How Bayern Can Beat Barca

Fol­low­ing this weekend’s drub­bing at the hands of Wolfs­burg, Bay­ern come into the hard­est tie of the quar­ter finals of the Champion’s League on a low. Can they over­come the humil­i­a­tion at the VW to get a result at Camp Nou against arguably the best team in Europe? Yes, they can.

Here’s how.

First, they need to shore up the defense which was picked apart by Mis­i­movic, Dzeko and Grafite. First they need to revert to a 4–2-3–1. Padding their defense with a double-six would pro­tect the weak­est part of the team; how­ever, Van Bom­mel and Ze Roberto are not strong enough to do that job, see­ing as how they couldn’t han­dle Josue and Mis­i­movic. I think Klins­mann would be bet­ter suited to slot­ting Ottl next to Van Bom­mel as the two play­ers to sit in front of Breno and Dimichelis.

A three man attack­ing mid­field would do a cou­ple of things. First it would keep Podolksi off the pitch and would allow Sosa a chance to show his met­tle on the biggest stage. He’s ready to break out and this could be the cat­a­lyst. Next, a four man attack of Toni and the three mids will allow the FB’s to sit back and defend, which is cru­cial for Lahm as he will be fac­ing the twin attack of Messi and Alves. Finally, Ribery comes into this game know­ing that he will be fac­ing off to a world­wide audi­ence with one of his few con­tem­po­raries: Lionel Messi. Give Franck free­dom and he’s going to be ready to put on the show, espe­cially if they can use Ottl and Van Bom­mel to absorb pres­sure and give him the out­let to run at Barca on the counter. Ribery is sell­ing him­self this series. We can act like he’s not leav­ing, but he prob­a­bly will and another per­for­mance to match his dou­ble for les Blues and he can put him self into Tor­res and Berba­tov trans­fer range.

Remem­ber these two teams are very sim­i­lar: they like pos­ses­sion, they have a vari­ety of play­ers who can do the incred­i­ble and they have shaky defenses and shakier keep­ers. So, Bay­ern has to play this game for the moment of inspi­ra­tion, when some­one cre­ates a moment of beauty. With Schwien­steiger, Sosa, Toni and Ribery on the pitch, it gives them four poten­tial candidates.

Yes Bay­ern had a bad week­end, but they had it against a very good side. But also a side with supreme con­fi­dence. If they can match Wolfsburg’s con­fi­dence as they visit Barcelona, they can dust them­selves off after the 16 minute fiasco this week­end and come away with at least a draw and a goal, but only if they scrap the 4–4-2 and make some changes to the personnel.

Also, if they see some­one back-heel the ball towards the net — SLOWLY — they might want to think of putting a foot to the ball.

Tagged as: Andreas Ottl, Franck Ribery, Sosa