enzo said:
Boateng pass accuracy 55%, Robinho 45%
Xavi 91%, Iniesta 88%
that stat is irrelevant mate. both robino and boateng aren't midfielders, one is a forward and the other is an inside forward. so most of their passes are "the last pass of the play". their passing accuracy is supposed to be low because the targets of their passes are always in the opposite box (or on the edge of it). long story short, their passes are always high risk passes (often forced passes). that can't be said about xavi and iniesta. having said that, we certainly don't need a stat to realise xavi and iniesta are better passers than robinho and boateng.
anyway enzo (this is actually a good advice for all of u guys), never pay too much attention to post-game stats. they're like "fun-facts", they're cool and intriguing, but don't try to read anything into them, as chances are they won't tell u anything about how a game unfolded.
milan displayed a counter-attacking strategy, wich means that all of their passes were vertical high risk passes (with a pretty low percentage of success of course), while barça played most of its game passing the ball around milan's box (unmarked and unpressured), trying to find an an opening, a crack in that "medieval wall" milan players erected around abbiati. therefore they had a higher passing success rate.
u could try to guess that from that stat...... but it's much easier to draw this conclusion from watching the game.
bebo said:
If, Pepe did this everyone would be disgusted ,but Since ,Nesta! is Nesta it`s brilliant .
WHOA!
that is harsh! and uncorrect. follow me for a sec bebo. picture this scenario; u're a defender who is about to go 1 on 1 vs a guy who is 20 centimeters shorter than u, who has a better acceleration and one of the best dribbling in history.
u miss your chance to stop him, he gets around u and now you're shoulder to shoulder. u're screwed. he's got a better acceleration than u, so u'll never get ahead of him again. and u can't even shake him off the ball with your shoulder, as he's basically a midget with a freakishly low center of gravity, so good luck trying to unbalance him. u have only 2 options left.
dirty option: u let him get ahead of u and perform a scissor tackle from behind. that's your best chance to stop him infact. u either manage to hit the ball and push it away from his foot (unlikely), or u mess up his ankle (much more likely). that's what pepe would have done in this situation. pepe does at least 2 scissor tackles every time he plays (i'm serious here, just watch him this week end and u'll count at least 2 scissor tackles, i promise). as for nesta instead, i've watched him playing since 1993... and i've NEVER seen him performing a scissor tackle from behind in his carreer. not even once.
clean option: in a desperate move, u try a "hook tackle" (i'm not sure this expression actually exist in the english football vocabulary. i'm just litterally translating from the italian expression "aggancio in recupero", wich could be roughly translated as "hook tackle") . if u time it well, u have a chance to perform one of the most spectacular tackles and snatch the ball from messi. if u don't time it well, u still can use your leg as an "obstacle" and make it more complicated for messi to gain speed and get away from u
this last scenario (missing the timing and trying to use your leg to stop him or slow him down anyway) is a foul.... but not a dirty foul, nor a dangerous foul. because you're putting your leg
AHEAD of messi,
not behind his ankles. if u don't time it well, it makes for a clumsy foul, but u're not exposing your opponent to any danger at all, as there's no chance he will get hurt from such a move. in italy we call it a fallo tattico ("tactical foul", wich is basically when u have no other options left than making a foul) and it's always yellow card material, wich is exactly what nesta got yesterday.
so, to respond to to your statement..... if pepe would do such a tackle, that wouldn't even make it into a "
Pepe's top 200 worst tackles of the month".
but that won't ever happen anyway, as well all know pepe always choses the "dirty option" in this scenario.
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now onto the game. i'm not quite sure why u guys seem so pleased with this match. if i were a milan fan, i'd be delighted, but from a neutral perspective it was an awful football match. it was like watching an epl clash between the leader of the table and the team fighting to avoid relagation.
in italy (despite all the clicheès and the bullshit about defensive football and so on), such a conservative approach would be unprecedented. u never see matches like this one in serie a. about 3 months ago novara faced milan in a coppa italia match. novara was dead last on serie a table (by far the worst team in the league) and the match was played in san siro..... and yet novara was much much more bold and confident than yesterday's milan .... and that was one of the most one-sided games i've seen this season in italy!!!!
mind u i'm not blaming milan for displaying a such a conservative strategy. thiago silva, van bommel and abate were out, nesta and boateng were coming from an injury.... the situation was absolutely tragic. besides the away goal rule certainly is no incentive to be bold in home matches, so allegri's tactic was absolutely understandable and justifiable. but to say that was a brilliant match is a bit too much imo. if that would have been a serie a match, it would have been the worst match of the season..... and serie a has been absolutely awful this season!!!
i also wouldn't say that was a good defensive display. good defending is having a succesful defensive performance,
while defending with 6 players. but if u defend with 8 men, if u mantain your entire team (bar the strikers) behind the midfield line, that can't be "good defending", even if u manage to keep a clean sheet. because if you're focusing all your energies into defending,
then u're supposed to defend well and to keep a clean sheet.
having said that, there were some magnificent individual efforts in defence. antonini was brilliant (btw was that the first time he played on the right... co'z i've never seen that before), bonera was fantastic.
also seedorf was sublime yesterday. however, i would have lined up aquilani instead of him. seedorf is a legend and there are at least 10 valid reasons to prefer him over aquilani in such a matchup..... but since allegri based all his offensive efforts on counters, aquilani's passing would have been much more useful than seedorf's passing yesterday.
i also can't understand why allegri picked robinho instead of el sharawi. that was really a no brainer. robinho is useless if u play counter-attacking football. infact as soon as el sharawi came into the pitch, he did more than robinho in the entire game.
anyway i really can't understand why u guys get so fired up about this champions league matches.... to be honest i think this competition is getting worse each and every year.
Lost $10 of that of course on predicting the other score wrong but that's still $70 profit of $20 investment 
Even funnier, did you see when Mascherano hanged his leg on Ibra? Really surprised Ibra kept his cool. He was so close to punching him in the face.
