don_quixote
Trent End
yeah it was a penalty, or at least i don't think you could award anything else. and they bloody deserved it considering some of the free kicks and yellow cards that went against them, arsenal that is.
was listening to that on the radio, match hadn't started when we first got back in the car, it was 4-0 before we got out of bristol.
did you watch the highlights there? The shots after the third goal are sort of genuinely shocking....shows the depth of feeling football (and its links to community pride, self-identity etc) engenders to a greater degree than I've seen for a long time.
there were so many other class performers there, that it's contestible whether he was even the best Barca player, with Xavi on the field.
i'm not the only one to think so. barca put in a brilliant team performance last night. comparisons to maradona (not that anyone here is making them, but many others are) are incredibly premature.
also, everyone (nearly) always puts strikers' performances above those of other players - the thought that someone could score 4 goals and still nto be the best player on the field is somehow a priori impossible.
Of course, but these weren't just tap-ins he was scoring and his contribution wasn't limited to the goals. Obviously Xavi is a master at holding possession and distributing the ball (tho Arse got more of it last night than last week), but when Messi gets it the opposition shits themselves en masse. It's not cos they've been reading hyped-up newspaper headlines.
As for Maradona, he's younger and has accomplished less, but a great deal than DM had at his age.
I agree that he probably was the best player; it just annoys me that a lot of the time people like Xavi don't even get considered for such laurels (and even more so for some of the other midfielders/defenders, who were superb), cos they're less sexy than someone scoring 4 goals or whatever.