rubin Kazan this week or, failing that, an eminently achievable home win against Panathinaikos to secure their first ever place in the last 16. That would be the best run by a Danish side in this competition since Brondby made the last eight in 1986/87.

Denmark’s dynamite shortage

This is all the more remarkable because as Marcellus, a sentinel in Hamlet, very nearly said, something is rotten in the state of Danish football.

Dennis Rommedahl, the consistently inconsistent winger who is now at Olympiacos, has just been voted Danish footballer of the year. Super League attendances – probably partly because of the Lions’ dominance and the national side’s travails – are down 24% this season. After a dire, dull, dour World Cup, the Danes may miss out on Euro 2012 (they face Portugal and Norway in Group H) at which point national coach Morten Olsen, linchpin of the legendary Danish Dynamite side, will retire.

Though no emerging Danish players have the explosive talent of the Laudrups, much hope – and hype – has focused on the slender frame of Christian Eriksen, the Ajax midfielder who became the youngest player ever to feature in a World Cup finals this summer. It’s worth noting that only five of the 13 players Solbakken fielded against Barcelona on matchday four were Danish.

Whatever happens, national service beckons for the Copenhagen coach. If the Norwegians don’t make it to Poland and the Ukraine, he will replace Egil Olsen as Norway coach in January 2012. If Norway do qualify, Solbakken will take over from Olsen after the Euro 2012 finals.

Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen

He will be missed at FC Copenhagen. Under Solbakken, the Lions have become the strongest Scandinavian side in European competition. No supporter will ever forget their 1-0 win over Manchester United, 3-1 rout of Celtic or that feisty draw against Barcelona in which Victor Valdes, at fault for the equaliser, did his Toni Schumacher impersonation.

Solbakken’s strategy of pressing Barcelona out of their stride – the footballing equivalent of Corporal Jones’s “They don’t like it up ‘em” in Dads Army – just about worked. His players were stubborn, resilient and intelligent. Though Barcelona dominated possession as usual, both sides could easily have scored the winner. One Barca supporter was impressed enough to suggest that if the Lions were in la Liga they would “finish in the top half for sure”.

Twenty five scouts from foreign clubs swelled the crowd at the atmospheric, compact Parken stadium. Defenders Oscar Wendt and Mathias ‘Zanka’ Jorgensen, midfielders Martin Vingaard and William Kvist and striker Damien N’Doye are the most prized players. Yet the renaissance of 33-year-old Jesper Gronkjaer, long regarded as the very definition of the stereotypically tricky but erratic midfielder, may be Solbakken’s biggest achievement.

Copenhagen has been chiefly famous for exorbitant bar prices, fairytales and Danny Kaye, as Hans Christian Andersen, singing “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen”. Solbakken’s Lions have made Copenhagen one of the capitals of European football. The team’s results may earn the Danish champions an automatic place in the Champions League group stage in 2011/2012. If they do make this season's knockout round, they will be the underdog everyone wants to avoid.

This could be the greatest ever season for club and coach. Football is certainly not a matter of life and death for Solbakken. He just reckons his near death experience has made him more focused. And his focus right now is on winning.

Madrid relieved to be hosting meeting of the ones that got away

Paul Simpson — Fri, 21 May 2010 07:30:00 GMT

The coaches are sparring, Bayern’s Croatian striker, Ivica Olic stands accused of being a fancy dan Steve Claridge – a pub footballer who has miraculously scored seven goals in Europe this season – both finalists are on the brink of a historic treble and although Real Madrid don’t feature in the final, they are trying to steal the limelight with some trademark wheeling and dealing. Yup, it can only be the UEFA Champions League final.

Chastened, terrified and ecstatic

The Champions League final will be a chastening experience for Real Madrid executives especially if, as is widely expected, the outcome is decided by Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder, both former Los Blancos.

There could be five ex-Real stars on the pitch on Saturday night – Inter’s Samuel Eto’o, Walter Samuel and Esteban Cambiasso have all also been discarded by Real – but, as the legendary Alfredo di Stefano is honest enough to admit in the official matchday programme, the worst case scenario for “all of those of Madridismo” has been averted.

After Real were knocked out by Lyon, Di Stefano was terrified by the thought that Barcelona would become the first team to retain the Champions League in Real’s own stadium. As the delightful Sid Lowe has noted, Di Stefano’s relief was shared – and in some cases surpassed – by Madrid fans, one of whom said Barcelona’s exit was “the happiest day of my life, well, after the birth of my kids”.

The Madrilenos will be even more ecstatic, for a while, if they can entrap the genius who masterminded this beautiful defeat.

Di Stefano certainly didn't revel in Barca's defeat to Inter...

Mourinho, Napoleon and supernovas

In 2004, Jose Mourinho won the Champions League with Porto in his last game as coach. He may well, if Gazzetta dello Sport is any guide, pull the same stunt this weekend, winning the tournament with Inter and heading to Real Madrid to occupy the hottest hot seat in football, a veritable supernova of dugouts.

Much as I admire the chosen one (as Mourinho was known in Portugal before, with a flourish reminiscent of Napoleon – who took the emperor’s crown and stuck it on his own head – he rebranded himself “the Special One”), I wonder if all this speculation hasn’t subtly tilted the odds in Bayern’s favour.

True, the Porto players probably knew Mourinho was leaving in 2004 but after Ludovic Giuly limped off, that final was more coronation than contest. He also faced a vastly less experienced coach, Didier Deschamps.

Even for a squad as gifted as Inter’s, Bayern – and Louis Van Gaal – are a stiffer sterner test, offering much less margin for error. Sneijder (who has described Mourinho as almost like a father) and Eto’o, who owe their comebacks to the coach’s guidance, wouldn’t be human if they weren’t distracted by unsettling thoughts of their futures without their mentor.

And for the team, there is a world of difference between approaching the final as if, like Ajax in 1971, you expect this to be the first act of a golden age and fearing that, shorn of your inspirational leader, this might be your only hope of winning this coveted prize.

In the latest Champions – available at all good newsagents and a few dodgy ones – Mourinho reveals some of the methods he has used to lead Inter to this final. One of his greatest gifts is to communicate his certainty and confidence to players. They don’t – unlike Don Revie’s England stars in the 1970s – drown in dossiers because he also gives them clear, succinct messages. Against Chelsea, Mourinho told his squad: if we don’t concede a goal from set-pieces, we’ll win. Inter didn’t and he was proved right.

Who's that on the cover...?

It’s possible that ‘Mou’ – as he’s known in the text world – can, through force of personality, keep his squad focused on the trophy Inter have waited 45 years to win. But any sports psychologist would insist that a team would prefer to prepare for such a career-defining fixture without wondering about the coach’s future.

Lions, ash and false teeth

Volcanic ash permitting, I will soon be in Madrid to watch the most eagerly anticipated Champions League final since… last year’s. In truth, 2009 was never that competitive after Eto’o put Barcelona ahead.

The team who scores first has won 12 out of 17 Champions League finals. (To be fair, two of those winners – Juventus in 1996 and Manchester United in 2008 – prevailed in the shootout.) Manchester United (in 1999), Bayern (2001), Liverpool (2005) and Barcelona (2006) are the only sides to come from behind and lift the trophy in the Champions League era. Twelve Champions League finals have been won by a single goal or in a shoot-out.

So the outcome may be tight, but whoever wins, they are unlikely to react quite as Ronnie Simpson and Bobby Lennox did in 1967. These two Lisbon Lions, heroes of Celtic’s unexpected victory over Inter, had but one thought when the final whistle blew: sprint to the goal and retrieve their false teeth before their jubilant fans claimed them as souvenirs.

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History not on Barca's side as they seek second leg fightback

Paul Simpson — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:30:00 GMT

In the entire history of the European Cup, I can find only four teams who have done what Barcelona must do next week: overturn a two-goal deficit from the first leg of a semi-final.

The first club to do so, bizarrely, was Inter, who lost 3-1 at Anfield in 1965 to Bill Shankly’s Liverpool and won 3-0 at the San Siro, reaching the final – as any Red will tell you – partly because Inter had a little help from the referee.

The last team to stage this kind of comeback, spookier still, were Barcelona who, in 1986, got stuffed 3-0 by IFK Gothenburg in Sweden, won the second leg by the same score at the Camp Nou and prevailed in the penalty shootout.

After donning a metaphorical anorak and trawling through the archives, my research suggests that 22 clubs have tried to do what Barcelona need to do at this stage in the competition.

Eighteen failed – few more agonisingly than PSV who, in 2005, were within minutes of knocking out Milan before Massimo Ambrosini’s late away goal.

Heurelho Gomes and Alex were among the beaten PSV players in 2005

Guus Hiddink, with the self-confidence that only comes from being worshipped as a virtual deity in such disparate parts of the world as Korea, Eindhoven and Stamford Bridge, still insists that his side would have beaten Liverpool in Istanbul.

The other two teams to successfully come back from the brink are Hamburg (who lost 2-0 to Real Madrid in the Bernabeu in 1980 but thrashed Los Blancos 5-1 in the return) and Roma, who broke Dundee United’s hearts in 1984.

Inter, as you may have noticed, are the only team to stage such a comeback and then win the final.

What does all this mean? Not much except, perhaps, that Jose Mourinho has reached the tipping point in his career at Inter.

Calcio may all bow down to the tactical genius of ‘Mou’ this week but come next Thursday, if Barca run amok on their own turf as Hamburg did in 1980, he could be dodging tomatoes.

Inter have done half the job but should heed the wise words of the great Mario Kempes: “Two-nil is the most dangerous score in football."

(In the same interview, for Champions, he also said: “Never rub the head of a bald Indonesian” but that’s for another blog).

Lyon’s mission is more straightforward. Claude Puel won’t let them play that poorly again. Their 534-mile coach trip to Munich didn’t help.

Hugo Lloris looks back in anger as Bayern take a first leg lead

I know, I know, old timers will insist that in their day footballers could run that distance to that game and still score a hat-trick before quaffing 15 pints after the game but times, if not attitudes, have changed.

The differences between winners and losers are now so small that such travails – apart from anything the sheer boredom must be enervating – can decide a tie.

In Munich, Les Gones played as if they were suffering from a kind of footballing altitude sickness, as if awed by the realisation that they had come this far for the first time.

In front of their own fans, knowing precisely what they have to do, they should be much more focused.

If they can put serious pressure on Bayern’s young defenders Diego Contento (who is 19) and Holger Badstuber (21) and make the most of Philip Lahm’s slight dip in form, they could yet reach their first UEFA Champions League final.

Bayern have shown great resilience since they overwhelmed Juventus in Turin. They are now the only team to win four Champions League knockout ties and they have the look of a team with luck on their side.

But their margins of victory have been thinner than a size zero model. They have lost their last two away games in the competition but still progressed.

"Who you calling flat-faced?"

It’s nice to see Louis van Gaal back at the top. As Simon Kuper has noted, he is ungainly, pot-bellied and flat-faced but has “one saving grace, he is brilliant.”

Kuper’s suggestion that Van Gaal is “that rare manager who constantly improves his teams’ performances” may surprise fans of Barcelona and Holland who failed to reach the 2002 World Cup finals under his tutelage.

He left the national side insisting: “Some of the players refused to accept my methods. I am who I am. I’m not going to change that and I have no desire to.”

But his enraged schoolmaster shtick has worked brilliantly at Ajax (where he won the UEFA Cup, a trophy that saved his job, as well as the Champions League), AZ and now Bayern.

Hard to believe that before Christmas the manager with a Michael Portillo quiff was only six games from the sack.

The worry for Bayern must be that as long ago as 2000 Van Gaal talked of himself as a potential successor to Sir Alex Ferguson.

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