Arsenal - sore loosers ?
Is it just me who feels that Arsenal are sore loosers ? What's wrong with the UK press ?
I am a hardcore Barcelona supporter for the past 5 yrs (since those days of Overmars, Rivaldo, Luis Enrique). They always played entertaining heavenly football even during their worst of seasons. I do appreciate Arsenal alongside Liverpool as one of my favourite teams in the EPL. But what I saw in Paris was something different. I felt really uncomfortable watching the game after the sending-off of Lehman. Neverthless to say the game ended on a note that made me happy. Barcelona - Champions of Europe 2006 !.
But after watching Henry's emotional outburst about the refereeing and the anonymity of Ronaldinho and Eto, I feel he missed out the following aspects in the game :
1. He never rued of his missed chances in the opening 3 minutes.
2. Barcelona are never the team to sit back and defend once they have a goal advantage. Imagine if the goal had stayed and Lehman played on. Does he think that Arsenal would have surely won in that case ?
3. Okie the yellow card he got was kind of unfair. But what about the goal from the setpiece which Sol Cambell converted ?. Eboue (?) dived on receiving the faintest of contact with Puyol and won that freekick. What does Henry have to say about that ?
4. Larsson was the difference - agreed !. I would say Ronaldinho was the difference because if it weren't for his pin point killer pass to Eto, Lehman would not have made hell for himself. And that, was the turning point of the game -- the red-card incident !. Albeit harsh, the referee was 100% technically right :). I am not mentioning the pass Ronnie made after waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting .. to Eto, whose produced an amazing first touch and directed a shot goalwards, which deflected off the goalkeeper and bounced off the near post.
5. Ronaldinho was anonymous, well it would have been the same if they would have gang-marked him as well. He was left all alone as Barcelona were getting lost in their natural instinct to play attacking football, searcing for that equalising goal. And not to say on those errie counter attacks, when he just had Valdes to beat, he messes it up. Ronaldinho had the miserly Arsenal defence to beat all the time. But I also whole heartedly agree to the fact that our magician did not have his best of nights neither did Henry for that matter.
6. Eto's goal should have been disallowed ?.Well I guess the offside rule says that as long as the player does not interfere with the play his position doesn't count. The ball was being passed to Larsson and Eto was no where interfering in the gameplay. Larsson produced a dummy and that set up Eto who scored. So as far as I see it things are fine. AC Milan didn't make a hue cry of Vladmir Smicer's goal which was well left by Baros en route to goal, inspite of the latter being in an offside position. The Rosseneri rued, but then played on and didn't make a big deal of it.
7. Barcelona played with the best of composure, never the ones to loose their minds and stuck to their natural game. It payed off in style !
8. Refereeing had its share of unfair moments for both the sides. But it is all part of the game. If it was for proper and fair refereeing the game as I would have seen would have the score 2-0 to barcelona (the goal scored by guily stands, arsenal never wins the set-piece that resulted in the goal, beletti scores, henry keeps missing :) ). See, sounds stupid right ? ... exactly !
Henry must look at his team and more than that, at himself !. Things go wrong but that doesn't mean that at such a high level he doesn't pause to give credit to the ones who deserve to win. It's a known fact (not that I am a Barcelona supporter and I say it) -- Barca play the most heavenly of possesion and attacking football one has seen over the past 3 years. This was long overdue !
Hats off to Frank Rjikaard - for his vision, his team and his cool temprament !
Hats off to Arsenal because they could not have done better with 10 men !
Henry was unhappy not because he had it bad, but he was so pissed that others had it good !