"Celtic Can Join Us In CL 16"- Lionel Messi

3 La Liga's
2 Champions Leagues
2 Copa Del Rey
2 World Club Cups
3 Spanish Super Cups
2 Ueffa Super Cups

Isn't underacheiving. Barcelona have also made their greatest ever start to a La Liga campaign with 28 points from 10 game so they aren't in decline.

 

I do agree with you liam, There is smaller teams out their with smaller budgets that have went and played a good game against barca.

Im going to the game on Wednesday and am * praying we dont end up with 10 men behind the ball for 90 minutes.

We have a good team im not saying we should go all out but 10 men behind the ball for 90 minutes is a disgrace infront of your own fans.

CMON the hoops get into this mob and dont give them time on the ball as Dundee Utd did to us at the weekend.

 

I like Barca, but it iritates me when they think every team should attack against them no matter how good the side are. We have a decent squad full of young players who will only get better, but lets face it, if we played a 4 - 4 - 2 against Barca we would get absolutely destroyed.

Footballs all about tactics, you do what you have to do to get something out of the game. I wouldn't care less if we stuck 10 men behind the ball Wednesday so long as we come out with something.

 

Given that they are "the greatest team ever" though, they should have won even more than that still.
They should have won every single Champions League and La Liga without fail since 2007, at least.

The way they bottled La Liga last year was criminal, I couldn't believe it. Now fair enough, they are only mortal at the end of the day and every team makes mistakes and has blips, but considering their brilliance I actually don't think they've been as dominant as they could/should have.

 

Cheeky *, Barca can join us in the last 16

I fail to see the praise from Messi. Seems to me he is trying to heap pressure on us by making us favourites for 2nd place, and also to get us to open up a bit by saying we should attack more.

If we play like we did at the Camp Nou and come away with a point I will be delighted.

 

Most Barca players are respectful yes, but they also have the worst diver and cheater in world football in Biscuits, his antics are sickeningly embarrassing and make you want to either laugh or cry.

Messi himself has also kicked out at players a few times, not least Pepe which was understandable and maybe just, but still not very gentlemanly or respectful conduct.

This myth that all Barca players are really nice guys whereas Real are all * is exactly that - a myth.

 

To be honest if we dont touch the ball for 90 minutes and get away with a 0 0 draw I will be delighted.

I would hate to support a boring team and would get bored quickly if we starting playing negative football more often than not. But in one off games when the odds are so heavily stacked against you I see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

Dont get me wrong we still need an out ball and I hope to see a few celtic chances. But realistically I think we need to be very defensive and very patient to get anything out this game

 

Exactly. This is Barca we are talking about. Far, far greater teams than us, with astronomically bigger budgets than ours have shut up shop against Barca.

We should not be pressured into going on the offensive, not by Messi, the press or our own fans.

Patience, and picking and choosing your assaults into enemy territory are the order of the day on Wednesday.

Blanking out the emotion of the crowd and sticking to the gameplan is what's needed.

edit. Blanking out the crowd was a poor choice of words but the sentiment remains.

 

What's so funny? Barca with "the greatest team ever" have only won 2 of the last 6 Champions Leagues. If they were truly the best EVER - i.e. in over 200 years of football - then surely they would have easily won every competition they entered, bar maybe the odd domestic cup?

Real Madrid managed 5 European Cups in a row in the 50s, why can Messi and co not do the same nowadays?

 

Och that's daft reasoning.


Maybe you have a point and the Madrid team of the 50s was better (most people just don't remember them) but to slate Barca for only winning 2 of the last 6 is to do them a real disservice.

 

Barca have bigger things to worry about, like how they're gonna contain wee Paddy McCourt, and how they're gonna break down the likes of big Kelvin Wilson and the Norweigan brick wall of Thomas Rogne, and how they're gonna cope when the tall greek Samaras is blistering down the wing at 1000mph, and how Valdez is gonna handle Commons 60 yard screamers.

 

The best team in the world doesn't always win every trophee. If Barcelona isn't the best team in the world, then who is?

 

The Pep Guardiola era only started in mid 2009 and his team only failed to win 5 trophies.

To say they have underacheived is quite frankly ridiculous.

 

* right we will Lionel, you wee weirdo

 

I know, i'm playing devil's advocate. If the current Barca are better than the Madrid of the 50s, or the Benfica team of that era, or any other team ever - then why haven't they replicated or beaten them?

They are the best team in the world, no-one has denied that. The "best team EVER" bit is the point I am talking about.

Ok I gather you're a Barca fanboy so reasoning will be pointless with you but do you really think they are the greatest team EVER IN THE HISTORY OF PLANET EARTH? And if so why have they failed to win these 5 trophies.

 

They're obviously going to expect to win every match they play, it's not really arrogance. The thing that * me off is this 'anti-football' horseshit that some of the Barcelona players have mentioned - 'not playing football the right way'. I might consider it 'anti-football' if we had even a tenth of their budget and went out and played with 11 men behind the ball but we don't - our entire team cost a fair bit less than Alex Song and we played defensively for large parts of the game, but we also attacked Barcelona, passed the ball along the deck, tried to retain possesion and played with at least two players forward as outlets for the defence throughout the match... and scored a goal. Hardly what I'd call 'anti-football' against a team that's widely regarded as the greatest ever.

We were the team who broke Internazionale's catenaccio, we play with wing backs, we don't punt the ball up to a big target man and hope for the best, we're not overly reliant on set-pieces to beat teams and we tend to go all out attack - sometimes to our peril -against almost every team we come up against - so surely we're the antithesis of an 'anti-football' team, are we not? If we had Barcelona's resources we'd go out and play them off the park... but we don't, so we can't. We have to play defensively. It's not a bad thing.

 

The only way to beat Barca is "anti football" anyway.

Inter, Chelsea, Real. It is physically impossible to do anything other than hit them on the counter, and even then you only pull it off 1% of the time.

 

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