Champions League Comment: Eliminated By Inter, It’s Time For Predictable Pep Guardiola And Barcelona To Have A Plan B

If there ever was a footballing chess match, the 90 minutes at the Camp Nou between Barcelona and Inter in the semi-final of the 2009/10 Champions League would have been the perfect advertisement for it.

As expected, the heated clash between the Serie A and La Liga champions was a scrappy but nonetheless fascinating duel between defence and attack, and at the end of the day when a team like Inter protect their goal as artfully as they did, it is always difficult for the offensive side to prevail... especially without a Plan B.

Barcelona did prevail alright, but the 1-0 win wasn’t enough to take them through to the final. They had their chances, though, to snatch the required 2-0 scoreline towards the tail-end of the match, but they wasted 80 minutes of the game doing nothing decisive.

The Blaugrana may have Lionel Messi, Xavi, et al. but as phenomenal a talent as they all are, their wizardry can only shine when a game plan is working. Guardiola set out a map of how to beat Inter’s air-tight defence, but unfortunately, it led his players to nowhere in particular very quickly.

Esteban Cambiasso, Lucio, Javier Zanetti and Walter Samuel all defended diligently and thwarted everything the Blaugrana could throw at them, but the Catalan juggernauts just came back with the same, predictable attacking pattern. And even though the Nerazzurri did have to work and run tirelessly to keep their defensive door shut, they weren’t stretched or taken out of their comfort zone because Barca did not attempt anything that ‘The Interpreter’ Jose Mourinho wouldn’t have showed them over and over again during their training sessions.

Messi scratches his head as he ponders how to beat Inter

It was no surprise that Barca only had one meaningful shot on goal in the entirety of the first half, and ended up with only three more for the rest of the game; one of which went in while the other two, from Messi and Xavi, were easily handled by Julio Cesar.

Such was Barca’s desperation as the game wore on that they started pelting long range drives, which flew horrendously off-target, and lofting in futile high balls from the flanks which were never going to beat the towering Lucio or Samuel, especially once Zlatan Ibrahimovic was taken off.

One high ball did find a way through to a man in blue-and-maroon just before Barca’s goal, but Bojan made a dog’s dinner out of a delightful Messi cross when he headed wide from close range. Had Guardiola and his troops drilled and worked more on a move like that during training as part of a Plan B, it might have just paid off on the pitch.

Barca were praised for their patience in sticking to the same style and philosophy in last season’s equally laborious struggle against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the same stage of the competition, but that same tenacity didn’t quite work against Inter. And it didn’t work partly because men like Mourinho have all but figured out how to frustrate and foil Barcelona’s eye-candy attacking football.

It’s not the first time it has failed Guardiola this season. Unfancied Rubin Kazan employed the same strategy as Inter and they walked away from the Camp Nou with an impressive 2-1 win and a 0-0 stalemate back at home.

With another season gone, opponents will now grow even more proficient in stopping Barca, and they will no doubt use Wednesday night’s game as their textbook – as their bible even – and learn how to derail the Catalans. As the rest of the world keeps moving forward, Guardiola, assuming he will remain at the Camp Nou next term when a new club president takes power, and Barcelona have to move on as well, even if it means sacrificing their ‘joga bonito’ football to work on alternative strategies, or changing their style altogether to something more effective.

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