Champions League Draw: Barça - Bayern (Winner To Play Chelsea Or Liverpool)

Nic,

I have actually been following Bayern in the Bundesliga and too be honest, I am not worried at all. That is not say that they will not pose a threat but when it's all said and done we will progress.Their defense is not very good and they play a high trap line, which never works against Barca's offensive line because we run with the ball as opposed to long passes. Ribery will be one ro neutralize and iff we successful (Yaya,Busquets) then Padolski becomes irrelevant and Luca Toni and Klose might miss these games. I am not overconfident, but I just think all things being equal, WE HAVE A BETTER,MORE COMPLETE, ANd BETTER BALANCED TEAM!

I agree with Diatus.Bayern should NOT pose much of a threat. Without Ribery they are an average team at best.I would not lose any sleep over the likes of Podolski,Toni and Klose.It is essential that Barça take advantage of the first leg and score as many goals as possible.This is NOT the time for defensive or goalkeeping screw ups !!

agreed with diatus, this is one of the better teams to get i think. nic, the bayern of the mid and late 90s is gone, they are nowhere near that now. their form in the bundesliga is quite poor and very erratic. klose is out for sure, and maybe toni too. honestly we have what it takes to beat this team. of course u cannot say its going to be easy, but we are much better and should over 180 miutes win it.

i reckon we can all be pretty happy with the outcome from this afternoon.

Sorry for the typos guys, I am on vacation and I just rolled out of bed!!!Still yawning!!!

At first I thought Bayern would be difficult, after all they did put in 12 past Sporting. While it will still be tough I think we will progress. It certainly doesn't help them when they have all those injuries. I read Klose will be out for both legs.

I still would have liked to see us play an English team. Also the other match-ups don't seem that mouth-watering.

I am not too worried about drawing Bayern in the quarters. It wont be easy, not by any means, but over two legs i feel we will have too much for them. As long we dont pick up anymore injuries and Puyol is back we should beat them.

What worries me a lot more are the semis; whether we get Liverpool or Chelsea they will both do what we hate; They will park the bus, they will play a physical, agressive game and they will counter with pace and precision. All this means that playing the home leg 2nd is a big advantage for them. It suits their style perfectly because they can come to the Nou Camp and shut up shop. Any away goal and we are in trouble. Would be A LOT more comfortable if we had the 2nd leg at home. We actually end up worse off than most when it comes to playing the home leg 2nd. We dont get that advantage in the quarters or the semis. I dont think it will matter as much against Bayern because they are very much like us, in that they like to attack no matter what. Against Chelsea or Liverpool though, we all know what they will try and do.....

Hilal, I totally agree with you on the importance of the EPL sides potentially having the second leg at home. Does anyone know the last time that Barca won a CL tie when we had the second leg on the road?

I also agree with the general sentiment that Bayern are a good draw for Barca. If I gave you guys even money odds that van Bommel will get sent off in one of the two games, would you take it? He's a notorious hothead (as we well know) and playing against Xavi and Iniesta will drive him crazy. Ribery attacking Barca's defensive right is terrifying because of the space that Alves leaves, but I think Barca can dominate in the midfield and deny the ball to Ribery. Franck isn't going to get his normal support because Bayern are going to be pinned back on their left by Messi and Alves.

Michael, i am not 100% but i think when we won the CL we got a bit lucky in the draw and we played both the quarters and the semi 2nd legs at home. Defninitely against Chelsea and I think AC as well. So it is clearly an advantage.

Agree completely with what you said about Ribery. Playing Bayern will be a lot like the games we saw against Lyon. If we let them have the ball and if we dont lay an aggressive, high pressure game they will be very dangerous (like Lyon in the first leg). However if we play like we did in the 2nd leg against Lyon i think we could very well make Bayern look foolish. Their defense is not great, they depend a lot on their attacking abilities. If we can keep the ball I doubt they can stop us from scoring. I can see us winning by 3 or 4 goals at home, probably conceding one or two and then a 2-2 or somthing away. The first leg at home will be important. If we can put it to bed in the first leg the 2nd leg doesnt matter anymore.

The bad news: Ribery is their biggest or perhaps their only threat. The good news: without help, Ribery can NOT beat you single handedly. He is NOT known for his scoring prowess. He is very similar to Iniesta. If we can take him out, it is all over for Bayern !!

Michael - wow, what a great question! I presume you were not thinking of this season's preliminary round where we beat Wisla 4-1 on aggregate (1st game at Camp Nou 4-0 and a 1-0 defeat away)
You will be interested to know that we have NEVER won a tie in the later stages of the Champions League after being drawn at home for the 1st leg. We have to go back to the 1993/94 season when the first two rounds were played as a knock out followed by a league stage afterwards to find a win with the second game away. In that year in the second round we played Austria Vienna winning the first game 3-0 at home and also winning 1-2 in the second leg in Vienna - LINK%E2%80%9394

Sorry bad link, try again - LINK%E2%80%9394

Hmmm. You'll just have to take my word for it or look it up yourself

Decent draw for you. Semi final could be a pain though no matter who you get.

NEVER!?!?! Damn that is a worrying stat. So basically we have to do twice what we have never done before in order to get to the CL final. GREEEEAAAT.

Thats the luck of the draw for you. Thats why it is so hard to pick a favorite for the CL, so much luck is involved. Although now the final draw has been held im sure Utd are clear favorites. They cannot be allowed to win it again......

I following Bayern,too and they are not so good,for example they couldn't win werder,and
almost the entire game bayern had 1 player more.... we can go in semifinal!

Hilal,
Since you are interested in stats, here is one for you. The last club to repeat as a CL champion was AC Milan(1988-1990).It has been 29 years and no club has managed to duplicate that feat.For either Barça or Manchester United to win the title this year, everything has to go right in spite of recent history.Let's see who is up to it !!

Sorry. I meant 19 years not 29 years.Please,guys: hold your fire !!

Man utd just got a ticket into the final porto than the winner of villareal/arsenal....sigh i am sick to the tonsils of man utd

man utd just got a free ticket into the final 1st porto than the winner of villareal/arsenal..... rigged draw this

Good point FCB-holland. Something else to note is that Utd are in the same situation as us in terms of playing the first leg at home in both the quarters and the semis. Not sure how it has affected them in the past but it seems to be in general an advantage to play the 2nd leg at home, if only form a psychological point of view. I know when they lost to AC milan 2 years ago they played the 2nd leg away. In fact in the last few years the two teams in the final have always been the teams that played the 2nd leg at home in the semis......

Hilal,
You are right. Playing the second leg at home is always a huge advantage. It will take a very special club to defy the odds and win it, past history notwithstanding. we are only emphasising the favourites ,however I would NOT be shocked if one of the underdogs surprised us all . It happened before but I hope it won't be at our expence !!

If the teams playing at home in the second leg make the most of their advantage we will see an Arsenal - Chelsea final. But then a London team has never won the thing! So much for statistics

History aside,injuries to KEY players can also be a major factor in tipping a tie one way or the other.It is possible that a club who is playing at home can get knocked out due to an injury to their best player(s). The history maybe against Barça to win the title but if we take care of business,one game at a time and stay injury free , we can still win the whole thing. Nothing is impossible !!

Yep, so much for stats...They do not mean a thing in games like these. We will have every chance in the world to move forward.I do not believe in any of the historical tendencies...unless it's Deportivo la coruna playing Real Madrid at home....

So I guess the consensus is that we match up very well with Bayern, but that we are the decided underdogs in the semifinal. The one factor that causes me to hold out some hope is that Pep is such a smart, analytical coach. He'll know about Barca's struggles when we have the second leg on the road and might try to tweak the way we play. Maybe we should be a tad defensive in the first leg to avoid falling into the counter-attacking trap?

This is an instance where Pep's tremendous institutional memory comes in handy. He played on the Dream Team and has been around the club for years, so he has a chance to figure out why our playing style hurts us when the first leg is at home. The question is whether he can make small changes without forcing the team to play away from its strengths.

Personally, I'd MUCH rather play Chelsea than Liverpool in the semifinals. Hiddink is less of a counter-attacker than Benitez, so Chelsea's style might not be terrible for us in the first leg. As for the second leg, maybe we'd be saved by Messi having such good memories of Stamford Bridge.

Never said it was impossible; in fact i think if any team can do it, it is us. Simply because on our day, home or away, if we have all our players fit and on form we can beat ANY team and we can do it in style. I was just pointing out that the odds are against us and the draw did us absolutely no favours.....would making winning it all that much sweeter!!

I personally did not wanna play Bayern, but oh well...we have to beat them now..I know havin second leg away from home is disadvantageous, but like Hilal said, if we have all our players fit and in form, then nobody can stop the juggernaut that is our beloved FC Barcelona...

Viva Barca...

i am pleased and not pleased at the same time about this draw.
If we want to win this trophy we need to play the bast teams. Bayern munich is listed as one of those. We can take these guys out but not in an easy way. Valdes has to be at his best ( the only time this season he was at his best was versus Bilbao vs barca) Back line also has to be top notch
but as alot of has said this barca teams best form of defence is attack. I have followed Bayern Munich and they have a shacky back wall too. Their goalie Rensing is worse than ours. But their attack is good. Ribery , toni and maybe klose are dangerous and they also have podolski. We should be able to beat them in both legs.
Prediction : 3-1 aggregrate win for barca.
Questions:
Will Puyol be back
will abidal be back
will militio be back
and what advantage does it have to have second game at home???!???!!???

Gow, I'm not the biggest Valdes fan in the world, but wasn't he at his best against Real when he made one huge stop in the first half and another in the second to keep the game scoreless?

i am hoping that we dont have any more blows to our back line and i hope puyol doesnt play in the international break if he is fit.....i am not too worried knowing that they try to play attacking and if you leave messi eto and henry with only 4 defenders to beat.......ITS OVER!!! we need a good win against malaga this weekend.....

hey micheal-
Valdes was amazing against real madrid but the save in the first half against real was a one on one. Tat save was a result of bad finishing. His second major save was against palanca in the same gamea nd that was at a tight angle. There was no way for palanca to score.
Against bilboa He had two major one on one save, and two wonderful freekick saves. He pulled off exceptional saves.
Valdes isnt good but i dont hate him, we should get a replacement and i think the best ones are neuer (shalke 04) or Reina

fans and their hopes

as for me, i car very little about stats and history, the road to the final definitely seems tough but i have belief in this special squad

abt liverpool n chelsea, there's no need to continue repeating the same things over and over abt their park the bus and counter, they can spring surprises anytime, we just have to be ready

on the 2nd leg away from home issue....u guys chose to be fans of barca hence you approved our style of play so u should have a good idea of what to expect, potential matches depict there is a good chance we concede at home, but thats d price of the style of play you chose to support....that is if their are no surprises....some people make it sound as if it is impossible for barca to score against these teams....if this barca squad cant do it, i expect we should be fighting only for la liga every season till we get a lucky draw

when the time comes, we step up to it

i'm alright with the draw against Bayern, i think it would have been tougher if we faced an English team at this stage.

as for the home-away leg situation, we'd just have to deal with it and NOT concede a goal at home! every champs league match requires max concentration for 180 minutes...i really hope our back line can deliver!

but i must say the odds are stacked against us now...it greatly annoys me that man united really got the easy way to the final.

waaaaaaaaaaaw= really it's unlucky draw for barca with away second leg.but i am optimistic i am sure we can progress through semifinal.

bayern have good players as we are.but they have advantage with second leg at home and also have good record agianst barca according champions.

DEFENCE:

the only warry for barca are defenders i don't know why for the last 10 years and now always barca have weak defenders accourding the best teams( i know we were won titles and champions for the last 10 years).

we have alot of defenders but realy i don't believe one of them( at the moment).
alves is very good for the attacking but his defending is not good.

away from home :

we need to keep cleansheet:

and that responsibility for the defenders and goalkeeper.


MIDFIELD:

i am very confidence our boys in the midfield
we have the best midfielders of the world.
xavi,ineista,toure, kieta,sergio basquat,hleb and gudjhanson. and the best three are:
Iniesta....Toure....xavi=100%.

ATTACK:

fantastic three: Henry.... Eto'o....Messi.
and also we have bojan and the man who are playing any position except goalposition(Iniesta).


we have more chance to go roma, but it depending on away from injury .

all in all we can win champion league:

I'm not too pertubed, if we want to win the CL we have to be able to beat any team in any situation, even if were at a disadvantage.

but my Man Utd, always have it easy