Barcelona

Pretty awesome final. I am glad Barcelona won by demonstrating their superiority. They left no doubt as to who the better team was. It feels so much more rewarding as a fan to see it go like that than having the champion decided in a shootout or a sketchy call or a ball bouncing off someone's thigh.

The running theme in the Enligh media seems to be that United "failed to show up" and a bunch of cliches about the team in Rome not being the "real United". They have played better at times throughout the season, true, but the thing all these outlets fail to mention is that United weren't at their best because Barca didn't let them. From the tenth minute on Barcelona rarely lost the ball. It is not that Manchester didn't play their best, they were denied the opportunity to do anything.

On Tuesday I outlined what I thought the game would hinge on. Let's see how right I was:

Early Goal- United looked certain to strike first as they had three clear chances in the first few minutes. Eto'o got Barcelona on the board against the run of play at the 10 minute mark and that changed the game. After the first goal Barcelona dictated tempo and United essentially chased the game the rest of the way.

Set Pieces- No one scored from a set piece so this was kind of a non-factor. United's best chance came on the rebound from a CR7 freekick just outside the area. Pique got there a splitsecond ahead of Park and cleared it to safety. One of the big mysteries will be why Ryan Giggs took a dangerous freekick instead of Ronaldo. That was probably their second best chance. On the Barcelona side Xavi hit the post after bending a wicked ball around the wall.

Barcelona's Width- Puyol and Sylvinho surprised me by how much they got forward. They allowed Barcelona to adapt to Dani Alves's absence. For large stretches of the game Messi attacked in a more central role, and as I predicted, did so very effectively. with Xavi and Iniesta behind him this propelled the attack in a much better way than the swinging cross approach would have.

Makeshift Defense- This proved not to be a factor at all. Sylvinho's age didn't show and neither did Puyol and Toure's change of position. Pique was solid in the middle of the defense. I said all they had to do was hold off United until Barcelona scored, and they did that. After the goal the defense was effective but didn't have too much to do.

Bench- This didn't factor too much. Tevez came on for Anderson at the half and worked his heart out, like he always does, but it didn't result in a goal. Berbatov, the other gamebreaker on the United bench, also came on and was practically invisible. Barcelona never needed to introduce an element to change the game and their comparitive shortness on the bench didn't matter.

I said it would be 3-1 Barca. I got the winner and margin right but the total goals wrong. That, and the accuracy of the above reviewed pre-match thoughts are proof of Pitch Itchy's astuteness. Am I a genius? That is not for me to say, you draw your own conclusions.

fun fact: As far as I know Gerard Pique is the first player to win CL titles in back to back seasons with different teams and beat his former team the second time around.