Ducky’s Note: The Other Big Four is back! As is Vishwa.
“ PIRLO+ SPACE+TIME = DISASTER”
- ONE OF THE MANY PROPOSED SOLUTIONS FOR THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM.
“ PEPE+DEFENDING=PEPE+DEFENDING WITH RAUL ALBIOL= DIDA+ GOALKEEPING= 0”
-ONE OF THE MANY PROPOSED SOLUTIONS FOR THE QUESTION OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND PHILIP METZELDER.
Had it been any other season, I’d have expected a closely fought Champions League encounter. Charecterized by that odd goal and the preference for tactical supremacy over technical prowess etc etc. But this time I was expecting an extremely one sided affair with Madrid scoring a minimum of three goals against a Milan side which I felt was probably their worst in a decade. But Milan being an Italian team and Real Madrid being the extremely-unpredictable-always-losing-to-Osasuna-football’s-answer-to-Goran-Ivanisevic side, time was always waiting to prove me wrong.
There is never any need to introduce these two sides. Between them they have 16 european titles. That is 16 more than Arsenal and Chelsea put together, 13 more than Nottingham Forrest and Aston Villa put together. So just for the sake of this rich history lots of people would have wanted a football extravaganza, a classic exhibition of the beautiful sport that is football. But the match , apart from a few moments, was anything but a football extravaganza. It was an exhibition of school-boyish goal keeping, a parade of ludicrous defending and a street-fight spectacle . Most people saw the scoreline and went “It was an entertaining game!”, but I said “Nonsense!”, a Champions League game featuring two of the best teams in Europe should not be charecterized by even one of the above mentioned. But the thought that this tournament has managed a full 3 points for a visting team at Nou Camp in a long time speaks volumes about its unpredictability and we wont dwell anymore on my ill-feelings towards the quality of this match.
The match started with Madrid on the attack and Drama queen Dida spilt a Esteban Granero shot right in front of Raul who made no mistake in scoring his 66th champions league goal in typical fashion. The shot was not packed with power , in fact it had nothing on it and the saves like these are, leave bread and butter, air and water for goalkeepers. Raul man!, what to say about him? 62 goals of 66 goals have come in similar fashion and the remaining four were penalties. The thought that this cunt is going to displace the second highest scorer in the champions league with a far far far far far far better strike rate is galling to say the least.
Madrid threw caution to the wind and were constantly harassing Milan in the first half. As it would be proved later, it is not a great idea to go out all guns blazing against an Italian side when your star defender is Pepe, a man who on his worst day will make Titus Bramble look like Paolo Maldini. Kaka was invariably involved in almost all of Madrid’s attacks and it very definitely looked like he will haunt Milan everytime he had the ball. He had a decent effort on goal from a difficult angle parried away by Drama queen Dida. If kaka was on most Madrid attacks then Benzema was the exact opposite. He looked very disinterested about everything thats happening around and was content to just amble on the pitch whenever there was some help needed. Is it only me or has Benzema really become a lot fatter in the past three months, I fail to understand. The Madrid weight-increasing treatment clearly at work, I guess. Ask Cassano or Fat Ronaldo for more details.
As the match went into the second half when Milan were not able to respond to Madrid’s questions came the game changing moment. And who better than Italy’s best player for the past three years to provide the game changer. Andrea Pirlo. What a player. What a touch. What a shot! What a goal! Pirlo with a real piece of genius from about 35 yards . If Makelele can have a position named after him then Pirlo should most definitely have the deep-seated playmaker’s role named after him. For the goal again, Madrid’s midfield couldnt close him down quickly and paid the penalty.
If you had watched the 6-2 demolition of Madrid at Bernebeu by Barcelona in May ’09 then comprehending the second of Milan’s goals would not have been a difficult affair. Madrid again trying to attack and getting caught playing with a high line of defence despite having Pepe and Raul Albiol- a rich man’s Bramble and Boumsong . Pato used his pace to good effect, and about 1/890th of his intelligence to get behind the disoriented Madrid defence to get to the ball which was carelessly treated by Iker Cassillas to score Milan’s second .
The match was not over there . One of the many blink-and-you’ll-miss Madrid game-getters Royston Drenthe got a well taken goal from a Raul corner. Nice shot and Drama queen Dida did not have much of a chance considering the kind of form he was in yesterday. And then there were two disallowed goals one for each side one right and one wrong and a fist-fight between the most over-rated player in the history of sport Raul and Nesta for which both of them should have been sent off. But both escaped with a caution. The third Milan goal was again a case of shambolic defending , a defensive performance which resembled last season’s famed Newcastle defence. Seedorf had the ball at the edge of the penalty area and he fed Pato beautifully, who was pretty much free at that moment and made no mistake with his first time shot to nail home his third in two games and thus the winner of what was some sort of a reality bite for Madrid. I am sure they would want to do some serious surgery to their defense if they want to win the most coveted title for a world record 10th time. Surely Pepe is not enough.
Real Madrid starting lineup against AC Milan :- Iker Casillas, Sergio Ramos, Pepe, Raul Albiol, Marcelo, Kaka, Lassana Diarra, Xabi Alonso, Esteban Granero, Karim Benzema, Raul.
AC Milan starting lineup against Real Madrid :- Dida, Massimo Oddo, Alessandro Nesta, Thiago Silva, Gianluca Zambrotta, Massimo Ambrosini, Andrea Pirlo, Seedorf, Alexandre Pato, Filippo Inzaghi, Ronaldinho.
“Raul – Luck = Carlton Palmer”
– Fact of life
“Carlton Palmer + Sense of humor = Armegeddon”
– written on the wall of a public toilet
Madrid are a one man team. Say it….
they can still grind out results with the kind of attacking players they have and the luck that Raul has been enjoying ever since the day his parents made an attempt to conceive him, even without the portuguese dude who plays for madrid these days if and only if the other portuguese dude puts in a decent shift. I can t see that happening simply because he is highly over-rated and in most games plays like shit.
Oh that Portuguese dude…rite.
and tho i have berated Carlton palmer at lengths, i think the guy is a massive entertainer. We ought to have a Carlton’s greatest quotes post or something.
i dunno if u d have seen it or if its available on youtube . but the 40 yard audacious palmer chip is perhaps that he is most known for, of course apart from being the worst player to represent England
Why so much hating of the Raul da? Its not like Cuntelroy hasnt scored a gazillion goals from poaches; and he’s defly put away more penalties than Raul has (simply because Raul has never been the penalty taker for Madrid often).
And its not like Raul hasnt scored some brilliant goals. Moreover, he’s hardly overrated, and much more under appreciated. For a guy who doesn’t have much speed or talent, he’s been prolific. Not every footballer can be an Henry or a Cristiano. Some must just slog.
Ambivalent,
Raul is definetly not as poor as i had portrayed over there. And to score goals with remarkable consistency without any special talent is also a very difficult task to acheive. But post 2002 he was never what he was pre-2002, but was still gettin all the credit in the world and was displacing Ronaldo, Owen etc not because of his form but because he was a madridsta by blood and also to please their fans. Say waht you want but i hold him partly responsible for Ronaldo not reaching his full potential. And playing in his stead he has managed to score goals, but playing alongside Zidane, Figo, Beckham, Carlos, Guti even a player like Javier Portillo has scored braces remember.
Madrid held again against Gijon
abt Raul he WAS like what OWEN WAS. ur criticism is too much. hes a decent striker and no one over rates him. Hes not even in the spanish squad. But as u said his being a Madrisdta was one of the reasons why Owen couldn’t attain success there. Most of the time Owen was benched even tho he boasted a much better goals to game ratio
being a die hard milan fan i could never think of a weaker team than this to face madrid with gundu fat ronaldinho trying hard and with the evergreen pippo and age weighing mostof the players down talking about age how can one forget ambrosini,surely the team which lost 3-1 to madrid few seasons back was way better ,what looked like a turnaround victory for milan was vindicated by their win against chievo or was it the start of another set of galacticos lost in the wilderness (with the draw this sunday la liga)???
Shanx,
it is too early to say about the longetivity of the current crop of galacticos. I d say wait till january or something if they get good defenders then probably Madrid will be the team to beat otherwise surely it would be a case of the usual Madrid circus of changing manager once in every six months.