FC Barcelona – FC Bayern: Messi is so but better than Götze – ZEIT ONLINE

Bayern and Pep Guardiola in Barcelona getting a private lesson with ball. Now they are faced with in the Champions League. And most major debates.

May 7, 2015 07:05 clock

FC Barcelona hero Lionel Messi | © Reuters

The football crowd in Barcelona has a bad reputation. It is considered spoiled and capricious. From time to time it applauds, and if need be, it rises by goals also times of its seats. Often the Barceloner Crouching only rum and watch and mumble to himself. A theater audience precisely. But if the old Camp Nou, the largest stadium in Europe, actually vibrated slightly because 90,000 spectators scream and bounce when they sing their songs, so loud that an even hours later the head roars – then something special must have happened. Just as on this warm Wednesday night

3. 0 won the FC Barcelona against Bayern. It was a brilliant game, a game full of pace, wit and humor. Even the two goalkeepers were playing with real football. The first 15 minutes were even anarchy. The game was so fast and exciting in these moments that one wondered if any one of the actors would last longer than half an hour. It is quite possible that because at that moment, but probably also in general, the best team in the world has played against the second best. But what surprised: How great was the distance between the two on this day

It was not so much the result.. The three goals were scored by stupid mistakes. Striking was more how much the Bayern were inferior to their opponents for long periods of the game structurally. Those Bayern the way that almost every domestic opponents dominate as the leader of the Bundesliga to the limit for boredom. But in Barcelona flew the balls in the initial phase in rows towards Bavarian gate. Without Manuel Neuer this semi-final pairing would have been probably already decided to 18 from a total of 180 minutes.

The disorder was partly tactical reasons. Pep Guardiola tried in his almost mythical transfigured return to Barcelona with a handle in the game theoretic tricks: He was playing with a triple defense line. So he wanted to strengthen the midfield, because he wanted to control the ball. And catching the ball is the only proven method to control for Barcelona Guardiola. “Then you have the game but also control”, the control freak said after the game. His choice of words indicates that it did not work.

In fact, the two veterans Xabi Alonso (33) and Bastian Schweinsteiger (30) should reassure the Bayern game. You should hold the balls with all their experience, they are distributed wisely and plugging the finest of these balls the pain-free mask man Robert Lewandowski. The won, incidentally, although with nasal bone and upper jaw broken road, already in six seconds his first aerial duel.

But his colleagues did not win much. Alonso and Schweinsteiger were overwhelmed by the pace of the game. While they were trying to get hold of a couple of advantages over again by their gained in many international matches cunning, but were just too sedate for the nimble Barça. Thiago played against his old club conspicuously inconspicuous and even Philipp Lahm (31) disappointed. He lost a lot of unusual duels, was slow and unfocused, probably still long-term consequences of his injury.

Barcelona against playing again quickly and directly – and especially fast and straight forward. Or dribbled because suddenly around the Bayern defense had opened spaces that knows itself every Kreisliga striker just hearsay. The three defender Boateng, Rafinha Benatia and in any case often stood alone against the Catalan trio Messi, Neymar and Suarez. The Bayern fans who were shipped in the top ring of the stadium, were very still. Here they had trumpeted throughout the day quite confidently, whether on the Rambla, on the beach or in the corner bars that probably they are the ones who will go to the final in Berlin.