Barcelona -vs- AC Milan (ALL comments)

Originally Posted by Giovanni

just want to quote a neutral observer": If it had been the knockout stages Milan would be going through. Losing 2-1 in Barcelona is by no means a bad result regardless of the performance and to me shows that Milan will be there or thereabouts come May "

Roy

THanks! This definitely need ssome maturity to see.

Originally Posted by Laudrup

Guess Ronaldinho won the pallone d'oro there

Our luck ran out, the plan was obvious from the first minute: 1 point's what we came there for and look how close we were to get it.

If you choose to practice that kind of football, you'll be harshly criticized if you lose.

So just let me know what counts. The Result or the criticism?

Look at Bush. How many criticism does he recieve? And yet why he wins it?

Not Being Criticized but not getting result is, to be down-to-earth, useless. Go ahead with your attractive football, and win it with fame when you do. But when you get trashed by counter attack, boy where will the praise have gone?

Originally Posted by sf_esq

Our lineup was awful. Carlo should have realized his strategy was dangerous and destined to fail - this was obvious during the second half where even a blind man could have recognized that we would eventually end up conceding a goal. Quite frankly, we're lucky they didn't score more goals. By the way, our coaching staff looked like clowns. What the hell was our management thinking letting Dolce & Gabbana give us those hideous clothes? Give us some normal clothes. Next thing you know, Carlo will be wearing leather pants.

Not funny either.

And can you please take a look, it's Sheva who scores first. I don't see any tactical error in the beginning. The idea is OK. And how do you see that we would eventually end up conceding a goal. I don't see how Barca can score actually until Ronaldinho's flash of glory, and can't you see that Barca just CAN"T do it in the second half. They may have plenty of chances but it's not LUCK that they didn't score more goal. After all, Dida saves us a number of occasions and you called Dida's save as luck?

Be realistic. Reggina may well play like Milan against Barca and lost 6-0.

frankly i like the D&G gangster clothes mafia like...we are more similar to Lucky Luciano Moggi and Anthony Giraudo though

wow, some of the responses are way over the top here. Now, the result is bad as was the performance, however, this match was one match where I would accept a loss, as we could afford to lose and still be in a VERY strong position and we lost to a great side. Lets not forget that before the match, the side have been doing very well recently and improving consistently every game.

I'm glad things here aren't as bad as Xtratime though, where I see "Kaka is overrated" threads as well as "Carlo should be axed".

I'm not trying to make excuses, but I'm being realistic here. Milan at the moment is one of Europe's elite clubs (even though were far from our best) and one loss (irrespective of how badly we played) doesn't change that. Personally, at this point I don't expect more than whats necessary from us to keep up with the pace of the other big guns in Europe (as we need to preserve the players energy) and then in the second half of the season, we can expect to see the "true Milan". Don't worry about the opposition at this point either as teams like Barca and juve are playing at their best, which will take its toll later (Milan learnt this in 2002/03), when we will be looking at peak performance.

FORZA SHEVA!
FORZA MILAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did not read all the comments in this post, but i scanned through them quickly. Many negatives one and few positive ones.

i must admit that barca deserved to win. They played game of their lives. I must also admit that Ronaldhino's goal was wooooow.

i asked myself, should i be upset about the performance or about the result?

well, as of the perofrmance. Many factors contributed to this. First, Were we as desperat as barac about the 3 points? Second, was this match a knockoff stage? Third, We still have 2 more games and we can qualify.


About the results, I was upset the fact we actually were up, we could have dictated the game with our style, but i must be honst that barac were up to the challange and they raised to the occation.

So we lost... end of world????????

What did we gain? Little extra session for Dida and the defense, i guess.

All thing will show up later on the season. I was watching the game and said to myself " I will take a loose today and a win against Juve in seira A in December"
We really need to focus on the Seria A ( based on our comfortable current position in CL). juve on a roll with Cappello, 5 points lead is way too much. Need to catch up before it slipps away just like 2 yrs ago when juve went on and no one could've stopped them.

FORZA MILAN.

take the positive side of the situation

Pirlo - controls the passing side of the game like few players on earth, the low cross to Cafu and of course the goal assist were at the highest level!

Sheva most effective player around at the moment; what's new.

Negative: Kaka', much depends on whether he'll be back to his best.

i have been very busy recently, so i haven't had time commenting on this match. but i did squeeze two hours watch it on espn2. seriously, it would be crazy if i didn't watch it. it was the first chance for me to watch milan on the screen this season. in case you don't know, i am in united states, the crazy soccer desert.

i am a little down after the game, but i am not at all humiliated. i don't understand why some fans claim that it was a forgettable and humiliating game for milan fans. i want to point out that you don't have to be humiliated. if you are really a milan supporter, you won't feel it that way. if you feel that, probably you are not yet a true milanista, at least in my opinion.

back to this game. i was a little surprised to see serginho and ambrosini. but i think that was some good bet. Nou camp has a wide pitch, so serginho could be very useful for his pace. well, he didn't look very energetic, and that compromised the tactics. with serginho, denifitely we needed more protection from the midfield, ambrosini was a good choice for this consideration. and he fought all the game, as always. we played fantastic in the first half. we controlled the game, barca only had spontaneous chances, like deco's header shaving the post. i was not at all worried. i know goal will come sooner or later. when i saw kaka wasting one chance after after, i was not concerned still. but after their equalising (lucky bastard!!), their morale was high, and yet we still lacked the motivations to press forward (the worst scenario we don't want to see was celtic losing again, and that's not what was happening, so i guess ancelotti and co adjusted their attitude immediately. that's not to blame.). that's the reason that we lost, as simple as that. we didn't have to win, and we didn't win. so there's nothing to be regretting about. if we win when we don't have to, that's a gift. but we don't, accept it, that's not big deal at all. ronaldinho showed his talents, and i hope that he could be with us, but if not, we have other good enough guys to use. so i won't be drooling and dreaming out him anyway. it is not my money.

sheva was fantastic. he didn't have many chances, but he was cool enough to convert one, extending his perfect record against barcelona.

kaka was awful. seriously, he was awful. he lost balls easily. he lost his speed. he lost his sharpness. he lost his composure in front of goals. 2 golden chances. (especially the second one, brought me some bad memory: i remember the goal we conceded in the toyota cup 1994, the first one, damn it, was very similar to it. that bastard asad was cool enough to swing the goal in. well, off topic). i think that's not all his fault. he has been played too often. that's ancelotti's fault. in this game that we didn't want to go all out for a win, kaka should be rested, or at least benched for the collision with roma.

serginho wasn't shining. the cross to kaka was nice, but other than, i didn't see much of him. he should be used as a sub, when everybody is tired, his pace kills.

pirlo was fine in my opinion. that long ball was brilliant finding sheva up front, and which could turn out crucial if we managed to hold on to that score. and he was active defending too. i don't understand why he received some low ratings. but who cares.

ambrosini and gattuso were as usual, and each of them received a yellow. i always like them, so maybe my comments will be biased. so i won't make any.

kaladze was more visible. he was improving game by game, i wish he could come back to his peak as soon as possible, we know that pancaro is reliable but he is not young any more.

nesta and maldini, what can i say? i don't understand why they received some low ratings either, i think they may not have the best days, but they were almost impassible in the first half. as for the second half, there was a good excuse. ronaldinho was some talent that you don't expect to mark him tightly every minute. he's got to shine some time, so he better score against us right now, so that we can get our revenge later, say in the final.

i was surprised to see the fumble made by dida, although his second reaction was impeccable, but still.

all in all, i wished we could have won, but i am contented with the result. at least we still stay top. that's important. the negative side is that now we can't rest our major stars for the coming two games, if we still eye on qualifying as group winner. simic and dorahsoo will have one or two less to play, but that's all. we will win big games, and i am not worried about that. and i am proud of being a milanista.

Milan did not look good indeed. Milan should not defend. They are an attacking team not a defensive one. Remember last years CL quarter Final agaist deportivo. We lost a 4-1 lead because we tried to defend it while we are an attacking team.

Originally Posted by AC-GIOFFRE

Milan did not look good indeed. Milan should not defend. They are an attacking team not a defensive one. Remember last years CL quarter Final agaist deportivo. We lost a 4-1 lead because we tried to defend it while we are an attacking team.

Milan are capable of defending leads, but our key is that we must control the match. The best way to do this is keep possession as much as possible rather than giving it away cheaply and inviting the opposition onto us, which puts us under ridiculous amounts of pressure where teams as good as Barca will capitalise.

This is something we really need to work on in my opinion, we do give the ball away too easily, which goes against our style of play.

Originally Posted by AC-GIOFFRE

Milan did not look good indeed. Milan should not defend. They are an attacking team not a defensive one. Remember last years CL quarter Final agaist deportivo. We lost a 4-1 lead because we tried to defend it while we are an attacking team.

i don't agree. the deportivo episode was simply a disaster which happens once in maybe 2 or 3 years. we didn't want to simply defend in that game, we had one or two decent chances by tomasson and kaka, but as soon as we conceded one goal, we looked scared. morale was the main reason. and it happened that gattuso had a bad day ( i read it somewhere that he had some off-pitch problem around that day ), so we lost one man that can single-handedly boost the game. to be honest, who would have expected that in one single game, maldini, nesta, dida all had a bad day??? that was a great chance we let go, that could have been our 7th CL trophy. but i don't agree that the reason that we lost that round was because that we wanted to defend, it was because of ridiculously bad luck and extremely low morale.

Isn`t any1 who can post the hightlights of the game?

Milan did not look good indeed. Milan should not defend. They are an attacking team not a defensive one. Remember last years CL quarter Final agaist deportivo. We lost a 4-1 lead because we tried to defend it while we are an attacking team.

How ironic, Carletto has been blamed so often for playing the usual offensive lineup at the Riazor

Cafu-Nesta-Paolo-Pancaro
--Gattuso-Pirlo-Seedorf
---------Kaka'
------JDT---Sheva

Instead of perhaps Simic, who's more defensive than Cafu, and another midfielder for JDT.

Originally Posted by Laudrup

How ironic, Carletto has been blamed so often for playing the usual offensive lineup at the Riazor

Cafu-Nesta-Paolo-Pancaro
--Gattuso-Pirlo-Seedorf
---------Kaka'
------JDT---Sheva

Instead of perhaps Simic, who's more defensive than Cafu, and another midfielder for JDT.

It is not so much who he played as how Milan played. My primary complaint is still that it was wrong to try out a new formation against a team of Barcelonas calibre.

A lot of you just need to relax a little. We are still 1st place in the group so it's not the end of the world. Yes Milan did not play well but this was a game that they could afford a sub par performance, the more important game is against Roma on Sunday. I would much rather beat Roma and lose to Barca then the other way around. I think it's funny that a lot of you are saying things like "kaka is not in form yet." It was just 2 weeks ago that he single handedly tore apart the Inter defense and forced them into 3 ugly fouls which led to 3 yellow cards. Give the guy a break he's 21 years old and it's expected that he can't play exceptional every single game. Let Juve and Barca enjoy their success now because as far as I know no championships have ever been won in November.