How To Stop Messi, Eto’o, Rooney and Ronaldo.

By: Rob | April 29th, 2008

Vidic playing may make the difference Four Fantastic players on thier day and players whom the opposition will worry about. In fact I imagine if you are a defender for either Barcelona or Manchester United, you would be getting pretty damn worried right about now. With only hours to go to kick off, here is my guide for the defenders involved as to how to best rid the attacking threat.

Lionel Messi
Can Messi produce this kinda magic tonight?

Messi is leftfooted, but always plays out on the right wing. This results in two things - he always cuts inside on to his good left foot so that he is on the weaker foot of the wingback, and - as we saw last week - he comes into a more central position to frustrate the centre halves and give Eto’o (we’ll be onto him in a second) a bit of space. For Patrice Evra, who’s job it is going to be to mark him, he is going to have to force Messi onto his right foot - if he can do that, then thats a fair chunck of his job done. Ferguson evidently fears Messi, he chose to rest Evra in the game against Chelsea on the weekend. But Evra will have to cut out a couple of his weaknesses if he wants to get through the night reputation still in tact. His first flaw, is that he spends so much time attacking he often forgets his defensive duty. He will not be able to afford to that this evening, and will have to constantly have an eye on Messi. The second is that he dives into tackles way too early, if he does this tonight, Messi will just waltz past him. Evra is able to deal with it, but its gonna have to be a big performance.

Samuel Eto’o
Is Eto’o Pointing to Moscow?

The key with Eto’o is whether Vidic plays. If Vidic plays, and plays his normal game he can frustrate Eto’o and when Eto’o gets frustrated he is absolutely no use to anybody. If Vidic doesn’t play tonight, or isn’t fully fit, then the African striker can run absolutely riot. Believe it when I say that in the right mindframe Samuel Eto’o is undoubtedly the best Number 9 in the world. Ferdinand is great defender, on fantastic form, but he’s not the type of defender to put in little niggly fouls and give the striker a hard time, which is what Vidic does really well amongst other things. I think Vidic’s presence could change the entire landscape of the tie in that sense.

Wayne Rooney
Will it be Rooney’s night at OT?

Rooney is a doubt anyway, but assuming he plays, its a similar sort of situation to Eto’o. Its been awhile since a crazy Rooney outburst, but I think its fair to say that those days are not behind him when he gets frustrated. There’s been alot of talk over at the Barcelona Offside about the fact that Yaya Toure has the abilty to utterly frustrate Rooney into picking up a supid yellow, or even a sending off, and this much is true, but Yaya will have to have the game of his life. What is gonna be essential to Barca is the tight tackling of Carlos Puyol - back from suspension. If Puyol keeps nicking the ball off Rooney as he did with Henry a couple of years ago, he can frustrate Rooney, and then the English striker will keep dropping deeper and deeper untill he is pretty much absent from the game.

Cristiano Ronaldo
Will Ronaldo attone for that dreadful penalty?

In the EPL this season it’s been the million dollar question - how do you stop C-Ron? Well some people will argue that in a game as big as this, you don’t need to, he’ll stop himself. Barca will not be thinking this however, and Ronaldo - I’m sure - will want to make up for his penalty miss in the first leg, that might ultimately cost United the tie. Ronaldo gets frustrated if he doesn’t get the ball basically - we saw that in the first leg. Playing up front on his own (God knows why) he didn’t get a great deal of the ball from the defensively set up United team and he ended up looking skyward for help, diving with increasing regularity. Don’t get me wrong, Eric Abidal is going to have to have a mammoth game for when Ronnie does get the ball, but Barca have to cut off the supply, which means giving Carrick/Hargreaves/Scholes a hard time, harrying them in the midfield. If they can do that, they can frustrate him to the point that he may well dissapear from view.