Champions League: Barça – Sporting CP, Tuesday 2:45pmEST

By: Isaiah | September 15th, 2008

The Champions League group stage is back! There is always a different feel to the Champions League games and this one is no different. It’s Sporting CP coming to visit the Camp Nou, replete with talent and goal-scoring capabilities (2-0-0 in the Portuguese league with 4 goals for and 1 against; a 2-0 victory over FC Porto in the Portuguese SuperCup).

While Barça hasn’t been prodigious in front of goal (1 goal in 2 league matches), when they’ve played in open games, the score has favored them every time. Take the first Wisła Kraków match, for instance: when Wisła came out to play, the game was over quickly. Sporting doesn’t strike me as the stand-behind-the-ball-and-defend kind of team. Racing and Numancia may be willing to play that way in hopes of coming out with a lucky draw, but Sporting doesn’t strike me as that kind of team.

The CL is generally more open and interesting than the domestic leagues because the talents available are of the attacking sort. Their coach has publicly declared, “We know they’re the favourites for this game. Their favourites for this game and for the entire group. But Sporting will go out to win in Barcelona.”* That’s good news for us, if it’s true. If they want to play a fast-and-open game, we’re more than willing to oblige them.

Guardiola has already shown himself beyond the reaches of my little brain in terms of squad selection, so my guess as to the starting lineup is merely that now, a guess. With Rijkaard, you knew basically what you were going to get, but with Pep, well, you have to wait and see. With Cruyff solidly on his side, having declared that Guardiola made all the right decisions in the Racing game and that it was the best game Barcelona has played in years, there is little doubt that Guardiola will continue his “revolution” however he sees fit.

And I’ve decided to come to terms with that, to accept it and enjoy the beautiful game regardless of outcome. I’m going to root desperately for us to score goals, to win games, but I’m also going to stop second-guessing Pep at every moment. I’m either going to have to do that or watch game film day-in and day-out like Andy Reid in order to be more capable of true criticism. Not that I’m going to stop commenting on the game or the way things are handled, or my hopes and dreams for the blaugrana, but it’s time to move from reactionary fan to true fan. It’ll be good for my blood pressure, at the very least.

The game, by the way, will be broadcast live on ESPN Deportes, rebroadcast at 5pmEST on ESPN Classic, and then re-rebroadcast at 9:30pmEST on ESPN Deportes.

Barcelona:
Here’s the squad list provided by Barça’s official site: Valdés, Pinto, Henry, Márquez, Xavi, Piqué, Iniesta, Puyol, Cáceres, Sylvinho, Bojan, Eto’o, Messi, Alves, Keita, Gudjohnsen, Touré, Pedro.

And here’s my starting lineup, built out of that: Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Sylvinho, Toure, Keita, Xavi, Messi, Pedro, Eto’o

The big deal here is that Henry is on the bench, to be used as a super sub for Eto’o. It’s what should have been done the whole time; Eto’o wears down defenses with his movement and speed, and then Henry comes in to brutalize them with his tactical knowledge. Pedro and Messi will help on that score too, forcing defenders wider and into space. Without Hleb, the left side is up to Messi and Iniesta to exploit (Pedro was ridiculously bad on the left), though the occasional flip-flop will be necessary to shake things up.

It’s definitely possible that Guardiola will start a more “attacking” lineup by replacing Toure with Iniesta, meaning that Messi would be, in effect, a second striker alongside Eto’o. a 4-2-2-2 in a lot of ways, or a 4-2-3-1 (which would modify itself into a 4-5-1 and a 4-4-2 with regularity as Keita and/or Xavi step up into the middle to fill the holes created by Messi and Pedro shooting off to the corners). Note that these formations are so interchangeable that it allows Alves to bomb up the wing on the right and Sylvinho on the left.

I wrote a whole section of this post about Busquets and Abidal (including the line, “Assuming Guardiola saw the same game I did on Saturday, he’ll keep Abidal on the field as finally I could say, for the first time since his transfer, that he was our best player.” I called that one wrong for sure as both Busquets and Abi get to sit for this one. Apparently Guardiola did see a different game than I did.), but now I’ve got to alter it, so here goes.

Consider Pique and Márquez: who starts? Pique did very, very well against Racing, but does he fall victim to the rotation? Does Cáceres get to a start and a chance to prove himself on a larger stage? Or do we stick with the idea of attacking wingers and put Sylvinho on? I tend to lean that way since we’re trying to up the tempo, I imagine, but perhaps Cáceres has proven himself capable of being both an attacker and a defender. He does start on the left for Uruguay, after all.

We could see a complete shift, with Puyol and Pique sitting, but one doubts that El Capitan will get the ax in favor of an untested pairing. It’s Puyol + someone, for sure. Cáceres could feature instead of Pique, with Sylvinho on the left, but if it’s not going to be Pique, I’m putting my money on Márquez getting the nod.

So here are the potential lineups we’ve got:

Valdes
Alves, Pique/Márquez , Puyol, Sylvinho/Cáceres
Toure/Keita, Xavi
Messi/Pedro, Eto’o, Henry/Messi/Iniesta

So many combos! And that’s without considering that I put both Toure and Keita in my starting lineup! Whoa Nelly, as they say.

On to Sporting:

It’s Fábio Rochemback’s return to the Camp Nou, too, of course. He’s 26 now, a couple of years removed from both the expectations and the success he encountered at Middlesbrough (2006 UEFA Cup final appearance, where they were trounced 4-0 by Sevilla, sans Dani Alves). So there’s that little bit of fun for him, as he sticks the boot in just that much harder against his old pals.

Also making an appearance will be João Moutinho, once a supposed transfer target and Deco replacement who never made the move. It will be interesting to see how good he really is — his appearances for Portugal in the Euros this past summer were fairly underwhelming, but so was the whole squad. Felipão didn’t seem to be able to use his talents all that well, but we may yet see the best side of him.

Helder Postiga is another threat, but one that I’ve never been particularly afraid of. For whatever reason, his scoring rate doesn’t impress me as much as it obviously impressed Felipão. Sure, he’s already scored once in the league for Sporting (so his strike rate is 50%), but if Wikipedia is to be trusted, Postiga has scored 42 goals in 158 league matches throughout his career. That’s a strike rate of 0.266 goals per game, a pitiful amount for a star striker, really. However, in international competition with Portugal, Postiga has tallied 11 goals in 34 matches, a much better 0.324 goals per game average. His only year in which he scored double digit goals was 2006/07 with Porto, when he scored 11 goals over 24 league matches (0.458 goals per match) and 1 goal in 7 Champions League matches (0.143; in total, with 12 goals in 31 games, Postiga average 0.387 goals per match, discounting international duty and the Portuguese cup). It’s fashionable to consider Postiga alongside players like Iniesta, who defy statistical comparisons thanks to all of the intangibles they provide (be they hard-to-track assists, space-creation, or ball-winning), but Postiga has never, ever struck me as fully capable in front of others. It’s almost like he was merely chosen to represent Portugal because, frankly, there was no one better to fill the Ronaldo (of fat fame) space that Felipão seems to love so much (for this very reason, beware of Chelsea when Drogba returns).

I’m not so foolish as to discount Postiga or the success that Sporting has had, but the highly successful Liedson (4 goals in 6 Champions League matches last year) is out injured, as is midfielder Simon Vukcevic, which just reduces the effectiveness of their attack. Postiga may prove me wrong, but I’ll be awfully surprised if that happens, given the way the boys played defense on Saturday.

This should be an intense match between two motivated sides. I expect nothing less than an enjoyable game, with little backpedaling by anyone, no matter who scores first.

Official prediction: 3-1 Barça; goals by Messi, Eto’ο, and Xavi.

*Quote found in Soccernet’s preview.