When beauty picks an Ugly mask

Mouriniho is in my opinion one of the best soccer coaches. He just manages to make his team just the right way against all the different teams he plays. For him it is important not to receive a goal.

If you want a real exegesis on what ails ya, then I'm afraid you can't gloss over the fact that most people, I'd bet, would love to come here and shout, "fuck you and the horse you rode in on", decorum notwithstanding.

Barca's problem, which it never shook off when pep took charge, was that they ALWAYS get carried away. You won six cups (only half of which were meaningful) and you instantly became the team of the decade. No, you didn't. And then all the unremitting smugness, dear God! Laporta bleating on about the Barca way of doing things (with one eye on the travelling circus in Madrid). Fuck off: you were never any different. And let's not forget all the grotesque inflated sense of self-worth epitomized by the bastardizing of "mes que un club" to mean "Yes, we're the best, I know, I know. Don't worry that you'll never be able to play football as divine as us, or even to be able to understand our ambrosial manna-from-heaven way of football that is too beautiful for mere mortals to emulate. No, you just try as best you can. Ah! How wonderful the world would be it were not only as great as us, but also as humble too!" Fuck off.

Inter (and Chelsea and Man Utd before them too, and Greece in Euro 2004) did nothing wrong by playing defensively. It is not unethical to defend, or even to not attempt to score a goal. No, I don't particularly like it either, but it's hardly cheating is it? You've got to be a particularly miserable and pathetic human being to not take that as an opportunity to ask what your own team could do to improve themselves in that situation instead of just moaning and complaining. Don't be so puerile.

Finally, don't be so histrionic. Yes, the Spanish papers get carried away: ignore them and acquire people at your club who are capable of ignoring them. Pep will also mature as a coach and realize that you do need a plan B, which doesn't necessarily mean betraying your priciples. Tranfers were also shocking, but they won't always be: you are a big club with a good youth academy -- you'll find good players. To the sane Barca fans (who aren't too few in number): not a bad season (but maybe some more squad reinforcements next year if possible), and just don't get carried away. And to the rest: go fuck yourselves.

Xavi explains the Champions’ KO: “The atmosphere before the match made us feel a bit of anxiety and tension“... (from EMD)

Thank you, Ramzi, for such an intelligent, articulated, clear-spoken post. I hope that, once the frustration wears off, this will serve to knock the silliness out of us. Lately, it seems I'm hearing more sensible things from madridistas than from culés. It's a pleasure and a relief to read something like this, lots of us needed to hear it.

I have been an inter fan since mid 90s when nobody in the world heard of mourinho. I am inter fan first and foremost. Mourinho is a great coach and in the top 3 best coaches in the world for sure and I am happy he is coaching Inter.

It's hard to be an Inter fan and not be a Mourinho fan at this point.

Tell me nonetheless, are you an Inter fan or a Mourinho fan?

alves dived just like messi at the start of the game. do i even have to say alves dived. shudnt it be obvious anytime it involves alves lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

u can see sneijder pulled out of tackle and there was no or minimal contact and alves decided to just fall instead of proceeding. no way was his progress impeded by the non existent tackle.

here is the greatest player in the world in all his glory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

at this rate i am starting to think barca have a diving training session with messi , busquets and alves in your team

pique goal was offside. no muntari or zanetti was not playing him on

http://www.interpersempre.com/...

so without offside goals inter would have won 2-1 anyway. pique's offside goal cancels out milito's offside goal

ofcourse you conveniently forget all calls that went against inter -- milito wrongly being called offside when he had a one on one, etoo called for a foul when he cleanly won the ball from keita

my argument still stands. can you tell me how many great chances barca created even when inter didnt put everybody behind the ball. it was still the same tiki taka with no incisiveness nonsense. go ahead list it out. i will wait lol

one thing though. i would never blame the ref even if inter failed yesterday because all this is normal in a frkng game.

who were acting like idiots bringing up non sense like mou owned a restaurant with the ref. not sure why spanish media and barca fans had to resort to 1960's tactics like banging outside the hotel , ref pay off etc etc.

lol, grandeMou.
Milito was offside, Alves was a clear penalty, and you think Barca didn't have any chance except of the goal from Pedro? And you really think a team converts 100% of its chances. You're such a pitiable person.
Oh, and by the way, Mourinho will leave your beloved Inter, so will you then follow Mourinho?

No problem, Sal. I simply want all the users commentating to keep the frustrated debate about the game in a fair manner.

Thanks.

ok pedro sorry for that misunderstanding

sal:
"Pedro
You are really a joke: Inter scored/counterd because our defense was in youre half of teh pitch and you just came with some long ball offfside goal."

If you haven't guessed, i'm one of the contributors to barcelona.theoffside.com. The fact that you took me for an inter support may underline that you did not understand my post.

I'd also suggest dropping the petty insults unless you want me to start throwing your comments into the bin.

helge: we scored 3 , milito missed 2 sitter in first half and sneijder doesn't control a ball and lets it run out when balo was open in front of an empty goal waiting for the pass

3+milito chances+sneijder == 6

it was very possible that inter could have scored easily couple of more goals except for our wastefulness. and i am not even counting the balotelli mess up at the very end when stankkovic was free and through and balo mishits the pass to row Z. mourinho plan to kill the tie in first leg was perfect and it worked. it would have saved lot of nervousness and tension if we werent so wasteful. imagine how crappy the motivation videos would have been if you had to overcome 5-0 lol

this is what i dont understand. inter played an attacking game and didnt park the bus at san siro. how many clear chances did you create ??? only two the pique shot that was cleared by lucio and pedro goal

what is your excuse for your pathetic offense ???

I dunno which match left a sourer taste in the mouth:
last year's semi vs. Chelsea or this years semi with Inter?

Soccer isnt solely about scoring goals, its also about maintaining your goals. Inter came away with 3 vital goals in Italy and chose to maintain them in Spain. I see nothing distastefull in this. Being 10 men down at the Camp Nou against the best attacking side at present left Jose with limited options, but of the options he had Jose chose the right one when he tasked his men to park the biggest bus they could. Why imperil a vital lead by attacking when you can protect it better through defending. Jose doesnt care about appearances, he only cares that the job gets done, his job was to progress to the final and that is what he did, he clearly thinks the end justify the means.

"this Barca offense without etoo and iniesta is toothless against any credible top defense"

lol, it was the same last year as well with them against Chelsea, so whats your point? Infact we created more chances this year, and managed to score more goals.Our defending is what let us down,Mr expert on what is best for Barca.

Barca such a gr8 team had no wing play. No incisive runs from messi or xavi that could earn them a freekick outside the D. Only two good deliveries from messi in the entire game. Messi i never near maradona. He didn't try to run down defenders. If h says no space he ought to create space.alvez pedro busquests- plays square balls only. inter really played well in 1st leg and defended too well in second leg. argentines should not pin hope on messi. he doesn;t have the guile nd speed. with more age he will become pedestrian footballer.

grandeMou, are you serious?
"Sadly if Inter had executed better we would have come to Camp Nou with a 4-0 or 5-1 score"

That's the biggest BS I've heard for a very long time. It's so fatuous, I won't even enter a discussion with you...

Why are we still arguing over the 1st leg game? Inter had more goals. Inter had more quality chances. Most people who watched the game would agree that Inter played better.

Barca is a great team, perhaps best of this decade. But even the greatest team lose games. When that happens, you learn from it and improve the team, not bitch about ref decisions and complain about the other team's style of play.

Yes Inter is a defensive team, but why is that an issue? The argument that "if every team plays like Inter..." is a pure strawman. It won't ever happen. It is very difficult to put together a team like Inter, and it does not suit the style of play for most. May be some people would prefer to have every team play attacking football. But I'd rather see teams taking different approaches and have variety in this sport. I enjoy Barca's football and Inter's football, just in different ways.

"I hope next time Inter and Barca meet in the CL all this bad blood will be under the bridge."

Me too, Johonna. Honestly, I don't believe any bad blood will persist between the clubs. I don't think our fans' behavior was ever about Inter. It was about our team, and against the man we have a long history with: Mourinho. Keep up the great work on the Inter blog!

btw you are giving all the flops a bad name by calling ibra a flop.

here is why pep doesnt have a clue. this pre season before he left Mourinho gave Ibra the 10 shirt. If that doesnt tell you what kind of a player he is than nothing else will

Ibra is ahybrid SS/AM more like in the mould of Kaka than a striker like Etoo. You should have kept Etoo and spent the money on getting a replacement for Henry. But if you were going to sell Etoo then atleast buy an equivalent of Etoo like Villa/Torres. Wonder what Pep was smoking

sal u r funny. ok dood. so u hope to play FM10 by dreaming about signing cesc/villa and thrashing inter. even with them u will not win 5-0 ever. so forget it. if u r going to indulge in fantasy how about this. inter will sign ribery , gerrard next year and milito will be his clinical self and we will finish the first leg 6-0 instead of 3-1 and watch the sore losers cry again after throttling them at camp nou

I think my scenario has better odds of playing out than yours.

You are right that we didn't create as many chances as we should, and that is due to Zlatan and Henry weing horribly out of form and we had to turn to 2nd class palyers like jeffren on the bench, we lack depth and that is pep's fault:
Guardiola transfers:

Ibrahimovic- flop
Caceres- flop
Henrique- flop
Chigrinsky dunno his name- flop
Kerrison- flop

thats a 100 million euros down the drain and you criticise Madrid, at least they got a winner in Ronaldo.

But grandeMou, we were STILL better than Inter, and I hope we see you again next year with iniesta/fabregas/Villa and i hope we trash you 5-0 and 0-5 just to clear this one out once and for all.

long ball offside goal ?? ok you are delusional. motta won the ball right in front of barca penalty box , passed it to etoo who crossed in for the goal. how the fuck is this long ball ? do u even know anything about football ???

It was offside but milito was also denied a one on one at the start of the game. so take off your Barca tinged glasses and stop whining about the ref

ok genius sal. you keep passing the ball around the halfway line and build up your ball possession percentage and be proud of it.

It is not how much you keep the ball but what you do with it that defines how good you are as an attacking team. who gives a fuck if barca have 70% poessesion passing the ball between busquest and xavi and messi and back to busquests and xavi and messi and on and on and on for 90 mins just inside the inter's half and doing shit with it.

barca -- will win every game in the world if instead of goals we start using meaningless passes. Cryuff might have brain washed you guys but a brilliantly executed counter attck like Inter's second goal (Maicon) is as much a pleasure to watch as much as your "total footballers" ping ponging the ball without any creativity.

lol. thats all

I am saying Barca offense was toothless based on two legs. How many chances did you create at San siro ??? Dont think Inter put 10 men behind the ball then.

this Barca offense without etoo and iniesta is toothless against any credible top defense. Emperor has no clothes and got away so far playing in Spain and by playing against Arsenal with Silvestre and Sol Campbell and Stuttgart.

Barca didnt create much over two legs and Inter created lot more chances in the first leg than Barca did over two legs combined.

If this is not toothless what is ??

Breaking down a top defense with 10 men behind is not easy and I know that. But Mau Utd or Chelsea or Inter playing against such a defense would have caused lot more trouble than Barca did. Never seen a defense with 10 men so comfortable under relentless attack for 60 mins and that shows the very one dimensional nature of Barca's attack.

Put Inter's or Man U or Chelsea offense against this 10 man Inter defense and they would have caused tons of chances and created lot of headache than what Barca did. Infact I am willing to bet that Inter may not have pulled this off against Chelsea or Man Utd or against our offense with Maicon , Sneijder , Etoo , Milito and Pandev/Balotelli.

Inter and Man Utd and chelsea have versatile attacking systems and have deadly transitional play both of which this Barca clearly lack. If was funny watching yesterday Barca trying to keep doing the same thing expecting it to work when it clearly wasn't.

Pedro

You are really a joke: Inter scored/counterd because our defense was in youre half of teh pitch and you just came with some long ball offfside goal.

when you SLEEP with 10 min in youre own box it is very hard for any team to score. A brilliant save from the keeper, faking injuries (maicon), wasting time, playing anti-football, a volcano erupting and a tiring 1000km busride and help from the ref is what saved you.

GrandeMou,

You were always going to play ultra defense EVEN with 11 men, like you actually DID in teh beginning of the game. You are not going to convince me that Inter would have attacked with 11 men, no way.

Inter DEFENDED at home too, youre goals came from counters, look at the statistics, ball possesion etc... .
What I saw was an offside goal, and a penalty not given. At barca I saw Ibra's shirt being torn appart and no call, a clear goal from bojan not given and Eto'o playing left back. You were afraid of Barca and you know it.
We can only hope Bayern trash you, because they have teh dignity to attack and not to hide like a bunch of schoolgirls.

"Inter showed We can play offense very well in the first leg and defense very well in the second leg. what did barca show ?? they showed you can ping the ball meaninglessly around the penalty box without creating any chances. that will only get you a spot on the couch to watch the final on TV and you got it."

I hate to be the bearer of reality but hyperbole such as this downplays the simple truth of the second leg: Breaking a strictly defensive minded team who, as Mourinho noted, did not want the ball is supremely difficult. Particularly against Inter, a team compiled of excellent players.

Lashing out at the infantile crying and moaning of others all you want but you're not helping your cause by throwing about hyperbole of brilliant Inter and 'toothless', meaningless Barcelona.

It's a two way street.

great post and agree 99%. hopefully we will meet next year again and it will be a good rivalry. inter fans have done worse including throwing a vespa from our stands so we are not preaching but never seen this kind of hype and hoopla for a CL game and this kind of wacky tacky stuff from players , team and the club. My opinion of Pep has gone up a lot and kudos for having a great coach. hopefully he will improve the team for next season so you guys can do better

sal and others: did u watch the game at san siro ?? which defense was torn apart ?? who created tons of chances. my only regret is all the misses of milito and sneijder and one defensive lapse of maicon. love mourinho's strategy. most coaches would bitch and moan about playing the second leg away and his attitude was to use it as an advantage to kill the tie after first leg and it worked !!! Sadly if Inter had executed better we would have come to Camp Nou with a 4-0 or 5-1 score and us tifosi would have a more relaxed time watching this.

Stop crying and moaning about Inter not playing attacking football yesterday. We have the best offense in Serie A and dominated Chelsea at Stamford Bridge playing attacking football and won 1-0.

It is not like we play like yesterday every day. We played ultra defensive yesterday to neutralize Barca with 10 men and anybody who bitches and moans about it is missing the point. Inter are not Greece in Euro 2004 since we dont play like this every game and dont know how many game of Inter you have watched but surely you even you must have seen the first leg at Milano ???

So relax football is fine and Mourinho/Inter is not going to eat it up. Maybe you should worry about the fact that against 10 men Inter in your home ground with the world best player you didnt create a decent chance until 85th minute.

Inter showed We can play offense very well in the first leg and defense very well in the second leg. what did barca show ?? they showed you can ping the ball meaninglessly around the penalty box without creating any chances. that will only get you a spot on the couch to watch the final on TV and you got it.

In the first leg ee didnt stop at 2-1 and even at 3-1 we were always trying to score. So stop trying to massage your ego saying anti football defeated you. No it was your crappy defense and toothless offense coupled with Inter's brilliant counter-attacking deadly offense and incredible defense that defeated you.

Ref call , anti football blah blah is all a different way of trying to accept the plain fact that you got your ass handed to you. We got our ass handed to us last Nov at camp Nou and no Inter fan tried to sugar coat it then. It happens to all of us so accept it and move on

Not all us Inter fans are trolls. I hope the people will not let a few bad apples taint the whole barrel (also, there are a fair number of angry Barca fans over on the Inter board - I ignore them).

I hope next time Inter and Barca meet in the CL all this bad blood will be under the bridge. It is, after all, a game, and the thought that an opposing coach would need a body guard at a press conference is just taking things waaaaaay to far.

Barcelona is a great team. Everyone knows that. But even great teams dont win everything all the time. Inter and Barcelona have historically had a good relationship. I would hope that that one loss would not change that.

now here's my take on the match.

why did yaya start at CB?
i must applaud pique and yaya as they were the 2 players who add urgency to our play. messi and xavi couldn’t do much as there was simply no space to run in to or pass to.
i dont understand how some people can applaud inter or call mourinho a tactical genius. all he had to do was instruct his players to stay in his own penalty area.

two things that pissed me off last night, was why didn’t we play like how we usually play. invite the opposition to our half? our players did bring the ball back on a few occassions but inter players didn’t bother so i guess that’s the reason. another one is why didn’t xavi take shots or ibra?

btw the ball did not touch yaya’s hand!
and bojan oh bojan, please practice headers. last year in the camp nou against chelsea you screwed us up as well with your terrible header. or at least let it go for messi as he had a better chance and he was calling for it.

now i wanna talk regarding our player who is supposed to provide us other options, ibra.
we bought ibra to break down buses but pep doesn’t know how to use him although ibra does suck in heading the ball.
what i see is that in ibra, we can’t do a plan A nor plan B.
he is in between.
he can do a bit of plan A cos of his passing but he is too slow for it.
he can do plan B but he is scared to head the ball.

what i would’ve like last season was villa, if not, get someone who is really good at headers, a beast in the drogba mould and add a great aerial threat for “plan B’.
and for our normal game(plan A), bojan, pedro or messi at cf.
so with that we have a plan A and B.
or we could use pique as a plan B :p

been waiting all day for your post ramzi!
superb as usual.

Actually what Busi did was insulting to Barca's style.
Really, i felt quite ashamed by what he did. Barca are known for fair play, and even if we qualified yesterday, i wouldn't like it coz Mou and co would've surely killed us with the red card.
I'm sorry to say this but yesterday Busquets' action was a disgrace. The loss still hurts me, really badly, but i would rather accept defeat than progressing unfairly.
Also, we all know how it feels to celebrate a 92nd minute goal(Chelsea), but i didn't know what to do after celebrating and then finding out that the goal had been ruled out.
Anyway congrats Inter.

Yeah, but Sal's point is true. If every team's pursuit was to play like Inter did yesterday, football wouldn't be the biggest game of the planet. And he's also true about Greece, the majority of football fans will tell you that they've not been happy with Greece as European Champions 2004.
Football needs teams like Arsenal, Barca, Bayern, ManUnited, Lyon (and even Real Madrid ^^) to keep its position as the world's number one sport.
People want to get entertained, and only very few neutral observers will have felt entertained by Inter yesterday, that's simply a fact. There are some defensive and tactics lovers out there, but I can guarantee you they're the vast minority ;)

Now I will not be here today. But Let Inter decide how to play, what they want, what they wish, and what they like.

Let's learn our own lessons. I think that serve us better.

They can come and talk about their Inter on the page. More than welcomed (whether they post common sense or trolls). As for Barca fans, I think we have more things to consider within our farm to keep us busy from picking on others.

Message foor all the Inter-lovers here:

if all th eteams have defensive coaches like mourinhio, that would be the end of the sports called 'football'. It will all be dull and boring and tactically with a lot of 0-0 results, nobody would like to watch these games anymore and the only players to start are going to be the big tall players with zero technique but who can defend like wounded lions. Is that what you really want to see Inter-lovers? Even if inter would win the CL, the will never be remembered a a great team, they will be teh Greece that won the Europa Cup by doing just what inter did, defending liek crazy. The great teams that enter the history books, are teams like Brazil, Barcelona, Spain, France, Argentinia with maradonna, they all were dominating their ennemies and played to WIN games. Mourinhio-lovers if everyone starts playing NOT TO lOSE games, that would be the END of football, the end of magical players liek ronaldio, messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Ronaldo 9, Pele, Maradonna, Cruyf etc... .

So Inter-lovers, Inter lost the game, won the tie and progress but ultimately football lost and even the inter-lovers deep down in their hearts know that Inter will never earn anyones respect with such a cowardly display.

Great post, Ramzi.

I laud your post for its calm levelheadedness.

Trolls will be everywhere; we've got a famous one giving interviews and applauding refs in our technical area. Let's hope we can both move on from here, and face each other properly, in a CL final with more football and less drama.

Also can we ban that bloody bot's ip? It's on every goddamn post I read on the offside...

did i miss something or is somebody really trying to sell Jordans on a football blog??? wow... lol... good post btw.

I wasn't a fan of this media campaign from both club and Spanish press either. Now we'll see if they can recover and regain mental focus on the league. We will actually already know on Saturday. I hope this elimination won't have any further bad consequences.
A bit more humility and respect towards to Inter could have been the better deal. And if the players were really as convinced of advancing and their own strength as the media and interviews suggested, then it will be VERY tough to get out of this hole :/

gl Barça, visca per sempre!

We have none to bame but ourselves. The game was already lost at Inter 3-1. It' snormal Inter would defend their lead. had we not lost or forced them to score at Barca we would have a totally differnt game. Pep was naive, we wer 1-0 up at Inter and STILL we let Alvez and Maxwell attack??? We should have defended our lead. But it's to late now.

Let us look at the future and that is what is important. We need a blog about eh FUTURE and as teh season is coming to an end, an EVALUATION of teh performance of teh players.

1)First conclusion I mentionned many times this season is that we clearly lack depth: We sold Gudjohnsson and Lheb (both attacking midfielders/occasionally forwards and what did we get on return? NOTHING. Add an injured INIESTA we have a midfield that is lacking creatibity, often we play with Keita and Busi/yayha, this way we don't play to Barca 's strengths. We are not about a physical midfield, but about a creative midfield that is able to penetrate defences. So I would buy a creative attacking midfielders who is able to take long shots. In my opinion FABREGAS fits perfevtly. We need him BADLY, if not an injured/out of form Iniesta will cost us.Than, we olso need both a center forward and a left forward. henry will leave so we should buy someone with PACE who is able to get PAST defenders and deliver CROSSES and be able to CUT IN from the left to the right to take the shots, these player sare difficult to find. than, IBRA is good but clearly not good enough, with him another season alone upfront, we will again depend on messi alone. We need VILLA clealy and BADLY.

Ols we need a world class left back who can backup Abidal, Maxwell is good in offense but he can not defend, and that has cost us terrible. i am thinking Ashly Cole/patrick Vierra Phillipe Lhame world class left backs.
Maxwell doesn't come close to them, at 28 years old he will only be worse in the years to come.

2)Not only do we lack depth , we olso have a terrible transfer policy, 25 million € would have gotten us a class left forward, instead we have Chygrinsky rotting on the bench and sitting on a huge salary. Then Zlatan has to be the floptransfer of the year. KAKA has the potential to become better next year, but Zlatan will be 30 next year. yess you heard that cleartly we paid 70million for a lazy, slow striker that will turn 30 next year??? i say let mim compete with Villa next year, he earns in a week what most of us won't earn in 20 years, so let him prove he is worth is or let him go.

2) We do not only lack depth