Comment - Mourinho can stifle the magic of Messi

20 April 2010 08:27

Robbie Blakeley looks ahead to tonight's mouthwatering Champions League semi-final clash between Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan and the Lionel-Messi inspired Barcelona.

Lionel Messi is probably the greatest player on the planet right now. With 40 goals already to his name this season, including two successive La Liga hat-tricks in March, the mini magician is rightfully on top of football's pedestal.

So as Inter Milan prepare to welcome Barcelona to the San Siro, you might think Inter coach Jose Mourinho would be enduring sleepless nights in the run up to his biggest night of the season. Doubtful.

- Tim Lovejoy on Inter v Barcelona

Mourinho's sides have come up against Messi on five occasions previously. Not once has the Argentine scored, or put in a performance suggesting he is the heir to world football's throne.

This isn't to suggest that Messi is the only threat Barca pose, or that this time round things can't be different.

But customers don't come much cooler than Mourinho, and he will have been meticulously planning, since his side brushed Chelsea aside in such calculated fashion, how he will cope with football's new wonder kid.

Mourinho will know the first battle for a player up against Messi is his mental approach; the defender has to believe he can stop him. Go out onto the pitch with an element of doubt and you'll be ripped to shreds, as happened to Arsenal's Gael Clichy in the quarter-final tie at Camp Nou.

Messi will start on the right-hand side of an attacking trio, probably along with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Pedro. Messi loves to run at full-backs, using his blistering pace and unique ability to turn on a sixpence at full speed before cutting in on his favoured left foot to either cross or shoot at goal.

For this reason, Mourinho is likely to use Javier Zanetti at left-back. Zanetti has been an Inter regular for 15 years now, clocking up over 500 appearances. While the vast majority of his games have come at either right-back of right midfield, his experience and expert positional sense, as well as huge self confidence, will help him deal with Messi. Not to mention, as a fellow countryman, he has seen him up close and personal, in training and matches with Argentina, over the last five years.

Zanetti has a fantastic ability to anticipate what his opponent is about to do next. Against someone as fast as Messi, whose only goal is to beat his opponent and create a chance rather than waste time with fancy flicks and senseless step overs (that's you, Cristiano), a player's reactions are vital. Messi won't give you a second bite of the cherry to get back and tackle him.

Ghana international Sulley Muntari will probably be used on the left hand side of midfield to help out Zanetti, who is now 36. Muntari is more defensively minded than Inter new boy McDonald Mariga, and strong tackles and tracking back will be needed; Zanetti may seem like he can go on forever, but as he enters the twilight of his careers his legs and lungs aren't what they once were.

Mourinho's final message will be for his team to dominate possession. For all Messi's skills, even he can't play without the ball. Inter cannot afford to sit back in wonderment, and Mourinho won't let them. They have their own attacking talents in Wesley Sneijder and Barca old boy Samuel Eto'o (wouldn't he love to prove to Guardiola he was wrong to let him go?) who combined so effectively in both legs against Chelsea.

Now is the time for Inter to seize the initiative; Mourinho and Guardiola both know what it takes to win a Champions League; my money's on the more tactically astute Mourinho to take his side to the Bernabeu on 22 May. Let the game's begin.

- Robbie Blakelely for Football.co.uk

Source: DSG