It was a nerve racking 2 days of exciting football action in Europe’s Premier club tournament that saw many football hearts broken especially If they were Manchester United or Arsenal fans. Both these clubs suffered losses that will no doubt have even bigger impact on their domestic title aspirations. Barcelona and Bayern Munich qualified at their expense to set up mouth watering ties against Inter Milan and Olympique Lyon respectively.
In the other fixture last night, Bordeaux were 1-0 winners over Olympique Lyon at the Stade Chaban Chelmas with Marouane Chamakh grabbing the only goal of the night. That however, was not enough to ensure their progression to the semis as Lyon were 3-2 aggregate winners.
For the first time in 3 years, there are no English clubs in the semi finals. However, what is even more shocking is that you have to go back 8 years to get the last time Bayern featured in a semi final of the Champions League. Inter also broke the curse that seemed to have followed them for 7 years when they overcame CSKA Moscow on Tuesday night.
Now, I have said this before and i will say it again. Inter Milan will make it through to the finals and going by last night’s results, my best bet is that they will face Bayern Munich (although Lyon are no pushovers).
That will definitely be a good final. i know you might be thinking that i have totally lost mind. No, I am perfectly sane. Barcelona were perfect against Arsenal and many will expect them to display that same form when they take on Inter. The truth is, Inter are a much more compact squad and Barca will be lucky if Messi gets a crack at goal.
When these two clubs met in the group stages, Barcelona emerged victorious. Fortunately for Inter, Lightning does not strike the same spot twice. So going by the law of averages, Inter are favourites to beat the Catalans this time round.
Bayern on the other hand have the momentum to get them past Lyon. Lyon do have amazing players within their ranks but Bayern have the experience in their Champions League winning coach Louis Van Gaal. Van Gaal won this tournment with Ajax back in 95 with a star studded team that had Van de Sar, Seedorf, Davids, Kanu and Finidi George amongst others.
That said, talk is cheap and both these teams will have to prove themselves in about a weeks time. So before you bit off my head lets wait and see what happens.
Photo credit: tisaigon
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