[theGuardian] How to beat Barcelona – three managers reveal their methods

Kurban Berdyev

Rubin Kazan

Beat Barcelona 2-1 on 20 October 2009

"I studied all Barcelona's games in the Spanish championship. The game against Valencia [a 0-0 draw] was the most helpful to understand them. I noticed that Xavi and Andrés Iniesta – key players in the team – almost never drop back to their own penalty box. This style of play in the midfield creates free space for shots from the middle range. Our midfielders were told to shoot on sight. It's also good to have a player in this area who constantly tries to hold the build-up of Barcelona's attack in the centre of the midfield. It was Alejandro Domínguez who was playing this role, always dropping from the forward's position to confront Yaya Touré. And Domínguez did a great job. I don't think we could have beaten Barça without him. Barcelona like to use the whole pitch. Their full-backs, Dani Alves and Eric Abidal, tend to play wide and leave some space in the centre. We were ready to organise our counter-attack through that area, so we waited for the right opportunity. That's how the second goal came in.

Quique Sánchez Flores

Atlético Madrid

Beat Barcelona 2-1 on 14 February 2010

"We had to try to keep our shape short and narrow to make it hard for Barcelona to find players between the lines, which is what they do so well and what most causes you trouble. We had to ensure there were not gaps there for them to exploit, in among us. We did that very well, we were focused and very intense, very effective. It's genuinely hard to minimise Barcelona's qualities because they are such a great team. But we did so and we even had moments where we were able to play some quite nice football although in the second half we lost control of the ball a bit, and in truth that wasn't the key to our approach. When we got the ball we were reasonably direct. Stopping Barcelona is really hard – they have good players and they are neat with the ball, so we were very pleased with what we were doing. José Reyes played very well, running at them constantly. The key though was to get it right collectively and deny them any room."

Manolo Jiménez

Sevilla (until 24 March)

Beat Barcelona 2-1 on 5 January 2010

"The key idea we had was to pile the pressure on their defenders and not allow them to bring the ball out of the back. We wanted to make sure that they didn't get the ball to their playmakers – we tried to stop him receiving and playing. We played with great intensity and really went for them. We were close together in the middle but quick to get the ball wide when we attacked. You can never relax against Barcelona because they are the best side in the world. We showed courage, competitiveness and quality. You have to work very hard and not give up a single ball for lost. We conceded one goal because of a lapse of concentration but we were able to overcome that fortunately."

[cartoon] Arsenal - Barcelona

Titlurile presei dinaintea meciului cu Arsenal

[cartoon] Arsenal - Barcelona

[Adrian Georgescu] Da, Raul la Liverpool!

Ar fi ca şi cum un rege, Gerrard Magnificul, i-ar acorda unui alt suveran adăpost la curtea Sa.

De câte ori îl văd încălzindu-se pe marginea terenului, prin minutul 75 al unui meci, îmi imaginez că, nu cu mult timp în urmă, curăţa cartofi într-o bucătărie din subsolul clubului şi, aflând că este nevoie de el, a pus şorţul deoparte şi s-a echipat pe o scară întunecoasă. Mă gândesc că Raul ar face orice pentru Real Madrid, dacă şi cei patru fii ai săi sunt numiţi după câte un jucător emblematic al acestui club.

Fotbalistul care în toată cariera sa de profesionist nu a primit un cartonaş roşu vede acum unul din partea propriului club, căruia i-a fost fidel mereu. Desigur, nu i se spune în faţă “Nu mai ai loc”, ci, în calda tradiţie corporatistă, i se dă de înţeles că “Postul pe care dumneavoastră evoluaţi e fost desfiinţat”. Şi nu e vorba de locul în aşezarea din teren – pentru că Raul ar putea juca oriunde în ofensivă: extremă, vîrf sau în spatele vîrfurilor -, ci mai degrabă, e vorba de postul de “simbol”.

Mi-l amintesc pe Baresi ţinut la AC Milan până la 37 de ani în teren, când marele Franco a simţit că nu mai poate şi s-a retras. Sau de Paolo Maldini, care a spus adio în 2009, la 40 de ani. La celălalt “diavol”, Giggs (36 de ani) şi Scholes (35) joacă încă, cu contracte prelungite. În acelaşi timp, la doar 32 de ani, recordmanul golurilor înscrise pentru clubul madrilen n-a mai avut loc în echipa de start nici într-o treime dintre meciurile disputate în acest sezon.

Sunt, desigur, scheme de cucerire ale Universului care îl exclud, deşi “galacticii” n-au mai prins cam de multişor o semifinală nu într-o competiţie desfăşurată pe undeva pe la marginea Căii Lactee, ci chiar aici, pe Pămînt: Liga Campionilor. Da, pentru al cincilea an consecutiv, Real Madrid e clubul cu cele mai mari încasări din lume, 400 milioane de euro în sezonul trecut, însă pare mai degrabă toana unui băieţel de patru ani de a nu mai da drumul din mână unor abţibilduri, decât după ce s-a plictisit de ele. Makelele, Robben, Sneijder şi mulţi alţii pot depune mărturie despre deliciile meseriei de pion otrăvit.

Sper ca Raul Gonzalez să accepte oferta lui Benitez şi să ajungă la Liverpool, pentru că blestemul Realului este că va rămâne “Raul Madrid” chiar fără să o ştie şi fără să o vrea. Aştept ziua în care vor vinde şi albul din echipament pentru a cuceri o piaţă prin Asia, când Cristiano Ronaldo şi alţii ca el vor scoate puţin fum din frezele ca mucul de lumânare, evaporându-se ca nişte holograme cuminţi. Ce vis! Raul alături de Gerrard ar fi ca şi cum un rege i-ar acorda unui alt suveran adăpost la curtea sa, iar fotbalul ar redeveni o ocupaţiune în care să mai fie loc pentru tradiţie, respect şi recunoştinţă.

[Sid Lowe] Players taking advantage of good sportsmanship

Iker Casillas was going mental, shouting and swearing and waving his arms in the air. Angrily, he refused to shake hands with Dani Parejo - a former teammate and quite possibly a future one, too. The rest of the Real Madrid team shook their heads sadly, looking stunned. And the coach, Manuel Pellegrini, was furious.

"I don't think anyone can be proud of what happened," he said. "I certainly wouldn't want my team to do something like that. What Dani Parejo did was very disloyal."

What Dani Parejo did was this: he tackled Iker Casillas, played the ball to a teammate, got the return pass, and scored.

There really isn't very much more to it.

Pellegrini outraged

Only, it seems, there is. There is very, very much more to it. And that has once again revealed the ridiculousness of one the most infuriating habits that has taken hold of the Spanish league, the double standards, gamesmanship and rank hypocrisy.

Real Madrid were playing at Getafe on Thursday night. Madrid were 4-0 up - yes, four; we're not even talking about a decisive moment, a match changing play - when a ball was crossed into the box.

Casillas came flying off his line, flapped at the cross, palming the ball out of the area and chased after it like a man possessed. Parejo made the challenge (cleanly, it appears), Casillas tumbled over him, and Parejo found a teammate inside the area.

When the teammate played the ball back to Parejo, Casillas was still on the floor, rolling round and making a fuss, but Madrid had four defenders between Parejo and the goal. One or two seemed to half-stop, others didn't. Parejo curled in a clever finish.

Casillas was furious. Pellegrini, too. They expected and demanded that Parejo kick the ball out of play. But why should he?

First of all, did Parejo even see Casillas on the floor? Maybe, maybe not. Probably yes, in truth - but that's not the point. The point is this: there was no foul. And even if there had been, that's up to the referee.

There was no injury. Although Casillas made a song and dance of being hurt and Pellegrini said afterwards, "he has a knock on his ankle you should see", he carried on for the rest of the match. He won't miss training this morning or Sunday's match against Atletico Madrid.

Even if he had been injured, so what? There was no clash of heads, no terrible fall onto his neck from a great height, no blood gushing across the turf. At most there was a wallop on the ankle. So what? It happens.

Would kicking the ball out and getting the trainer on extra quick have made a major difference to his recovery? Why should anyone stop for an injury? If a full-back is struggling with cramp does the winger agree not to run at him? Of course not.

Why does Parejo owe loyalty to Casillas? Wouldn't not scoring have been disloyal to Getafe? The club he plays for. The club that pay him.

And what's to say that Casillas wasn't rolling about a bit precisely to try to force Parejo to kick the ball out and thus rescue his own stupid mistake and prevent Getafe from scoring a goal they had every right to score? 

And that is exactly the point. Kicking the ball out when a player goes down began as an act of sporting behaviour. But it has become exactly the opposite. It has been manipulated and taken advantage of. If you expect players to police themselves they will cheat. And now they cheat all the time - and yet, morally, they're the good guys; if he doesn't take the bait, the poor sod who's being cheated is the bad guy.

It may not have been the case with Casillas last night but players who invariably have absolutely nothing wrong with them have realised that going down is a great way of stopping the other side building a move, or launching a counter-attack or, like last night, scoring a goal. You can see them on the floor, eyes darting about, looking round to see if staying down and rolling about a bit is a good idea. If their team wins the ball back, magically they're ok again.

Other players then feel a kind of moral obligation to kick the ball out. But they shouldn't. It's twisted. It's upside down. It's just wrong. The moral obligation should be to carry on. The moral obligation should be to get back on your feet, there's nothing wrong with you. And even if there is, hey, tough luck, that's the way it goes sometimes.

Sportsmanship being taken advantage of

How often have you seen the player who's gone down actually need treatment? (and even if he does, so what?) It's as if the very fact of kicking the ball out is the magical cure his injury needs. And then when the other team, in a gesture of reciprocated 'goodwill', give the ball back they invariably give it back 50 yards further back and having had time to regroup. A good chance becomes a throw-in by your own by-line, right down in the corner. Hey, thanks mate! That's real sporting!

The sporting gesture was open to abuse and got abused; the sporting gesture became one of the least sporting things you could wish to see. And just another impediment to everyone's enjoyment. Game after game gets slowed, broken up, ruined - yes, even ruined - by the constant booting the ball out for no reason whatsoever. The moral pressure is too great for anyone to withstand.  

A couple of years ago, the then-Valladolid coach Jose Luis Mendilíbar, also getting pretty annoyed with the trend, announced that his side would not kick the ball out ever. And that he didn't expect any other team to kick the ball out for his players too. Before every game, he personally informed the referee of the decision and went to the opposition dressing room to tell them too.

If there's anything serious, he said, let the referee stop the game. He didn't because there wasn 't. The difference may not have been huge, but games flowed that little bit more.

Sadly, the example never caught on.

Last night, Manuel Pellegrini complained that Getafe's goal - a goal that made absolutely no difference whatsoever - was unsporting. Last week, he said nothing of the sort when Rafael Van der Vaart controlled with his hands - yes, both of them - to score the vital equaliser against Sporting Gijón.

Ah, he'd say, but that's up to the ref to see. And last night's wasn't? The player who got it wrong last night was Casillas, yet the pariah this morning is Parejo.

Last night Dani Parejo scored while Iker Casillas was on the floor.

Good.

[totalBarca] Lessons from the Ibrahimovic-Eto’o comparison

Originally titled “‘IbracadARRRGGHHHH how could he scuff that one?!’ A culé considers requesting a refund,” I decided that was too harsh and not really what I’m arguing. But I miss Sammy, and I’m getting tired of watching Ibra pout on the field. So I went looking for constructive criticisms….

The same thing that makes football the most beautiful sport in the world also makes it very difficult to win an argument about a player. There are few statistics in football, and fewer still that do anything to capture a player’s value to his club. So I am waltzing into very subjective territory. Clearly, many of us enjoy these arguments — but let’s accept that there’s no winning to be done by anyone here. That job belongs to our players.
Let me add to that disclaimer a confession: I have waffled back and forth on the subject of Zlatan Ibrahimovic more times than Sergio Ramos runs a brush through his hair each morning. Even at the time of this writing, I am not sure precisely how to feel about the man. He is our striker and I know he can succeed here. Eto’o is gone and not returning, and I hope Ibra can look to his legacy to help raise his form.

Big Game Sammy has struggled to fit into his new side, too-- but came up big at Chelsea

There are several ways in which Zlatan is an improvement at CF over my beloved Cameroonian.

1) He is simply massive.At 6′3″ and 185 lbs (1.91m/84kg), he simply has a much larger frame than Eto’o, making him (at the very least) a more dangerous target from set pieces.
2) His ball skillsare of the very highest level, meaning he should be able to hold the ball up in the rare situations where opponents– British ones, probably– smother out our normal flair in midfield and make possession harder to maintain. Samu is certainly an accomplished settler and dribbler of the football, but those skills are not what made him such an assassin. More on this in a moment.
3) Wizardry:Ibra has the same reputation for cold-blooded finishing — a phrase which Eto’o should probably put on his business cards — but in the past he has always seemed to make something from nothing, and to create chances for himself and others. And he makes individual plays that rip culés out of our seats, even when they come to nothing. In a Liga game this season, for example, he was whistled for a high boot after using an impossible little Tae Kwan Do kick to bring the ball away from two defenders while it was well above his head height (and I wet myself in awe and cursed the referee).

But over the course of the season, as we wait patiently for Zlatan to find his place in the side, he has proven to be an inconsistent performer. His shortcomings also contrast sharply with Eto’o — though this time the comparison is not flattering to the Swede. Consider:
A) Lack of focus:Ibrahimovic fails to hustle back onside when possession is lost or his run forward does not earn him the ball. He certainly does not lack the pace and he is experienced enough that he should know better. He shows a tendency to dwell on misplayed balls, and is often seen shaking his head and walking/jogging back toward an onside position. I can’t count how many times this has happened this year, and I’m sure Eto’o was not perfect in this regard — but I know he worked harder to make sure he was in the right position as quickly as possible. And the one word that embodies his play, even when his form slips, is “hustle.”
B) Easily frustrated:This is related to the above point, as I think Ibra has very high standards for himself and he has not often reached them this season. He is a passionate player who wants nothing less than excellence from himself and his teammates, and that is a good thing. But he lets his emotions get the better of him on a regular basis. Sometimes that affects his focus (see above), but sometimes it seems to lead him into rough challenges and ugly verbal exchanges. Even when he does not accumulate cards or do something unsportsmanlike, that sort of behavior affects the whole side. It is unprofessional and it distracts teammates from the game at hand. Eto’o is not immune to frustration, of course, but makes a habit of channeling his frustration into running farther and working harder to repossess the ball. Thus far, Ibra has not found a creative outlet for his angst.
C) Inconsistent effort: It was always going to be complicated to fit a lone-striker type into the “total football” or Pep-ball system that raked in the hardware last season. Indeed, the only part of Rakun’s piece that I completely agree with is the notion that Pep deserves much of the blame for failing to put Ibra in a position to succeed. But I also think that a professional athlete in a slump has one thing completely in their control: ”How hard am I going to work?” We have seen the Swede be brilliant when he puts in the work — If he played each week as he did against Zaragoza on Sunday, we could applaud his effort just as we lament his finishing. It is that up-and-down performance that frays my nerves. At times, he does fight for possession, he does sprint everywhere and he does show with each touch that he’s ready for the ball. But only at times. Too often he is starved for the ball, and it shows in sloppy touches or scuffed chances at the goal mouth.

Zlatan is a warrior-- when he wants to be

So we return to the notion that Eto’o and Ibrahimovic are completely different types of players. Lord knows Samu missed his fair share of so-called “easy chances.” (Heck, somebody even made a video compilation of his misses.) But because he is a different kind of striker, and because he is constantly engaged in the game whether or not the ball comes to him, he always found himself with multiple chances per game — and so the misses fade in our memory.
Zlatan, on the other hand, needs the ball at his feet; he needs to be a target when Pep leaves him high and alone; he needs to be a part of the buildup when the strategy calls for multiple players to share the high striker role. We need to find a way to set him up for success (and again, we have not done so very often this year). I suspect we may need to let him run free much as Samu always did, but I’m no strategic expert.
Here’s what we really need: the Swede must improve the things he can control, regardless of what happens in each game. We need him to follow the Cameroonian’s example with his mentality about the game, and surely that will allow his natural creativity and skill to shine.
We need a focused, humble, hard-working and professional Zlatan Ibrahimovic — because that man is a deadly, world-class striker AND a brilliant distributor of the ball to his teammates. When he shows up, he is a joy to watch. Please, Ibra, start showing up every week.

[The Guardian] Man ... Superman ... Leo Messi

Leo Messi celebrates after scoring his sensational second goal against Real Zaragoza. Photograph: Denis Doyle/Getty Images

It's not big and it's not clever but sometimes swearing is the only thing that will do. Sometimes you've used up every other word and nothing else quite hits the spot. You've rummaged round the back of the sofa, rifled through the drawers, turned out your pockets and still come up empty. Pep Guardiola insisted that he was clean out of adjectives and frankly so was everyone else. Spain was suffering a severe shortage of superlatives last night. The Catalan newspaper Sport invited readers to send in headlines for what they had just witnessed and there were plenty of super, sensational and sublimes, some magic, magnificent and marvellouses, wows and wonderfuls, plus deities by the dozen, and even a Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but still there was no way to really do it justice. No polite way anyway. Just wide eyes, a wider mouth and a simple: holy shit!

What they had witnessed would have been one of the most brilliant performances imaginable from Leo Messi but for one thing: you would never have imagined it. He was unbebloodylievable. The milk. The consecrated bread. The dog's dingly-danglies.

It was a performance that started off well, got better in the middle, and by the end was barely believable. One that left you feeling exhausted just watching it, full of ridiculously good touches. It got better and better and better and when you thought it couldn't get any better it got better again. One that went from Crikey to Bloody Hell to Oh my God to Now, you're really taking the mickey. Only Messi wasn't taking the mickey, he was just playing football – the way he plays football. The way no one else has played football. Maybe ever before.

"I'm not sure he's human," said the Zaragoza playmaker Ander Herrera. "Tonight, I saw Diego Maradona," declared the Real Zaragoza coach José Aurelio Gay, "but at more revs per minute. There are no words left to describe him – he is interplanetary. We could have beaten Barcelona but we could never have beaten Leo Messi. If we had scored four, he would have scored 12."

He didn't get 12, he got three. For his first trick, Messi headed Barcelona into the lead. For his second trick he won the ball near the halfway line, dashed through, the ball never leaving his foot, stepped round three challenges, left Matteo Contini on his backside, and hit a low shot into the net. And for his hat-trick, he curled in a beauty from the edge of the area. Then he produced a bit of barely plausible skill inside the Zaragoza penalty area, flicking over one man and stepping beyond another, before being pulled down for a penalty. It would have been his fourth only he got up, dusted himself off and handed the ball to Zlatan Ibrahimovic instead. "Well," Messi shrugged, "Zlatan needed it."

He certainly did. If Messi has scored the unscoreable, the Swede, who had scored only once this year, had missed the unmissable. No wonder everyone went weak at the knees. He's a genius – and so generous too! He'd done the truly impossible – scored three and made Ibrahimovic score too.

He was, insisted Carles Ruipérez in La Vanguardia, "Unbelievable. Unrivalled. Unrepeatable. Spectacular. Marvellous. Wonderful. Genial. Incredible." "Messi is the God of football," declared Sport. "Stratospheric. Magical. Divine. Generous. Extraordinary." "ET," ran the headline inside, "was born in Rosario and plays in Barcelona." "Brutal," added El Mundo Deportivo. On the inside, they were recalling the famous Ronaldo goal against Compostela – one so insultingly good it had Bobby Robson pacing back and forth on the touchline, head in hands muttering: "I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" and the Compostela players threatening to sue for damages. "Maradona + Ronaldo," ran the equation "= Messi". El País called him "infinity", while El Mundo reserved for him a "place amongst the greatest".

Speaking of the greatest, even Marca, the newspaper who decided to ignore Messi's brilliance against Stuttgart on Wednesday by splashing on the breaking news that Muhammad Ali is a legend, found a place for him on their cover. Near the bottom, but on the cover nonetheless, with the headline "Super Messi". "Maradona, here's your son," it said inside. AS too gave Messi big billing – just above a Rafa van der Vaart explaining that just because he controlled the ball with his hands it doesn't mean he handballed it. "Messi," said the paper, "is from another world!"

All of which might seem a bit over the top for a hat-trick against the side that conceded six against Real Madrid and lie just three points above the relegation zone. Late last night, on the ape-house shouting-fest that is Punto Pelota, Pedro Pablo San Martín turned on his fellow guests, accusing them of "popping Viagra", shouting: "Stop going on about him all the time! It's only Zaragoza!"

Only, it's not. And that is the point. It's not only Zaragoza, it's everyone else too. It's every game. For Barcelona, at least. One of the incredible things about Messi is how rarely he disappoints. In fact, it's tempting to conclude that he has made the ridiculous so routine that he doesn't get talked about as much as deserves; playing perfectly is hardly news. It was not just Zaragoza, it was the fact that Messi has now scored two La Liga hat-tricks in a row, after an astonishingly brilliant three against Valencia last week. It was the fact that, until he handed the ball to Ibrahimovic, he had scored Barcelona's last nine goals. It was the display against Stuttgart that prompted Christian Gross to admit: "Comparing him to Maradona is perfectly licit now." It was the eight in a week. The 11 in five games. The free-kick against Almería – so subtle, so stupidly soft you wonder if he was wearing slippers. And playing with a balloon. The 25 in the league already, the 34 in all competitions.

It's not just the goals either. When it comes to the inevitable and often tedious comparisons with Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the things that is often said about Messi is that he is not as complete. Earlier this season the pro-Real Madrid newspaper Marca asked the man who had just published a glossy, club-sponsored biography of Ronaldo to do a comparison of Ronaldo and Messi in the midst of its campaign to beatify the Portuguese – and get pictures of him with his top off on their cover as often as possible. Surprise, surprise, Ronaldo won. He scored higher than Messi in heading, speed, shooting, leadership, physical condition, and free-kicks and penalties, scoring the same in technique and passing.

It was not a new conclusion. In England too Ronaldo is invariably described as more complete than Messi – stronger, faster, bigger, more athletic. But aren't they all part of the same package, an obsession with physical strength? Isn't that a pretty incomplete reading of complete? Last season Messi scored twice as many Champions League goals with half as many shots. This season, Messi is the league's top scorer with 10 more than Ronaldo, has provided more assists than anyone else (Ronaldo is not in the top 20) and has completed more passes than any other attacker. He hasn't even taken any penalties.

Yes, they were acting like they were on Viagra. But, no, it wasn't just Zaragoza. It is everything Messi has done throughout his career. The 79 goals in 129 games. The two European Cups and three league titles. If he was not already the best player in the world in his first three seasons – 30 goals in 60 games – it's because of injury. Every season, he missed at least 10 matches. But when he played there were special moments. That unbelievable hat-trick against Real Madrid. That Getafe goal. The pair of destructions of Atlético Madrid. The naturalness with which he took over from Ronaldinho – every bit as much the messiah but not such a naughty boy.

You always felt he was just an injury-free season away from being the best. Last season he got it. Last season he got 38. The top scorer's award in the Champions League. The goal in the Champions League final. And the World Club Cup final. And the two in what was effectively the league final – the historic 6-2 against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabéu, when he was described as "Maradona, Cruyff, and Best rolled into one". As well as the Copa sublime hat-trick that knocked Atlético out of the Cup and saw the Vicente Calderón hand him a standing ovation.

It is everything Messi has done and how he has done it. It is the sheer stupidness of his talent, the ohmygoddidyoujustseewhathedid? about him. The fact that he gets hacked at and somehow keeps on running, that he'd be like a Weeble only he hardly ever even wobbles. That the ball, to use the old cliché, really does seem to be tied to his feet. He doesn't even seem to kick it most of the time: like a faithful dog, it just runs alongside him. That he's like the kid in the under-10s team that picks the ball up, runs rings round everyone and scores; that he is exactly the kid he was when he was a kid. That he goes from 0-60 in no time and from 60-0 again in even less – what was so stunning about his goal against Valencia last weekend was how suddenly he stopped, sending the defender screeching by like a cartoon character off a cliff.

  

It is that last night his president Joan Laporta announced that Messi is the best player in Barcelona's history – and it didn't sound completely ridiculous. Premature, yes. Exaggerated, probably. But not completely ridiculous. Yes, Messi has more to win in order to prove it – although he has already won more than George Best ever did and more European Cups than Diego Maradona. Yes, he still has to achieve things to make his case watertight, particularly with Argentina. But how could it be otherwise? After all, for all the sublime touches, the goals, the assists and the win-it-on-his-own performances, perhaps the most ridiculous thing of all is that Leo Messi is still only 22.

Sid Lowe