Can EPL Clubs Re-Win the Champions’ League?

National Pride!

La Liga Fans defend its bril­liance, backed by the National suc­cess of Spain in Euro 2008. Added to the tech­ni­cally dri­ven shows of its elite clubs, beside the host of tal­ents Spain exports to the elite clubs in Europe, by well or with no way to avoid.

And while the Cal­cio Fans hail the world cup win­ners, prais­ing the Ital­ian Grinta and the tac­ti­cal edge of the Italian-speaking league, with teams defend­ing their ter­ri­tory and bounc­ing for­ward to cre­ate chaos and smash up the opponents.

There is no doubt that Cham­pi­ons’ league suc­cess of the Pre­mier League clubs cre­ated a strong case for “Crowned Lion” foot­ball fans to believe in the supe­ri­or­ity of the pre­mier league, backed by the marketing-Financial value of the Pre­mier League busi­ness wise, and the qual­ity of the infra­struc­ture, sta­di­ums, cov­er­age and what­ever needed to give that com­pe­ti­tion an edge. At least for the Bar­clays’ League loyal fans.

As a part of our cov­er­age for the Cham­pi­ons league knock out stage, we open today the first chap­ter of the EPL series, scan­ning the chal­lenges vis-à-vis EPL clubs Cham­pi­ons League Adven­ture this sea­son. We start with the Lately crowned UEFA Champions:

Man­ches­ter United.

Led by Sir Alexan­der Chap­man Fer­gu­son for the past two decades, Man United hunted 25 domes­tic titles, 6 con­ti­nen­tal titles, one inter­con­ti­nen­tal cup, and a FIFA Club world cup. Obvi­ously the Red Dev­ils have the “Know how” of win­ning titles.

Strength:

- The Fer­gie Element:

It’s amaz­ing how this guy can mix arro­gance with the sense of change in his foot­ball DNA. I believe this is one of the lit­tle details that gave this coach the edge. A mas­ter of con­tin­u­ous improvement.

He cre­ates a sys­tem and stick to it, but to a cer­tain extend. He can smell the need of change and decides the right moment to turn the table around, whether he is tack­ling tac­tics and strate­gies to approach a game, or when he feels a player life cycle in his squad reached an end.

One game against Roma in Cham­pi­ons league 2007 was all what he needed to inherit then improve the Striker-free strat­egy. Apply­ing that non tra­di­tional tac­ti­cal method­ol­ogy –Espe­cially for an Eng­lish club– earned the team an unmatched glory last sea­son. But that wasn’t enough to mis­lead the old scot; the first thing he demanded for the new sea­son is a Berba­tov. He got his man and switched back to the offense struc­ture he is aware he will need more often, being the team to beat.

No doubt, Sir Alex had and still has the qual­ity play­ers in his troops to win bat­tles. But it’s also true that he was able to get the best out of his team, while some other clubs strug­gled even when they had more qual­ity and depth in their squads.

- The Players:

After Peter Schme­ichel retire­ment, Man United fans waited for long till they got the right man for the Job, Spi-der Sar. In Vidic, they have the best Defender in the world at the moment. With Fer­di­nand he cre­ates one of the most impen­e­tra­ble duets Assisted by one of the best Left back­wards. That’s in brief the back bone of Man United. The Brazil­ian twins, uncle Neville, tal­ented Evans, and the two long serv­ing Brown and O’Shea cover the other needs and cre­ate the needed depth.

The Mix of youth and expe­ri­ence is the trade­mark of Man United mid­field. With the likes of Scholes and Giggs lead­ing and inspir­ing the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of Red Dev­ils includ­ing Owen Har­g­reaves, Ander­son, Michael Car­rick, and Fletcher the Old Traf­ford Fans are calm and con­fi­dent that the oper­a­tion room in the mid­field is well covered.

The flanks are ruled by Ronaldo, the FIFA Player of the year on one side, and With Nani, Park Ji-Sung and Giggs being the sailors on the other side. All in all, cre­at­ing a lethal offense with the dual com­bi­na­tion of looks-lazy Bul­gar­ian Fox, Dynamic Rooney and Tevez the “Argen­tine prophet for the 21st cen­tury.”, as labeled once by Maradona.

Yet, what make Man Utd com­pet­i­tive are not the big names alone, but the men­tal­ity planted in the group. The col­lab­o­ra­tive work of the team in offense and defense, the desire to come back from behind, and the capa­bil­ity to win a game even when the form and per­for­mance are not meet­ing the best expec­ta­tions are the main strengths of this club.

Weak­ness:

For a team win­ning all the titles Man Utd won last sea­son, and per­form­ing as good as they are so far, it’s too risky for any­one to dig for defects with­out being hunted by the club fans. Yet, here we go, giv­ing it a try!

1) Flanks Bal­ance: Park work rate is admirable, and Nani may have the poten­tials. But with Giggs get­ting old, Ronaldo seems to be the only wing that can seri­ously gen­er­ate threat from the flanks for Man Utd. That may prove being risky. Evra runs on the left feels like the only fresh breeze blow­ing from the left for the Dev­ils in red.

Another unlikely sur­prise may hap­pen. It’s always pos­si­ble that Sir Alex may use O’shea as a left back (switch­ing to a third CB when the team move for­ward), with Evra play­ing up front as a left wing and Silva as a right back you never know with the old man of Man Utd.

With Ronaldo cut­ting inside all the time, its Vital for both flanks of Man Utd to be active, not an easy chal­lenge to tackle.
2) The Mid­field: Man Utd mid­field may end up com­pli­cat­ing things for them. With all the atten­tion spot­ting on how good the defense is, led by Fer­di­nand, Vidic and Co. with all the praise for the offense inspired by Ronaldo, Rooney, Tevez and Berna­tov. With Scholes and Giggs get­ting their fair share of paper talks. I believe Har­g­reaves, Ander­son, Michael Car­rick, and Fletcher will play THE vital role their own way, decid­ing the des­tiny of Man Utd in this Cham­pi­ons’ league adven­ture. Man Utd mid­field lack a pure defen­sive mid­fielder. Har­g­reaves is injured, Ander­son is a decent option but the same as Car­rick they can’t play a defen­sive mid­fielder role per­fectly, not yet. Scholes is get­ting old so he may not be fit to play the water car­rier role when things get seri­ous. The mentioned-younger-players need to hit their form before due time or else they will com­pli­cate things a lit­tle for Fregie.

With Evra fly­ing on the left flank as a full­back, and if the team will have no player for the defen­sive mid­fielder role, Da Silva will unlikely play on the right back. Instead, a RB/CB player will take place to act as a third cen­tral back assist­ing Vidic and Fer­di­nand, and giv­ing the free­dom for Evra to move for­ward with no concerns.

3) The form and moral of back up play­ers: Evans impressed so far, but how secure will it be to use him in Cham­pi­ons’ league if either Fer­di­nand or Vidic was not avail­able? Will he meet the expec­ta­tions? After a long break, will Neville bounce back to form? O’Shea and Brown are gam­bles as well; you can never expect how they will per­form, with bril­liance or catastrophically.

In the other hand, if Berba­tov wasn’t avail­able, there is no back up to use as a sky­scraper in the box. There could be some promis­ing names but none of them proved being reli­able yet. Sir Alex will have to use last year suc­cess­ful struc­ture of Rooney-Ronaldo-Tevez, but with the uncer­tainty sur­round­ing Tevez trans­fer it may unset­tle him as time goes by, and with Rooney being injury prone this option may not be def­i­nitely avail­able as well.

4) Ronaldo per­for­mance in big games has always been a ques­tion. In my opin­ion, the impact of this debate cre­ated more pres­sure on him while per­form­ing in big matches more than his per­for­mance inspired for such debates. It’s impor­tant for this yeast of play­ers to get into a game with­out feel­ing any doubts sur­round­ing their poten­tials. Being in a posi­tion to prove his worth is not the best approach for him to focus, it increases the pres­sure and makes his game more com­pli­cated. With time and matu­rity he will be able to han­dle that bet­ter. If “time” means this sea­son or the fol­low­ing ones, the com­ing days will tell.

Man Utd will face Inter today, and with the injury prob­lems in the back line, this will be a big test. Adding to the fact that Mour­inho knows the team he will face, and he rarely dis­ap­pointed in his Chelsea days against Man Utd.

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Next in this series: High­light­ing another EPL club (Liv­er­pool).
Beside the series cov­er­ing Span­ish and Ital­ian clubs, com­ing soon!

Can EPL Clubs Re-Win the Cham­pi­ons’ League?, 5.0 out of 5 based on 2 rat­ings

Tagged as: Add new tag, champions league, epl, Manchester United F.C., Premier League