The replay is only because they tied. Although if the semis or the final end as a draw after 90 minutes they don't replay them, they just go straight to extra time and then penalties if necessary. But all games before that are settled in a replay if the first one is a draw.

degea's save at the end on mata was incredible

oh yes, yes, yes-- degea = man of the match

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anyway, BARCELONA/ AC MILAN later today

predictions?

i have none but i hope barcelona come out of the hole, if only for political reasons (ac milan = berlusconi).

I'm hoping Barca dig themselves deeper into a hole, if only for political reasons (Barca = Catalan dogs)

HEY, HEY, WTF!?

I'm a Madrid man through and through. Even though I'm about as Spanish as a ...*thinks* I dunno...something not very Spanish.

aaa haaa haaa. i fucking hate madrid. starting with the "real" name ("royal"). fuck the monarchy!

anyway, nice first half!

What a fucking cunt. My fucking piece of shit tv doesn't work so my digi box is useless to me. And now my piece of shit laptop decides to not let me watch the game. Cunting cunt. Piddled off.

holy fucking jeezus jiminy jumping christ! what a game!!!!

Brilliant game. Barca are now apparently the first team in CL history to come back from a 2-0 first leg deficit without scoring an away goal.

For all the talk of Barca's decline, tonight was as good a performance as I think I've seen by them. Messi's a genius, full stop. Xavi's a genius, full stop. All that's left is for them to meet Bayern, ideally in the final to determine who really are the best in Europe right now. Until tonight I'd have said Bayern without doubt. After tonight, though, I'm not sure.

they were really awesome today. except for alba who i thought had a bit of an iffy day. except until he scored-- ha! maybe he should be a winger instead of a defender. lucky piqué was there, i think.

bayern / barcelona would be awesome to watch and it would have to be a tactical mindfuck beyond teh comprehension of mere mortals.

Alba may be the perfect example of that trend for defenders who are better going forward than defending.

I thought Milan were disappointing tonight but I don't think any club would've faired much better against that Barca display. Their problem now is consistency but when everything clicks they're still the team to beat, I reckon.

Good tactical analysis of tonights game on Zonalmarking.net

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2013/03/...milan-tactics/

plus they weren't playing with those hideous, hideous shirts


wow is he prolific all of the sudden! he had been stuck on the same 2 articles for weeks and now a barrage-- lots of catching up to do!

bayern at halftime has been a fucking mess without ribéry.

robben was subbing for him but he piled on top of mueller on the right instead, clogging up the works. eventually they switched but too late. plus mueller is not so great on the left.

in fact, the arsenal goal came after alaba fell-- normally ribéry pairs up with him and comes back to help defend. now alaba is playing with who??? fuck this shit.

also schweinsteiger missing, bender out for the season and boateng, why is he not there? van buyten is a nice player but old and slow and i fear for defensive gaps. but ESPECIALLY on bayern's left now that ribéry is not there.

FUCK!!!!

It doesn't seem like they're doing that bad. They're certainly giving Arsenal a run for their money for chances. Well that's what the bbc live commentary tells me...

I almost want Bayern to score just to put Arsenal out of their misery. Bayern look indifferent but Arsenal don't look capable of capitalising on it enough. A bit of a stalemate.

what a shitty-ass "victory", it tastes like vomit. chaos and fuckups. now javi martinez won't play the next match due to yellow cards. this is proof that ribery is the heart and soul of bayern goddammit. without him, bayern's offense is shit. shit shit shit.

also, kroos didn't have his boots tied right today or something. what shit shots he made-- i mean he usually has a fucking cannon in the foot but today he blew chunks. its like those old leather balls when they got wet.

i hope this is the lowest low for bayern, although they also lost to bate borisov so that could be the low.

dammmitttt....

the bbc doesn't watch bayern every week. they played awful. i'm very unhappy with how they performed. pissed me off.


when is saw gervinho go in i was somewhat relieved because that man sucks. hence the 2nd arsenal goal caught me completely by surprise.

Yeah, Bayern were crap. They have the excuse tonight of losing Ribery but even without him they were poor. I'm just hoping, for the sake of the tournament, that it's just a blip. Although this game did remind me what a cunt Arjen Robben is. He's like an utterly charmless Suarez.

well ribery was gone but also schweinsteiger who is the architect. think dortmund without hummels or juve without pirlo. dismal!

it was a matter of compound holes: a hole in the defense (boateng), a hole in the midfield (schweinsteiger), a hole on the left lane (ribery). terrible!

javi martinez can be covered by luiz gustavo who is not as good but can manage, provided schweinsteiger is there next match. though i think boateng has one more suspension date from red card. oh no, he doesn't-- which is great.

and kroos better get some hypnotherapy so he can get back in form. that dude can kick but today he was pffffffff!!

ps- bayern got temporarily better when robben got back to playing on the left at the start of the 2nd half (he must have gotten a talking-to) but later oh cack.

It was a bad performance but all teams have them, look at Barca's first leg against Milan. And at least Bayern had the excuse that they'd effectively already beaten Arsenal in the first match, so could afford to cruise a bit. They have the quality but it's how they bounce back from such a poor display.

Tomorrow's quarter final draw will be fascinating. I just hope it keeps Bayern and Barca apart so they can hopefully meet in the final. I still think they're the two best sides in the competition, regardless of the blips we've seen from both of them. I really want this final to be a proper contest between the two best sides in Europe (and by logical extension, arguably the world). That never happened last year with Chelsea winning it and ended up proving nothing and, while no single game can entirely prove anything, a Barca v Bayern final will be about as close to conclusive as it gets.

And just out of interest, as you know far more about Bayern than I do, I'm wondering how many of their players you think would get into the current Barca first 11. Neuer in goal and Lahm in defence, for sure, but player for player could you see any others, given the calibre of talent they'd be ousting? Schweinsteiger for Xavi? No way. Ribery for Iniesta? Nope. Gomez for Messi? Haha. But are they even the right pairings?

i know, but as a fan, it ruined my afternoon, ha ha ha


that would be nice but... don't write off juventus so quickly...


actually in style of play w/ the magnetic legs & mad dribbling i'd pair ribery with la pulga, although they play in different roles and their teams take different shapes.

e.g.
this one from proposed formations march 12



i couldn't find a better one of bayern but let's try this one for their more-or-less first team

although yesterday they started like this



on the wings i think ribery is better than pedro or alexis sanchez. iniesta's role is more like kroos maybe, and iniesta is better. xavi/busquets vs. schweinsteiger/javi martinez, barca is better (the spaniards should probably have more varied names, dammit-- xavi, javi, xabi.. ayayay...).

alaba > alba though, lahm > dani alves, neuer > valdes, piqué > badstuber > puyol (old). oh i am getting headaches. more of this later.

i think xavi/iniesta/messi are the axis that fuels barca though and they are hard to stop, and without badstuber and javi martinez would be a bitch to even try stopping them. but who knows. bayern i think has better defenders.

what time is this draw?

The draw is 11.00am GMT. You're West Coast, right? Isn't that 4am? You can find out the results over breakfast.

Re the player-for-player comparison. Your assessment seems fair, although the sheer fluidity of Barca's set up makes individual comparisons even harder than normal. I don't think david Villa, for example, would make many top ten strikers lists but he's perfect for Barca.

Re Juventus, they're definitely dark horses but I can't help thinking (probably wrongly) that the team that stops Pirlo effectively stops Juve. Saying that, Juve are probably my all time favourite continental side so I'd love to see them do well, even though I'd still prefer to see the final battled out between the two supposedly best sides - which for me remains Barca and Bayern.

Man this thread reached new geek levels...and I love it.

waitaminute...why was robben on the left?

ribéry was out injured. lacking any other substitute, they put robben there, but he gravitated back to his natural position, which is also mueller's. at times they switched and it was shit. then they just fucking overlapped. this effectively narrowed and cluttered bayern's attack, which is why (in my opinion anyway) yesterday's results were so shit.

if you follow bayern, you'll see that out front they can easily swap mandzukic/mueller for gomez/robben [center+right]. but ribery always always starts on the left.

i've talked often of bayern's deep bench but this is where it's lacking-- nobody can cover for ribéry. alaba probably more or less could, but he's needed on defense. and while other people get more glory or news coverage, i find the ribéry/alaba pair to create an awesome dynamic on bayern's left.

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ps- if i was henyckes i'd start training alaba/contento on the left to cover when ribery is absent, as contento already subs for alaba on defense and alaba has proven good on the attack (he even scored recently vs... oh i forget)

Another great game I had to miss. Lame. Hella lame.

To be honest, it wasn't that great a game. The last five minutes were exciting and the few minutes after the first goal, when Arsenal looked like they might conceivably pull it off. Other than that though, it just felt like Bayern weren't bad enough to lose and Arsenal weren't good enough to win. Barca vs Milan was the one you really missed out on.

Pft the Arsenal game is so yesterday. I was talking about the Tottenham game.

true, it was a shit game, at least for bayern-- ugh! if you can catch a replay of barca/milan however, heart-stopping stuff!

ps also found out galatasaray knocked out schalke after all. eh, schalke is in the weeds this year-- except they recently beat dortmund ha ha ha.

pps- what spurs game?

The europa league game.

Inter Milan 4-Tottenham 1 (agg 4-4)

Cassano 20′ Palacio 52′Gallas 75′ (og)Alvarez 110′

Adebayor 96′

Talk about a tense game!

oh, cool! i'll try to watch that tonight--in spite of the spoilers! (i have this website that keeps replays for 8 days).

i normally write off europa league matches due to limited RAM but those are two nice teams.

Damn! I'd have liked to have seen that.

So the Champions League Draw just happened:

Bayern vs Juve
PSG vs Barca
Real vs Galatasaray
Malaga vs Dortmund

Would've rather Juve stayed away from Bayern (and vice versa) but otherwise glad the main contenders have avoided each other.

oh shiiiiiiittttt!!!!

the only one i'm 99% sure will advance to the semis is real madrid



and by that photo i mean this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKIZkE1BZ8c

Bayern and Juve looks epic and could go either way. This is the tie I'm most looking forward to. Will Pirlo break German hearts again?

PSG will be without Zlatan in the first leg so that has to make Barca even stronger favourites.

Can't see anything but a Real win over Galatasaray.

I saw Malaga the other week and, while they only drew, they look very decent. Although over two legs you have to favour Dortmund.

bayern munich plays bayer leverkusen in about 90 minutes from now. leverkusen are good and could give bayern another defeat after last week's arsenal match (the horror). it should be interesting.

yes, yes, bayern/bayer-- confusing. one is a place (bavaria), the other is the brand of aspirin.

FUCKING LOVE EVERTON!

2-0 win over Manchester City! Brilliant. Although I feel like deja vu is kicking in at the moment. Last year we lost a big f.a cup match (Liverpool you scum pigs), the next week we ruin a manchesters team's chances at winning the league (our 4-4 draw with United last season).

WHY U NO DO DIS LAST WEEK!

Yeah, great win for Everton but, as you say, hardly means much now. Difficult to see them getting a Champions League place now. All that's left is the chance of finishing above Liverpool.

QPR currently losing to Villa. Massive game for both sides. Hope Villa stay up and QPR go down.

:cool:

Watching Bayer v Bayern on a stream. Bayern seem to be coping with the loss of Ribery far better than they did against Arsenal. Quite brilliant goal from Gomez.