A long route for Barcelona to meet Inter

The Preacher of Beautiful Football

Barcelona will meet Inter Milan tonight for the first leg of Champions League semifinal. The team has to travel by bus over 1,000km, with a stop in Cannes before setting the next day trip to Milan, the fashion capital! It would be a huge disadvantage for Barcelona and we will see whether this shortcoming has any effect on the team.

Hopefully it will be another beautiful game by Barcelona, not marred by bad physical tackles on tiny but incredible players.



My prediction:

Inter 1 Barcelona 2 :)

"The Special One" who doesn't understand beautiful football, yet. Still can improve!

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Guardiola expecting Inter to be tougher than Arsenal

Having seen his team create a plethora of chances in destroying Arsenal in the previous round, Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola insists his team won't have things so easy against Inter Milan.

The Italian champions host the holders in the Champions League semi-final, first leg at the San Siro here on Tuesday with many still purring over the Catalans' sumptuous play against Arsene Wenger's Londoners.

Barcelona produced a first half of mesmeric proportions in north London but still came away with only a 2-2 draw.

Yet in the return leg Argentina star Lionel Messi produced a majestic performance to score all four goals in a 4-1 dismantling of the Gunners.

But Guardiola believes this test will be much more difficult.

"We played very well in the last two games against Arsenal and we'll try to maintain that level," he said.

"I'd like to create the same number of chances we did against Arsneal but I don't think we will because Inter are so competitive, from the coach (Jose Mourinho) right through to the players.

"We're not the only team playing, there are the others too and sometimes they play well.

"Tomorrow we're playing a team like Inter who are four or five times champions of Italy.

Barca endured a nightmare journey just to arrive in Milan, travelling the 1,000km by bus and stopping overnight in Cannes, but Guardiola insisted they will not be making any excuses.

"It's not an ideal situation playing a Champions League game after 14 hours in a bus but it's the volcano, you can't do anything about it," he added.

"We could have stayed at home and lost the match 3-0 but we wanted to play and we took the bus and wanted to do it in the most comfotable way so we took two buses.

"Of course it's not easy coming by bus but they do it every day in the second and third divisions."


To read more, click on the title!

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The Special Battle begins – but can Mourinho settle a score with his old club?

"Everything is in place then for Inter against Barcelona, Mourinho against Guardiola. The Special One against the apparently even more special one. Mourinho once said: "Barcelona is a great club but in my short time as a coach I have won just as many European Cups as them." That was true when he was starting out at Chelsea, but things have changed. Guardiola made it 3-1 to Barça last season... Mourinho has got some catching up to do."