For all the prematch BS by Manuel Pellegrini that he will set his team  to attack from the word GO, it was pretty boring for the neutrals. Manchester city totally let down their fans by their approach in the first half. They just wanted to pull a chelsea or Inter against Barcelona, but hey Mr, we have moved on. Now our manager a.k.a coach is not Guardiola but TATA Martino. One of the first things he learnt to or wanted to change in our team is "Tell not to attack like headless chickens and be PRACTICAL". Guardiola stressed too much on attacking which had some bad effect on the team. For ex: The knock out game at the same stage against Arsenal at emirates(Which ended 2-2) during 2009-10 is a perfect example. We were head and shoulders above them, but we ran out of steam in the second half. 

 Tata Martino has brought a new tactic/gameplan in our team. It's called "tiki-naccio". That's what we did during the first half vs Manchester City. I was able to recall a similar kind of game we played .( Can you all recall the game where Messi was injured in the first half after scoring Messiesque goal?.If not, you can read that here : Click .) Also against Celtic (Away 0-1) we followed this game plan. It seems to work well.

Coming to the match, for all the fuss that Manchester city created before KO, what happened was altogether different. Firstly, they had already lost the battle in attack by parking the bus. It was, may be a safe approach, but we are not the old Barcelona who would find some what tough to break the  teams who park the bus. We played very safe(In our own style). And the first half ended 0-0. Manchester city tried to trouble valdes couple of times, but he was comfortable both the times. 

During second half, this incident changed the whole flow of the game. Thanks to the direct approach by Barça. No side way passing this time around.

Ok you might have encountered many rival fans who were whining that it was not a penalty . Please read this and show them this  detailed report : REFEREE REPORT

Messi as usual scored to make it 1-0. The approach after being 1-0 against 10 men was quite irritating for Barca fans. Because anything can happen over two legs and it's not a rocket science to understand, the importance of away goals and an extra man advantage. In particular, Andres Iniesta and Alves were superior and had an excellent game. You can read "How Alves was responsible and threatened Hart " here : ZONAL MARKING ANALYSIS. 

All the cules around the world were pretty pissed  at "Barca's approach" after 54 th min. We had to wait till the very end for the second and very important  goal. Thanks to the Brazilian, DANIEL ALVES. He had missed the chance second ago, but scored a nice goal in the end, between the legs of Joe Hart. OWNED! 

After all we proved that Money alone cannot guarantee you success . We had experience in encountering games like these in CL and won comfortably 0-2 at the Ethihad, where city had managed to thrash teams like Manchester United, Spurs and Arsenal. 
In the second leg, we should just keep our basics right to proceed to the next CL round. All in all, we saw the maturity of the players against this pretty good Manchester city side. 

Special mention : For all the analysis and bashing I had done for Jordi Alba, he played very good and deserves the mention for keeping Navas calm most of the game(City preferred to attack via left wing ;) )

Capture of the day 

VISCA EL BARCA .