Inter - Barcelona (16 Sep 09)

[Luka]

I don't know how it was with you guys, but the coment in my polish station transmiting the game, was so anti-Inter, that I wanted to go to the studio, and beat the crap out of them.

...

As for the game, it worked, but only for like 20 minutes in the first half.

Jose made a mistake about this game, and I knew it, when we switched to 5 deffenders at the back. Barca was very danegrous, and we risked loosing this game.

We looked very bad in second half, the lack of technique was very easily seen, but what could Chelsea or Man Utd say last year? It was almost the same.

We have a lot of work ahead of us, the game against the CL winners looked how it looked. Our player have to gel more, know eachother, while we have to hope the next time we'll meet Barca, Jose will change his gameplan a little(I don't mean attacking all out, but change the tactical nuiances).

 

[kookoorookoo]

Very average match by us, thats what happens when you go out and try to defend. When we play Barca we have to try and attack and hold possessions otherwise what happened today is what will always happen.

are you drunk? or are you just thick skulled? attack barca freely and let xavi, iniesta and Messi rip your ass apart? mehn..u are igronrant as you are arrogant. barca's midfield is the best in europe. Inter is missing her best DM and you expect inter to come out and go all out?

by the way, Muntari needs his head examined!

 

[CafeCordoba]

Nice result. The performance was even worse than I imagined it could be. Inter is wayyyy behind, unfortunately. Our midfield is just totally incapable of playing football against a good opponent.

Really humiliating home performance whatsoever.

 

[bollockologist]

We got really tired in the second half. We pressed them well in the first half and still had the energy to do some attacking moves. However in the second half we got really tired, we stayed back and the energy to attack was not there. We still lack in creativity, Sneijder needs help in these kinds of games.

I can't say I'm disappointed but we are still behind from Barcelona's level. Hopefully we'll improve with time.

 

[Suneet]

One word describes how I feel. Yawn.

Eto'o worked his ass off, Milito was good until he actually got the ball and was onside, it was as if he coudnt believe it he has a chance. Sneijder was sleeping at home, but Motta, J.Z., Lucio, Maicon, Chivu, Samuel, J.Cesar what a game by these players.

 

[Choppin Onions]

1pt will have to do. Pretty bad 2nd half, but hey we've all seen worse from Inter in CL games Santon and Mario probably should have came on earlier to add a bit of energy. The boys looked pretty lifeless for a good portion of that 2nd half.

Barca are still the best team in Europe. Messi amazes me everytime I watch him. And still a pleasure to see Ibra miss sitters in Europe. That 1st half miss was comical as it wasn't even close and he was practically 1-on-1 with JC. Some things never change I suppose.

On a side-note, the announcers over here seemed pretty pro-Barca (how surprising) and kept on calling us Inter Milan. Quite annoying.

 

[Ehsan]

Okay so they dominated us the second half, but it was still anyone's game because our defenders were amazing - especially Samuel. We actually had more shots on target than they did. That combined with the fact that their attackers missed a couple of great chances made things end evenly. Again, let's not forget the fact the we were dominated in the second half after ending the first half on almost equal grounds. I assumed we would play better without Muntari.

I'll give a -1 to Mourinho on this one. Didn't like the timing and manner of substitutions or the way we handled the game.

Still, very good result for us considering everything, and good thing this was our first game. Things should only get better from here.

 

[blackmore]

to be fair, how many teams have you seen go out and attack barca and come out successful??

when u have one of the best coaches and he says his squad is complete then theres always an expectation...we kinda saw jose with his nutsack in his mouth today...

 

[Il Muro]

What a crap display.

Our midfield was slow (both in the mind and physically), lacked movement and can't play incisive passes (like i always said, Sneijder is not particularly creative, and it showed tonight).

The only bright spot was Samuel and Lucio in defence. They were great.

 

[K.I.]

to be fair, how many teams have you seen go out and attack barca and come out successful??

Look, we have the same dangerous players they have, if we try to attack the match begins to be even and they are the ones defending and not us. This will never work and and if this is the knockout stage we would lost the second leg, dont we ever learn from our mistakes? Today Barca are the ones who lost 2 points, we won a point.

 

[FCBarca]

Very average match by us, thats what happens when you go out and try to defend. When we play Barca we have to try and attack and hold possessions otherwise what happened today is what will always happen.

I didn't really expect much more from a Mourinho managed side, tbh...From the parts I saw, Inter looked up for it and certainly created danger of their own...Barca, failed to break the parked bus but did better, IMHO, than in the past...That understanding/rhythm with Ibra will take time is all.

Disappointed with Stark but what else is new...90th minute before he books a single Inter player?...Yet booking Henry for dissent?...Whereas Chivu's tackle was malicious, from my vantage point...The missed pk on Stankovic is a bit disappointing too.

Soooo strange to see Milito & Samu up front, I used to dream about that partnership

 

[Suneet]

And to everybody who's complaining and saying we are behind Barca and we should beat them, well you are smoking something good. We wanted to win offcourse but its not easy to beat Barca. We played poorly but atleast didnt lose.

 

[The_Emperor]

Well we looked good defensively at least
Too bad we had a very defensive approach in the second half. I thought we looked good in the first half, even had some decent chances.

 

[Jimmy]

I think we have a huge advantage by having played this game. Obviously, we sucked big time offensively in the second half, and it seemed to be due to stamina. Expect a rather second-string team the coming weekend.

But back to what we will gain from this. Mourinho could see how Barca plays against such a strong team like us. With absolutely no respect, but also 100 passes before they actually attack. He will use this to his advantage the next time, because Barca will play exactly the same.

We also have to take advantage of counter-attacks, and this was due to us having too many new players. I could see a handful of times, where we could have done a pass to a player on the run, but we didn't do it. Sneijder sadly did this a lot.

I wanted a win and am not happy about our offensive performance in the second half, but I see this as an extremely positive experience.

Btw, imagine our potential in the first half with a Muntari who had been awake? We could have had the lead.

 

[K.I.]

are you drunk? or are you just thick skulled? attack barca freely and let xavi, iniesta and Messi rip your ass apart? mehn..u are igronrant as you are arrogant. barca's midfield is the best in europe. Inter is missing her best DM and you expect inter to come out and go all out?

by the way, Muntari needs his head examined!

LOL, what the fuck is your problem? Either talk like human being or just fuck off and shut the fuck up.

Also FC Barca, that wasnt a penalty on stankovic, he had his hands behind his back, the ball hit his elbow for god's sake.

 

[shahz_nerazzurri]

Same old Inter we are so very used to in the CL. It was just like the Liverpool away game, or the ManU home game. Its kind of sad when your achievement is getting goalless draws at home against bigger oppositions.

We dont look anywhere close to scoring a goal against any of the top European teams.

 

[Luka]

Everybody has the right to be dissapointed/mad after the game. This is fair.

But like rfU said, who plays differently against Barca, than deffending most of the time?

Chelsea, Man Utd, hell even Real Madrid, who all have much superior technicaly teams than us, had the same. 40% ball possesion, or even lower.

Ferguson tried to do something different in CL final, and I give him that - he has balls. He pressed Man Utd very high, and it was Man Utd who had ball for like first 20 minutes, but this is why Barca is the most dangerous. It's not that they keep posession a lot. Teams play like that, because THEY FEER THE COUNTERS of Barca. If the worst teams can counter, imagine what are counters from the best technical team in Europe - deadly.

That was what happened with Man Utd. One counter, and that was pretty much it.

That's why teams don't play like that, and when they try, it ends like with Bayern last year. (4-0).

 

[K.I.]

People talk about all these Barca players but what about our players? Barca today let us roam free BECAUSE we are out there defending, if we do the opposite you would see a different Barca. The reason Barca always play like this is because until know there isnt a team strong enough to challenge them on the pitch.

Edit: I am not saying we go all out attack guys, people here when they here someone talking about offense they think we mean that we should let all 11 players go out on a fucking raid, thats not what i am saying.
Also Muntari need to sort himself out becaue you cant play in a match like this like that, absolutely disasterous game, but Jose seems him in training and should not have played him in the beginning, and another things, these line referees need to get checked, THREE wrong offsides.

 

[milton]

after watching this game i'm a lot less confident we'll win the CL. most of the match we got outplayed in midfield, and we were the team playing at home, lucio was probably our best player. muntari was an absolute disaster, i'm going to cry now

 

[Ehsan]

Barcelona had 0 shots on target the second half.

I think last year Manchester had 20 shots or something which JC saved (exaggerating but you get the point)

It's not the same thing.