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| gomes celebrates his winning goal with his bayern team-mates |
this time around last year the most major difference in the inter squad was of course the absence of the charismatic jose mourinho under whom they secured the treble....leonardo surprisingly has had a better start to life at inter than the portugese but inter are still yet to show the same potential in the champions league as they did last year and on a defensive note this years side cant even come close to previous years having conceded the most number of goals in the italian league(*top 4*)!....diego milito was injured for this 1 and a 4-3-2-1 system was played with julio cesar(*Captain*) between the sticks....maicon, lucio, ranocchia and chivu were in defence and motta, zanetti and cambiaso were played in midfield....wes sneijder and stankovic played "in the hole" behind eto....
van gaal started his regular 4-2-3-1 system with kraft in goal, lahm(*captain*), badstuber, tymoschuk and pranjic in defence...schweinsteiger and gustavo in midfield with robben right, ribery left and muller playing behind gomez...
what followed was surprisingly a very very open game considering the defensive(*atleast from inters p.o.v*) line ups!...and it was the italians who had the early chances with ranocchia getting a shot in on goal in the very first minute!...eto also got a good oppurtunity to open the scoring but he shot from a difficult angle and on his weaker foot so it wasn much of a problem for kraft!....at the other end ribery hit the crossbar from a header following a cross from arjen robben!...the dutchman has only recently come back from injury and has given bayern that electrifying pace and skill down the right hand side that they bad been missing while he had been out!...
bayern were the better side during the opening 45 min controlling most of the possession and the chances....theyr defence also kept it very tight...the italians most of the times played very narrow since inter have never really had much width to them and the attacks are channeled down the center....the center area was made very crowded and the main player of inter...th 1 who makes them tick, wes sneijder wasn given any room at all to create chances or get shots on goal!...the german teams full backs also got higher up the pitch when bayern were in possession of the ball due to lack of width from the italians and chivu in particular was having a rough night against the combination of lahm and robben
SECOND HALF
inter started the second half on a more positive note and got a bit better through out the second 45....bayern were still bossing them from the wide positions and at times it seemed no1 at all was tracking either lahm or pranjic!....the front 3 always stayed up the field and didn help out in defending....
robben came very close to breaking the deadlock on the 53rd when following some good work from schweinsteiger, the flying dutchman drifted past challenges and hit a good right footed shoot from the left side of the box but it hit the near post and went out for a goal kick!...the second half was certainly a whole lot more entertaining and many more chances were created...the majority by the men in red and white and actually there was a whole 10 min period from the 60th min onward when there was wave after wave of attacks coming in from the germans and they had 5 or 6 good chaces to score!....ranocchia got injured after that and was taken away on a stretcher to be replaced by houssine kharja....inter were better in the 10 min leading up to the goal and created a few good chances in quick succession
then came the defining moment of the match when following a good cross field ball from ribery, robben was allowed to come in on his left foot as he soo loves to do and took a shot at goal which bounced awkwardly in front of cesar who could only parry it into the path of the on rushing gomez...he tapped in from 3 yards out and clenched a very well deserved win for the german side who will be very very happy right now knowing they got theyr revenge from the side that beat them in the final last year and have 1 foot in the quarter final with that invaluable away goal advantage!....for inter a lesson learnt harshly and leonardo will definitely need to put a more positive and attacking side in the match at the allianz if he is to have any hope of recovering something from this fixture
(*btw guys i noticed the commenting on my blog had been limited to only those who had subscribed and i felt that a bit unfair so now any1 can comment anonymously on any of the posts!*)...
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