A Sputtering Giant

As you the reader may or may not know, I am an avid soccer player. I both play and watch soccer on a regular basis. I don't particularly want to go through and explain my soccer history, but believe me when I say that I am well seasoned and know more than most about the beautiful game. I've been wanting for a while to write a post about this large portion of my life, so I thought yesterday presented a great opportunity to talk about the big game in the Copa del Rey Semi-Final game between Barcelona and Real Madrid. For those of you that don't know, Barcelona has been a perennial power house in the past 4-5 years and has been regularly regarded as one of the best if not the best club sides in the history of our sport. One of the keys to their superiority comes from the ball possession tactics that all Barcelona players are forced to learn at an early age and never deviate from. It is commonplace for Barcelona to see 75% possession of the ball in their games. The problem is that they have become predictable.

Barcelona thrives on keeping the ball and outsmarting the other team. They never rush to a decision. They probe in and around the defense looking for the weak point in the armor, until finally they sense their endless passing game has tired out the other team and they catch them not paying attention. This tactic is beautiful to watch and is effective in most games, the problem comes when Barca comes face to face with better teams. Due to their style of play, better teams know to crowd back and just hold their shape. The longer Barca passes around the opposing teams 18 yard box, the more tempted Barca players are to get forward trying to make penetrating runs into the defense. This picture was taken from the game yesterday against Real Madrid.

This shows how all 10 of Barcelona's field players are within 40 yards of Madrid's goal. This is the problem I see with this tactic. Against unskilled, unprepared, and not very fast teams, this situation is feasible to protect yourself in (even with Barca's mediocre defense), but the problem is that against teams that have players that are much faster and skilled then Barca's defense (such as Madrid), this sort of field positioning is catastrophic. I realize that most of the Barcelona players are incredible passers and kept the ball well, but all it takes it one miss placed pass and the other team is on the counter. This was how the first two goals came for Madrid yesterday. Madrid took advantage of Barca playing high up the field and they took advantage, the first with Ronaldo forcing Pique into a 1v1 in the box and the second with Di Maria simply running onto a 50 yard clearance and absolutely embarrassing Puyol with a simple shimmy. The fact of the matter is that Barcelona has a weak defense to begin with. Non of them are really true defenders due to the way they are raised and trained in La Masia, so why not try and help these guys out with not forcing them to always be sprinting back into position to try and save a break away?

Now, I would like to address how Barcelona's crowding tactics on offense are hurting them as well. As I mentioned earlier, teams are starting to learn how to play against Barca. The good ones don't even worry about possession, because they know that they aren't going to out possess a team like Barcelona. For this reason, most teams are sitting back and letting Barcelona pass around them and are simply letting them take low chance shots or are simply stepping in at the right time to win the ball. This packing of the box that has become commonplace since my team (Chelsea) showed the world how to perfect it against Barca last year in the Champions league. Because of this, Barcelona are forcing themselves to make more and more difficult goals. With having 20 players within 40 yards of the goal, how does Barca expect to get enough space to get many chances against a well organized and prepared team? Barcelona seem to ignore the fact that sometimes just getting that quick long ball up to your play makers or taking a chance and trying to take a defender on rather than just passing backwards will cause the other team to make mistakes (just like Barca does when other teams do it to them). Barca truly needs to relearn the benefit of counter attack play or isolation of your play makers if just to make their play more unpredictable. How can you really expect Messi to do much when by the time the ball gets up to him, all of his other 9 teammates have stepped up to be within 10 yards of him and in consequence brought all of the rest of the defenders towards him. Barcelona need to add to their game and relearn the counter attack/fast break mentality. Without it, they are far too one dimensional, and are going to keep forcing their players to make incredible goals such as Jordi Alba's over the shoulder volley yesterday. The problem is that making those incredible goals are much more difficult than the tap ins that come from successful counter attacking play.

Here is a link to some nice long highlights of yesterday's game:
http://www.footytube.com/video/barcelona-real-madrid-feb26-161817

My Downton Obsession

Well, as NOT too many people know, I have an odd obsession with England/Britain. I don't know if it was started from my love of soccer and having English trainers and coaches when growing up or the fact that I became completely engrossed in Harry Potter as a young kid. It has always been a dream of mine to get to live in England and get to go to the pub each weekend and watch my favorite team Chelsea play. This rather unwarranted love of a country I've only ever spent two days in never usually intrudes on my daily life, other than the occasional occurrence of this love of England creating unorthodox and wonderful friendships with complete strangers. I do however notice that this "love of Mother England" seems to come through most often in my movie choices. I have always been extremely fond of Victorian period movies based in England and I will gladly admit and go on record as being a huge fan of the movie Pride and Prejudice (I am a romantic as well when the quality of the movie lives up to my standards). Anyways, this whole build up and back story of my inner Brit is to try and shed light on the fact that I could possibly be biased with my next review, but I will leave that to you to decide.

These past few weeks, I have caught the Downton Abbey fever, which for those of you that have never heard of the show, I will give a short synopsis. Downton Abbey is about a Duke and his family in early 1900s England that live in the town of Downton and own the large mansion known as Downton Abbey, which is where most of the story takes place. I will not pretend that the show entrances me with its unique and unorthodox storyline or incredible twists and turns along the way. It does not. There is no revolutionary innovation that makes Downton Abbey a necessary recommendation for an everyday person. And to most people, it can be fairly predictable at times. This is where my back story and bias comes into play. The story follows the lives of this Duke's family with both their tragedies and celebrations. It is essentially a british soap opera with quality writing and directing as well as great acting. However, this show shouldn't be confused for a standard telenovela that one would find on Univision. Downton Abbey is a wonderful show with beautiful visuals as well as interesting and well-developed characters, but it definitely doesn't set a new precedent which demands a wide audience. It isn't for everyone, but for those of you that don't mind a bit of melodrama and some sexy British accents, you should try out this show. If you get hooked, you're done. I'm through the first two seasons now (which is only about 14 episodes), and there is no drop in quality. I hope the third season holds true to this as well but we will see. So if you need a bit more Brit in your daily life, this is definitely where you can find it. I hope you all enjoy it as I have.