UCL (2012-13) RD16 - 2nd Leg: Barcelona vs. Milan

[DonCorleone]

i don't know you may be right, but i had the feeling that this was doable for us. what pisses me off at most, is allegri with his formation and player selection. when we face some peanuts opposition he closes up the game, fields 4-5 DMs, when we face strong teams where we have to defend a 2-0 he opens up and screws up. i simply dont understand what he is up to. yesterday i was expecting to see a team of bone brakers, a 4-5-1, that won't give barca a centimeter of space to move and circle the ball. instead he fielded ambrossini and flamini only both tired and old, that made barca's job easier than ever.
this should be a lesson for us for the future, but i won't say this is the best we could get. I am to bet all i have, that barca's next opponent will kick them out. they are vulnerable and beatable even at camp nou!


ps: allegri has to grow up as a coach. he knows 0 tactics and is one dimensional.

parking the bus wouldn't work... Chelsea did it very well...still Barca scored 2, missed a penalty and 10 clear chances....
we knew from the first leg we have to play actively and tackle them already at the half line... that's what we did after scoring the first goal...and that's what we did after scoring the second.. we were active, not defending with 11 in the area and that was what got us success... Barca plays against the parked bus every week so that would be a bad idea...

Allegri called it right when he said we had too much respect in the opening minutes... he might have made mistakes in the team selection but I guess the young team failed tactically... Allegri wanted to do what we did at San Siro and it was a right call... but the shape in which Barca was and the pressure was too much for this team...

[Haroon]

What is important right now is the direction we are heading now. Let's not forget that three weeks ago even if Barcelona had an off-night we were there to capitalize on it fully. We neutralised them and we created a self-doubt in them so much so that they took this game much more seriously.

I don't think Real beating them twice really helped our cause because it literally incited rage in them to prove their critics wrong. Had they smashed Real in both games or the later game then maybe they would have been more relaxed. Our win over them humbled them and hurt their pride. Real inflicted further damage and all of a sudden everybody was pointing fingers at them. They didn't like this. They wanted to prove everyone wrong. It became a mission and unfortunately for us, we were the victims of all that anger!


We went there with the right tactics and idea but the execution failed totally. When Messi scored he had 5 Milan players around him. It was a touch of a genius to dink that ball into the corner as Abbiati couldn't do anything about it. Nobody could. Getting that momentum so early really set things off for them in the right direction and brought self-doubt into our minds.

I agree with Galliani that if that ball had gone in by Niang the game would have been over because Milan would have set-up totally differently and Barcelona would not have a 2-0 lead. They would have gotten desperate to score the goals and even 2-1 wouldn't hurt us and that would have left many gaps at the back.

I mean just look at the scoreline. Despite their total domination and wonderful play, they still scored 3 goals on us. I am 100% sure that we would have held them out if the score was 1-1 and then they made it a 3-1 game. It's the small details.

3 cms on the right and Milan would have equalized and it would have been a big blow. The Camp Nou 90,000 would have gone quiet. The whistling would have been converted to biting nails and our players would have started to relax more.

And all this is with us playing a horrible match. It was that close.


We don't need to worry about going for the known quality players IMO. What has got us to this stage was the first leg performance. We have to make that a reference point and work on those football basics.

-> Close down the spaces really quickly. We didn't do this in the Camp Nou. We were waiting too much like the old days.
-> Ball skills. This means short quick passes and interplay. It requires a great first touch, quick skills, presence of mind and the small pass.
-> Off the ball running
-> Learn to control the field even if we don't have the ball. The zone should be ours even if we don't have the ball.


We took this game less seriously compared to Barca. If Allegri would have realised how much big a goal or two goals could be in this game then he could have had Noc, De Sciglio and Bojan as the three subs in his minds because two of them have goals in them. And he should have started with Muntari who has a mean left foot instead of Flamini/Ambrosini. One of them should have sat out.

That would have been my plan knowing that 1 goal was golden for us so players with a natural flair for the goal would have been on the pitch. Despite whatever mistakes we made, 3 cms is the difference.

We need to learn from this because this is a young team. I don't think the DM members are that young. We don't like these 4-0s. I couldn't eat anything all day. It's hard recovering from something like this. And the bad thing is that these 4-0s with Dortmund, Deportivo, Utd. and Barcelona, not forgetting the 3-0 (before we got the away goal) vs. PSV and Arsenal have all happened in the last 11 years. Gulp!

[Haroon]

It just highlights how much important it is to get the ONE goal that can change the complexion of a match just like that. ONE GOAL is all it takes to start something.

[Haroon]

I agree ... we can't park the bus. It's just not in us. We would get destroyed trying to park the bus. We can do a mixture of resolution defending and attacking but pure parking the bus can't be done by us. We don't have the team, mentality or players to do it.

[DonCorleone]

Well, just look at Bayern almost wasting 3-1 win away tonight! and they are possibly the hot team right now! One famous czech player wrote a book called "footballs has no logic" and that's they way it is... Arsenal could have gone thru despite being pathetic in both legs

the first goal was decisive factor as I've seen we can play brilliantly with first touch against Inter or Lazio.....all the combinations of Abate-Montolivo-Boateng...one touch...fast to the wing... We could not make a single first touch right yesterday...it just wasn't our night :-(

[Haroon]

Arsenal almost went through. Shockingly poor display by Bayern but maybe a good omen or them that they lost badly at home now. Wake-up call for them.

We need to seal that second spot for automatic qualification. Next season we could have an exciting side that can win its own group. I think the last time we won out UCL group was back in 2007-8.

After the first leg of this round people were saying that all the Spanish sides will go out. Well, three of them made it and Valencia was not too far as well. So, well done to La Liga sides. Tides turn from one game to another in the UCL just like that.

[brickeberg]

We have to make that a reference point and work on those football basics.

-> Close down the spaces really quickly. We didn't do this in the Camp Nou. We were waiting too much like the old days.
-> Ball skills. This means short quick passes and interplay. It requires a great first touch, quick skills, presence of mind and the small pass.
-> Off the ball running
-> Learn to control the field even if we don't have the ball. The zone should be ours even if we don't have the ball.

Funny enough this was what made me hyped about Allegri before he joined us. The above was his playing philosophy they said. And then came the Ibra-dependency and having no balls. I don't think that Allegri is good enough to be our coach, but we've seen that he has the capability to get the team to play like that, we saw it several times in Allegri's first season with Milan. The team pressed like mad and controlled the pitch and play even without the ball. It works very well in Serie A and in CL too, as evidenced by the Barca game, so I don't know why we don't play like that more often.

Nonetheless like you said, despite embarrassing ourselves in Nou Camp it was still close. Niang had a golden chance and we even pushed them back in the last 10 minutes. This team has IMO a good foundation and a couple of signings in the summer plus Balotelli and De Jong should make it even better next season.

I just hope that this loss doesn't affect the team negatively cause we still have a very important objective left. Lets get that 2nd place and come back to the CL next season stronger and better!

[DonCorleone]

Inter and Napoli were humilated even more than we were... Going out 5-0 on agg. with Viktoria Pilsen is far from 4-2 with Barca!
We should still have an upler hand... Shame that Juve saved the result ag. Catania... They will still have two UCL games and they are gonna be dropping points. Now if we beat them it's still 8 which is too much