"By Any Means Necessary" For Chelsea...What Chelsea must do is play a dirty, disruptive and downright dull game, smother Barcelona in the midfield and hurt their best players. It's not the time for prettiness...
Last Updated: 17/04/12 at 10:26 Post Comment
http://www.football365.com/john-nicholson/7678779/John-NicholsonChelsea have got no chance. Barcelona are far too good for them over two legs.
A Spanish win is inevitable. Barca are football magicians. Messi is a secular god.
Yeah, yeah. We know. But football cares nothing for such wisdom. It doesn't care who is or isn't the greatest side ever to walk the earth or who is the most tedious to watch, both of which may well be Barcelona. There is always a way to lose every game, there is always a way to win any game.
To win this one, Chelsea need to learn from the unfashionable past.
The modern orthodoxy is that Barcelona are so brilliant that you do little more than stand back and admire them as they destroy you; applaud as they run in five. They are the purveyors of the holy football which must be worshipped. Right. So Chelsea have two choices - they can give up or they can fight.
There used to be a way to beat superior sides like this. It didn't always work but it often did. It is now much harder to pull it off and it will offend many people in a way which it never would have done in the past.
Here it is.
Some of you will hate me for even suggesting it, I know.
Hurt them.
Studs down the Achilles, tread on his feet, break a toe if you can, grab his bollocks, elbow in the ribs, knee in the throat. All accidental, all covert, all nasty as hell. It's okay, hurting Messi or Xavi or Iniesta is not like punching the baby Jesus in the face. They'll get over it.
If needs must, get a man sent off in injury-time for a bad tackle - make sure you bring on someone useless like Obi Mikel to deliver it; anything to put their best men out of the next game.
Chelsea don't have to deliver any career-ending assaults, just hurt enough players badly enough to reduce their impact in the first leg and put them out of the second. Is it legitimate as a tactic? It is if you get away with it.
Injuring a side's best players was never a tactic anyone in the past directly admitted to but it was understood by everyone that this is what would happen. Some men built careers on it. Season after season Liverpool would send Graeme Souness in as a hatchet man - not that he needed any encouragement, the desire to savage a player was always near the surface for Souey. In the first few minutes he'd perform a full-body tackle on the opposition playmaker like a heat-seeking missile, exploding the man in a profusion of limbs, mud and blood. It was cruel and heartless but also, a bit bloody brilliant. And the history books don't show Liverpool won all those European trophies because of their ability to hurt the key opposition players, they merely show their success.
The trouble is the rules have changed and in 2012 you will get sent off if you even sneeze over someone, so Chelsea need to set about Barcelona in as snidey, nasty and covert way as possible. Out-snideying and cheating Barcelona is tough to do, admittedly. Rarely has such a good side been such a team of whiney cheats, especially in big important games. But Chelsea can use this to their advantage.
Precisely because most of the Barcelona side are ruthlessly despicable cheaters, the referee will expect that. So when they go to ground clutching a part of their body that until a couple of seconds previously worked perfectly, there's a good chance the referee won't take their protestations seriously. If they are hurt deviously enough, the officials will merely think it is just Mr Sergio Biscuits et al up to their usual tricks.
They need to be cold and calculating though. No heat of battle stamping or kicking. That's no use. They need to do it professionally, out of view of the referees and apparently accidentally. They need to plan times to do it, who to hit and how to hit them. They should do most of the damage in the second half so the officials can't be alerted by half-time footage.
All players must know where to kick, tread and stamp for maximum damage and minimal risk. It takes bravery because they might get hurt. It is not a foolproof plan but it is a plan and it can work and Chelsea is the only team
with the physicality and the football quality to achieve it.
But inflicting injury is not enough. They also need to score. Here too, the past can help them. Forget trying to play football against Barcelona. Don't try to be classy or clever.
Boot it long and boot it long often. Get some bloody snow on it. There's no shame in doing that even though the purists will hate you for it, especially if you win. Hurting them and beating them with the long ball will be like the devil taking over the church for some.
Chelsea is the only top English club that can and do play the long ball with any success. It's harder to do than many imagine. You need the men to do it. Small nippy forwards are no good. You need a massive b**tard who can roll like a tank towards the goal. As the magnificent Didier Drogba proved on Sunday, a big hoof down the pitch to him can be the most dangerous ball played. Critics of the long ball say it is boring and brutal and of course it often is. But that's because it is usually done by poor sides that have no alternative in their armoury. A good side who knows how and when to play it long is a different prospect all together. Was Drogba's weekend goal boring? No it was one of the finest you'll see.
Increasingly, top defenders don't play against the well-played long ball or against a big physical striker who knows how to play the tactic properly. Defenders are far more used to it being played on the deck, around and through them. The long ball is so out of fashion amongst the best sides that it will be the greatest challenge Chelsea can give to Barcelona.
What Chelsea must not do is try and play football. Everyone who tries that gets torn a new one by the Catalans. What they must do is play a dirty, disruptive and downright dull game, smother Barcelona in the midfield and hurt their best players. It almost worked for Holland in the World Cup final. Indeed, with better finishing, it would have worked. Their breathtaking display of brutality might have found few fans but that's not relevant. This is not a beauty contest or some moral debate. 'By all mean necessary' should be the Blues' motto.