Chelsea’s Brazilian midfielder Ramires has defended his side’s tactics against Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League semi-finals.
The Blues defeated the likes of Napoli, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Barcelona-c38604 and Bayern Munich to finally claim the coveted European trophy for the very first time. Chelsea earned heavy criticism for their tactics deployed though, with a majority claiming they had played an extremely
defensive game.
Chelsea were accused of what is popularly known as “parking the bus” in front of goal, which makes it extremely difficult for the opposition to sneak in a goal. While Ramires did not deny a defensive approach to the clash against Barcelona, he denied it
being the usual way http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Chelsea-c38786 played.
Ramires revealed in an interview:
"This anti-football is not Chelsea's style, we only played that way in those games against Barcelona, when we played against http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Napoli-c40003, we needed to score a goal and we did it, when almost nobody believed we would.”
The 25-year-old felt then caretaker manager http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Roberto-c31294 Di Matteo, who took over from Andre Villas-Boas mid-season, had shown brilliant managerial skills by deploying defensive tactics against the La Liga giants, which eventually resulted in success for the
London side.
He said:
“If we tried to play as equals against Barcelona, we would have conceded five or six goals. We watched some videos of Barcelona and decided for that strategy. We knew we could beat them on counter-attack and we were happy for achieving that. If you don't
play that way, you can't beat them.”
http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Ramires-c30523 was certain his side would not have been successful had they not approached the game defensively, which was something Barcelona apparently could not counter. He revealed they had studied the Catalan side’s previous games and had realized defensive
tactics were best suited to tackle Barcelona.
The http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Brazil-c2858 international admitted they had learnt a lot from Real Madrid’s 2-1 win over Barcelona in the La Liga, with Jose Mourinho’s men also playing an extremely defensive game. Ramires continued:
“It's not only Chelsea that plays that way against Barcelona. We watched that game where Real Madrid beat them 2-1, playing the same way we did.”
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