Mar 14, 2013
Mar 13, 2013
A Magisterial Performance and the Way Ahead
Last night was "The Night" - One to remember for time to come, One we will be proud to have watched happening, One which gave a real answer to nay-sayers and the haters who said that "The Era was Over". But for all those who love to watch football at it beautiful best, last night was all about joy and pleasure. They say the "Barcelona of the Old was back" and they were right. We were playing like we did during the prime time under Guardiola. Actually we were playing better than that when you consider the tactical innovation that happened in the match and also the pressure we were under going into this match. Surely we had the luck going our way, had that Niang scored before our second goal, thing could have been tensed. But to argue that this side wouldn't have reacted to that was ridiculous. Our boys and management would have taken that into account and looked absolutely ready to score four goals in the night, if necessary. And to the nay-sayers , who conveniently forget the fact that we should had a clear cut penalty and the sending off Abate way before that event, I have only one things to say - time to get out of your fantasy world. The enormity of task was overwhelming. Let's see how hard it was - first we had to score at least three goals and that too without conceding, that has to be done by a team which struggled to score recently and conceded goals just for fun in every match, also this has to be done against a team which is going to sit back and counter(Barca's problem all the time). That was huge task and we did that with beauty and grace. From one step out of the Champions league we are back as firm favorites.
Mother of All Come Back - FC Barcelona - 4, AC Milan - 0
- FC Barcelona secures Spot in UEFA Champions League Quarter Final with an emphatic 4-0 victory against Milan.
- Barca created history by Completely overturning the first leg deficit.
It has never been done before - never in the history of UEFA Champions League a team has overturn a two goal advantage from first leg without in which they haven't scored. Not anymore. Our boys needed to turn around a 2-0 defeat from the first leg and boy, they did it in style. They thumped this AC Milan side 4-0 to book their place in the Quarter Finals. This should hurt Milan like teh way teh 94 final result hurt us, they had one foot in the Quarters. So that's a sweet revenge. Two first half goals from Messi, both of them were sensational made us equal on aggregate. Another goal from David Villa gave us the lead and the late goal from Jordi Alba completed the rout. People used to say that this Great Team has a Great Comeback missing from their portfolio. Not anymore, this would be as good as it gets. The starting line-up selected by Tito was Valdes, Alves, Mascherano, Pique, Alba, Xavi, Busquets, Iniesta, Pedro, Messi and Villa. The line-up looked like a 4-3-3 with false 9 but in reality was a much more adventurous one. We played with a three man defense and also Villa was playing ahead of Messi, who was having a free role. It was similar to the line-up I suggested in my match preview. Milan started with their strongest line-up with Abbiati, Abate, Mexes, Zapata, Constant, Montolivo, Ambrosini, Flamini, Boateng, Niang and ElShaarawy.
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