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This is by far the worst I've seen him play. The only positive plays I remember are one nice flick to get past a defender, and a good through ball to Pedro. For the most part, he was awful. Losing possession, playing hospital passes, you name it. Mentally, he never got off the bus.

While the majority of the credit goes to Pique for the goal, Xavi's pass was excellent. Also, I thought he played fairly well in the first leg (see a video of his touches at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S2eTiUpKVQ); his sideline pass to Maxwell led to the first goal. My big problem with your...

Odd factoid that probably won't last but is nonetheless amusing to me: even before the beatdown on Almeria, this year's Barcelona had more points, more goals scored, and fewer goals conceded in their away matches than at Camp Nou. This hasn't happened in any season from 2001/2002 onwards (that's...

I've seen several people state that Barcelona needs a tall center forward to target on crosses and beat parked buses. However, I checked the statistics on the FCB site, and found that in the 2008-2009 season, the team didn't head the ball that much. The forward line of Eto'o, Henry, and Messi...

I'm worried about how easily Abidal was turned around by opposing players when defending. I hope he figures it out, because right now I get nervous whenever an opponent dribbles towards him.

Henry has played in eleven games (playing the whole game in seven), and so far he has only two goals and two assists, with both assists in his first game. I don't know whether this means that MLS is better than most think, or Henry has just deteriorated that badly. Either way, it's not hard to...

If we'd taken Messi off and played with ten men, it might not have made a difference. He was shockingly awful. Caught in possession often, poor movement, frequently offsides, and abysmal finishing.

What is it with Bojan subbing in during CL games and missing a header while unmarked? Chelsea in 2008-2009, Inter last year, and now here. Hopefully he's gotten it out of his system.

His overall play (passing, build-up) is better, but his finishing has been off since the World Cup. When he plays for Spain, he does a great job moving the ball and creating, but he doesn't take his chances to score.

As John McEnroe said, "You can not be serious." When he played at CF, he was usually great. Whenever he played on either wing (left or right), he was bad. He scored far more goals either going down the middle or from the right than the left.

While the Champions League is played at a higher level, last year I found the Europa league games to be much more entertaining than the CL encounters. Compare the Europa league final (a dramatic extra time victory) to the CL final (an impressive but dull dominance); I thought that summarized the...

Yeah, why judge Messi based on important games against good competition when we can give him the award for scoring lots of goals against the likes of Tenerife and Valladolid? :rolleyes:

I didn't see the Argentina-South Korea game, but I have watched the rest of Argentina's games. IMO, Messi was good against Nigeria, but he was just okay against Greece and below average against Mexico. Today, he was one of the worst players for Argentina. I won't say he was the worst because of...

My opinion is somewhere between the first two choices. I would suggest starting with technology only for goal decisions, as that is relatively easy to do. Then as people get used to it, using technology for other calls can be considered. Trial runs can be set up to gauge effectiveness of...

As a fan who's watched all of Spain's games and doesn't have any bias (positive or negative) w.r.t. Torres, I think he has been atrocious. One shot on goal in 11 attempts says it all. Judging from how many fans are suggesting that Torres be benched, I'd say that not many are impressed with his form.

Against Nigeria, he showed great dribbling and good creativity, but his finishing in the box was below par.

On one website, there was an article saying that Iniesta's injury isn't serious. The first comment was from someone identifying as 'madridista' from 'madrid.' Here is his gem of an insight: "so, even if hes injured, hes useless for us! he didnt score and if ramos plays in midfeild hel prob...

I found a good article about Mourinho's plans. I've edited out extraneous information and changed the formatting for length.

Quick calculations from from the table Gnegneri posted: Yaya is better at not losing the ball and at helping the attack; Busquets is better at regaining the ball and drawing fouls (big surprise, I know). In the ratio of bad passes to total passes and the ratio of balls recovered to balls lost...

Dominated at midfield, then played center back. Over the past two seasons, he has shown he can play well at any midfield position. What can you say? With the possible exception of Messi, he is the most versatile player on a team full of multidimensional players.