DoomMerchant wrote:that Barca side just knows each other so well...it was one of the most amazing performances. It was a masterclass in football. And to see Mourinho's face and his teams reaction was priceless.
I do believe, however, that spanking them so thunderously could come back to haunt them. Jose will not take it lightly and i can see Madrid being really motivated by this to win the league and beat their rivals.
The result yesterday should make for a really fun CL and La Liga season i believe....fantastic stuff.
cheers
Their way of playing.. the basics of making sure there is always at least one option to pass to, is pure teamwork and is a living example of team over individual skill. The irony is they have plenty of individual skill too! The national team has adopted this as well as we all know, if you watch the U20's or U18's or U16's they are all playing the basic same game.
Barca seem to have cornered the market and the way that the academy products just slot in is scary. Madrid buying talent just doesn't compete.
I always make the point in these sorts of discussions though, that Barca still have to buy in the players that make a real difference to their forward creativity... in other words imo their system is a bit robotic and they are at their very best when they have one or two wildcard players that are truly unpredictable. The obvious example was the winning side with Larsson and Ronaldinho. With Larsson possibly being the most effective.. He would just do things and be places that even the Barca players couldn't predict and so gave them a cutting edge that the robotic pass and move just doesn't, however good it is.
In a bit of a wider perspective you can see this with both Arsenal and City, where passing it around and around is kind of impressive but ultimately often results in a kind of stalemate against well drilled defences. My own take is that Barca would often struggle in the English Prem and ultimately that demand of the Prem will benefit City if we adopt more and more the Barca style, as we will need, as we have already seen, a more mixed approach when dominating teams. When we get into CL i think this will pay off, even against the mighty Barca.