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Hey Guys!
My name is Keita Rudd and I'm a 11 year old male!
I live in New Zealand and play soccer for Green Island and my city, Otago!
I support MANCHESTER UNITED and I've ...
I love to play football on the streets or on the field :) I find its the most relaxing part of the day :) Always do it before and after school with my self of my mates. I hate it w ...
and Spain










"Not a single one of my comment was incendiary"
"I'm not sure what your job is as a mod but I'm sure you have the ability to figure out when someone is flagging a post just because he can't handle [it]"
"None [of my posts] are ever insulting anybody in particular whether its a poster or a player"
However, I just found these comments made by you:
"English football warriors? Hahaha the warriors that haven't won the WC for 50 years? Or the ones which lost out before the QF's this year. Or that sorry team that we saw luckily win last year? Srfooty: Learn the game before you talk, kid!"
"David: Your post is quite stupid. Spain's top performers were in the world XI because they won't the Euro's. Falcao, Messi and Ronaldo had HUGE seasons. As for your diving post, ST F you! You sound like a sore loser who can't accept the fact that EPL's quality is not as good as you believe. And the UEFA conspiracy theories are getting old. Find something new to cry about. "
And as you said, I do have the ability to know when User A's posts are getting flagged by other users because they disagree with what User A is saying, and when User A is breaking site rules. User A is breaking site rules right now. User A is you.
Last time I brought this up with you was just a kind heads up, but this time it is an official warning. Please refrain from such aggressive comments in the future; failure to do so will result in the mod community placing you on "troll status" and you will lose your posting rights.
Clearly you are a very intelligent, thoughtful, and passionate football fan. Stick to talking about football, and we will have no problems.
Thank you
Actually I do agree with you but you have to look at how the game opened up within 5 mins. Milan came out looking to defend like they did back home. Barca came out wanting to score immediately. Messi's strike changed the psychology of both teams.
I don't see why you're blaming defence for the 1st goal. Barca did what they usually do, push the ball to the anchor right outside the box and then do a quick 1-2 to take a clear strike. When Messi scored, Milan actually had it covered. I mean, look at the goal. Messi is a genius. It took him exactly 2 secs to release the shot with 5 guys surrounding him. That's just something you can marvel and if Barca played the same play again, messi wouldn't score 9/10 times because any one of the 5 defenders surrounding him would block the shot. "
I am making a more in depth analysis on the match so I guess I can give you the 1-0 goal Analysis part although I haven't finished the part in how this was dealt with in San Siro yet. Hopefully you remember though:
Now what we see here is the formation and lead up to the 1-0 goal.
The 4 red circles (yes the shaarawy-Pique one is orange) indicate the players been marked. Whereas the blue pentagon indicates the pressure at the man in possession and the yellow squares indicate the man which shall aid in the chase down of the ball and cut between to snap passes. Already here we can see that Shaarawy, Abate and Flamini have placed themselves between their man and the Milan goal. Meanwhile Montolivo is now standing between the man with the ball and Messi? Is his job to snap the ball before it reach Messi, is that how we decided to deal with Messi for this match? Or is he wrongly positioned already? I am leaning towards the latter and believe that Allegri and the staff had approached this threat the same way as they did in San Siro and this is just what happens as soon as a player loses concentration from his task for a few moments. Now seconds later this is what we can see.
We can now see things happening and how players have to adapt to the situation. We got Shaarawy marked with the orange arrow bottom of the page tracking home towards Milan goal and Messi, we got Abate still holding his man marked with the red arrow. We got Boateng as new pressure man to the man in possession, (Niang were the one in the previous picture while Boateng was one of the yellow squares) Now the first issue rise already here as both the man Niang was pressuring in the last picture, Xavi which is the guy now in the middle of the picture, and the new man in possession, Busquets, is now going into the zone where Ambrosini, marked with the star in this picture, is.
This means that Ambrosini need to take a decision if he is to mark Xavi who is now free of Niang or press Iniesta which now is about to pass Prince Boateng. If Ambrosini decide to mark Xavi, that means he trust Flamini, which is coming down from the top orange arrow to come down and stop Iniesta from getting a freeway to the Milan defence and even attempting on a longshot or make a final pass there. If he decides to be the man to put pressure on Iniesta, it means Xavi goes free and Montolivo is the man who needs to track to him to take him out of the game.
We can also see that both Flamini, top orange arrow, and Montolivo, middle orange arrow, is now coming to support in the situation, leaving Messi and Iniesta unmarked. Iniesta is in rather harmless position at this moment while Shaarawy is tracking down to take care of Messi as marked with bottom arrow.
Now this could work against most normal teams but this is Barcelona and we knew that, a little slip like this is all it takes. We can’t give them this kind of space and now we will see why in the following picture.
In matter of 5 quick passes and some new runs all within 4 seconds this is the new reality. Busquets is the man with the ball and let’s face it, the pressure point here is 5 meter from Boateng to Busquets which give him the space to make this next pass. We also see that Flamini I believe it is, has no control with Iniesta also letting him have 5 meters to spare and again every Barcelona player except Messi in the attack is marked by a Milan player deeper down in the field. Can you start to see what was really bothering me as a subjective Milan-fan watching this match? Why is it smart to keep letting him have only the defence between him and the goal? He is a good dribbler, but still, it is better to let them dribble you than to let them run straight at the defenders and leave that to those while you don’t even stand between the man in possession and him. We also see a 2,5-3 meter distance with Messi and Shaarawy while walking in this picture. Anyway long story short, Busquets is about to power a pass in what I saw was measured to 80 km/h Which Messi with no man between him and the defenders let go to Xavi in 1 touch which let it go back to Messi and we get to this picture instead.
Now in this picture there is several things which bothers me but I will start with the one that didn’t really matter in this situation. If you see the black line, you can see how Constant make is setting an offside line without been involved in the game at all down in the corner which do make him involved after all by making sure the Barca striker, Villa I believe, is not in offside. Now in reality it is Mexes job to set the offside line and the rest of the defence is supposed to follow it and this is marked in the yellow line where you see Villa would barely be offside. Now as always, the devil hides in the details and this actually opens up an extra opportunity for Messi to just let the ball through to Villa and give him a 1v1 situation with Abbiati. Now this didn’t matter as what more happened is that Neither Zapata or Mexes attempts to snap/tackle Messi at this point been afraid for getting dribbled or making an penalty situation, whichever reason they had (Zapata can claim he was making sure Villa wouldn’t get the ball because of Constant I guess), Shaarawy, Montolivo and Ambrosini (I think) can’t close in either (although Ambrosini should be able to as Messi used one touch letting the ball get closer to him before shooting) and out of the 5 Milan players in a radius of 1,5 meter, not one closed down the final step to attempt to take the ball, but rather watched how it went.
This is the shot of Messi and you can see what I talked about here, as he shoots sure Mexes makes an attempt to set his knee in front of the ball, but that is also all. We also see that Constant making sure no Barcelona players is in as Pedro (I believe) makes a run in the back and a free opening to him marked with the blue triangle. Messi already shot and been the player he is he put it in the top corner.
So what exactly is my concern about this goal? Beside Constant been a leftback making the offside line it is how we decided to mark Messi and close in on him once he got the ball, leaving the work to Mexes and Zapata, who I admit also failed here. Now if a midfielder had been the one to close down on him and he attempted to dribble pass that midfielder, it would mean that either Mexes or Zapata could have been in immediate backup zone and picked the ball of Messi.
Basically with this in mind, if you got access, watch how Milan played against Barcelona at San Siro if you do got access to that video
And the closing in on the man in possession is very obvious between 4th and 5th picture as if anything, Zapata and Mexes drawn back even further while inviting Messi to come in and do his stuff at them.
P. S. Not sure why I changed from Pentagon to star when mariking the pressure on the man in possession in 3rd picture
" You say the defence should have closed him down but the fact is Messi's attacking reflexes are much better than most defender's defending reflexes. "
This means just because Messi gets the ball and is an excellent dribbler, you think it is ok to let him go freely? No it isn't. First defender should press him and if he gets dribbled, well that's when the 2nd defender is behind and snaps the ball.
Also you must have failed to read my analysis if this is the part you put most interest in as I was arguing for the fact having a marker on the right side of him would have left him the choice of passing on or trying to dribble the marker where either of the CBs now would have worked as the 2nd defender snapping the ball as he accelerate past the man he dribbles.
It isn't easy but it surely would been a better scenario and I still think if this happened, Messi wouldn't scored in this situation. And the marker point I was highlighting here was a big difference from how they approached Barcelona in San Siro.
I don't believe all the difference is in Barcelona were having a good day at Camp Nou and Barcelona just wasnt accurate enough at San Siro. I keep believing that Milan did something different at the 2 matches. I also believe I have highlighted the difference in my analysis. And lastly but also important, I DO believe Allegri also know this and he had a plan of repeating the same tactical approach, but the players on the field failed to follow it allowing Barcelona to get that goal
-kgb (mod)