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6 parts in Total
6 parts in Total
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Barca Documentary
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Just Love this
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Alternative Take on Part 6
Ahhhhh. Still so delicious.
They were doing the whole season as far as I’m aware so all pre planned.
It's part of a series, presumably covering the entire season.
They're not all working ... :-(
Here's one of dressing room before, HT & FT:
Here's one of dressing room before, HT & FT:
... and if anyone needs to watch the highlights again from both legs ... here you go!
And in your head you're hearing "...corner taken quickly, ORIGI!!!!"
Ken Early: Did Lionel Messi’s half-time team talk help Liverpool beat Barcelona?
We see the deferential tone coach Ernesto Valverde adopts when speaking with the players. When he gives the team-talk before the Champions League semi-final first leg against Liverpool, he sounds like he is merely offering the players advice and suggestions, as though he would not presume to issue actual instructions.
This is not surprising, really, since Barca’s senior players have won more than him and are plainly far more important to the club. Yet it does leave you wondering what the point of him actually is.
At half-time, with Barcelona leading Liverpool 1-0, we see Valverde peering at a laptop with his assistants and then squatting down, as though addressing a kindergarten group, to give some more helpful hints to the players. He talks about how Barcelona should deal with Liverpool’s pressing and makes a couple of technical points. While he speaks, you can see Messi in the background, head down, apparently in his own world, not paying the coach any heed. That’s okay, this stuff about pressing isn’t really for him.
As the team is getting ready to go back out, Messi finally speaks: “If we start to play one on one they are stronger, guys. We aren’t used to that. They are very fast. If we play this to-ing and fro-ing it’s anyone’s game. If we have the control it’s another thing, right?”
The striking thing about Messi’s message is the emphasis he gives to what might go wrong. As we are to discover, this is something of a theme in his team talks. First, we see him score two goals in the second half. The second, his 600th for Barcelona, is a 30-metre free-kick that astonishes even the other veterans like Sergio Busquets.
Was crying
Weirdly, the 3-0 lead immediately starts to make Barcelona nervous, because it reminds them of the season before, when they beat Roma 4-1 in the first leg of the quarter-final, before losing 3-0 away to go out on away goals.
The story of Anfield is well-known. Liverpool scored in minutes 7, 54, 56 and 79 and Barcelona were out. We knew that. But we didn’t know that Jordi Alba was crying at half-time because he had missed a good chance and made a mistake to give away the early Liverpool goal. We might have expected that Valverde’s tactical message at the break would have more to it than, essentially, “get the ball and give it to Messi”.
And we could hardly have imagined that Messi’s speech to his team-mates as they prepared to take the field at the beginning of the match had gone as follows: “Come on people, we are going to take a step forward. We can’t waste this opportunity, okay? Give everything, now that we are here. We have to start strong. Remember Roma was our fault. Nobody else’s. We mustn’t let the same thing happen. It was our fault, nobody else’s.”
And so we saw that the best player in the world is utterly hopeless at motivation, apparently believing that “let’s talk about the thing that we desperately don’t want to happen, and get that very firmly in our heads before we go out and play,” is a sound basic format for a captain’s gee-them-up speech.
Gerard Pique, speaking some time after the match, remarks: “When they score the first goal very quickly then, I suppose, the ghosts of Rome appear.”
In truth, the ghosts of Rome were summoned by Messi to the Barcelona dressing room moments before the players went out on the field.
Based on what this documentary reveals, you can draw two conclusions. Barcelona might benefit from appointing a coach who has the confidence to address the players as a leader, rather than as a kind of helpful consultant or advisor. And Messi might be better off letting his feet do the talking.
We see the deferential tone coach Ernesto Valverde adopts when speaking with the players. When he gives the team-talk before the Champions League semi-final first leg against Liverpool, he sounds like he is merely offering the players advice and suggestions, as though he would not presume to issue actual instructions.
This is not surprising, really, since Barca’s senior players have won more than him and are plainly far more important to the club. Yet it does leave you wondering what the point of him actually is.
At half-time, with Barcelona leading Liverpool 1-0, we see Valverde peering at a laptop with his assistants and then squatting down, as though addressing a kindergarten group, to give some more helpful hints to the players. He talks about how Barcelona should deal with Liverpool’s pressing and makes a couple of technical points. While he speaks, you can see Messi in the background, head down, apparently in his own world, not paying the coach any heed. That’s okay, this stuff about pressing isn’t really for him.
As the team is getting ready to go back out, Messi finally speaks: “If we start to play one on one they are stronger, guys. We aren’t used to that. They are very fast. If we play this to-ing and fro-ing it’s anyone’s game. If we have the control it’s another thing, right?”
The striking thing about Messi’s message is the emphasis he gives to what might go wrong. As we are to discover, this is something of a theme in his team talks. First, we see him score two goals in the second half. The second, his 600th for Barcelona, is a 30-metre free-kick that astonishes even the other veterans like Sergio Busquets.
Was crying
Weirdly, the 3-0 lead immediately starts to make Barcelona nervous, because it reminds them of the season before, when they beat Roma 4-1 in the first leg of the quarter-final, before losing 3-0 away to go out on away goals.
The story of Anfield is well-known. Liverpool scored in minutes 7, 54, 56 and 79 and Barcelona were out. We knew that. But we didn’t know that Jordi Alba was crying at half-time because he had missed a good chance and made a mistake to give away the early Liverpool goal. We might have expected that Valverde’s tactical message at the break would have more to it than, essentially, “get the ball and give it to Messi”.
And we could hardly have imagined that Messi’s speech to his team-mates as they prepared to take the field at the beginning of the match had gone as follows: “Come on people, we are going to take a step forward. We can’t waste this opportunity, okay? Give everything, now that we are here. We have to start strong. Remember Roma was our fault. Nobody else’s. We mustn’t let the same thing happen. It was our fault, nobody else’s.”
And so we saw that the best player in the world is utterly hopeless at motivation, apparently believing that “let’s talk about the thing that we desperately don’t want to happen, and get that very firmly in our heads before we go out and play,” is a sound basic format for a captain’s gee-them-up speech.
Gerard Pique, speaking some time after the match, remarks: “When they score the first goal very quickly then, I suppose, the ghosts of Rome appear.”
In truth, the ghosts of Rome were summoned by Messi to the Barcelona dressing room moments before the players went out on the field.
Based on what this documentary reveals, you can draw two conclusions. Barcelona might benefit from appointing a coach who has the confidence to address the players as a leader, rather than as a kind of helpful consultant or advisor. And Messi might be better off letting his feet do the talking.
YouTube reveals most-watched videos of 2019
article_update_2.44297147.jpg
YouTube has revealed this year’s most popular videos in the UK
Photo: Nick Ansell/PA
Liverpool’s Uefa Champions League defeat of Barcelona was the most popular video on YouTube for UK users in 2019, the video-sharing platform has revealed.
This year’s top-trending videos feature a mix of sporting moments, as well as a feud between YouTubers, and TV highlights from The Late Late Show with James Corden and Britain’s Got Talent.
Sorry, this content isn't available on your device.
Best bits of the 4-0 Liverpool-Barcelona game, posted by BT Sport, has attracted more than 9.8 million views globally since being posted in May.
Make-up and beauty YouTube personality James Charles came second with his No More Lies video, a response to fellow YouTuber Tati Westbrook.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
article_update_2.44297147.jpg
YouTube has revealed this year’s most popular videos in the UK
Photo: Nick Ansell/PA
Liverpool’s Uefa Champions League defeat of Barcelona was the most popular video on YouTube for UK users in 2019, the video-sharing platform has revealed.
This year’s top-trending videos feature a mix of sporting moments, as well as a feud between YouTubers, and TV highlights from The Late Late Show with James Corden and Britain’s Got Talent.
Sorry, this content isn't available on your device.
Best bits of the 4-0 Liverpool-Barcelona game, posted by BT Sport, has attracted more than 9.8 million views globally since being posted in May.
Make-up and beauty YouTube personality James Charles came second with his No More Lies video, a response to fellow YouTuber Tati Westbrook.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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