Barcelona vs Inter Milan

I took leave to watch the Lyon vs Bayern Munich match last week. Ostensibly. Then in the end I didn't, because I couldn't wake up. Later that evening, though, I ended up watching a SIFF film with Nat and another colleague.

If I had woken up last week, I would have found out something that I found out today. I missed the first alarm on my clock. But I thought, "I can make it till half time". I drove to 1 24 hour coffee shop which I knew screened live matches, even in unearthly hours. They weren't showing Barca vs Inter Milan. Then I drove to another coffee shop. No dice either. See, that's what happens when English teams don't get into Champion's league. They don't show them at coffee shops.

So I have to see what the soccernet report says. Harry Redknapp had asked me what I wanted to bet. The only thing I was willing to wager was that Barcelona would win the match outright and I wasn't sure about that. In any case, I was right. Well stupid me. But I could have been wrong. Inter could have gone for an early goal, which would kill off Barcelona because they they would need 3 goals to get through.

Last week when I was looking at the odds, I thought about buying Liverpool eat ball vs Atletico Madrid. I would have won that one too. Dammit...

Inter Milan had a 3-1 advantage from the first match. That is a good lead, except that the next match is Barcelona at the Nou Camp. Barcelona had a ray of hope when an Inter Milan defender got sent off in the 30+ minute. After that, Barcelona had 85% possession, and had 15 attempts on goal (compared to 1 or 2 for Inter). They weren't there to play football at all. If it were anybody else, it would be outrageous. Since this is Jose Mourinho, you'd expect it of him, he's that cynical. I remember the lyrics of a spoof somebody made about him when he was at Chelsea, "Jose and the Amazing Technicolour Overcoat":

"A corner kick is just enough,
A header on from Damien Duff,
The ball flies right into the net and we are one nil up"

Sums up his counter-attacking philosophy perfectly.

In the end, though, Barcelona "won" this match 1-0. Inter went through. It was the closest of margins, because if Inter Milan conceded 1 more goal, they would have been dumped out, and Barcelona would have completed one of the great comebacks at this stage of the competition.

A piece of trivia: Some journalist mentioned that he wanted to know what the Barcelona dressing room of the 97-98 season was like. That was when Louis Van Gaal (now manager of Bayern Munich, UCL finalist) was manager, Jose Mourinho (manager of Inter Milan, other UCL finalist) was a trainer, and Pep Guardiola (manager of Barcelona) was captain. Another piece of trivia: the UEFA Champion's league finals will be at the Bernabeu stadium, home of Real Madrid. Samuel Eto'o (stupidly sold by Real Madrid to Mallorca, now at Inter), Wesley Sneijder (stupidly sold by Real Madrid to Inter Milan) and Arjen Robben (stupidly sold by Real Madrid to Bayern Munich) are going to play there. Frank Ribery (stupidly not bought by Real Madrid, but suspended for Bayern Munich) will be on the bench.

If I had caught the match, I would have left right after the final whistle. And then I would have missed this:



Similarly, last year, I was watching Barcelona "beat" Chelsea. I also left after the final whistle. I missed this (background: Chelsea were denied 4 plausible penalties by the referee):



So good, they even did a remix of it:



But who cares when you have youtube?

The Europa league semis are tomorrow. I hope that the Europa League final will be between Liverpool and Hamburg, because these are the two cities most closely associated with the Beatles.