Barcelona Advances To Champions League Quarters

Barcelona drew with Chelsea 1-1 in the second leg of the Champions League pre quarter finals to advance on aggregate (3-2) having won the first leg 2-1.

Revenge is sweet. Last year was heart breaking for the fans of Barcelona including yours truly. The exit after losing to Chelsea in the two-leg Champions League pre-quarters was very hard to digest. After all, Barcelona was playing excellent football. Being excellent is not good enough though. The game is so uncertain that it can change within minutes. You have to fight against the unpredictable nature of the game itself. That is when a team keeps winning which translates to real greatness.

Coming to the game. Chelsea started off controversially arriving late in the tunnel. Jose Mourinho was already there but the team wasn’t. It meant that the start was delayed by three minutes. The early game saw some excellent passes between Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho. Messi limped off in the 25th minute, which may explain why he missed the weekend La Liga match, to be replaced by Henrik Larsson.

The first half was tight with Barcelona having more possession. They had many more chances as well. Chelsea managed a few chances which were more dangerous, but without any results. Crespo replaced Drogba in the 58th minute while Mourinho theatricals were showing no signs of reducing in the back ground. Crespo soon had a real chance of scoring but strike was wide to the anguish of Chelsea.

Ronaldinho kept up his skill and as the clock ticked on, the task at hand kept becoming tougher. It became near impossible when Ronaldinho scored the first goal of the match in the 78th minute. John Terry’s defense had no answer to the Ronaldinho brilliance. All Chelsea could do was hope to score two goals to force an over time. Had the shot of Eto’o gone in instead of hitting the pole for a 2-0 score line, the victory would have been more convincing.

Article Author: Pratyush Khaitan

Pratyush Khaitan is a young entrepreneur. When he is not handling business, he is the sports editor of Desicritics, a movie buff and a sports writer. He analyses sports at Sportolysis.

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