Champions League Preview: Liverpool - Barcelona

By: Isaiah | March 5th, 2007

There are less than 24 hours before Barcelona play at Anfield and the tension is quickly mounting for me. It’s a huge game, especially on the heels of another loss in La Liga, but not just because of that loss. It’s big because Barcelona are down 2-1 going into a game at a very tough place to play. Both teams will be looking to prove a point, as Liverpool also lost over the weekend, but they do have the lead and despite the fact that Benitez says they’re looking for a win (Spanish), well, they’re looking to not lose. Obviously winning would be better as it would mean less tension in the closing moments, but not losing is more than good enough for Liverpool and I think everyone knows that.

What will happen is certainly a tough question. Anything can really happen, as both teams will have powerful lineups; I imagine Liverpool will want to play something akin to what they played the first time, but with Barcelona looking to attack it might end up being more of what they rolled out against ManU. With Rijkaard it’s hard to say; with Benitez: impossible.

Barcelona will have Thuram and Deco back and that should make for a stiffer back line and more creative central midfield than was the case against Sevilla. I can never really argue with a midfield of Iniesta and Xavi, but against Liverpool out-and-out attacking is more important and Deco is, of those three, the one to turn to for goals and goal-creation. Gio and Motta are both out, which leads us to the roster, thoughtfully provided by the Lionel Messi Weblog:

Keepers: Valdés, Jorquera.
Defenders: Puyol, Márquez, Thuram, Zambrotta, Sylvinho, Oleguer.
Midfielders: Giuly, Xavi, Deco, Iniesta, Ronaldinho, Messi, Edmílson.
Forwards: Gudjohnsen, Saviola, and Eto’o.

There are two ways for this to go. Either Rijkaard opts for his 3-4-3 lineup or the more standard/conventional 4-4-2 approach. I like the latter better, but the former would probably look like this:

Valdés, Oleguer, Thuram, Puyol, Márquez, Xavi, Deco, Iniesta, Giuly, Ronaldinho, Eto’o.
Márquez would be the holding midfielder and Deco the attacker with Xavi and Iniesta playing the center of the field. Eto’o would be alone up front, but the nature of the beast is that he and Ronaldinho and Messi would all interchange depending on the run of play. Except Eto’o doesn’t really track back.

A 4-4-2 would probably look more like this:

Valdés, Oleguer, Thuram, Puyol, Zambrotta, Xavi, Iniesta, Deco, Giuly, Ronaldinho, Eto’o.
Zambrotta would play left and be expected to push up quite a bit, but otherwise it would look virtually the same. Some of the spacing would be different, of course, but the idea is similar. And there’s a striker involved, unlike at Zaragoza where Ronaldinho started up front. It worked at Sevilla too for a while, the no striker thing and really, as long as Gudjohnsen doesn’t start (or play, really), I’ll be happy.

Prediction: 1-2. That’s right, I think it’ll go to extra time and then penalties. From there, it’s a crap shoot, but I think I’d put my money on Valdés over Reina…did I just say that? Wow. Yeah. But I went with gut instinct and that’s what came out. So Barcelona goes through on kicks. Ronnie isn’t going to miss his, that’s for sure.

He wants another one…

…Of course, so do these guys.