Saturday 17 January 2009

Match discussion: Deportivo

This evening at 8 pm bt,
Barcelona plays the nineteenth game of the season against Deportivo.



Deportivo is ranked 7th and last in the Liga with 30 points, which is the same amountas Atlético Madrid and Villarreal. Last weekend, the team lost 1-3 against Sevilla, playing with Aranzubia; Pablo, Lopo, Zé Castro, Filipe (85 Riki); Sergio, Rodríguez; Verdú (67 Bravo), Lafita, Guardado (81 Valerón); Bodipo

Osasuna players Verdú and Cristian played for the Barcelona youth teams.


Deportivo squad list:
Aranzubia, Fabricio, Manuel Pablo, Zé Castro, Lopo, Filipe, Colotto, Piscu, Sergio, Juan Rodríguez, Antonio Tomás, De Guzmán, Cristian, Lafita, Guardado, Verdú, Valerón, Bodipo, Riki

Barcelona squad list:
Valdés, Pinto, Jorquera, Alves, Puyol, Márquez, Piqué, Cáceres, Abidal, Sylvinho, Xavi, Touré, Keita, Gudjohnsen, Messi, Eto'o, Bojan, Henry, Hleb, Iniesta


!!! LIVE MATCH CHAT !!!

From two hours before until two hours after the game you can join a match chat (read more here)


Before (what are your expectations, what's your prediction, what should be the line-up,...), during and after the match, you can also comment on the game here.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

...hope we can secure another three points to send a sign to la liga and everywhere else...this win today would make us stronger than we were the whole season and also the whole club-history...to break the alltime record of 50 points in 19 games would give us enough confidence and trust to be good enough to demand all trophies...humbly but with style...c u when we get there (hopefully)...ONE LOVE!!!!!...may the better win...

Louis said...

wooow... just watch and enjoy, this is once again an exhibition of pure art...

kamikaze kontiki said...

wah, I missed the first half ! :(

Anonymous said...

Ole~ We Won !! and We didn't lose a point !!!

Barca football is true piece of art ~ we enjoyed so much !!!

Visca Barca ~ Keep rock'n roll ~

Ramzi said...

My five cents:

1) Happy Birthday Guardiola, if I am not wrong your birthday is tomorrow, but I will not be around to cut the cake with you. The guys broke another record for you in this match.

2) First Goal was the Messi Exceptional type, all way long with the intuition he get "this is my moment, so it will be me against the whole world, no matter who is around i will do it myself", and passing the ball to the net was a piece of art.

3) In the second goal, Messi insisted to get the ball before it pass the sideline, and passed it to Alves to set the second goal. I think if the first goal show an individual brilliance, the second one show the group mentality of continuous pressure with no mercy, giving no chance for the opponent to catch their breath even thru playing the ball out of field.

4) We simply "crushed the bus" tonight by a "crossing based tactic", using "Henry as a target man" in the box and having "Keita to penetrate into the box" as requested , thats something I was looking for since a while so nothing to complain about and this is one step forward in our Offense dynamics.

5) Alves Package was the smartest cheapest transfer we made considering the money we paid, you can never buy a first class Defender + first class right midfielder+ first class wing+ play maker +goal scorer only for the amount of money we paid. I get a strange feeling I cant explain every time I compare our current right back to oliguer, Beletti or even Zambrotta (with respect for all).

6) I wasn't on the chat application during the game but I can make a guess that some people there were wondering why Pep didn't substitute Messi when the game was sealed. now I honestly have no definite idea about the reason, but I can make a humble guess that guardiola know he cant substitute messi directly every time a game is secured. Because thats the case in most the games we play (we seal it early), so Messi body will by time get adapted to play 75 minutes every game, and he will start without intension spreading his energy on that period of time (NO its not fantasy, this is something that exist in football), Messi got some tackles in this game but I cant consider this game as a "dirty game", and the number of cards prove that, so I think it was good that Pep kept Messi all the game.

7) I think Guardiola had to substitute Valdes for bojan, we needed no keeper in the second half, so I just got that brilliant Idea...

kamikaze kontiki said...

It was interesting to watch the performances of some of the less aclaimed players. I thought Keita was a very important presence. Did anyone count how many times he turned up in the opposition penalty area? And yet he was always back to help out the defense too. He still seems rather low on confidence so his passes aren't sharp and his touches not assured but his movement is always very intelligent.

Toure is a 100 times better than Busquets. Guardiola may not like African players but its easy to see that Toure closes down space a lot faster, his reflexes and reactions are much better so that he makes tackles easily without fouling and his distribution and passing are actually better too.

Pique is a revelation. He has excellent positional sense. As long as Guardiola plays a zone defense i think Pique will be very comfortable.

Hope to see a lot more of Iniesta next game !
Happy Birthday Pep !! I wish u had been a player-coach rather than Van Gaal during that era. We could have won everything with the 98-99 squad.

Anonymous said...

"7) I think Guardiola had to substitute Valdes for bojan, we needed no keeper in the second half, so I just got that brilliant Idea..."

Hmmm, wish that was possible to do...valdes was quite all night and we didnt even make use of substitutions, so could have give pinto a run in goal too.

Anonymous said...

Just curious, why Eto'o not gave a penalty kick for Henry to second hattric in this season??

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