Possibly? It definitely wasn’t their great football. Every round it was: ‘Surely they can’t luck out again!?’, but they did. That’s sport and stranger things have happened, although I struggle to think of any.
As bucketybuck says, the park the bus approach - which is a legitimate tactic, although not my favorite - didn’t actually work given the amount of chances both Bayern and Barcelona had in their matches. The sole fact that they needed penalty misses in both games, tells you that it was more luck than anything else. Chelsea 2009 and Inter 2010 used these approaches effectively against Barca, Chelsea 2012 lucked out.
No, they didn’t win the European cup by just getting lucky.
You do what you can with the players you have. Deep defence and counter-attack are perfectly valid ways of playing. Mourinho chose a different path that was equally effective. Neither is objectively “better”.
Chelsea knew they couldn’t prevent chances and chose to harry and hassle them in deep positions. Barca fluffed chances under intense defensive pressure, it had a huge amount to do with how Chelsea played.
Except that people are saying exactly that. More knowledgeable people than you or I. And of course it was effective, several times, when it really mattered.
I thought it was clear five minutes in that Di Matteo had told his boys to always have 8 or 9 behind the ball, hell Drogba was defending more than he was attacking, and hit on the counter attack or set pieces. Apparently it was not.
The match (and the semi final) was a classic case of a superior team being undone by smart tactics and strategy. Chelsea knew that they would lose if they attempted to play differently (for one Bayerns flank play would have destroyed them). Last year Man U tried to out Barca Barca and got hammered for their troubles.
They kepth Lahm and Gomez quite all night. The pig rider was contained and only Muller caused problems. It should be noted that of the 30 or so shots on target only a handful were genuine scoring oppurtinities. Not for nothing did Robben make those long range attempts. It was a well thought out and executed plan not just luck. Did they have luck; sure all winners do. But Bayern also had luck (their goal for instance should have been saved by Cech). It was not the main reason for Chelsea’s victory.
Otherwise, people must have been watching a different match then me.
We shall have to agree to disagree, because I seriously disagree.
As has been noted, Chelsea’s simplistic approach of parking the bus didn’t actually work! Chelsea did not deny either Barcelona or Bayern Munich goalscoring opportunities, both teams had multiple chances to win the games! They didn’t take them, but it was because of failings on their own part, not because of anything Chelsea did.
It was not superior tactics that forced Robben or Messi to miss their penalties, or forced Sanchez or Gomez to miss relatively easy chances. They had a limited gameplan and they got away with it. Fair play to them, but lets not pretend that if the game was played ten times that Bayern would not win nine of them.
But those chances don’t happen in isolation do they? Messi stepping up for a penalty knows full well that for all their possession they aren’t getting enough genuine chances and…hey…here’s one on a plate for me! No pressure there Lionel.
And there is no way that Bayern are anywhere near 9:1 on favourites for such a match. Let me know the name of your bookie if you can get those odds. I’d suggest a 6-4 maybe 7-3 balance but the whole point of the Chelsea game plan is to tilt the odds towards the former rather than the latter. In order to do that you need a plan and have the discipline and fitness to execute it.
And nothing wrong with it being a simple plan. Brian Clough (who knew a thing or two about winning European cups and getting moderate players to perform as a collective) was a big fan of simplicity.
Was any luck involved…of course. Was it only luck? No, and to suggest otherwise is rather disrespectful. (and that is from someone who loves watching Barcelona play and who couldn’t care less about Chelsea.)
Semantics: It was the Champions League Final, not the “European Cup.” I think “European Cup” would more aptly describe the Euro Championship, which is a competition between all the nations of Europe and not club teams.
Also, if a nil-nil score at the half surprises you, I don’t think football/soccer is the game for you.
It may be a UK or a generational thing but most people I know call what they won “The European Cup” and for the national team competition we would say “European Championship”
Plus the trophy itself is the same one as was used when the competition was really “The European Cup” (well…a remake of the same design as Liverpool got to keep the last one in 2005)
Not sure if it has an “official” name but if you went into the Liverpool trophy room and pointed at it and asked what it was, I’d expect they would say “The European Cup”
I agree with you about leagues not being won by luck. But tournaments? Luck plays a much bigger part. Especially in knockout rounds. Chelsea was lucky.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you here. My concern is that people dismiss their achievements as purely luck and error on the part of the opposition and don’t give them due credit for their strategy, tactics and effort. When clearly they executed their plan very well.
Plus, their plan was not purely negative, when they needed to score they pushed and they scored.
And finally, they did this over multiple games, most strikingly in home and away ties against Barcelona.
Exactly, Chelsea’s strategy made good use of the resources at their disposal. Despite clearly not being the best side in Europe, they gave themselves a decent chance of winning.
Wasn’t what is now the Champions League a straightforward single-elimination tournament (although it may have had home-and-away legs before the final)? Back then, it was pretty much universally called the European Cup. I think its official name was something like the “European Champions’ Cup.”
I know that Terry has recently acquired this reputation due to his fling with another player’s girlfriend. But I recall comments well before that incident referring to him in a similar manner. What’s his story and why is he viewed in such a negative light?
I still read a whole lot about luck… with an ending that seems to be written towards the intended audience. I heard a whole lot Dutch commentators, mostly former players and certainly ‘bigger names’ than Ashish Magotra, who were absolutely dismissive of Chelsea’s performance… almost bordering on the insulting; they were definitely stronger in their classifications as I would be (and have been in this thread). I like the way one of the most respected BBC writers (Tim Vickery) describes it in his first paragraph. No too diferent from what Quercus wrote here.
My (biased) view is that he is a bit of a thug on the pitch who is very good at getting away with it - in the semi-final he was caught out, and to be fair to him (though I see no reason to, other than for the mental exercise of it :)) that was perhaps atypical, but he has frequently been booked and sent off throughout his career for bad tackles, he is a leading practitioner of shirt-pulling, plus basically I don’t think he is a world-class centre-back - particularly now he has lost half a yard of pace.
Oh, and in addition to the thing about sleeping with a former team-mate’s girlfriend, he has been accused of racism - not sure what the final outcome of that was, but no smoke without fire I think.