FC Barcelona stays Firm in La LIga Title Hunt

Can't believe I missed two of the most entertaining match in this season's La Liga chase. With Real Madrid on their tail, FC Barcelona has registered consecutive league victories against Villareal and Tenerife. The margin of both the victories are the same with Barca managing to find the net on four occasion in each match. It was quite a surprise to see Ibrahimovic missing from the line-up against Villareal, especially with the David Villa rumours going strong. There were some suggestions which pointed that may be Guardiola has started to lose confidence in Ibrahimovic. But for now Ibra looks firmly in the plans of Guardiola and that should be the reason why he started with him against Tenerife. After the disappointing performance against Inter Milan it was good to see Messi back on the score sheet. He has scored four goals in the last two matches and now leads the La Liga Pichichi with 31 goals, six more than Real Madrid's Higuain.

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The Curse of Arsenal FC

From its inception as the UEFA Champions League in 1992-93 season, Europe's Premier competition saw every of its defending champions failing to defend their crown. Many Champions have reached successive finals but their dream have been brutaly shattered every time. Milan, Juventus and Manchester United were the ones who came close to defending their crown but failed at the final. Other were much luckier seeing their dreams dashed much earlier. The latest entrant is our beloved FC Barcelona who failed to defend their crown falling to Inter Milan in the semi-final. Many Football pundits have already developed a habit of discounding the defending champions from retaining their crown, especially the once who give betting advice. They fondly call it the "The Curse of the Defending Champions".The European Cup after getting re-christened as UEFA Champions League have undergone a great deal of change and have emerged into the current format in the year 2003-04, when FC Porto emerged the winners.

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Barca vs Inter Milan, Where it went Wrong?

Barca have themselves to Blame for the Champions League Exit

Now with Barca eliminated, the time has come to do a post-mortem of the tie. Does it serve any purpose? I don't know but still we needed to see what all things went wrong. As I said in my FC Barcelona vs Inter Milan Match Report, the semi-final tie was made difficult by Barca's incompetent performance at the San Siro. The truth was that FC Barcelona with the players and the coach were complacent on the night and that resulted in our semi-final exit. It is not the first time this is happening in this season and Guardiola definitely has to take a huge part of the blame. The Copa Del Rey exit also was due to the above mentioned reason. In that match we failed to recognise the danger a very gritty Sevilla side could pose at home. No realising that danger, Guardiola send in a side with most of the stars missing in the crucial home leg. We never were able to repair the damage done in the home leg. A closer look at the Champions League semi-final defeat also gives you the same picture. Guardiola failed to understand the advantage Barca had in playing at home in second leg. Instead for looking for a 1-0 or a 1-1 draw we went for the kill and got killed.

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FC Barcelona - 1, Inter Milan - 0

FC Barcelona knocked out by Inter despite the victory. Aggregate Barca - 2, Inter - 3

FC Barcelona's dream came of defending their Champions League crown at the home of their rivals came to an end after being knocked out byt Italian Champion Inter Milan. Inter Milan, who were reduced to 10 men for almost an hour following the dismissal of Motta, held firm in defense. FC Barcelona's attack struggled to find a way past the dodged defense of Inter for most of the match. The last ten minutes lived to the expectation where we had Pique scoring an absolutely brilliant goal, Bojan missing a sitting header before and also had a disallowed goal from Bojan. The disallowed goal was a bit harsh and if that had stood we would have been heading to Bernabeu now. In the build up to the match I argued about the importance of deploying a 4-2-3-1 formation, FC Barcelona vs Inter Milan Preview. But Guardiola stuck to the 4-3-3 formatuion and against my wish he also started with Ibraahimovic. But there were quite some surprises in the starting eleven. We saw a new central defensive pairing last night, with Toure and Pique playing at the heart of defense. Milito played the left back role while Alves was in his ususal right back role. The midfield had Busquets, Keita and Xavi. Messi and Pedro completed the attacking line up with Ibrahimovic.

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FC Barcelona vs Inter Milan Champions League Semi Final 2nd Leg Preview

FC Barcelona needs to Produce a Magical Night against Inter Milan

So, the stage is set of this all conquering FC Barcelona side to overcome one of the biggest challenges in last two years. After losing the first leg away 3-1 at San Siro, FC Barcelona have to do it all at Nou Camp now. A failure to do that will see the dream of retaining the Champions league crown at our rivals home ending. Many have pointed out that we need a miracle to go through to the final, but for me that is more of an exaggeration. What we really need is a solid, compact and a determined performance and we could be heading to Bernabeu. The last time Inter Milan visited Camp Nou we ended up winning the match comfortably - FC Barcelona - 2, Inter -0 . A repeat of the same performance will see us comfortably through to the final and that is the reason why I emphasized on a good compact performance rather than a miracle. No way this is going to be easy, but this FC Barcelona side has the talent to achieve that result even with the absence of Iniesta.

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