A new Richard Swarbrick animation...El Clasico

[MrCoffee]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGUtpF2n5aM

I love the happy Pep and sad Jose. This guy is amazing.


In case you missed it, check out his Gareth Bale animation

[Upton]

1. Why is it

that every time Barca is having a bit of difficulty in the CL, a mysterious red card comes out? Listen to Mourinho:

"I just have one question: Why?" he added. "Why Ovrebo , Busacca , Stark? In each semi-final it is the same. We are talking about an absolutely fantastic team. Why didn't Chelsea make the final? Why did Inter have to be saved by a miracle?

"Congratulations to Barcelona. But I just do not understand why Barcelona always receive the help of the referee. All my life I will be asking myself this question, and one day I hope to receive an answer.

"I am not too sad, I have a great family. But I don't understand why Barcelona have this power. It happened two years ago to Chelsea (in the 2009 semi-finals), almost to my Inter last year, and also to Arsenal this year."

"Why do the opponents of Barcelona always have a man sent off?"

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/912532/mourinho:-barcelona-have-knocked-us-out?cc=5901

That's a damn good question Jose..

[MrCoffee]

2. Easy answer

Defenses get frustrated with Barca's possession game, as a result, the fouls are more frequent and more aggressive.

Real had 29% of the possession in the first half. You simply cannot prepare players like those on Real to accept that. They want the ball, and they get frustrated when they can't get it.

There's no conspiracy, it's just the natural response to playing Barca.

[Upton]

3. I'm sorry but I'm not going for it..

I mean, is that what happened when RvP was so unjustly sent off? That had absolutely nothing to do with amount of possession or anything else..other than the fact that Barca needed a favor to score to avoid being eliminated

Did you see the way they were flopping around? Both teams were...La Liga play at it's finest. Reminded me of Spain's national team last year.

I'm sick and tired of Barca being given advantages by the refs. RM, Chelsea, Inter, Arsenal..come on. Perhaps, Barca's opponents should just start the match with 10 men from now on. That way the ref won't have to worry about making up some excuse to send a man off.

I don't know if it's a conspiracy or what, but Mourinho is right, just as Wenger was..

[HuckleB]

4. IT'S A CONSPIRACY!!!!

:rofl:

[MrCoffee]

5. The RvP card was completely insane, yes...but read Paul Hayward in today's Guardian

Pretty compelling argument that the Special One's problem isn't a conspiracy, it's his flawed gameplan. He keeps playing Barca exactly the same way, and it's not as effective with Real as it was with Inter.

At this point on his grand tour of Europe (Portugal, England, Italy and now Spain), Mourinho has landed himself with an image problem. Up in the presidential chambers of the Bernabéu there will be new grumbling about Real's deviation from the stylistic norm. How, the plutocrats will ask, did their disputatious coach expect to knock Barcelona out with 28% possession, in his own stadium – and by leaving Kaká, Karim Benzema and Gonzalo Higuaín on the bench for the full 90 minutes?

Plainly, Pepe's dismissal around the hour mark wrecked Mourinho's plot to blitz Barcelona in the final 20 minutes. But the clan will still ask why he stationed seven defensive players behind three ineffective counterattackers in the first half and posted a dire 29% possession rate up to the interval.

To liven up his team, Mourinho sent on the target man, Emmanuel Adebayor, for the second half, rather than the speedier Benzema or the more cunning Higuaín. In other words, the coach displayed a timid mindset not from the moment of Pepe's dismissal but from the first whistle: a reflection of his belief that the only way to defeat Pep Guardiola's ball-hoggers was to block them off and hope to get lucky on the break.

This worked for Mourinho's Internazionale because their counterattacking was determined and lethal. Real's breakout strategy never got off the ground because Mesut Ozil was innocuous and Cristiano Ronaldo failed to scatter Barça's makeshift defence, in which Javier Mascherano, press-ganged into service at centre-back, presented an obvious weak spot that Ronaldo neglected to exploit.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/apr/28/jose-mourinho-real-madrid-tactics

As to the RvP card, that was the one of the most obscenely ridiculous cards I can recall.

[HuckleB]

6. RvP was not a straight red, remember.

It was clear that he'd been given a good deal of leeway already, and when you have a yellow, you don't mess around like that. He pushed it one bit too far. It's ludicrous to simply say it's about him getting one yellow and then only getting a yellow for wasting time. There was much more to the equation. This seems to be lost on far too many. When you run your mouth off at the ref, you put yourself in his sights. RvP has no one to blame but himself, and it's ridiculous to play the conspiracy theory card, especially if you actually watched the game.

[Upton]

7. I try to watch all the Arsenal matches..

either live or on delay. That even includes pre-season stuff like the Emirates Cup, so I sure don't miss CL ties..

Yeah, RvP was sitting on a yellow...something Busacca was more than aware of. Which makes one wonder even more why he would give RvP another for kicking the ball one second after the whistle. A whistle van Persie claims he couldn't even hear through the noise of a crowd of some 95,000. It becomes really outrageous when you consider the same ref let Abidal get away with something like this:



As far as the conspiracy talk goes, I tend to think Barca gets all these favors because of their reputation more than anything else. Most of this crap happens at Camp Nou...and frankly, it appears even some of the best refs are intimidated....but it's got to stop.

If you watched the game yesterday, you saw a Barca team flopping and diving continually, plus ganging up on the ref until they finally got their way.

[HuckleB]

8. Yeah, sure, you betcha.

The red is on RvP, not on the ref. Whine away about it, and whine away about Barca. I appreciate the fodder.

:rofl:

[many a good man]

9. Shoe's on the other foot

And Mighty Mou's foot is in his mouth...

Mourinho may be blessed with the memory of an elephant, but he certainly chooses to use it very selectively.

Mourinho didn’t win his Champions League trophies just with “hard word, pride, effort and sweat” - he also received some favourable refereeing decisions (and fortune) along the way. In the 2003-04 edition, his Porto side were on the verge of elimination during their second round tie with Manchester United. Ahead 1-0 in the second-leg at Old Trafford, the dominant English champions had a Paul Scholes goal scandalously disallowed for a non-existent offside decision. This meant that a last-minute strike from Costinha, following a shocking goalkeeper error by Tim Howard, put Porto through 3-2 on aggregate. Mourinho didn’t complain, instead he raced down the touchline for his famous celebration.

In the 1-0 semi-final victory over Deportivo, Jose also benefited from outrageous refereeing. In the first-leg in Portugal, which finished 0-0, one of Depor’s star players Jorge Andrade was sent off for playfully kicking at former team-mate Deco. The pair unsuccessfully remonstrated with referee Markus Merk that they were just fooling around, Andrade repeating the words: “He’s my friend, he‘s my friend”. The red card had a huge bearing on the tie. Without their rock in defence, Deportivo lost the return 1-0 at home, and Mourinho’s Porto proceeded to the final where they beat Monaco 3-0.

Fast forward six years to Mourinho’s second Champions League triumph, and once again Inter’s success was not as black and white as he'd like us to think. Granted, the Nerazzurri were deserving champions, but they had their rub of the green on the path to glory too. In the second round first leg with Chelsea at San Siro, the Londoners would have probably returned to Stamford Bridge with a 2-2 draw had referee Mejuto Gonzalez awarded Chelsea a penalty for a clear last-man trip on Salomon Kalou by Walter Samuel, which could have also potentially resulted in a red card for the Argentine.


http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/editorial/2011/04/29/2463454/scholes-2004-abidal-2009-milito-2010-jose-mourinho-is-a

[Upton]

10. Oh you like to read...

okay..

Messi and Mourinho mask Barca shame

Pepe's key dismissal feeds into the second key debate: Barcelona's behaviour. Though the Portugal international's boot was high, it certainly felt as though his dismissal had as much to do with Dani Alves' exaggerated reaction and the hounding of the referee by Barcelona players as it did the challenge itself. A yellow card would have sufficed, but Alves ensured Real, and a Mourinho team, would yet again lose a player in a match against Barcelona. His brief departure on a stretcher only added to his dramatic performance.

In this, though, Alves was far from alone. Pedro and, unsurprisingly, Sergio Busquets, were guilty of the most rank and reprehensible play-acting seen in some time. Real are far from innocent on this front of course, but seeing players of the quality and ability of the two World Cup winners indulge in the dark arts was painful. Perhaps it is the knowledge that Barcelona do not need to stoop to such depths that made it hurt so much; their ability alone is enough to ensure their superiority, and certainly over two legs.
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Real were guilty to a lesser degree, but it was Barcelona who surrendered their hard-won moral high ground with their histrionics. We can expect some devilish behaviour from Real Madrid, managed by Mourinho and containing Pepe, but it is becoming an ever more evident part of Barca's approach as well. If Real were said to have abandoned their principles by adopting an oppressive yet legitimate defensive strategy, then what of Barcelona and their behaviour?
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On Thursday morning, Barcelona's carefully crafted, shiny image looks a little duller than usual.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/912767/lionel-messi-and-jose-mourinho-mask-barcelona-shame?cc=5901

[many a good man]

11. Oh, I read that, too

And I agree with it 100%.

The ref's whistle was silent the first half hour of the match while RM brutalized the smaller Barca team. At first I could forgive the theatrics just to get the ref's attention, but it just got out hand - on both sides. One more clasico to go...