matbezlima
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2019
- Messages
- 388
I would like to talk about United's qualities in the 2011 UCL final. We all know that it was a Barcelona masterclass and the greatest performance in a UCL final in this century, but I will not focus on this in my comment, I will focus on United.
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You can see in the whole game that United's own box when United were defending was often extremely crowded. The spaces there were very, very tight, minimal. United's defenders actually had a good match and made a good share of great tackles and interceptations of Barcelona's through balls in the entire game. All of this coupled with Barcelona, specially Pedro and Villa, not being at their sharpest in their passing and decision making, meant that Barcelona's tiki-taka, triangulations and quick one-twos inside the opponent's box, one of the most impressive things that we associate the most with Guardiola's Barcelona, were virtually non-existant in that UCL final.
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Perhaps that was exactly Ferguson's plan to contain Barcelona and it makes some sense. United was doomed to being totally dominated in midfield no matter what he did and their counter-attacks were dreadful and they never knew what to do in possession. United also didn't have a Pepe to play in midfield that could disrupt Barcelona's midfield with physicality and pressing, what Mourinho did in the series of 4 Clásicos and something that Pepe was being extremely sucessful at in all games before being sent off in the third game of the series, the UCL's first semifinal leg.
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Guardiola's teams have often received in his career criticism that they are too obssessed and dogmatic with passing the ball into the net, that they were alergic to shots outside the box. These criticisms were specially common after Barcelona's elimination against Inter. And this was a flaw of Guardiola's teams for most of his career that he perhaps fixed at City.
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Unlike Mourinho, though, Ferguson didn't really want to park the bus. Ferguson probably expected that Barcelona would just be frustrated trying and failing to tiki-taka and triangulate in United's box in the entire game because it was so unlikely for Barcelona, no matter the circunstances, to try many shots outside the box. So he only bothered to heavily crowd United's box, leaving A LOT of space on its edge for shots outside it.
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And this strategy totally backfired because Barcelona actually, and extremely atypically, wasn't afraid to shoot from outside the box at all in the game. See the game's highlights, Barcelona shot way, way, way more from outside the box than usual. Probably most of their shots were from outside the box, a fact almost alien for that team! None of Barcelona's goals were tiki-taka goals and all of them were from outside the box too. Messi's goal is a clear example of Ferguson's tactics backfiring: the players didn't try to close down Messi, they kept position and maintained the box protected and crowded, but Messi shot anyway and scored.
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What do you think about all of this? Should Ferguson have totally parked the bus like Inter did and try to win the UCL on penalties instead of only crowding the box?
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You can see in the whole game that United's own box when United were defending was often extremely crowded. The spaces there were very, very tight, minimal. United's defenders actually had a good match and made a good share of great tackles and interceptations of Barcelona's through balls in the entire game. All of this coupled with Barcelona, specially Pedro and Villa, not being at their sharpest in their passing and decision making, meant that Barcelona's tiki-taka, triangulations and quick one-twos inside the opponent's box, one of the most impressive things that we associate the most with Guardiola's Barcelona, were virtually non-existant in that UCL final.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps that was exactly Ferguson's plan to contain Barcelona and it makes some sense. United was doomed to being totally dominated in midfield no matter what he did and their counter-attacks were dreadful and they never knew what to do in possession. United also didn't have a Pepe to play in midfield that could disrupt Barcelona's midfield with physicality and pressing, what Mourinho did in the series of 4 Clásicos and something that Pepe was being extremely sucessful at in all games before being sent off in the third game of the series, the UCL's first semifinal leg.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guardiola's teams have often received in his career criticism that they are too obssessed and dogmatic with passing the ball into the net, that they were alergic to shots outside the box. These criticisms were specially common after Barcelona's elimination against Inter. And this was a flaw of Guardiola's teams for most of his career that he perhaps fixed at City.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unlike Mourinho, though, Ferguson didn't really want to park the bus. Ferguson probably expected that Barcelona would just be frustrated trying and failing to tiki-taka and triangulate in United's box in the entire game because it was so unlikely for Barcelona, no matter the circunstances, to try many shots outside the box. So he only bothered to heavily crowd United's box, leaving A LOT of space on its edge for shots outside it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And this strategy totally backfired because Barcelona actually, and extremely atypically, wasn't afraid to shoot from outside the box at all in the game. See the game's highlights, Barcelona shot way, way, way more from outside the box than usual. Probably most of their shots were from outside the box, a fact almost alien for that team! None of Barcelona's goals were tiki-taka goals and all of them were from outside the box too. Messi's goal is a clear example of Ferguson's tactics backfiring: the players didn't try to close down Messi, they kept position and maintained the box protected and crowded, but Messi shot anyway and scored.
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What do you think about all of this? Should Ferguson have totally parked the bus like Inter did and try to win the UCL on penalties instead of only crowding the box?