Barcelona 1 - 1 Real Madrid (agg 3 - 1)
Pedro (left) celebrates opening the scoring with team-mate David Villa
Barcelona booked their place in the Champions League final at Wembley after drawing their semi-final second leg with arch-rivals Real Madrid.
Barca, who led 2-0 from the first leg, were lucky not to go behind when Gonzalo Higuain had a goal disallowed.
They went ahead when Andres Iniesta's fine pass enabled Pedro to rifle home but Real levelled when Marcelo fired in after Angel di Maria hit the post.
Barca now face either Manchester United or Schalke in the final on 28 May.
The Catalans, who have won the tournament on three previous occasions - 1992, 2006 and 2009 - will discover their opponents when United, who have a 2-0 lead from the first leg, entertain German side Schalke at Old Trafford on Wednesday.
But European football's governing body Uefa, not to mention the hierarchies at both Barca and Real, will be relieved that Tuesday's match largely passed by without the theatrics, spite and bad blood that enveloped events at the Santiago Bernabeu last week.
As if that game was not bad enough, the aftermath of Barca's 2-0 win in the first leg was marred by both teams complaining about the other's conduct to Uefa, Real coach Jose Mourinho stirring things upand the Madrid club accusing Barca's Sergio Busquets of racism, so it was a blessed relief to get back to football.
With a torrential downpour in Barcelona adding to the sense of foreboding at the Camp Nou, referee Frank de Bleeckere led the two teams out perhaps expecting the worst - but he, like the boisterous 90,000 crowd, was instead treated to a thoroughly entertaining football match.
Mourinho, sent off last week, was not in attendance but he picked a more attack-minded Real team with Kaka and Higuain restored to the starting line-up as they went looking for goals to haul themselves back into the tie.
They started brightly enough, with Marcelo finding some joy down the left and Cristiano Ronaldo initially appearing to be in the mood, but once Barca adapted to the slicker-than-usual surface they soon began to toy with their expensively-assembled opponents.
Messi, who had single-handedly spared the teams total embarrassment in the first leg with his two fabulous goals, was causing Ricardo Carvalho all sorts of trouble with his lightning-quick anticipation and the fit-again Iniesta and Xavi were keeping the ball moving with staggering accuracy and speed.
After Busquets headed a corner into the arms of keeper Iker Casillas, Barca put together a mesmerising spell of five minutes in which they could have opened the scoring on five different occasions.
Messi twice forced superb saves from Spanish number one Casillas, who also had to be alert to push away a David Villa shot, while Messi dragged another effort off target and Pedro lashed narrowly wide from just outside the box.
A few minutes later, Barca were ahead. Iniesta picked a perfect pass to slide Pedro clean through, the forward taking one touch to tee himself up and another to lash the ball past Casillas with his left foot.But while the score on the night remained goalless, Real always had a chance - and early on in the second half they were unfortunate not to halve the overall deficit as Higuain slotted past Victor Valdes, only for the referee to rule that Ronaldo had fouled Javier Mascherano in the build-up.
Real were left with a mountain to climb - but try to climb it they duly did. Emmanuel Adebayor and Mesut Ozil came on for Higuain and the ineffective Kaka and they momentarily silenced the Camp Nou when Di Maria fired against Valdes's right-hand post and then kept his cool to set up Marcelo to fire home.
Their main problem then was getting the ball back off Barca. The hosts refused to panic, kept on playing their normal game and did not let Real have another sniff of their goal.
It threatened to get tetchy towards the end as Real's increasingly desperate players found themselves only able to break Barca's momentum by committing fouls but De Bleeckere magnificently stood up to the challenge and exerted his authority at the right moments to keep the players under control.
For for first time this season a Barca-Real 'Clasico' finished with 11 players on both teams but the joy unconfined belonged exclusively to Barcelona at the final whistle as they celebrated reaching a third Champions League final in six seasons.
0 comments:
Post a Comment