La Liga Round 16: FC Barcelona vs Atletico Madrid

futbol wrote:It's not one game though. I'd argue that this is happening since last season already against any team that isn't cannon fodder.

AC Milan: 4 games. Not a single one was won from open play. Penalties decided the ties. And this wasn't even a particularly great Milan side. Thiago Silva injured. 35 year old Nesta...

Chelsea twice.

Struggling against a disciplined Celtic side. Twice.

Even Real Madrid. They aren't in particularly great shape this season, but 3 of the 5 goals Barcelona scored against Madrid this season were penalties + freekicks.

The usual Barcelona gameplan doesn't really work that well anymore against anything that isn't called Zaragoza, Deportivo or Real Sociedad.

We'll see in the Champions League I guess.

Seems to me that you're ignoring the times a team took that approach and it didn't work and only naming the times it sort-of-did. Chelsea should've lose by more than 3 goals if we had our scoring boots on that day, for instance. I agree that playing a narrow 4-4-2 relying on quick counter attacks is the way to play against Barca, but we were "found out" by Hiddink. 4 years ago. And we still won the CL after he showed the world how to stop us.

Another point is that I don't see that many big teams pulling this off successfully in the CL. Arsenal or United? Never played against us like that. Bayern and Juve wouldn't either. Real Madrid have sort of figured it out, but they rely much more on the pressing of Barca than the Chelsea-approach, which is more effective imo. The rest of the teams Barca can deal with well.

We've been using roughly the same 'tactical gameplan' for the last 4 years.

Don't tell me it doesn't work. Because results don't tend to favor your view.

Didnt think we had a particularly great game.Very poor the first 30 minutes.
We needed a bit of magic to get back in the game and thankfully Adriano provided it.Without that bit of magic we might have struggled as Atletico were doing really well to keep us out.After the goal our play improved a lot and Atletico just gave up which was kind of strange as they were playing really well upto that point.
Messi had one of those strange walkabout games which he seems to have every few months.Still contributed with 2 lethal finishes.
Highlights of the game for me were Busquets goal and Thiago's control.
Busquets was just ice cool.Terrific finish.
And Thiago's control
Very similar to how Xavi controls difficult airballs,who is the best at controlling airballs in our team.