Inter Milan 3-1 Barcelona Highlights

Barcelona have hit a brick wall of excellent tactical football, defensive tightness and attacking efficiency. All credit to Jose Mourinho and his squad for showing that Barcelona is not only not unbeatable, but it also has clear squad deficiencies when it comes to finding alternative solutions to difficult game situations.

To be totally honest, I saw this coming. Mourinho downplayed his squad considerably before this match, sending a clear message: we will not win because of individual technique, we will win only if we are the better team. And Inter duly responded to that and were, indeed, the better team. As tactically evolved as Guardiola and his Barcelona team are, they are still a naive squad in the sense that they believe they can cruise through all matches on wit and free-flowing passing alone. And when hard-workers like Yaya Toure are left on the bench, the team suffers.

Mourinho had his Inter Milan squad rotate between two tactical formations this year and, come game time, chose none. He instead had his team play in a strong 4-2-3-1 that kept all Barcelona’s forward lines constantly outnumbered. His team were under rigid instructions to give 2/3 of the pitch to Barcelona, who passed the ball freely in that zone. But when that final 1/3 was breached, Inter put up amazing pressure on the ball carrier and Barcelona simply crumbled.

The game started off well for Guardiola’s men with a goal by Pedro. Around this time, Italian fans feared that Mourinho’s gameplan would crumble, now that Barcelona had an advantage to protect. But this is where the Portuguese’s cunning outplayed the Spaniard’s beautiful football. Inter kept their cool and Barcelona kept going for goal, and when the counterattack finally worked, Sneijder put the ball past Valdes to make it even.

This seemed to spur Barcelona on, which is exactly what Inter expected. The blaugrana was increasingly innefective up front, with an especially poor performance by Ibrahimovic, while their defense looked helpless as Maicon and Milito set the score at 3-1. During the last 10-15 minutes Barcelona laid siege to Inter’s goal, but was unable to get an all important second away goal.

There is now a question on whether this lead will be enough for Inter to win the round at Barcelona. And honestly, after what we have seen today, it may very well be more than enough.