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21.04.2010 11:50
Reasons to be hopeful ahead of the second leg
Jesús Carrillo
Pep Guardiola’s team has a fantastic home record in the Champions League but they’re going to need another magical performance to get past Inter next week.
The precedents in the Champions League knockout stages over the past two seasons give plenty of scope for optimism. This season, FC Barcelona piled on the goals in the home legs of the ties against Stuttgart and Arsenal, while in the same two knockout rounds last season they brushed aside Olympique Lyon and Bayern Munich in the Camp Nou.
No problem this year
The score lines in all four of the above matches would be sufficient to
put Barca into the Madrid final. In the R16 this year, Barca beat Stuttgart 4-0 with goals from
Messi (2), Pedro and Bojan. In the quarterfinals, they beat Arsenal 4-1 in a memorable match in
which Messi scored all four goals. Either score line would be more than enough to go through to a
second consecutive CL final for the first time in the Club’s history.
Knockout performances
Going back to last season, Barca beat French champions Lyon 5-2 in the
Camp Nou to qualify for the quarterfinals. There they beat Bayern Munich with four goals in half an
tour, more or less clinching a place in the semis before the return leg in the Allianz Arena.
Room for optimism
Of all the home matches played by Barca in the knockout stages of the Champions League over the
past two seasons, only one result would have stopped the team going through to the next round. A
goalless draw, such as we saw last season against Chelsea in the semi-finals, would hand a place in
this year’s final to Mourinho’s Inter. However, Barca went on to rectify that first leg
slip-up by knocking Chelsea out of the competition with a last-gasp goal from Iniesta in the return
leg at Stamford Bridge.
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