Two years go Manchester United played Barcelona in the Stadio Olympico in Rome for the Champions League title. Barcelona won 2-0. This year the same two teams, fittingly the Premier League and La Liga champions, met at Wembley in the Champions League final.
It was a good final, immeasurably better than last years when Inter played very defensive football to defeat Bayern Munich. Barcelona and United both came to play, both came to win, but it was men verses boys in the end. And of course Messi scored the goal that gave Barcelona the lead.
United started well and took the game to Barcelona, who of course just absorbed the pressure for the first ten minutes. A repeat of the last time these teams met in the final. Then Barcelona started to play, found their rhythm with the short passes and started dominating the game and the differences in style became clear.
The breakdown of a Barcelona attack would be followed by a long ball being played over the Barcelona midfield in an attempt to find a United forward. Barcelona would retake possession and the whole tiki-taka process would begin again. Barcelona were pretty to watch and United responded to the pressure, but they were playing the best club side in the world.
In the 27th minute Barcelona went ahead. Xavi, crossed to Pedro on the right. Messi made a run taking the defence with him and created the space for Pedro to put the ball past Van der Sar. Well worked goal, but the lead did not last long as Rooney and Giggs (who looked offside when the ball was played) worked a well weighted 1-2 that led to a wonderful first time shot from Rooney that left the keeper no chance.
The rest of the afternoon was all about Barcelona and following the script Messi was in the middle of nearly everything. Inevitably he scored, ten minutes after the break he picked up a square pass from Iniesta, a couple of touches put him clear in the middle of the penalty area and calmly shot across his body to put United down 2-1 and that was it.
Messi worked hard, perhaps his biggest contribution was to stretch United’s defence every time he had the ball, opening space for others to make use of. This space gave David Villa the opportunity to make it 3-1.
The rest of the game was more the same with Barcelona making United’s play look very basic at times. This was a final graced by two good teams, it’s just one was so much better than the other. Barcelona play a beautiful possession style with imagination, and the final was a great advert for the game.
Seattle was playing in Salt Lake last night and I joined a few others at the Irishman in Everett.
Real Salt Lake had not been defeated at home for over two years and have only given up a couple of goals this year. The game was played in the rain, I’m not sure Seattle have had a fully dry game so far this year. Sigi changed a few things around. Montero did not start. Sigi said it was down to his lack of production, he’s being paid to score and has not been troubling opposing keepers over the last few weeks.
It was not a pretty game, and as ever Seattle did it the hard way. Salt Lake are a very defensive side and as Seattle misses Zakuani, they certainly miss Javier Morales who had his ankle broken a few weeks ago.
The game was very stale until almost an hour in when defender Jamison Olave was dismissed for fouling forward Mike Fucito on a clear scoring chance. Fucito pulled a great move to spin Olave around an create a chance for himself. The Salt Lake defender had no real choice but to bring him down and there was no question about the sending off. Up to that point Olave had been very effective in shutting Jaqua and Fucito down.
Seattle had a lot of luck tonight. Keller had to have a great game to keep them in it, including a top drawer reaction tip onto the crossbar from a Will Johnson shot.
The first goal came from Patrick Ianni, he managed to get the tap in during a goal mouth scramble from a Wahl corner. Over the last few games Seattle have looked better on set pieces than they did previously and it paid off tonight.
With 7 minutes to play Lamar Neagle made it 2-0 and scored his first league goal with a beautiful curling shot into the top corner. It gave RSL keeper Rimaldo no chance. Again Wahl was the provider, this time from open play.
Seattle did not do it the easy was as the home side were relentless for he last ten minutes. They pulled a goal back through Nelson Gonzalez and forced a number of good stops from Keller and his defence in injury time to hold onto the three points. This was a good win, Seattle is still not firing on all cylinders, there is no question they miss the speed of Zakuani and OBW, but this was a step in the right direction. Fucito has stepped up and is fun to watch.
At the other end Keller is making his defence look better than they are. As a unit they are failing to shut down teams, a lesser keeper would struggle. They are going to miss him next year.