Champions League 2009/2010

[ezee ryder]

Mourinho, hilarious.

[Anpanman]

Inter are giving a perfect demonstration in how to defend, their back line is just that, a perfect line. No diving in and giving the opposition free kicks outside the box, keeping Barca for the most part at arms length and not caving in and going to pot - keeping their discipline when Barca scored.

Brilliant, utterly brilliant and for the purist fans a delight to watch.

[NemesiS]

I hope Barca feel chelseas pain now after stealing it last year. Mourinho will get a ban for that for inciting the crowd i would imagine. He's a legend. I hope he comes to United as that's how to defend a lead, with 10 men and all against Europe's best

[EJG1980]

Seeing a team giving their all and defending with their lives is an underappreciated art.

[Kongster]

Mourinho deserves a lot of credit for winning the tactical battle. To restrict Barcelona on their own turf to very few shots and clear chances isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination. Especially when you consider that Inter played the majority of the game with ten men.

[teenagewasteland]

Ironic that Barca's cheating probably cost them their best chance of winning the game. As soon as Milan went down to 10 the bus well and truley came out.

[vjoe]

It was a great match. Mourinho managed to put Bar?a in one pocket and the referee in the other.

That red card was ridiculous.

[Mayhem]

Mourinho FTW! Admit it, we do kind of miss him in the Premier League heh... the handbags with Valdes at the end was the icing on the cake... and yeah the red card was a nonsense decision, yellow if anything at all. The expression involves the words "over", "acting", "sack" and "****"...

Ironic that Barca's cheating probably cost them their best chance of winning the game. As soon as Milan went down to 10 the bus well and truley came out.

We said that here at home while watching too... my brother decided that one newspaper should run with the headline "Cheaters Never Win"

[Nu-Eclipse]

We said that here at home while watching too... my brother decided that one newspaper should run with the headline "Cheaters Never Win"

Yeah, of course...because English teams never cheat, do they?

Inter have been worth their win over the two legs, but Barca have been fairly poor in both games, imho.

A considerable part of me is hoping that Bayern Munich beat Inter in the final...I mean, does the Footballing World really need EVEN MORE boasting and bragging from Mourinho?

[Charlie]

I love Mourinho. The guy positively shimmers in style and charisma and I like that in people. Not forgetting he's a bloody good manager. The Premiership is a less interesting league without him, and Chelsea a weaker team.

But moving on, tonight's game was an example of why I'm growing disillusioned with football. The game seems increasingly about cheating, tricking and deceiving referees into influencing the result. It's reached the stage where I'm beginning to question if I can call it a sport anymore.

It needs rugby-like refereeing in my opinion where video evidence is used to make decisions and, again like in rugby, players accept decisions like men without the childish moaning, whining and referee crowding we see. Using video evidence, I think players found guilty of diving should be booked without hesitation. I don't think I saw a serious foul in tonight's match yet both sets of players were rolling around in 'virtual' agony as if they's just been struck with hammers or stabbed with sharp instruments. It's a joke. It needs stamping out.

[Sam The Man]

I love Mourinho. The guy positively shimmers in style and charisma and I like that in people. Not forgetting he's a bloody good manager. The Premiership is a less interesting league without him, and Chelsea a weaker team.

Yeah totally. He is the best manager tactically in the world and alongside fergie at motivating his players. Hope he's the next UTD manager after the G.O.A.T but i think he has some years left in him yet.

[NemesiS]

A considerable part of me is hoping that Bayern Munich beat Inter in the final...I mean, does the Footballing World really need EVEN MORE boasting and bragging from Mourinho?

Football needs exactly what Mourinho brings to the game. He's a born winner who manages to get the very best out of players. Last night was absolute masterclass in defending which has generally been a hallmark of Mourinho's style. He's arrogant, rude, impolite and a braggart, but this for me is offset by his incredible charisma and more importantly the fact he can back it all up with with a quite astonishing success rate at where ever he has been.

I reckon Chelsea fans would have him back tomorrow given the chance and Abramovich (who wll probably now realise he should have bit the bullet over that spat with him) will be turning a lovely shade of green if he bags another Champs League trophy . What i wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall in Romans house if he does

I hope Inter batter the Krauts (i could never ever support Germany), and if they defend with 11 men like they did with 10, they should do okay.

[merf]

that was a defending masterclass last night, by 2 centrebacks who were deemed not good enough for Bayer or Real Madrid.

Barca did kind of get their just desserts for diving & dodgy decisions in the past in this one.

What was so great about Inters defending is how they so rarely let Barca in around and behind them, it was all infront, even supposedly 'lazy' players like Eto & Sneider tracking back abnd hassling round the box like their life depended on it.

All well and good Xavi doing his usual hundred completed passes but none of them really hurt Inter, many were reminiscent of Ray Wilkins in his pomp.

Also that was never a straight red but he already had a yellow, 2nd yellow and off was pretty much a given.

btw, 86% possession for Barca and 555 completed passes to inters 67 !

[NemesiS]

Yeah, the stats were incredible. I was reading them this morning and couldn't believe it. It was a complete seige.

Going back to Inter's defending though, did anyone else notice that whenever they won the ball back in defense from a Barca attack, they didn't hoof it straight out as United did against bayern. They controlled it and played it with almost total composure. I thought that the calmness under pressure they showed trying to hold the ball was amazing.

Eto + ?25m for Ibrahimavic looks a steal for Inter now as he played out of his skin helping the defense last night whcih you don't often see.

[abigsmurf]

Mourinho has always been an incredible manager at organising defence. He's the only manager I know where you could watch a team winning 1-0 and remain confident the other team wouldn't equalise.

Would I want him back at Chelsea? Nah. His time is well over, he's a great manager but he comes at a cost. All these papers and pundits heaping praise on him now were spewing endless amounts of venom at him when he played for us (enemy of football and all that crap). Admittedly a large part of us was because Chelsea had become one of the big boys in the space of 2-3 seasons which angered all the pundits who only felt Arsenal/Man U/Liverpool should be able to get the title.

It's possible he could come back to Man U and the press would look at him as their new messiah but I'd be surprised. I'm not sure he'd come to Liverpool, I think the rivalry between Chelsea and Liverpool when he was here was too strong (although he'd no doubt relish taking Benitez' job).