Barcelona 1 – Inter 0: Defense is Beautiful

Does this guy look like he regrets being a footballer?

I thought that the two game tie with Barcelona showed the difference of two teams at the top of the European game. Both teams have great athletes. Both teams have incredibly skilled footballers. The difference between both teams came on the training ground and in the overall philosophy of the clubs.

Barcalona are the holding Champion. They have a philosophy that has been proven to be effective and suitable to their players. They crave the pass, the possession and the scoring chances that style brings them. It’s useful and effective. More than that, their players fit the style to a tee. Their club motto states that the club is bigger and more important than the players that make up the organization.

Inter, over these past two seasons; have been trying to make a motto themselves. Of the army of talented and haphazardly collected players that Mourinho has inherited from Mancini, slowly over these two seasons there has been a winnowing of those that don’t buy into the new motto and making some additions of those that do buy into the new motto – one that isn’t too far from Barcelona’s – that the team is bigger and stronger than the individual.

But, the philosophy that Inter is following is much different. Inter’s players don’t fit the all out attacking philosophy of Barcalona. Mourinho brings another philosophy that Inter fit well, especially with the signings from last summer – everyone plays defence first, secure the ball and then transition to the attack.

And that’s the difference between these two. It might be slight, but at this level tiny things appear huge due to the skill and meticulous preparation of the players involved. To play like Barcelona, you need talented and technical players of a like that no other team has or is close to having. To play like Inter, you need a manager to organize the club and motivate the players into buying into his system like no other club is close to having. It’s a contrast of styles played out by two teams who are at the top of their game which I thought was fascinating when I wasn’t having mild coronary attacks.

I still don’t understand the cries of the neutral that thought this game was boring. Watching the game a second time, it was incredible to see the different philosophies made flesh. It was amazing to me to watch these people put their trust – and an entire years worth of preparation, time and hard work into making the ideas of these well dressed men on the sidelines made a reality. It’s a credit to the two teams, the managers and the organizations.

My Inter Players of the Game is really academic at this point. I can’t see how anyone can argue this selection.

Highlights

Analysis

I have made my thoughts regarding the Champions League very clear. I think it’s watered down. I think it’s too long. I think that a lot of the prestige is lost in an effort to make a lot of money.

Having said all that, I think that Inter’s path to the finals are worthy of the old European Cup tournament. We have played the champions of Spain, Ukraine, Russia and the probable champions of England in an effort to get this far. And let’s be honest, Barcelona we had to deal with 4 freaking times. How fair is that?

And what have we earned? In the finals we get to play the probable champions of Germany. Yay us. I don’t know how much more my heart can take.

Some thoughts coming out of the game yesterday:

Did anyone, upon watching the game all the through the first time, feel mad or upset when it ended? I was upset before feeling good, like, since the Motta sending off, I was expecting the other shoe to fall. Was that just me getting angry at Barca and the ref’s or was that the increase in the stakes?

By the way, that was the quickest sending off in the history of the Champions League. Doesn’t seem to fit the crime, did it?

As a neutral to their team, I had lost some respect for Barcelona after the Chelsea tie last season. I got some back after watching them dismantle ManUre in the finals. I lost a lot more after this tie. I got a lot more respect for the Barca fans from the Offside than I do for the trash talkers from other places that allow comments.

James Richardson of The Guardian Podcast got it right, “There was one team that should have attacked more last night and it wasn’t Inter.” Barcelona didn’t play like a team that was losing the tie. They played like a team that was going to win… eventually. Not with any fire or emergency. I thought that Inter fought like crazy to keep their advantage.

Although I think that there are some flaws in Barca’s game that have nothing to do with their defence. I think that they lack a shooter that can, from the run of play, put in a dangerous shot from 30 meters out. I think that this deficiency was exploited by Mourinho or the team or both. Inter were able to sit back a bit more rather than potentially loose their shape a create more space by spreading up the field farther.

Which also brings me to the lack of adjustment of Barcelona to our man disadvantage. The response by Inter was pretty basic – pinch farther in to protect the middle and most dangerous area of the field. There was no response by Barca to flood the flanks. I am not talking about sending in crosses, necessarily, I am talking about putting people on the edge of the box and try to advance the ball into a shooting position on the edges of the corners of the penalty area. After the sending off there was more passing around and probing. There should have been concerted attempts to work one edge and then the other, since Inter were so focused on the middle. Moving Messi from the middle to the edges more might have been a good idea too.

I think that we have all seen The Biscuits’ Peek by now. That wasn’t the dive that bothered me a whole lot, even if it got a player thrown out. Motta was carrying a yellow and he can’t claim that Biscuits’ diving was a surprise considering his pregame interview. I was pretty dismayed that several Barca players tried to dive for a penalty, though, including Alves at the end of the game… again.

This makes all the Anti-Football stuff that much funnier to me. Diving is apparently ok, since, barring The Biscuits Incident, I haven’t heard a whole lot about Barca fishing for penalties, but playing defence, which is supposed to be… you know part of the game, that is just too terrible.

Valdez trying to curb Mourinho from celebrating is an expression of Valdez’s frustration at his own impotence during this game. He was basically powerless to keep Mourinho from celebrating by winning the game so he tried to use other means. It’s a little pathetic and it’s really creepy.

I couldn’t help but notice that Messi tried to take out Maicon again. Other than the whole Argentina and Brazil thing, I can’t figure out what the deal is. A subtitle of this article was going to be “Messi Goes For Another Tooth”. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the last game, but this was just dick – ish.

Yeah, Pique’s goal looked offside. It’s kind of fair play for the offside goal that Milito scored on them in the first game. On the other hand, the handling was definitely the right call. The arm moves up to the chest in reaction to the ball and the ref was right there to watch it happen. It looks like he calls it immediately and the players around the ball stop playing.

How awesome was Cesar? I don’t know if there is a category for save of the season, but he made it on the finger tip, diving behind, reflexes like a cat save he made on Messi. WOW.

I don’t think that enough has been said about the job that Cambiasso did on Messi. Considering that he was supposed to be working in tandem with Motta and had to do a lot of it on his own… just goes to show the talent in this man that goes overlooked. He doesn’t get enough credit for being the player that he is.

And talking about overlooked… Can anyone remember a time in these two games when Javier Zanetti put a foot wrong? The Captain was flawless – again. He’s amazing and I haven’t heard one word spoken or written about the near perfect Champions League season he’s having. He won’t get one award. He won’t even get mentioned by a newspaper. But I will know. I guess that’s going to have to do for me.

Mariga came on for about ten minutes at the end of this game. I was again pleasantly surprised at his calmness given the situation. Does this mean he’s getting more trust? Will we see him more?

They didn’t play a huge role in this game/season but I feel good for Toldo, Materazzi and Cordoba. They deserve something for their long service to the club and this moment was special for them. Especially Toldo, who I think is going to hang it up after this season. That might be why there is all this talk about getting the goalkeeper from Sampdoria.

Samuel and Lucio sacrificed their bodies again. Not bad for a pair of geriatrics, or so they are called by football-italia.net and the English media. Are there better central defenders in all of Serie A this season? I can’t think of two others I would have rather have had.

I think that we can all agree that the shenanigans of Barcelona supporters before and the club as a whole after were pretty sad. Every club as it’s moments and probably more often it’s the fanbase that embarrasses the club. The difference, I think is the marketing. Barca markets itself as the good guys of football and the fans some kind of proud connoisseurs of the game. But I think that we can all see that they are like the rest of us. This means players and fans made up mostly of meatheads and overstimulated, undereducated yo-yos with far too much time and alcohol on our hands. Welcome to reality.

Where do we go from here? We have a league game on Sunday and the Coppa Italia final on Wednesday. This thing isn’t over yet, but in a weeks time we will have a large corner piece of sky ready to place in the puzzle that is this season.

All the speculation regarding the off season, like whether Mourinho is leaving or not – again – is pretty unimportant in my opinion. If he leaves, he leaves. I wonder if he’ll finish the job for this season first.

FORZA INTER

Some Related Inter Posts:

Category: Champions League, Coppa Italia, Douglas Maicon, International Duty, Ivan Cordoba, Javier Zanetti, Julio Cesar, Lucio, Manlove, Serie A, Spurious Gossip, Team News, Thiago Motta, Transfer Speculation, Walter Samuel, shirtless