The 2009 Champions League final, which will be repeated at Wembley in 22 days time, resulted in a hugely disappointing loss to Barcelona in the final. Rant looks back on that final and wonders whether Manchester United will make the same tactical mistakes again?
Both teams lined up as expected; United missed out on Darren Fletcher after Scotland captain’s unfortunate booking in the semi-final with Arsenal. Meanwhile, an injury crisis forced Barcelona into fielding a makeshift back-four including Yaya Touré in central defence.
For United, Cristiano Ronaldo led the line, with Sir Alex Ferguson deploying Wayne Rooney and Park Ji-Sung in wide positions, aiming to contain Barça’s fullbacks. Barça used Lionel Messi in the now familiar “false 9” role, forcing Samuel Eto’o wide.
Surprisingly, United initially lined up in 4-4-2 with Ryan Giggs playing as a supporting striker – it was perhaps an attempt to press and take the game to Barça, although Giggs floated too much to get a sense of how United lined up at any given time.
United started the game brightly though with Victor Valdes saving an excellent Ronaldo free kick early in the game. After all, the Reds had been pre-match favourites.
Eto’o and Messi kept changing position as game settled into a pattern, which caused United considerable problems. Ultimately when Messi dropped deep in the ninth minute, not a single United midfielder picked him up. The Argentinean pulled Andreas Iniesta’s marker out of position, which afforded the Spanish international a free dribble, eventually allowing Eto’o to score past Edwin van der Sar at the near post.
The goal could have easily prevented had United maintained a more disciplined shape.
United persisted with a 4-4-2, (see figure 1, below) which Barça negated by simply passing around the oncoming Red midfielders. The shape also meant that Park and Rooney had to form a second line of defence with United on the back foot. It took the pair away from Barcelona’s full-backs, enabling Puyol and Sylvinho’s influence on the game to grow.

Three greatest footballers of all time: Pele, Maradona and Messi

TWO SOUTH American football loving nations, Brazil and Argentina, have produced numerous world class footballers over the years. However, football is one of the most popular games in all European countries as well as other continents too.

Amongst hundreds of great footballers from across the globe, Pele, Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi are perhaps the best ever football players we have seen.

Football player of the century, Pele, played his first international match at the age of 16 years and 9 months against Argentina and scored his first international goal. Pele played four FIFA World Cup football from 1958 to 1970. In the final of the 1958 World Cup final against Sweden, he scored two goals.

In World Cups he began to wear jersey no 10. After Pele, jersey no 10 became the most popular number in every sports event. Great players in all the sports wear jersey no. 10.

Pele also played club football for Santos and New York Cosmos for around 20 years. In his career the King Pele scored 1281 goals in 1363 games.

Diego Maradona, who is also considered as one of the greatest football players of all time, appeared in four FIFA World Cup tournaments, including the 1986 tournament. In 1986 FIFA World Cup football, he captained Argentina and won the tournament after victory over east Germany in the final.

In the same World Cup, his goal against England from 66 yard was voted "The Goal of the Century". In the 1986 football World Cup, Maradona won the Golden Ball award as the tournament's best player.

Maradona played club football for Argentinos Juniors, Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Napoli, Sevilla and Newell's Old Boys. He played 16 times as captain of the Argentinian national team, which is still a World Cup-record.

In the current scenario Lionel Messi is the world's best contemporary player, has won twice FIFPro World Player of the Year in 2009, 2010 and FIFA World Player of the Year in 2009. Messi also represented Argentina national team in 2008 Olympics games, in which Argentina won the gold.

In 2004 Lionel Messi played for Barcelona and became the third-youngest player ever to play for Barcelona. From the last two seasons he has scored maximum number of goals for his club Barcelona. Lionel Messi will appear for Barcelona against Manchester United in final of Champions League 2010-11 on Saturday, May 28 at Wembley Stadium in London.

Diego Maradona has declared Lionel Messi his successor. Due to his ability and playing style many have drawn comparisons of Messi to football legend Maradona.

However, there is are no comparison amongst these three superstars, but these three footballers have dominated world football in the last six decades.

Ferguson to ‘neutralise’ Messi in Champions League final

Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson has tapped into his wide network of scouts, staff and contacts to study Barcelona and its striker Lionel Messi ahead of the Champions League final at Wembley on May 28.
United cruised their way into the final after overwhelming Schalke FC 4-1 at Old Trafford to complete a 6-1 aggregate win, and now Ferguson wants revenge for the team's 2009 league final defeat to Barcelona.

According to The Sun, the United manager has statistics and information even the Argentinian maestro may not know about himself. He knows how Messi gets the ball, what he does when he gets it, how to stop him getting it and how to neutralise him when he does.

When asked about how he will approach the final, Ferguson said: "I think we'll be quite well prepared."

The Scot had earlier said that he would turn to his Real Madrid counterpart Jose Mourinho for advice on how his side should approach the game.

"I speak to him quite a lot and I spoke to him last week. Real Madrid are a different team from us so I think we will depend on our own knowledge of Barcelona. But the experience that Real Madrid have and from Jose's angle - you always take information from that because he's always very helpful like that," Ferguson had.

"I don't think we should be going there lacking in confidence. We'll be playing a fantastic team, but we can't be frightened out of our skins. We have to find a solution to playing against them," he had added.

Ferguson, only the third manager to take a team to four European finals, now stands on the threshold of matching Bob Paisley's three European Cups.

Messi best player of all time

Lionel Messi will go down as the greatest player in footballing history, better even than Diego Maradona and Pele, according to the former Argentina and Tottenham midfielder Ossie Ardiles, who claims Barcelona’s Messi is similar to their fellow countryman Maradona – except better.

Ardiles, who helped nurture Maradona for the national side, said on Tuesday: “I think there is only one player you can compare with Messi, and that is Maradona, and in many ways they are very similar. But for some time I have thought that Diego could never be surpassed, and nor could Pele, but no longer. I would now say that Lionel Messi will go down in history as the No 1 player of all time, the best that there ever was.

“The big difference is that Maradona played in Argentina, then in Italy, while Pele stayed in Brazil, and during their time the pressures were less intense than they are now. Messi is under pressure all the time, and has to play in incredibly high-intensity games all of the time, the Champions League being the perfect example.”

European football’s governing body, Uefa, dispatched the Italian refereeing great Pierluigi Collina to monitor Belgian match official Frank de Bleeckere’s handling of Tuesday night’s Champions League semi-final second leg between Messi’s side and Real Madrid. Uefa named Collina, its head of referees and a former World Cup final referee, as its official observer at the Nou Camp.

Uefa’s disciplinary panel will meet on Friday to examine six charges arising from the first-leg match. Real’s manager, Jose Mourinho, faces further punishment for his comments during and after the match. The Real midfielder Pepe also faces a longer ban for his red-card challenge, and Madrid have been charged over their fans throwing objects and invading the pitch. having settled the dust on real madrid, will messi on his co-horts deal similar blow to man-U on may 28th ?

Scoring records and domestic dominance

Barça gave a footballing lesson at the Bernabeu, climaxing in two Leo Messi goals -one of which will surely go down as a classic- that put them in the driving seat for a place in the Wembley final ahead of next week’s second leg at the Nou Camp.

A special occasion like tonight’s, demanded high levels of concentration and bravery and Barça proved to have enough of both. Going into the semi –final without Iniesta, Abidal, Adriano and Bojan, the team lined up with Puyol at left back and Keita playing just in front of him, and stayed true to their style of play, dominating possession, building from the back and showing complete control: this was Guardiola’s commitment and it worked.

74% of the possession and two second half goals from Leo Messi, meant Barça took a giant step towards making next month’s Wembley final. With both Pepe and Pinto seeing red and Ramos a yellow that will mean he misses the next game, the Nou Camp is set to be the scene for the deciding game next week.

82% possession
From the start, this game looked like the first meeting between the two at the Bernabeu, rather than the Cup Final, with Barça composed and in charge - claiming an astonishing 82% of possession in the first quarter of an hour, whilst Madrid failed to get their pressing in midfield underway. Mourinho was clearly happy to give up the ball and hope to hit Barça on the counter.

Pinto red card
Most of the first half was a midfield tussle with only a piece of individual skill from Villa and two efforts from Messi and Xavi creating danger in Casillas’s area. Madrid were defending in numbers and only made hesitant attacks through a series of free kicks from the left, which failed to seriously trouble Valdés, who did however, make a great double stop from Ronaldo and Ozil, in a clear offside position, just before the break. It had been a niggly first half and after a scuffle broke out in the tunnel at half time, Pinto was shown a straight red.

Pepe gets his red
Mourinho fiddled with his tactics after the break, bringing on Adebayor for Ozil to try and hold the ball up in Barça’s half, but the visitors found ever more space in midfield and began to put together their typical passing game. Then on the hour mark, Pepe lunged into Alves and was shown a straight red, as was his manager, who complained in a typical fashion to the officials at his player’s sending off. With half an hour still to go, Madrid’s resistance seemed inevitably about to crack.

Afellay proves decisive
Barça nearly opened the scoring on 67 minutes, when Villa’s shot from the left was parried out by Casillas only as far as Pedro, whose header went agonisingly close. For his troubles, Pedro suffered a nasty knock as Marcelo stamped his leg and Afellay came on to replace him. The young Dutch winger made an almost immediate impact as he out sprinted Marcello in the box and centred at the near post for Messi to turn home and complete Barça’s first objective of an away goal.

Messi magic
Barça were now even more on top and they were looking for a second. It was Leo Messi - who else? - who rounded off the game with a brilliant piece of individual skill, slaloming through the Madrid defence and cleverly shooting to Casillas’s right to double the score and his own personal tally for the evening -a historic, unforgettable and brilliant end to a great night for Barça in Madrid.