Sunday, May 23, 2010

May 2010 - Victory for Negative football!

There's no need to second guess my general opinion regarding Inter Milan's victory last night. Bayern Munich went in to the game knowing what to expect and yet played into Mourinho's hands. And the special one clasped his hands gracefully as Diego Milito's double strike sunk Bayern.

One can't help but draw comparison between Bayern Munich and the Arsenal when we faced Manchester United and Chelsea early February. Arsene Wenger refused to shift his tactics to accomodate for Rooney and Drogba, which in turn resulted in total capitulation.

Jose Mourinho will go down in history for his triumphs. Unfortunately for him, a majority of the footballing world will be glad to have pages with his name lost in the books. The teams that will be remembered are Guardiola's Barcelona for the brand of football they played. Or the Real Madrid with Di Stefano. Or the many Brazil teams that created history with the football they played.

Players like Fernando Torres, Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie, Zinedine Zidane would be faces you expect to see in the Nike or Adidas adverts for the brand of football they so love. However, you would never find a Diego Milito or a Goran Pandev in these.

That is not to say that they are not good footballers. I for one would love to see Wesley Sneijder in the Arsenal team should the worse happen with the Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona issue (notice there are no developments today regarding that. May be because Guillem Balague is off on a Sunday).

The Inter team has been trained to play football without a football. At times during the match yesterday, it almost seemed as thought everytime Bayern lost the ball, the Inter players were puzzled amongst them as to what to make of the spherical object that is at their feet.

Despite all the negativity, Inter pulled off the victory and the Gunners watching last night should take note of how those players battled for each other on that pitch. There was a time when we were reduced to 120 minutes of absolute capitulation by Manchester United and still came out with our 5th trophy in 4 seasons.

Arsene Wenger has to re-build a team that are willing to throw everything on the pitch to achieve the prize. A team that has the determination to turn the dream into a reality rather than sit there hallucinating and imagining what its like to lift a trophy.

It's a long summer ahead so lets hope the stars are lined up waiting for their medicals and ready to be signed.

Keep the faith!

3 comments:

  1. Agreed. Negative football may get results, bt 4 fans thers no entertainment value

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  2. Big Sam must now feel vindicated for his (bad)style of play.

    Inter is now managerless - Blackburn must be worried!

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  3. I tend to agree that fans want to be entertained, but you need a mixture of both. Inter played really well against Chelsea away and Barca at home.

    It is no point having a go at negative football just because you have a manager in Wenger who goes on about it all the time. And whatever comes out of his mouth is gospel.

    Your own George Graham won you trophies and assisted with part of Wenger's initial success with Adams, Bould,Seaman, Winterburn and Dixon. Better then Cygan, Wright,Stephanovs, Grimandi,Vivas and Luzny (although he was not bad).

    The Real Madrid team in the past,Brazil teams and Barca teams all have the same thing in common. What they do is press and defend well from back to front.

    Barca had the best defensive record (in la liga), and Inter scored over 100 goals in the season.

    It is no point playing good football and just because Arsenal fans are not winning things for the last 5 years, you go on about bad football.

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