Ah, St George’s Day. This augurs well for an English team marching into a Catalan fortress to do battle with the locally assembled gladiatorial cream. What’s that? George is also the patron saint of Catalonia, where he’s known by the dashing, Latinate moniker Jordi! Oh, dear, next you’ll be telling me that George/Jordi was neither English nor Catalan, but rather a Turkish-born Roman soldier. Oh dear. Well at least he slayed that dragon. Oh, I see….
It’s all at this site here. Apparently he’s also the patron saint of Ethiopia, Canada, Serbia, Montenegro, Moscow etc and so on.
As for tonight’s match, whether the stalemate stemmed from St George favouring both teams or neither I couldn’t say, though I suspect it was because, knowing that it would be the second leg that counted, he spent the evening with Ethiopia or Canada. The match did get off to a decent start. Barcelona survived an early penalty scare when both of central defender Gabriel Milito’s flailing hands connected with the ball, but Cristiano Ronaldo, with goalkeeper Victor Valdes going the wrong way, could only find the right-hand post. After that Barcelona regrouped, but although they had the lion’s share of the possession, they offered very little in the way of penetration and Edwin van der Sar was hardly tested until Thierry Henry came on and showed that rasping shots on target are one of the best ways to fluster goalkeepers. Unfortunately for Barcelona, he didn’t have enough time to make his theory stick, and on a night when Messi was reasonably effective, and Ronaldo started fairly brightly but never really caught fire none of the supporting cast of either team really got going. Rooney in particular seemed curiously off the pace, and with Anderson on the bench and Ferguson playing Owen Hargreaves at right back to allow Wes Brown to slot in for the ill Nemanja Vidic at centre half, there was no dynamism in the middle of the pitch, where Scholes and Carrick were solid but uninspiring. In the end Ferguson seemed to be content to settle for the draw and trust that his team to be more enterprising at Old Trafford next week.
As a neutral I for one hope that Deco and Messi, both today returning from injury and both substituted tonight, will have regained match fitness in time for the second leg. I also hope that Rooney and Ronaldo shake off the malaise that seems to have afflicted them since Saturday’s league draw with Blackburn. At least Ronaldo looked pacey and threatening in bursts tonight, but Rooney, though willing, seemed ill at ease, and as much as his defensive commitment is to be commended, he seemed more comfortable operating as an auxiliary left back whenever United had conceded possession than marauding forward when they had reclaimed it.
