Barcelona 1 - 0 Schalke: YAY…a Toure Edition

By: Isaiah | April 9th, 2008

So I just spent somewhere in the 20+ minute region writing up what wasn’t too bad a post, certainly evolving into something worthwhile anyway, and then somehow the browser decided that it wanted to go to the previous page and I lost everything. That’s what I get for writing it online rather than offline and copying it into the publisher. Fuuuuudge. I’m sorry if this feels like I’m phoning it in, but man I was just getting going on that last post…sigh. All right, calm down, Isaiah. Let’s do this again, for the kids.

For 20 minutes, Schalke had Barcelona squarely and completely on the back foot. Perhaps you could just say that Barcelona was sitting down, that’s how on their back foot they were, but no goals allowed thanks to Valdes making an incredible save on Altintop’s shot, then Kuranyi inexplicably missed a wide open tap-in at the back post. Basically, Schalke just started where they’d left off last Tuesday: missing chances. They dominated the midfield and easily worked their way into the box on repeated occasions via Abidal’s side.* The Camp Nou “faithful” (who remind me of the Bernabeu “faithful” right now) were whistling and jeering and generally being a nuisance rather than cheering.

And then the masterstroke. Say what you will about his past performances, but Rijkaard won us this game. His starting lineup was nothing surprising (except to note that Milito was out in a move that I thought was pretty good so that he would avoid the inevitable yellow card that goes with him stepping onto the field nowadays — does someone have to make up for Deco’s absence in the book or something?); the key was putting Eto’o in the center and then, when the squad wasn’t showing signs of doing anything other than turning the ball over and giving up a goal at some point, Frankie Boy pushed Yaya up a little in the middle of the park.

This did two things: it cut off some of Schalke distribution because it put Yaya in a position to both pressure their midfielders and also win headers and secondly it threw everyone off balance because of the sonic boom and resultant terror that accompany Yaya’s killing stare:

Yeah, I would pee my pants and give up possession as well. While this didn’t put a complete stop to Schalke’s forward progress, it did lead directly to the goal that eventually won the game and the tie. Abidal saved a ball on the wing from going out, flipped it to Toure who played an interchange with Henry, then Toure spread the ball out to Bojan who whipped a cross into the middle that bounced into the air off a defender and would actually have gone in had it not been pushed back into the air by another Schalke defender and, finally, the ball fell to Toure who side footed it in. Of course I yelled “Gooooool” for almost as long as the commentator, stopping only to see if he was actually yelling it or babbling on about something else like he had been for the previous 43 minutes.

So we went into halftime on a good note and proceeded to dominate large stretches of the second half. The down note of that, though, is that we never scored again despite 6 other shots on goal (and 12 off target), most of which were directly at the keeper. That we could have scored quite early (Xavi) and then repeatedly after that (Eto’o, Henry, Krkic, Iniesta) only begs the question of whether or not we’ll ever get past our next opponents: ManU. Shit. If we play like we did today against ManU, we’re done for after just one leg. Seriously. Combine our lack of defensive effort to start the game with our lack of finishing throughout the game (except for the goal, of course) and we’re looking at a 3-0 scoreline, easy.

One thing that infuriated me was the whistling when Bojan was substituted. The Camp Nou ticket holders claim to be soccer-literate, but now I’m not so sure. It’s hard to tell in a 98,000 seat stadium who exactly is whistling, but it’s most likely the Catalans who go there all the time, so I’m going to go ahead and target the season ticket holders. If you don’t know why Bojan was subbed out, you weren’t paying attention, so stop your freaking whistling. What was seen as tantamount to giving up was, in fact, a brilliant, attacking move on Rijkaard’s part. Bojan was getting all kinds of space on the right, correct? Well then, if he’s getting so much open space, wouldn’t it stand to reason that anyone in that position would have that kind of space? It would seem logical to conclude as much, so he replaced a tiring Bojan with a fresh and energetic Giovani, who plays the wing much better than Bojan because that just happens to be Gio’s preferred position whereas Bojan is more of a striker type. So you put a winger on the open wing and let him do his thing. There were just as many chances for Gio as there were for Bojan and I don’t think that he blew any that Bojan wouldn’t have. His passes across the middle were incisive if unrecognized by his teammates and he pulled the trigger at the right time. So yeah, good call, Rijkaard. Not only do save your little star player (who is still 17) for the next match where the cules will be demanding he score 10 goals, you don’t lower your offensive capabilities whatsoever. And you get booed for it. What the hell?

Back to ManU: that we’ll now be missing Puyol thanks to a heavy challenge on Asamoah that earned Captain SuperFantastic (take that Gerrard!) a second yellow will only cause more back line issues. Thuram is capable, but capable doesn’t win Champions League semifinals. Milito will be there to chop the crap out of anyone who comes near, but we’ll be lucky to get out of there with a clean sheet if we do. I can tell you that right now.

Messi, however, could be back and that can only be good news for us. I know that it’s hard to come back from injury and jump right into the mess, but hopefully he can get a game under his belt before then. Naturally we have stern stuff between now and then in La Liga (@Recre Huelva, home against Espanyol), but if Messi can get on the field against Espanyol, I’ll feel a lot better about our chances. I doubt we’ll see him against Recre this weekend (Saturday 4pmEST), but hopefully against our intercity rivals (and new member of The Offside).

I’ll go ahead and try my hand at player rankings:

Valdes: 7. Rarely called into action, but pretty strong when needed. Had a few flaps, but they weren’t dangerous.
Zambrotta: 4? I don’t know. He was invisible offensively for most of the game and a couple of his back passes were dangerous.
Thuram: 5. Nothing special, just regular old capable. He does have that badass aura about him, though, which I do love. So maybe 5.5 for that.
Puyol: 6. While several might claim he was wonderful, that’s only if you look at the second half. In the first half he was all sorts of out of position and not necessarily because others were forcing him to be by their bad play, though that definitely had to be a factor. His hustle is worth 3 points at least.
Abidal: 3. I have to give credit to his hustle (3 points), but the rest of his game was gag-inducing. I wanted Rijkaard to put Sylvinho on midway through the first, after all, and that has to be worth negative points, right?
Toure: 1 billion. He scored! Yay! Toure! Man-crush bonus points! Really he was solid, if somewhat off his game in the first half. He solidified his role as current blaugrana ubermann** by moving further up the field and beginning to distribute offensively while still holding down the fort defensively. This allowed Xavi and Iniesta more time on the ball, which is certainly a good thing.
Xavi: 5. Nothing out of the ordinary; just solid and dependable. No major screw ups, though he should have put away that brilliant feed from Iniesta.
Iniesta: 7. While it might be unfair to give Xavi a 5 and Iniesta 6, I do think that Iniesta was far more offensively capable today than his counterpart. Perhaps that’s partially role, but Xavi was upfield with little effect more than Iniesta, who was tracking a bit farther back and inserting some fantastic passes now and then.
Henry: 5. Please just score.
Eto’o: 5. See Henry. Also, learn to pass faster on counterattacks. You used to have instinctual knowledge of where to get the ball, but now…?
Bojan: 6 His runs were good, but his passing left something to be desired.

Subs:
Giovani: 6. Same as Bojan, only fresh. Unfortunate Iniesta mistimed his run into the box or it would have been another goal for sure. Instead it was a counterattack for Schalke. Also, heavy touch on that wacky play where Henry won the ball and tried to flick it over the defender, who headed it forward, then ran away from it and let Gio pounce, only to have his first touch fail him.
Marquez: 5. Didn’t really have much time to assess his role, really.
Gudjohnsen: -. Might as well not have been subbed on, but it did save Henry from maybe getting a card for his verbal and physical jousting with Jermaine Jones. That was pretty fun to watch.

*where he made me mentally note that he seems to have such supreme confidence in his athletic abilities that he disregards positioning, thinking he’ll make up for it. Doesn’t work like that at this level, bucko.

**I’m not sure that’s who Nietzsche had in mind, but whatever.