Results for tag: Barcelona
Posted by:
Andy Gray
on Mar 15, 2011 at 08:52:14 AM
The other day somebody asked me what I thought were the three things you needed to win the Champions League. "Xavi, Iniesta and Messi," I replied.
Joking aside, Barcelona are of course the outstanding team in the competition this year, though their tie against Arsenal ended up being tighter than many would have thought. With 20 minutes to go, it was Arsenal who were going through, let's not forget, and Barca did benefit from a pretty harsh decision when Robin van Persie received his marching orders.
But those are discussions for another day and Pep Guardiola's men played really well over the two legs and probably deserved to go through. It sounds like an obvious thing to say, given they're the 2.32 favourites to win the competition, but they really are the team to beat.
You need...
Posted by:
Andy Gray
on Feb 28, 2011 at 08:41:14 AM
It was meant to be the match made in heaven but just recently Jose Mourinho and the Real Madrid hierarchy seem to have fallen out of love just a bit.
The big masterplan was of course to knock Barcelona off their perch at domestic level and win the Champions League sometime over the next two or three seasons. They still have a pretty decent chance of going all the way in Europe but as regards the race to the La Liga title, it will take a minor miracle to prevent Barcelona from defending their title.
In typical fashion Mourinho has very much done things his own way since arriving at the Bernabeu. He made the big call that so many other recent managers weren't prepared to make and told Raul that his time as a Galactico was up; he decided that Rafael van der Vaart wasn't his sort of player...