Still no club has won the Champions League twice in a row. Manchester United should be proud of coming so close but it was not to be. Barcelona were great and I guess that they deserved it.
So where did it all go wrong for Manchester United. One of the main problems were the errors. Manchester United simply didn't play as well as they can. Vidic who has been player of the season was the one who missed Eto'o! Evra's mistake led to the second goal. It is had to criticise these players as they have been so good for Manchester over the years.
Manchester were playing well at the start, but after Vidic made the mistake it allowed Barcelona to maintain possesion. Everyone knows that Barcelona love to do this. Even when they took corners they would pass it back rather than cross it in the hope of scoring.
This is all very well, but Manchester panicked and then chased the ball. The reason that Chelsea got the better of Barcelona was that they just sat back and waited for Barcelona to play into the danger areas and took the ball of them. Because of the eagerness of Manchester to win and the fact that they fell behind, they chased and tried to get the ball back and then opened up a lot of spaces.
The other error of tactics from the manager was the introduction of Berbatov. I have no complaints about a manager who has brought 11 league titles, but this time he got it wrong. I can understand the idea of wanting to attack more, but having 4 strikers is not attacking. The attack comes through the team, from the defense up, it can even start from the goalkeeper. For a team that was getting overrun in midfield, one cant afford to have 4 strikers. After that Barcelona were free to do as they liked as Berbatov is hardly going to win back the ball.
In the end the time of possession was fairly even, and Ryan Giggs felt that Manchester had more chances, but it was just not their day. Congratulations though to Barcelona, it is very difficult to win the trophy, even though they won in very dubious circumstances against Chelsea - to win the European cup takes a lot of good fortune as well as skill. Also congratulations to their midfield of Xavi and Iniesta who were absolutely superb, but it will be a different story next year we hope.
The thing about sports is that someone has to lose. There can only be one winner. Fortunately in life things are not so absolute.
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