Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Champions League. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Champions League. Afficher tous les articles
samedi 6 juin 2015
Barcelona win in Berlin : Suarez, Rakitic and Neymar deliver Champions League glory
The Spanish side opened the scoring after just four minutes, with Alvaro Morata equalizing in the second half before the Uruguayan and the Brazilian secured the win.
Barcelona completed a trophy treble in Luis Enrique's debut season in charge as they beat Juventus 3-1 in the UEFA Champions League final in Berlin.
Luis Suarez produced his most crucial contribution of his short career at Camp Nou when he restored Barca's lead 22 minutes from time to effectively settle the game, after Alvaro Morata had canceled out Ivan Rakitic's early opener.
A fifth European title looked set to be a more routine ask when Rakitic - the man to perform so capably in replacing the soon-to-depart Xavi this term - opened the scoring in the fourth minute with a trademark Barca goal, which saw nine of their 10 outfield players touch the ball.
However, while Barca enjoyed the better of the first half from there - threatening a Juve back line shorn of Giorgio Chiellini through injury - former Real Madrid man Morata struck early in the second period.
Having scored twice in the two-legged semifinal against his former club, Morata was afforded a simple finish after Marc-Andre ter Stegen had saved an initial effort from Carlos Tevez.
Suarez was the only Barca man not involved in Rakitic's opener, but the Uruguayan provided the crucial touch in his side's crucial second, as he replicated Morata's finish when Lionel Messi's effort was spilled by Gianluigi Buffon.
Neymar had a header disallowed, via an accidental handball, as Barca sought to put the game out of sight late on.
But it proved inconsequential in the end, as the Brazilian added a third with the last touch of the match to ensure that Luis Enrique's side repeated the treble-winning achievement of Pep Guardiola's Barca in his debut season of 2008-09.
The victory also provided Xavi with a successful send-off to his career with the Catalan giants before he joins Qatari club Al Saad.
European success continues to elude Juve, meanwhile, with the Serie A side coming up short in its attempt to win the continent's most prized trophy for the first time since 1996 and its own treble bid.
Barca could barely have hoped for a better start, as Rakitic opened the scoring in style in the fourth minute when he was the beneficiary of a spell of neat passing play that bore all the Spanish giants' familiar hallmarks.
Following Messi's raking pass out to Jordi Alba, Neymar slipped the ball in to Andres Iniesta. He in turn found the Croatian - Rakitic finishing past Buffon from inside the six-yard box to spark wild celebrations on the Barca bench.
The goal came somewhat out of the blue, with Juve having begun on the front foot. And, having fallen behind, the Italians then saw Arturo Vidal display an uncharacteristic lack of composure, as the Chilean blazed over before Neymar was wayward at the other end.
The Liga champions began to apply further pressure, and Buffon kept out Dani Alves' effort with a superb strong, left-handed save, before Vidal – perhaps flustered by his part in losing the run of Iniesta for the opener – was overzealous in his tackling and narrowly escaped a second early yellow card for crashing into Neymar.
Juve had half-hearted penalty appeals turned away following claims of a foul by Alba on Paul Pogba midway through the half but Barca was largely controlled in possession, apparently content to take the pace out of the game.
The threat of Messi, Neymar and Suarez continued to prove a real menace on the break and the latter twice went close to extending the lead with long-range strikes prior to halftime.
Buffon was handed a let-off when he inexplicably gave the ball away to Neymar deep in his own half but he displayed his vast experience to keep Suarez out again early in the second half after a rapid Barca breakaway.
Despite replicating its early momentum, Barca was hauled level when Morata pounced on Ter Stegen's save after 55 minutes to get Juve back into the game.
Claudio Marchisio's deft backheel helped Tevez into a shooting position and, when the Barca goalkeeper kept that effort at bay, Morata followed up to tap the ball into an empty net - prompting wild celebrations from the goal scorer that had unsurprisingly been absent against Real.
With Juve buoyed, Tevez and Pogba both went close, but their momentum was abruptly halted by Suarez's close-range finish - at a time when the Italian champions were enjoying their most threatening spell.
A trademark dribble from Messi was followed up by a strike that Buffon could not hold, allowing Suarez to tap home his most important Barca goal.
Neymar looked to have wrapped up victory with a header soon after, but the official on the byline spotted his header had deflected off a hand.
Barca legend Xavi was then introduced for his swansong at the expense of long-time midfield companion Iniesta.
It could also prove to be Andrea Pirlo's final Juve game, with the midfield maestro unable to conjure up any late moments of magic before Barca sealed victory when Neymar scored with the final touch of the match following a quick break.
It completed a season many in Catalunya would not have believed possible when Luis Enrique's took over from Gerardo Martino in May 2014, and then saw his position questioned following rocky results and a public disagreement with Messi at the turn of the year.
The Barca boss - consistently non-committal on his future in charge - must now decide whether to bow out at the top or attempt to replicate former team-mate Guardiola's legacy.
Why Arturo Vidal Will Be Key to Champions League Final Victory for Juventus
Having reached the European Cup or Champions League final on no fewer than seven previous occasions, Juventus will hope to improve on their poor record when this year’s edition gets underway on Saturday evening. Winning just twice—with their last victory coming in 1996—the Bianconeri will undoubtedly be huge underdogs for this clash with Barcelona.
Yet having enjoyed some excellent performances thus far in European football’s elite competition, they will hope for one last victory that would cap an incredible campaign. Indeed, if they are to add a third trophy to the domestic double they have already clinched, the Turin giants will need Arturo Vidal to be at his very best.
After a poor start to 2014-15, the Chilean midfielder once again became key to Juve’s success, making a series of crucial contributions as the season drew to a close. Only Carlos Tevez, Alvaro Morata and Paul Pogba bettered his tally of eight goals in all competitions this term, while he also weighed in with four assists.
His most recent strike came in a difficult away meeting with Sampdoria on May 2, and it secured a 1-0 victory that delivered the crucial points needed to seal the Serie A title. Vidal has netted just once in the club’s march to the Champions League final, but that, too, was a vital effort that ultimately saw them progress from their quarter-final meeting with AS Monaco.
Chances proved difficult to come by in a tense first leg, and when Ricardo Carvalho's trip on Alvaro Morata saw the referee point to the spot, it was Vidal who was ultimately handed the responsibility. The pressure was immense, with missed penalties against Olympiakos and Cesena surely replaying in his mind as he stepped up in the 57th minute.
Having blazed a shot over just before the break, he would blast the ball home in emphatic fashion, and reveal afterward that he had actually asked for the opportunity. “I felt confident, so I asked Carlitos [Tevez] for the ball and then I scored,” Vidal told Sky Sport Italia after the final whistle (h/t Football Italia).
“We don’t have a first choice penalty taker, it’s whoever feels most up to it will take it,” he added, showing the confidence he has in his own ability, and Juventus have come to rely on him heavily since his arrival from Bayer Leverkusen back in 2011.
The 28-year-old has often been deployed in a more advanced role since Massimiliano Allegri moved away from the 3-5-2 formation this term, often playing slightly ahead of the other midfielders and finding himself in better attacking positions than he previously enjoyed.
Paul Pogba often switches places with him during games, but Vidal has never shirked his defensive duties no matter how Juventushave lined up. According to statistics from WhoScored.com, he has averaged no fewer than 4.5 tackles and 1.5 interceptions per game in the Champions League, numbers that hint at just how hard he works to recover possession.
That effort is part of an incredible spirit that runs throughout the side, and one the player himself hinted at as being crucial to their hopes of ultimate glory when he spoke to Sky Italia shortly after helping theBianconeri to overcome Real Madrid in the semi-finals.
“Barcelona have extraordinary players, but so do we and in Berlin we’ll play the game of our lives,” Vidal said as he left the field at the EstadioSantiago Bernabeu (h/t Football Italia). “We have a very united squad, we are all brothers here because we’ve known each other for a few years now.”
“What Juventus have is a great team,” he added, and while that is undoubtedly true, the Old Lady will need Arturo Vidal to once again deliver if she is to see off the challenge of Lionel Messi’s side.
How do Juventus stop Messi,Suarez, Naymar ??
It’s a question that opponents have been asking since the four-year-old Lionel Messi first wandered on to a dusty pitch in the Rosário suburb of Grandoli, nudged the ball in front of him and set off on a slaloming gambeta that took him past three players. How do you stop him? Before the semi-final Pep Guardiola, who perhaps knows his game as well as anybody, admitted that you just couldn’t. As Messi demonstrated against Athletic Bilbao in last Saturday’s Copa del Rey final, when he’s in the sort of form he is in at the moment, even surrounding him with three players and placing another three between him and the goal isn’t enough. So what do Juventus do?
Messi may be a huge problem, but the biggest problem is that he is far from the only problem. Devote too much time to him and Luis Suárez and Neymar will run free. It may be some consolation to Juve that the front three converted 74% of all Barça’s league goals this season – an even more extraordinary record when you consider that Suárez was banned until the end of October – but that says less about Barça’s reliance on their front three than about the sheer volume of goals they’ve scored.
The way most sides approach games against Barcelona is to sit deep and pack men behind the ball. The Guardiola Barça could – very occasionally – be frustrated by that approach, as they were against Internazionale in the semi-final in 2010 and by Chelsea in the semi-final in 2012. Deny them space, hope the front three end up congested in the centre and pray that Messi (or indeed Neymar or Suárez) don’t do anything brilliant.
They are, though, prone to brilliance and one of the changes Barça have undergone in the three years since Guardiola left is the willingness of their players to run with the ball. In the Champions League this season, Messi, Neymar and Suárez have successfully completed dribbles an average of 12.0 times per game. In 2011-12, Guardiola’s final season, the front three of Messi, Pedro and Alexis Sánchez successfully completed dribbles an average of 4.3 times per game.
Under Massimiliano Allegri, Juve have at times sat deep – they did in the semi-final against Real Madrid, for instance – and have been more tactically flexible than they were under Antonio Conte, but their natural game is still to press. That said, they do have a side that is well equipped to play on the break. Assuming they play with a back four they can play Andrea Pirlo as a deep-lying playmaker (and hope his unusually wayward passing in the second leg against Madrid was a one-off) with Paul Pogba and Claudio Marchisio biting and snapping around him. Carlos Tevez and Alvaro Morata, as the two goals in the first leg against Madrid showed, are adept at playing on the counter, while Arturo Vidal, even if he isn’t quite back to full speed after his injury, has the energy to shuttle forward from a defensive midfield line to prevent the front two becoming isolated.A trick, a jink, and they’re gone: there is a risk, of course, that they will lose the ball – even Messi has been dispossessed in 35% of his dribbles in the Champions League this season – but Luis Enrique’s version of Barça is prepared to take that risk: the advantage is that one quick burst can take a couple of opposing players out of the game and so puncture any defensive shield.
The danger with that approach, quite apart from Barça’s front three, is that it necessarily leaves Juve narrow. Both Dani Alves and Jordi Alba would have space in front of them to exploit, opening an avenue for them to overlap Messi and Neymar as they cut infield. That, of course, then makes it even harder for a defender up against Neymar or Messi: block the road infield and they can lay the ball outside to an overlapping full-back, but block that route and it makes it easier for Neymar or Messi to cut inside.
Really, though, there’s no alternative. Aside from sitting deep, the other way to deal with an outrageously gifted opponent is to cut off the supply to him – as, say, George Graham’s Arsenal did in negating Chris Waddle of Sheffield Wednesday in the 1993 FA Cup final. Perhaps it is possible to block the supply lines to Messi: Tevez could play to the left and look to pin back Dani Alves with Vidal in support and Marchisio could keep tight on Ivan Rakitic with Pogba drifting over to cover, but that still leaves the other side of the pitch. Again, focus too much on Messi and you’re giving Neymar a free ride. And even Bayern, as majestic in possession as they are, discovered in the opening quarter of an hour at the Camp Nou the dangers of playing a full press with a high line against Barça: Rakitic and Andrés Iniesta will just slip balls through for the front three to run on to.
So Juve’s only real option is to sit deep with Pogba, Marchisio and Vidal scavenging and Pirlo looking to release the front two, who themselves have a defensive role to play in trying to check as far as possible the forward runs of the full-backs. There’s nothing particularly radical about how Barça play these days, but that doesn’t make them any easier to stop.
Carlos Tevez ready to rip up Lionel Messi’s Champions League script
One of the best things about football has always been the sense that it is above all, a slightly wild activity, a matter of rare human extremes. Even among the captive princes of the modern game this is still a business of frantic, compelling moments, its popularity rooted in something raw and authentic that still manages to peep out through the glaze of corporate inanity.
At which point: enter Carlos Tevez, king of the wild, oddly compelling moment, who on Saturday evening will play in his third Champions League final; and who is arguably the pivotal player in an otherwise slightly one-sided looking collision in Berlin of the great and the merely very good.
With this in mind it seems an ideal moment to consider what we might call The Tevez Paradox. Here is a player who just keeps on doing terrible, terrible things. Who has been described as a rotten apple, who once refused to come on to the pitch while employed by Manchester City. Here is a man who went on strike in Brazil and has demanded a move at his last three clubs. But who remains beloved by supporters anywhere he has been, a trophy magnet, an ultimate team man, and a player for whom great things, and bad things, and slightly mad things really do seem to be an essential part of the job.
In English football, Tevez’s best wild, compelling, toxic moment was probably his first wild, compelling toxic moment, the winning goal at Old Trafford that kept West Ham United in the Premier League eight years ago.
It is, looking back, a perfect little spritz of pure uncut Tevez. Gobbling up a loose ball Tevez plays a sniping little one-two, barges past a strangely sad and haunted-looking Wes Brown and then clips the ball on the volley past Edwin van der Sarbefore scuttling off in that familiar frenzy of triumph, a man apparently still immersed in the same all-consuming game of football he seems to have been playing off and on, in between minor inconveniences like sleeping and eating and changing continents, for the last 30 years or so. Never mind the consequences of that goal, not least the £10m in reparations to Sheffield United. By the time West Ham paid up, Tevez had already moved on, won the Champions League, teed up another rancorous transfer and generally stumbled about trampling the rose beds, failing to pay the milk bill, sweeping the crockery into the bin and leaving a gorgeously muddled trail of blood and entrails in his wake.
Michael Ballack has spoken this week about the extreme pressures of playing this kind of final. One thing is certain. Tevez will be impervious. He is the ultimate big-game footballer, not just a player with balls, but a player with an excess of balls, balls for everyone, a bolt-on gonad in shorts and shin-pads. Tevez is the kind of player you’d pick to captain a team of earthlings away at the champions of Mars: stepping off the transport, emaciated by six years in deep space travel, you can be pretty sure within 30 seconds or so Tevez would be scuttling about like a malevolent gerbil, squaring up to the nearest giant squid, scoring a disputed equaliser and generally getting on with the business of winning at football. This is as much about craft as temperament. For all his energy Tevez is also a brilliantly certain, brilliantly clever footballer. At Manchester United he provided the balance in that wonderful front three alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, scoring fewer goals but forming a high-class bridge between the shifting planes in attack.Tevez is 31 now and in the late bloom of a fascinating career. As Juventus prepare to play the part of hopeful fall guys in Berlin there is a fair case to be made that he is the key to the contest, even more so than Barcelona’s own Argentinian No10. With Lionel Messi and this season’s Champions League there is a sense of some broader destiny in play, a kind of divine will to power. Barcelona are expected to win. Messi has been, quite frankly, on another plane altogether. It would require something remarkable, an act of utter script-shredding refusenik conviction to stop them. Now. Who does that remind you of?
At Juventus he has been able to thrum through his full range of attacking talents, an excellent passer a tenacious dribbler and a relentless, no-fear finisher. Plus he is in a sense the perfect modern freelance footballer. What Tevez brings is portable passion, transferable conviction, just-add-water instant belief. There has been some talk he may be off to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer and this would be an excellent move, as it would for any megabucks project-club in the market for some high-grade galvanising spirit. Hiring Tevez is like hiring a catalyst, an instant flush of actual football-style passion, like booking the Sex Pistols to swear and snarl obligingly over some stiff-shirted 1970s daytime talk show.
Frankly Manchester City would have been better off keeping him, just as Argentina would surely have won the World Cup if Tevez could have been shoehorned without collateral damage into the team that decelerated its way to the final in Brazil. Never remind the bollocks: here comes Carlos, a gloriously nourishing rotten apple which has to date won the Copa Libertadores, the Brazilian championship, the Champions League, Serie A and the Premier League with two clubs, and who retains even now something pure and compelling, a rare kind of basic footballing rage.
There are so many subplots to this Champions League final, many of them Tevez-facing: the intrigue of Mascherano-Tevez, of Messi-Tevez, and beyond that the wider narrative of Messi-ism itself, a predestined notch on those claims of all-time greatness.
One thing is certain. Tevez won’t listen to any of it but will instead keep on playing that same old game of Carlos-ball in which, win or lose, he remains a brilliantly authentic presence, and an ominously decisive cutting edge.e of the best things about football has always been the sense that it is above all, a slightly wild activity, a matter of rare human extremes. Even among the captive princes of the modern game this is still a business of frantic, compelling moments, its popularity rooted in something raw and authentic that still manages to peep out through the glaze of corporate inanity.
At which point: enter Carlos Tevez, king of the wild, oddly compelling moment, who on Saturday evening will play in his third Champions League final; and who is arguably the pivotal player in an otherwise slightly one-sided looking collision in Berlin of the great and the merely very good.
Lionel Messi: the genius who operates to a different set of physical rules
Read more
With this in mind it seems an ideal moment to consider what we might call The Tevez Paradox. Here is a player who just keeps on doing terrible, terrible things. Who has been described as a rotten apple, who once refused to come on to the pitch while employed by Manchester City. Here is a man who went on strike in Brazil and has demanded a move at his last three clubs. But who remains beloved by supporters anywhere he has been, a trophy magnet, an ultimate team man, and a player for whom great things, and bad things, and slightly mad things really do seem to be an essential part of the job.
In English football, Tevez’s best wild, compelling, toxic moment was probably his first wild, compelling toxic moment, the winning goal at Old Trafford that kept West Ham United in the Premier League eight years ago.
It is, looking back, a perfect little spritz of pure uncut Tevez. Gobbling up a loose ball Tevez plays a sniping little one-two, barges past a strangely sad and haunted-looking Wes Brown and then clips the ball on the volley past Edwin van der Sar before scuttling off in that familiar frenzy of triumph, a man apparently still immersed in the same all-consuming game of football he seems to have been playing off and on, in between minor inconveniences like sleeping and eating and changing continents, for the last 30 years or so. Never mind the consequences of that goal, not least the £10m in reparations to Sheffield United. By the time West Ham paid up, Tevez had already moved on, won the Champions League, teed up another rancorous transfer and generally stumbled about trampling the rose beds, failing to pay the milk bill, sweeping the crockery into the bin and leaving a gorgeously muddled trail of blood and entrails in his wake.
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Tevez is 31 now and in the late bloom of a fascinating career. As Juventus prepare to play the part of hopeful fall guys in Berlin there is a fair case to be made that he is the key to the contest, even more so than Barcelona’s own Argentinian No10. With Lionel Messi and this season’s Champions League there is a sense of some broader destiny in play, a kind of divine will to power. Barcelona are expected to win. Messi has been, quite frankly, on another plane altogether. It would require something remarkable, an act of utter script-shredding refusenik conviction to stop them. Now. Who does that remind you of?
Michael Ballack has spoken this week about the extreme pressures of playing this kind of final. One thing is certain. Tevez will be impervious. He is the ultimate big-game footballer, not just a player with balls, but a player with an excess of balls, balls for everyone, a bolt-on gonad in shorts and shin-pads. Tevez is the kind of player you’d pick to captain a team of earthlings away at the champions of Mars: stepping off the transport, emaciated by six years in deep space travel, you can be pretty sure within 30 seconds or so Tevez would be scuttling about like a malevolent gerbil, squaring up to the nearest giant squid, scoring a disputed equaliser and generally getting on with the business of winning at football. This is as much about craft as temperament. For all his energy Tevez is also a brilliantly certain, brilliantly clever footballer. At Manchester United he provided the balance in that wonderful front three alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney, scoring fewer goals but forming a high-class bridge between the shifting planes in attack.
At Juventus he has been able to thrum through his full range of attacking talents, an excellent passer a tenacious dribbler and a relentless, no-fear finisher. Plus he is in a sense the perfect modern freelance footballer. What Tevez brings is portable passion, transferable conviction, just-add-water instant belief. There has been some talk he may be off to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer and this would be an excellent move, as it would for any megabucks project-club in the market for some high-grade galvanising spirit. Hiring Tevez is like hiring a catalyst, an instant flush of actual football-style passion, like booking the Sex Pistols to swear and snarl obligingly over some stiff-shirted 1970s daytime talk show.
Frankly Manchester City would have been better off keeping him, just as Argentina would surely have won the World Cup if Tevez could have been shoehorned without collateral damage into the team that decelerated its way to the final in Brazil. Never remind the bollocks: here comes Carlos, a gloriously nourishing rotten apple which has to date won the Copa Libertadores, the Brazilian championship, the Champions League, Serie A and the Premier League with two clubs, and who retains even now something pure and compelling, a rare kind of basic footballing rage.
There are so many subplots to this Champions League final, many of them Tevez-facing: the intrigue of Mascherano-Tevez, of Messi-Tevez, and beyond that the wider narrative of Messi-ism itself, a predestined notch on those claims of all-time greatness.
One thing is certain. Tevez won’t listen to any of it but will instead keep on playing that same old game of Carlos-ball in which, win or lose, he remains a brilliantly authentic presence, and an ominously decisive cutting edge.
The Finale of dreams (Berlin 2015)
Ahead of the big match in Berlin :
A total of 77 teams from 53 associations entered the 2014-15 Champions League and only two remain. On Saturday, Juventus and Barcelona will battle it out in Berlin for Europe's premier club title.
The Bianconeri are surprise finalists having initially struggled in their group. Despite opening Group A with a 2-0 win over Malmo, they suffered consecutive 1-0 losses to Atletico Madrid and Olympiakos. But they sneaked into the last 16 in second place behind Atletico by taking seven points from their last three games.In the knockouts, Juventus has gone from strength to strength. The club thrashed Borussia Dortmund 5-1 on aggregate before seeing off Monaco 1-0 over both legs in the quarters. Juve then stunned Real Madrid, winning 2-1 in Turin before drawing 1-1 in Spain as Alvaro Morata (2) and Carlos Tevez did the damage.
Barcelona, meanwhile, has been outstanding throughout the competition. The Blaugrana topped Group F with 15 points and goals from six games, although the club did suffer a 3-2 loss to Paris Saint-Germain in France on matchday two.
In the knockouts, Luis Enrique's men have been irresistible. They dispatched Manchester City 3-1 on aggregate in the last 16 before Luis Suarez put PSG to the sword in the quarters in a 5-1 demolition over both legs. In the semis, a Lionel Messi masterclass at Camp Nou ensured Bayern had no chance of recovering from the 3-0 first-leg deficit.
That is the road to Berlin for Juventus and Barcelona, but who will go all the way on Saturday?
'Champions League final could be Pogba's last game for Juventus, says agent
Mino Raiola says that while the Bianconeri do not want to sell, the French "work of art" will leave Turin if another club makes a big enough bid during the summer transfer window
Paul Pogba's agent has revealed that Saturday's Champions League final could be the midfielder's last appearance in a Juventus shirt.
The France international is one of the most sought-after players in world football, with a host of Europe's biggest sides all interested in signing him.
Juventus have repeatedly stated their determination to hold onto Pogba and build a team around the 22-year-old, but the player's representative, Mino Raiola, has now claimed that his client could depart after this weekend's showdown with Barcelona.
"Berlin could be Pogba's last game with Juventus," the agent told Sky Sport Italia. "They don't want to sell him. Whoever wants him will have to buy him.
"However, it could happen. The market is open until September 2. He has a contract with Juventus, who have not made any moves to sell him.
"Concrete offers arrived but they were brushed aside. But the price will be decided by who wants him. The price doesn't matter to someone who wants to buy a work of art.
"Juventus will control the auction but it will be one of the most costly transfers in history. He's a special player. He's already given us a glimpse of the path he's on even though we have not even seen the best of Pogba."
Pogba joined Juve on a free transfer from Manchester United in the summer of 2012 and has won three consecutive Serie A titles and one Coppa Italia with the Turin outfit.
