THE CHAMPIONS League got out of hand this week. It was exactly what the tournament needed. We virtually knew in advance who would be in these quarter-finals and even the presence of Porto was a very small surprise since the serial winners of the Portuguese championship are not an assortment of weaklings.
If the Champions League was to be revitalised we had to see the familiar characters behaving in an entirely unfamiliar manner.
All of that was delivered. The single predictable outcome was Barcelona’s 4-0 rout of Bayern Munich, particularly since Lucio and Philipp Lahm were missing from the German club’s back four. It was lazy for anyone to assume Porto would be the flimsiest side. The embarrassment of Bayern’s drubbing was made memorable by the reaction of Franz Beckenbauer. The club president, a hyperbole addict, called the first-half showing the worst in Bayern’s history.
Rafael Benitez is much too circumspect for denunciation of that sort, but he could not have guessed at the brittleness Chelsea would expose in a 3-1 win at Anfield. Such a quantity of goals breached the unofficial quota applied to fixtures between these teams. Chelsea had manifestly applied a lot of thought to several aspects.
Steven Gerrard was bottled up by Michael Essien. The Ghanaian, a good footballer with great physical power, was the complete antidote to Liverpool’s dynamic captain. Everyone appreciates that Benitez depends on Gerrard, since even Fernando Torres will be at a disadvantage if the midfielder is tamed. At 26, Essien can emerge as a leader in the next phase of Chelsea’s history.
The 3-1 victory, all the same, was about more than the readiness of individuals. Liverpool would have anticipated the difficulty of this encounter, but not the collapse in their organisation following Torres’ opener. Defeat has many accompanying pains and Benitez was sentenced to revisit his Anfield past in the wake of Branislav Ivanovic’s two goals from corner kicks.
In his first year at the club, when Liverpool were fragile at set pieces, Benitez had to argue for his preference for zonal marking. If you weren’t careful he would even pelt you with statistics. In Britain we still have a nostalgia for man-marking. It is true that Liverpool’s present policy requires a lot of communication among players and an alertness as opponents make their runs.
The team floundered, but it is idle to pretend that the alternative is foolproof. When man-marking is employed, the risk is that the opposition will be handed the initiative. They can compel their supposed jailers to follow them. That drags defenders out of key areas.
Whatever went wrong for Liverpool, it was not born of flawed ideology. Guus Hiddink had noticed specific faults and readied his players to exploit them. Gerrard was given hardly any space to embark on driving runs. Benitez might have shifted him wide, but that would have been a concession. The Liverpool manager settled for a hope that Gerrard’s moment would come.
Chelsea had the broader base of talent. Hiddink’s ability as a confidence-builder has been under-estimated. Who ever thought Salomon Kalou and Florent Malouda would hit such a peak, let alone on the same evening at, of all places, Anfield? Liverpool have, to all intents and purposes, been eliminated.
The remaining Premier League clubs have their hopes. Arsenal have been through hard times in which an apparent battle with Aston Villa for fourth place looked the key assignment. All the while, though, they knew that players such as Emmanuel Adebayor and Cesc Fabregas would come back from injury. The Gunners, despite losing William Gallas for the rest of the season after knee damage, are on course for the semi-finals following an enjoyable 1-1 draw away to Villarreal. They are real contenders for the trophy now.
A relative freshness is their precious resource. How Manchester United would love a share of it. Their squad is large yet still there is a fatigue that must originate in the mind rather than the body. Unable or unprepared to press like a Premier League club, they let Old Trafford become a showcase for Porto’s passing and movement in a 2-2 draw.
It is confirmation of the Champions League’s enthralling volatility this week that, with the exception of Bayern, it should be recent winners of the tournament, United and Liverpool, who are most at risk of elimination.
Guardian Service
