Barça - vs. AC Milan - tonight at 20:45 CET

Called up players: Valdés, Pinto, Adriano, Dani Alves, Montoya, Piqué, Puyol, Bartra, Mascherano, Cesc, Song, Sergio, Xavi, Iniesta, Sergi Roberto, Pedro, Alexis, Neymar Jr, Messi i Tello

Possible lineup:

VV
Alves Pique Mascherano Adriano

Xavi - Busquets - Iniesta

Alexis - Messi - Neymar

I would personally play Cesc for Xavi as Milan will park the bus, so we are more vertical and have more chances.
And off course, I would play Bartra for Machete, but no chance of that.

messi to breakout of his drought

Messi scores when he is relaxed. Today i expect him to miss open chances
No im joking. He scored vs milan under pressure last season

Valdés, Alves, Adriano, Pique, Mascherano, Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta, Alexis, Messi, Neymar

Well we did get a few calls in our favour to be up, but Pique SMH...

*bleep* you Pique

Poor stuff from both full backs in my opinion.

Alves doesn't seem to locate anyone bar Messi in the final third.

Adriano just poor workrate and defending overall. Got in the way too many times and wasn't offering himself in attack nor in possession.

More importantly Barcelona's midfield just looks slow. I don't think there's a slower midfield in CL than this one.

Winter is Coming wrote:Well we did get a few calls in our favour to be up, but Pique SMH...

I had a bad stream, but i think the first call was right, Abate was having troubles the whole first half to contain Nerman and lost it. The second one was offside.

So all in all a deserved victory.

I think referee in second half was against Neymar. Probably after watching replay in break he decided that Neymar dived. Also 3 arguable offside calls against Barcelona in second half

Yeah the offsides were wrong, but also really close. I do not think the ref was wrong against Nerman. He was clearly manhandled all the time, and although he went down a bit easy at times, he was fouled almost all the times.

Was able to catch this game recorded, of course, but still.

Overall I'm happy. Alexis had an off game, Messi's general play was pretty good but was marked tightly anytime he got forward by Mexes, and players collapsed on him quickly, so his influence wasn't as strong as it could have been. Still decisive, with a PK goal and a magnificent second goal. Neymar was bright and creative all game and looked to take Abate on. Certainly is an X-factor character like Messi in the final third. Unlucky not to score...his finishing surely isn't as good as it was in Brazil but it will come.

Xavi was great IMO while Iniesta was OK. Did his work and contributed in the lead up to the PK, but wasn't that bright. Thought Busquets was great as well.

Backline didn't have much to do. Pique was unlucky, and Masch fouled far too much and went diving into tackles he didn't need to, but was OK. Below par game from Adriano and I think Dani Alves was alright.

Overall it's 3 points and a win that puts us in a comfortable position. Happy with the team tonight.

I think you're being a bit harsh on Alexis CB, he was not a prominent figure on the ball however he was also simply ignored by his midfield when making some fantastic runs in behind our defence which our offside trap failed to deal with. Milan were quite fortunate at times with offside calls though I'm uncertain whether that may simply have balanced out the second goal for which I've yet to see a good replay.

Neymar deserved a goal for his efforts tonight, however you were quite wasteful as always throughout the game. Certainly could have made more of some sloppy turnovers from us tonight, particularly in the first half where we lacked a reference point in the centre or a threat on the flanks to balance this void and then in the second half as we began to tire, though really the end result felt academic from the first minute. Now please go and find some other team to play constantly, I'm sick of you, no offence.

CBarca wrote:
Xavi was great IMO while Iniesta was OK. Did his work and contributed in the lead up to the PK, but wasn't that bright. Thought Busquets was great as well.

Iniesta's form must ring an alarm. He has been lacking sharpness since the start of the season. It is surprising to see after he had one of his best seasons last year. Not only his sharpness, he has been guilty of overplaying a bit too much recently; holding on to the ball for too long and making risky dribble when he can just safely pass the ball to a team mate.

dostoevsky wrote:I think you're being a bit harsh on Alexis CB, he was not a prominent figure on the ball however he was also simply ignored by his midfield when making some fantastic runs in behind our defence which our offside trap failed to deal with. Milan were quite fortunate at times with offside calls though I'm uncertain whether that may simply have balanced out the second goal for which I've yet to see a good replay.

Neymar deserved a goal for his efforts tonight, however you were quite wasteful as always throughout the game. Certainly could have made more of some sloppy turnovers from us tonight, particularly in the first half where we lacked a reference point in the centre or a threat on the flanks to balance this void and then in the second half as we began to tire, though really the end result felt academic from the first minute. Now please go and find some other team to play constantly, I'm sick of you, no offence.

Completely agree on Alexis. I think problem with Barcelona's midfield is that they are reluctant to take risks and make a pass that may not reach its target, with the safe option usually being preferred. Xavi for example, him admittedly being one of the best midfield orchestrators of all time, he does not have the vision and execution of someone like Xabi Alonso in playing a quick pass. He does slow the game down and this has been one of the problems with Barcelona's play in recent times. Forwards can get into good positions but midfielder can't find them with a long pass.

On AC Milan, I think Balotelli should have started. He caused Barcelona a lot of problems in the second half. Him and de Jong were Milan's top players, perhaps two of the few whom, in a perfect world, would be worthy of wearing the legendary rossoneri shirt. As it stands, the quality of this AC Milan team is worse than I can remember. I feel sorry for Allegri for taking so much shit in when his squad is nowhere near AC Milan standards.

To Dotevesky...

Feeling is mutual, lol

I hope we don't get paired up anymore for some time (and I mean that out of full respect)

Certainly agreed on Balotelli danyjr, the comparison in our play at the beginning of the second half when we still had energy and the first reminded me of the contrast between the impact of Pazzini and Niang last year in the central role. We lack the off the ball movement in midfield and threat on the flanks to operate without a central reference point and Mario is the sort of player who is Mascherano's nightmare. A very poor decision to bench him without at the very least restructuring the midfield to better facilitate the counter-attack. We made the game simply too easy for Barcelona to control in our own half and mistakes were inevitable when we put ourselves under so much pressure, unable to assert ourselves on the ball and incapable of patiently waiting for the play to unfold when we reached the final third, we spent far too much time to defending in the first half. I feel that had Balotelli featured from the beginning it might have been more of a contest, though I'm fairly certain that Barcelona would still have collected three points.

When I say Alexis had an off game, I don't mean he was bad, I don't think he was. What I mean is the off the ball runs and his hounding of the ball and subsequent couple recoveries/match is something that's become expected of him. For me to say Alexis would have been on tonight would be for him to bury the easy chance he had, and be a little better in possession/decision making. I thought Alexis was decent, but for the form he's on at the moment, he certainly seemed a bit off to me. Perhaps calling it an "off-game" was a failure of my own to present my view on Alexis tonight, and was harsh indeed. I should clarify I didn't think he played badly.

Alexis offered nothing to the attack, he was good defending and.. that was about it.
Buscuit had more shots then Alexis, and that says something, for champions league matches Pedro for some reason plays better, for league Sanchez shines.

Expected result considering Barca's near full-strength line-up and our pathetic defence. Having said that, I thought the penalty call was soft and it was unclear whether Busquets header was onside or not. I think Barca could've thrashed us, especially early in the first half and late in the second. De Jong played a terrific game, and he is sadly one of the few class players left in this team, along with Kaka and Balotelli. For Barca, Messi and Neymar were impressive. I hope for Milan to have a much better squad next time we play - which I hope will not be for a long time, but will probably be the quarter finals.

our goals were from a bnit of luck I agree, but many of our 1v1 chances were wrongfully called offside, even the lucky messi chip goal was wrongfully called.

Yeah, I agree with you on a couple of those 1 v 1's. I'm not a fan of the "2 wrongs make a right" theory though.

I was really frustrated with Neymar. The game was almost brilliant at everything but shooting. I still remember the instance where he waltzed pass 3 Milan defenders only to give the ball to the audience. He seemed to be clinical back in Brazil. What the heck happened?

Iniesta concerns me. It seems he run out of magic.
Xavi had a great game and Busquets was amazing.
Pique had a decent game and the own goal was just bad luck.

Messi seems to be recovering and he could have scored one of the most beautiful goals in the CL had he not been offside.
Nice game overall, but the team needs to be more clinical. We can count on creating dozens of opportunities to score a couple of goals

For me Iniesta was better than Xavi. He does what you want and gets out of difficult situations so easily.this helps the attack continue in its flow. Perfect decision maker. He does very important work every game

I don't understand the praising of Xavi. He provided nothing to the game, in attack or defence. His only contribution was the cross for Busquets goal, and that wasn't a great cross like Cabaye's one vs. Chelsea, just very poor defending from Milan.
He shot a lot and non at goal, made 0 important passes and was invisible in defence. He was good distributing the ball as he always is. His game was just acceptable.

Iniesta was slightly better with his chip pass for Neymar's penalty, his shot from the edge of the box that abbiati nearly deflected, and provided something defensively. Also the pass to Messi when he hit the post too.

What is unacceptable is that Barça continues to play as a starter a guy who is not a CB and that when he doesn't complete succesfully one of his hollywood tackles it's a very clear opportunity for the opposition. Mascherano again made some mistakes that luckily went unpunished. Adriano too was meh defending Balotelli.

Xavi was pretty good. Made some great long balls throughout the night, got an assist and could have had another one when he made that brilliant throughball to Neymar only just for the referee to called for (wrongly)offside..

Iniesta was better, yet people criticise Iniesta and praise the average game from xavi.