Drogba was definitely Man of the Match. I hate the diving and cheating, but I didn't see him do any of it last night.
Hell no, that was Ashley Cole by a country mile. I despise the guy as a person, but he should have won man of the match, not that idiot Drogba. The amount of critical tackles he made during the match was huge. Drogba did 2 things, where only one would have mattered (the real goal) and if it had not been for Cole, then it would have mattered nothing since Bayern would have been ahead 4+ to 0 by that time.
And he did try to cheat last night, but the ref to his credit did not stop the game. When Olic almost scored, Drogba was "hurt" at the other end.. his loss of the ball caused the counter attack.. and it was funny to watch how fast Drogba got back on his feet once he realized that he almost cost his team the game. While he did not do as much as he did against Barca, he did try.. quite a few times.
Bayern were the more pleasing team to watch, no doubt, but they couldn't convert possession into goals, so they lost.
Yep they lacked the luck needed.. that every team needs... just like Man City needed on the last day of the season. No Barton red card, no 5 min over time, no 2 goals.
There are no trophies for ball possession.
Hmm maybe there should be.. or a point/goal for the team with the most ball possession over 60%. I am personally getting tired of teams that dont try to play the game and just stand back and hope for the one chance of a contra..... something like the handball rules on non action might help.. dunno.
That seems to be something people like you forget. If there were City would have won every game they played in the EPL this season. Barcelona would have won the CL again. They didn't because they could not penetrate really committed and stubborn defences. Catenaccio is an unpopular style of play for good reason, but you cannot deny that it can be effective. Chelsea and Inter are the proof.
The ref cheated Barca in the semi final and that made Inter go to the final.... but that is another discussion. And yes Chelsea and Inter are the proof and frankly they hurt football more than they help it.
Barca, Real, Bayern, Man Utd and all those teams who have won their leagues and CL gongs have all spent shed-loads of money. Real have spent more than Chelsea and City combined over recent years, but somehow it's only those who have gained success recently that are criticised for buying success. Funny how just one trophy-less season can turn Barca and United fans into bitter children.
As a Barca fan I resent that. Barca ****ed up in La Liga to easy oppontents. If they had won those games instead of drawing then the title race would have been much closer and different.... as a fan I admit they ****ed up royally against those teams. But lets not forget... Barca is still the most winning team in Europe (title wise) of the big teams. Barca got 3 major titles this year, where as teams like City and Real got 1. And Barca still has a good chance of a 4th title this season...
Chealski has bought success, just as City has. Chealski was nothing before Abramhovich bought the club.. a team of with a glorious past, but nothing more. The same with Man City.
Real Madrid has been dominant on the European scale for decades, and Barca has been up there the last 20+ years. Man U has been dominant for decades also...
Now you can claim that Real Madrid buys its championships.. and I would agree.. at least the last 20 years. But saying that Barca or Man U "buy" their titles in the same way is a tad harder, looking at the core of both teams. Man U does not buy mega stars.. they buy cheap and make mega stars of them.. or come from their own ranks. Barca buys one or two stars and the rest come from their own ranks or are bought cheaply (relatively speaking). Over half the Barca team come from their youth academy, and Man U also has quite a few from their youth team, although it has declined over the years as the competition in the EPL has gone up.
Both Man City and Chealski dont do that. How many players in the City team come from the youth academy.. I mean players that actually play?... 2? How many on Chealskis? 1? How many are actually English? Only team that is worse is Arsenal with its non-English English team... do they even have English players.. oh yea one.
Regardless, next season will be the first where a lot of teams need new players, but the financial resources wont be there to command the massive wages and transfer sums.. not that they dont have the money, but that their balance sheets need to be kosher for the 2013-14 season where the harsh rules come into place. Chealski needs new players, as does Barca, Real, Man U, Liverpool, Man City and so on and so on.. all because of players getting old or being forced retired due to illness/injury. Hell Robben in Bayern has been talking about retirement as well. And then there are the fringe players with high wages that need dumping.. which wont be easy for certain teams.. City for example. At least with Chealksi their high earners are coming to end of contract soonish and are not getting renewed.
I suspect football will start to look very different over the next 2 years and it might with some luck push "new teams" outside the usual suspects to compete for titles both domestically and Europe wide.
FC Bayern has a habit of breaking my heart... But I still love them.