Wednesday 8 June 2011

Barcelona 2011 = Football Masters

Its been 2 weeks since Man Utd lost to Barca in the CL finals. It still hurts but I have to admit, Josep Guardiola did an amazing job putting together a squad like that.

Some of the interesting things he did...

1. using a withdrawn striker like Messi pull midfielders and leaving central defenders with nothing to mark.
2. using 2 strikers (Villa and Pedro) as wide men to receive Messi's passes. Confusing both opposing full backs and central defenders and allowing its own full backs space to run up and down the sidelines.
3. finally, and this is a genius... using a defensive midfielder (Mascherano) as a defender. Having Pique as a lone central defender is no problem as Man Utd had deployed a lone striker and having 2 defensive midfielders (Busquets and Mascherano) in front of and beside the main defender allows maximum protection to the keeper.

Brilliant! Now if we can find a way to negate all that...

No comments: