author: Tony Cascarino
source: The Times
date: 17 April 2009
editing: fcbtransfers.blogspot.com
I'm not sure why Barcelona are attracting so much admiration and awe, as if they were one of the greatest sides in history. They're not: they are overrated and Chelsea can beat them in the semi-finals of the Champions League. Because as good as Barcelona are going forward, their defence is suspect and that prevents them from being a truly great team.
When I've watched them this season, they've flattered to deceive. Yes, they are fantastic in attack. But you can get at that defence, and the reason they've looked so comfortable in advancing to the semi-finals is because they haven't played many decent opponents.
They beat Lyons 6-3 on aggregate but this is the weakest Lyons side for a number of years. They’re not a team to fear, and they did score twice in the Nou Camp. Then, in the quarter-finals, Barcelona beat Bayern Munich 4-0 and home and shared a 1-1 draw away. Instinctively you think that’s incredibly impressive but Bayern are not a good team. The sort of team who will give away chances that you know top forwards such as Barcelona’s will take.
But the Catalans will concede their fair share of opportunities as well, because of the open, attacking style they play and because their defence and goalkeeper aren’t top-drawer. It’s why I think that if Chelsea play well at the back they will knock Barcelona out. That might be a big “if” after the 4-4 draw with Liverpool.
But we know Chelsea have the potential to defend better. With a central defensive partnership of John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho they will look more secure, and while Ashley Cole won’t be there because of suspension, Michael Essien’s got the agility and legs to subdue Messi, as he subdued Steven Gerrard at Anfield.
It will be a shock to Barcelona to face a really tough team after the easy ride they’ve had so far in Europe and in Spain, where Real Madrid have been ordinary and Valencia, Seville, Deportivo La Coruna and Villarreal are all not as good as they were.
Barcelona have been knocked out of Europe in recent years by Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool. English clubs don’t let Barcelona have things all their own way. Liverpool nullified them in 2006-07 by hard work and ground out a result. Chelsea can do that. Stop the service to Henry and Eto’o and they won’t run back to chase the ball. Limit Messi and you limit Barcelona.
And Chelsea won’t be in awe of going to the Nou Camp. They won’t be intimidated - especially since the first leg is in Spain, giving a real advantage to the Londoners. If the tie is in the balance after the Nou Camp, there’s no doubt Chelsea can win. And if they do, if they knock out the favourites, maybe someone will say to me: “Wow, how good were Chelsea?” It might just be that the real question to ask will be “How disappointing were Barcelona?” They’re high on a pedestal they don’t deserve.
read the full and original article here
Read more:
Barça's beauty lies in their bite
Barcelona Is Winning With Style
Barcelona the team to avoid in Champions League
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Barcelona are overrated
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52 comments:
Haha, this guy is going to eat his hat come next Tuesday. He obviously doesn't know anything about the game. Typical naive Englishmen. No offense to the English but they do to a large extent have very naive observers of the game.
Cascarino is making a big gamble here. If Chelsea get knocked out he will look like a complete arse.
Not that he doesn't look like that already with this article.
lmao, the two comments before mine say it all. Cascarino is obviously one of those fat, pub visiting, getting drunk while watching english football guys. the sort of ppl you saw in eurotrip :P. from klinsmann to hiddink, everyone says barca are the best. so who the hell is this Cascarino dickhead? hes going to be crying next tuesday
"madrid have been ordinary". justify that first, cascarino, you maggot faced dick. 46 points out of 48. they are a very good competitor, better than chelshit. and essien subduing messi is probably the dumbest thing i have EVER heard. messi can run rings around that guy for hours and still score a hat trick. "Barcelona have been knocked out of Europe in recent years by Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool." agreed, but then again, barcelona were never in good form int he last two seasons. and they have never been knocked out by chelsea. another factual error. in fact THEY WERE THE FIRST TEAM TO BEAT CHELSEA IN STAMFORD BRIDGE during the 2006 UCL which they won.
so Cascarino, i suggest you pick up your large beer and get drunk on 28th april, coz otherwise, youre gonna cry when chelsea get beaten 3-0 in the camp nou, and 2-1 in stamford bridge.
I'm a Barca fan, too, but can you say that we REALLY had a huge test like Chelsea in our season so far ?
Lyon ?
Yeah, I thought so.
Bayern ?
This Bayern ? This hilarious Bayern, who conceded 5 against .. Wolfsburg ?
Please. The guy is right that Chelsea is our first test of this calibre for the season. If we make it through them, then I'm sure that he'll start think differently. But only if...
and this "youre gonna cry when chelsea get beaten 3-0" is so stupid.
you really think that we will beat chelsea with 3-0 ?
i REALLY hope that our players won't be so ignorant, too. chelsea can punish us, and they can punish us BADLY.
don't overreact, everybody can say what he wants. it's up to our guys to prove him wrong.
and madrid have indeed been very ordinary this season, like they were the seasons before, they play bad and win with 1-0. liverpool (and juventus before) have clearly proven how ordinary they are.
This guy is an absolute jerk of a reporter, yes, we may not have met a team like chelsea but that takes nothing out of the fact that Barca has the capability of dishing out that treatment to any team, I see he mentioned the front 3 alone, so who would mark Iniesta and his snake-like movements, Xavi would definitely be the choirmaster and ooops, I forgot, you have Alves bombing down your flanks pumping in crosses, he mentioned VV, I must say that VV has been better than Cech over the past couple of weeks. Nuff said.
actually chelseea knocked us out in the 04/05 CL. when we lost 4-2 at stamford bridge(carvalho's goal was not fair).. anyways if barca defence is so bad as he says it is why have we only conceded 4 more goals than chelsea who is playing in epl where the teams have no idea what attacking football look like. why did we only concede 1 goal against a bayern munich side that were joint top goalscorers with barca and as good as chelsea are tey have never beaten us at the camp nou and only won twice out of 5 times at stamford bridge... only thing that can save chelsea is the same thing that saved liverpool and manchester... defensive errors within the 25 yard area... english teams find it hard to score on barca on the run of play and get your facts straight macienne(21) is playing lb not essien.
made a mistake replace 2 with 3 and 5 with 4.
..."don't overreact, everybody can say what he wants. it's up to our guys to prove him wrong."...i totally agree with this words...
regardless of whatever is ever written on paper or online, the truth and real result is always based on the day of the match on the pitch between the opponents.
let's hope we handle chelsea like we are capable of. god bless our defense.
well this Tony guy is weird:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2048546.ece
if chelsea's defence will play like they did with liverpool, i bet we gona get 5 in thers net, i think our game must work mostly through messi, because machiena is un-expirienced youngster, same as Lell was in first game with Bayern, so i personoli think we have a good chances to get nice result in first game. i just don't understand why this guy thinks that chelseas defence will hold one from our attacks... kind a hard to belive it.
is this satire?
that said, chelsea is obviously going to be tough...
...the whole world of football...players,coaches,legends...everybody's talking about the way we play and about how we run this season...78 points of 31 games...88 goals shot and fewest of all get with 24...61 goals from our strikers with etoo on best way becomming pichichi...like chelsea still playing in all competitions...sure,chelsea is strong with drogba and came the long way too till semi-final...maybe on another circumstances,but that's football...but this words said here,shows disrespect,non-educated-bigmouthtalk mixed with a big portion of jealous dumbness served by an nationalistic,surely wannabe,when considered the name "tony cascarino" that sounds like italian not british,englishman,hoping to make chelsea bigger with his mouth...but say again...hope our guys show him his dumbness and give him a name that he deserves more like barca the victory...ONE LOVE!!!!!...BARCA FOREVER!!!!!...if you want some,get some...bad enough take some...the best they can get are the points,but never our style...money can't buy you love...we selfmade,biiiitch!!!!!
LOL
of course we are overrated..
like this article IS.. :p
dont get your self to worked up w/ this kind of article, i was kinda expecting..
we got all the love.. is it really possible for everyone to like us?..hell even RM fans grudgingly know we are good and they respect us.
i guess not, theres always room for someone to really not apreciate the work of barca... :p
and i think this cascarino is writing this stuff bout barca to be different than anybody else :p
"whoaa everybodys saying barca's the best football team in the world right now, w/ style.. maybe i should say the opposite, that would get peoples attention.."
lol
im from ireland and this cascarino dickhead played for republic of ireland, but im glad to say that he was born in england and he can stay the fuck over there. probably never watched a BARCA match in his life.
"Stop the service to Henry and Eto’o and they won’t run back to chase the ball."..and what is that all about? He's obviously not seen Barça play this season. If he had, he would know that Henry and, especially, Eto'o work a lot harder than the likes of Drogba and Anelka have ever done.
This guy is a fool,and a naive one too.
The team that on the start of this season was considered to be in a rebuilding phase is crushing everyone on the path,embarassing opponnents,well you can say we spared Bayern (after all we want Ribery),playing the best football that hasnt been seen since the R10 era,being on the 3 fronts,scoring goals just as easy as Rambo slains the entire village with the one gun and he says we are overrated.Believe me my friend,Chelsea will be no exception.They will get hammered by the machine you call overrated and there will be no sparing as with Bayern.
Cascarino is overrated. :-D
all i can say is ingonre this wife beater
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2048546.ece
There is some truth in this article. Barca has awsome attack, but their defence is very bad.. We all saw what they did against athletico madrid.. If Barca needs something then thats new defenders like Vidič, Ferdinand, Terry.. I think that Chelsea will knock us out of Cl because of barcas insecurity in defence..
Chelsea let in 7 in 2 games.
ManU let in 4 vs pool.
So who really defends?
hey anonymous. answer, that,, i cant hear.. u ... who has the bad defence...hahah
hi im a Barca fan and im english i support west ham and cascarino is one of them one eyed premiership mugs whp thinks ur only good if your english and in epl complete twat an as a englishman i wanna say not all english people are like this in fact u wud be surprised the amount of english barca fans there are, cascarino speaks like he watched last seasons barca which yes defensively we were vulnerable but this season we are solid yes we can be vulnerable but all teams are just like chelsea will be, mancienne will not fancy marking messi, ithink essien will mark xavi and possibly mikel maybe on iniesta with lampard pushing forward this is how i think chels will line up at camp nou:
433
Cech
Bosingwa Terry Carvalho Mancienne
Essien Mikel
Lampard
Ballack Malouda
Drogba
this could be the lineup if anyone knows barcas philosophy an style its hiddink who has been very respectful, i can say all west ham fans wil be rooting for barca as we HATE CHELSEA, i think alves will give chelsea loads of problems lets wait an see.
1stly these eng shit if they tlk about stats n all tht shit they only tlk bout it like wt happend for around 5 to 6 yrs before tht they know these eng were mere poo poos in europe. like 1 guys said barca were teh 1st team to beat chelsea in their home stad. well before abravomich's money chelsea were arses getting fucked around every weekened. bt thts teh case wit all teh eng teams. bt last yr we saw how strong teh so called world champions were against us even wit all their money. anyways let them tlk well show them. n god bless u Blaugrana uk fan.
n pep i read this news on goal.com can u tell me if theres any truth to this? they say la liga clubs 20 of them have a total debt of 300 billion euros which is impossible when according to a recent surevy manu n chelsea have teh highest debts tht being around 700 to 800m pounds.
I somewhat agree with this fellow... but only when he says "If the teams are even after the first leg, chelsea MIGHT win". Besides that he seems to think that because of chealsea having a nice arena too it will be easy coming to Camp Nuo...
Really poor match for us.. Getafe had the match in their pocket and gave it away.. the missed penalty was AWFUL!
The only good part is that a LOT of Madrid players got carded and in all probability Pepe will be banned for at least a couple of matches for kicking a player.
madrid won a cant belive it pissed!!!!!!!
Mad PEPE on the loose :). maybe he and Bruno alves can have a MORTAL KOMBAT. LOL
Wow, Barca fans are really bitter, twisted and prejudiced people almost as bad as Madrid fans!
Anon, let me guess you are a Madridista? :p
It is confirmed: Pepe will miss a minimum of 3 matches for a triple red card suspension - http://tinyurl.com/cyrgkn
Anon, are u not proud to reveal your Identity? Tell me let ne pay you a visit.. and u know what that would lead to, 999 or 911.. u would need it mate. You ask me why? for intrusion. stay on a "colourless blog" if you have any. Like you wish Barca to win when we play..sad act
he can't be a madrid fan if said "almost as bad as madrid" maybe he is a manu fan. anyways ignore the intruder... i can't believe uche, granero and albin stood there and let casquero kick that pk (wtf, who tries chip penalties in these times?)... also albin and soldado missed some fairly easy chances but that's how madrid has been winning for the past 4 weeks shades of two years ago when teams were clearly goal shy against them and they won la liga. good news is robben and pepe will both miss sevilla match, well pepe will miss up to barca match and like i said on another topic " i bet you stiokovic will go real and fail at his super saving"... against barca he saved 3 goals which were like what... 9 yards from him and he gets beat twice from 20 yards against madrid.. if they beat or even draw against sevilla playing that way i officially call la liga a second rate league with one first rate club.
What will it take for Real Madrid to lose? These upcoming matches for Barça are very crucial to fend off Real.
I wouldn't stress this loss to much today.Pepe was starting to regain my respect back as a player until his blatant disrespect for another players lively hood...a perfect example of a poor decision making based whats in the best interest for the team. Real will get what they deserve in the end. If their defense falls to shambles this weekend we'll all know why. Great job Pep, way to think about no one but yourself.
Here's a clip of when Pepe loses his head, and also a picture of when he hits Albin a few moments after
http://www.d1g.com/video/show/2800892
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8273/12403489080.jpg
Here's a video of the punch;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6Rehgyofuc
Well, Madrid were outplayed for 85 mins today! And that was Getafe at home! Just wait for Sevilla away, they'll get battered!
i guess im the only one who knew that this game was fixed. it was no surprise that getafe couldve easily won this game but madrid has the whole getafe board in their pocket! that penalty kick didnt fool me, and im sure there are others who see it just as clearly as i do. It wasnt luck, or a miracle... just plain match fixing bullshit. i hope they get caught and sent down to the segunda division. but of course its madrid and it seems like they get away with anything these days. pepe will probably only get a one game ban.
oh yeah this article is a joke. why bother posting this on a pro Barça site? i wish i had a copy of this article on a printed newspaper to wipe my ass with it. I know Chelsea will be our toughest test so far, but dont take anything away from what weve done because we were miles ahead of our previous opponents!
Fuck the rest! always FCB!
i cant believe he was aloud to publish that! normaly when you are a professional writer and write for the times then you wouldnt go about writing very bias papers about how his team will win. Barca will win against chelsea but lets say that chelsea won, this faggot will be back to writing another page of crap of how shit man utd or arsenal are. hes not a writer hes just a fan who wants his team to win.
did you also notice how he failed to mention our midfield? the very position where we can dominate a game and win it.
I apologise in advance for this comment but im just angry at this article.
if barca's defense is bad, whose is good?? cascarino's "solid" chelsea conceded three against bolton and 4 against lpool. man u conceded 3 against gamba osaka (GAMBA OSAKA!!) and 2 against porto AT HOME. arsenal-dont make me start. lpool - see chelsea.
on the other hand, barca won against the remaining top four clubs in spain with an 11-1 scoring record, sevilla 3-0, valencia 4-0 (4-0!!), madrid 2-0 and villarreal 2-1. also, dont forget bayern 4-0. the team that won 12-1 in the previous round
and this really made me laugh - "Then, in the quarter-finals, Barcelona beat Bayern Munich 4-0 and home and shared a 1-1 draw away. Instinctively you think that’s incredibly impressive but Bayern are not a good team." really? if bayern are not good, how come they scored 12 goals against lisbon? agreed they lost to wolfsburg 5-1, but then, man yoo lost 4-1 to liverpool as well, does that make them a really bad team who can be thrashed?
All I have to say is Tony Cascarino is an 'attention seeking idiot' who needs to justify being payed by a newspaper to write garbage.
OMG i agree wiv Memo for the 1st time.. You are 100% correct. When I saw the pen, I told my brother who is a MAN-U supporter that it looks fixed. You dont tkae pens at such a crucial time like that. I expected Uche to take it tho. But lets win all our games and let madrid fix and win all their games (if they can... but you know they are lsong the 2nd clasico) so.. 9points is more than enough to win the league.
Tony Casca can rot in hell
*losing the 2nd classico*
Now now now relax everyone. Lets be nice. The writer of the article is just expressing his view.
Just as all of us here have a right to publish their opinion, he does.
Personally i welcome that article because seriously everyone trying to say how godly we are doesnt do us any good. I rather everyone say we are gonna lose everything and that itself actually serve a purpose in motivating our players.
hahaha...i can't believe this article,no matter what people can say...
i don't think all english teams
always outplays teams like lyon or bayern.
actually,manu suffered against team like porto.
i have to admit english teams've dominated CL recently and its great thing,but english fans are so arrogant, i really hate it!
we are going to lose to chelsea due to a suspect defense...after chelsea is coming off of a 4-4 CL match...yeah. clearly not a logician
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