Do not let anyone tell you the best team won. Do not let anyone
say that football was the victor here. Barcelona may yet grace the
Champions League final, they may yet dazzle this competition with a
beautiful game, but this was not one of them.
They swung a boot. Swung a boot and got lucky. Swung a boot and,
somehow, eliminated a Chelsea team that were superior on the night and
deserved a rematch with Manchester United in Rome.
Andres Iniesta’s equalising goal in the third minute of injury
time was a fine shot, a killer blow, timed and directed to
perfection but for Barcelona it was also the last roll of the
dice.
Full credit to them for never giving up, for sticking to their
principles even when reduced to 10 men, but having promised to
outplay Chelsea and demonstrate their status as superior
footballers and rightful kings of Europe, they did nothing of the
sort.
Lionel Messi was ineffective and largely anonymous by his
standards. Samuel Eto’o was shut out of the game by John Terry,
whose fate was, perhaps, harshest of all after his agonising
penalty shootout miss in Moscow last year.
Chelsea should have had three, maybe four, penalties; they
should have been home free long before Iniesta’s fateful
intervention. That they were not was considered the work of referee
Tom Henning Ovrebo, from Norway, whose interpretations of several
contentious incidents were bizarre to say the least.
He judged fouls made inside the area to be outside, the ball was
handled and he waved play on, and as the game unfolded those with a
sense of portent began to fear that calamity loomed.
When it did it led, predictably, to an outpouring of impotent
fury. Didier Drogba was the most spectacular offender and will not
have heard the last of his expletive-spattered outburst but, one
feels, when Chelsea’s players get in front of the microphones over
the next few days, neither will UEFA.
X-rated: Drogba is restrained by Guus Hiddink during
his outburst
Drogba’s brief address to camera was a brutal précis of the
wilder conspiracy theories that will be doing the rounds, but the
problem when Barclays Premier League football, and its elite clubs,
are so often singled out by UEFA as undesirable, is that it gives
some folk ideas.
What must be hoped now is that Barcelona justify the hype in
Rome. That they give the Champions League final the match they keep
talking about but, over two legs, failed to deliver.
Barcelona were the superior side at the Nou Camp, but here,
while Chelsea’s game was counter-attacking, rather than expansive,
it was the home team that consistently
looked likely to score.
Petr Cech barely had a save to make in Chelsea’s goal. Barcelona
lost to Manchester United in the semi-final last season, and they
will lose again if they play like this.
The cutting edge that Manchester United demonstrated at the
Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night was by far the most impressive
performance of the four semi-final ties.
Some will argue that what happened at Stamford Bridge was
first-leg karma. Hardly. Chelsea were not fortunate in the Nou
Camp, they were just not pretty enough for purist sensibilities.
Neither were Barcelona last night, but they got away with it.
They got away despite a red card for Eric Abidal and a yellow
for Dani Alves which put them out of the final.
It is a pity, as Alves is arguably the finest full back in the
world right now, but he will hardly attract the same pity as Darren
Fletcher. Alves has the worst Champions League disciplinary record
of any player in the last four, further proof that the best teams,
without exception, know how to mix it as well as play it.
The positives? The best teams in Europe are in the final.
Placing this one match to the side for a moment, it cannot be
denied that over the campaign Manchester United and Barcelona are
the clubs that deserve to be going to Rome.
If they both arrive in the right spirit — and Barcelona at least
know no other way but to attack — this could be a classic.
It will certainly be the most eagerly awaited final in recent
years, with delicious battles all over the field, not least the
coming together of the world’s finest footballers, Cristiano
Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Manchester United will be hoping that Ronaldo’s defining
performance did not come against Arsenal on Tuesday; Barcelona that Messi does not
have another Champions League game as underwhelming as his last
two.
If anything, Chelsea’s defeat — the first time an English team
has fallen to foreign opposition since Liverpool were defeated by AC Milan in the 2007
final — serves
further to highlight Manchester United’s incredible achievement in
becoming the first team since Valencia in 2001 to return to the
final.
That the vagaries of ill-fortune as well as the best teams in
Europe stand in the way reveals Sir Alex Ferguson’s players to be
exceptional.
If they succeed in overcoming a Barcelona team on course to
rewrite the record books in Spain, and become the only team to
retain Handballs, fouls and a late swing
of the boot do the job for Barca the European crown in its
Champions League format, it will be hard to argue against them as
the greatest of all time.
Maybe, then, it is for the best that there is not a repeat of
last year’s final.
Maybe it is for the best that English football does not turn the
Champions League final into its 39th game.
At Stamford Bridge last night, however, that sort of
rationalisation was for another time. As the stadium emptied, it
did not feel right, it did not feel just.
We knew that the better team was going to Rome; but the
best team lost.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1178169/MARTIN-SAMUEL-Handballs-fouls-late-swing-boot-job-Barca.html
