Half a decade ago there was a time when the Premier League and Scottish clubs fared really well in the Champions League but that glory has surely faded away as the last English club to win the Champions League were Chelsea back in 2012.
Since then Europe’s top competition has mainly been dominated by Spanish teams with the exception being Bayern Munich who won the trophy at the end of the 2013 season.
And now former England international and current football pundit Garry Neville has revealed that one particular match that changed the tides not only for the English clubs but for football in general.
Gary Neville was obviously talking about his former club Manchester United and their loss to Barcelona during the 2008-2009 Champions League final.
Manchester United had beaten Chelsea in the final the previous year and the English giants had the chance of successfully defending their title in the 2009 Champions League final – which until that point in time had not been achieved by anyone.
But talking about United’s 2-0 loss to Barcelona during the Champions League final, Gary Neville has claimed that that defeat not only meant a huge blow to the Red Devils but it was indeed the start of something new in world football.
Neville is widely regarded as one of the best pundits in European football right now and the former full-back has given a superb analysis of how that Barcelona team managed by Pep Guardiola ushered a new era of tactics and dominance.
Gary Neville’s analysis of the 2009 Champions League final is truly worth a read
Speaking on the latest podcast, Neville said explained: “It’s a big statement this, I was going to say changed football forever – but it changed football in terms of how we think of it.
“I remember sitting in the stands, it was Barcelona v Manchester United, and seeing [Gerard] Pique and Yaya Toure, three yards from the touchline, [Victor] Valdes in net and [Sergio] Busquets going to the edge of the box – and Manchester United putting on a high press for about 10-15 minutes, dispossessing Barcelona a couple of times and could have scored.
“They didn’t – and I remember Barcelona kept doing it and I was thinking ‘United are going to do them here’. They’re just going to keep winning the ball off them and they’ll score. They’d beaten them the year before in a very different style of play.
“Pep Guardiola had come in for Frank Rijkaard and it was the first time I’d ever seen centre-backs so deep, so deep, on the touchline almost, and thinking ‘this is madness – this is madness’.
“I remember after about 20 minutes the game-changing. The United players’ legs started to fade – you could feel it – the Barcelona players were continuing to move the ball from deep positions, they were starting to pick United off, moving the ball through midfield and eventually their legs started to go.
“I thought ‘that’s different’ – and the year after was when people started to get used to the Pep Guardiola way of playing. [Javier] Mascherano started to go to centre-back, Pique went even deeper. It then became the very beginning of what would be a great side. [Lionel] Messi moved from being a right winger into a false nine and we saw possession at its greatest level – a team at its greatest level as I’ve ever seen.
“The base of that was playing out from the back – and that transformed our thinking forever and what we’ve seen since is centre-backs parking their backsides on the touchline, trying to play their way out.”
After the 2009 Champions League final defeat, Sir Alex Ferguson’s side had another chance at glory two years later when both the teams once again met in the finals at Wembley.
But by then it was too late as Pep Guardiola had built a juggernaut which went on to dominated world football for a couple of more seasons.
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