Neither side has many injury concerns ahead of the game. Wayne Rooney missed Manchester United’s FA Cup defeat to Chelsea, but he should be fit in time for Monday’s clash. He will partner Robin van Persie in attack, with Danny Welbeck and Shinji Kagawa offering creativity and tenacity from the wings. Tom Cleverley and Michael Carrick will resume their successful midfield partnership, with Phil Jones a possible inclusion in place of Cleverley.

United’s defence was a concern early in the season, but they have not conceded a Premier League goal for more than 600 minutes. David de Gea is in exemplary form, and it is likely to be a back four of Rafael, Ferdinand, Vidic, and Patrice Evra in front of him.

Manchester City have found the “second season syndrome” makes retaining a league title a lot more difficult than winning it the first time. Their key players have failed to shine all season. The likes of Yaya Toure, Vincent Kompany, Sergio Aguero and David Silva have shown their quality in patches, but not on a consistent basis. This has led to City dropping too many points and now they find themselves fifteen points behind the league leaders.

2) Steven Gerrard vs Marseille

3) Lionel Messi vs Mexico

4) Robert Pires vs Southampton

5) Fabio Quagliarella vs Slovakia

Over two years ago I wrote an article on Lucas Leiva. The Brazilian had become a scapegoat among Liverpool fans after struggling to adapt from the much less physical and slower Brasileirao. His faults were obvious, but the qualities that made him worth persevering with aren’t typically appreciated in English footballing culture – neat passing and clever positional sense wasted on a country that typical played a direct game with heavy running.

Nevertheless, Lucas was starting to come into his own after the departure of Xabi Alonso, and since then has grown to be recognised as one of Liverpool’s key players. His place as underappreciated midfielder didn’t go unfilled for long though, with the arrival of Jordan Henderson.

Unfortunate to arrive under Kenny Dalglish and Damien Comolli’s generally awful transfer dealings, Henderson was thrown in as another overpriced stats-based British signing. Although, unlike Stewart Downing and Andy Carroll, Henderson was actually pretty handy.

The main issue with how he was viewed is that the Henderson that turned heads at Sunderland played a different role to how he is used at Liverpool. While still the same player, under Steve Bruce Henderson was shunted out to the right of midfield, his natural preference for the middle giving them more of a footing there, but also given the task of setting up striker Asamoah Gyan with crosses. It was these crosses that more than likely earned him his move to Liverpool, as Comolli used chance creation statistics to identify suitable new signings for Dalglish.

Given Dalglish had previously had great success with Ray Houghton in a similar right-sided role, it was fair to assume Henderson would be carrying on from his time at Sunderland. Instead, he rarely got a go playing wider, more often staying central. In a side increasingly developed towards specialists and direct play, where exactly Henderson fitted in wasn’t clear, stuck into a withdrawn role where he was wasn’t able to venture forward unless playing alongside the similar Jonjo Shelvey.

Henderson is best suited to a role that typically doesn’t exist in English football: the shuttler. The closest type of player to the shuttler is a box-to-box midfielder, although Henderson doesn’t fit into the action-orientated, slide tackle at one end then score from range at the other image that moniker conjures, even though he operates in that same space. Defensively, a shuttler is less physical, relying more on positioning and pressure to win back the ball, and more passive offensively, knitting play together with simple one-twos and triangles rather than driving runs to support the attack. In some ways they are like registi but more mobile, yet you are unlikely to see them play many long raking passes – their game is focussed on a simplicity that can make it look like anyone could do the job, which generally doesn’t sit well with fans. Still, Lucas was a shuttler in Brazil, and the fans have eventually warmed to him, could Henderson follow in his footsteps?

Although they have shared similar circumstances, Lucas’ progress probably isn’t the best comparison for Henderson. While he arrived in England as a box-to-box player, the Brazilian has been moulded into a holding midfielder and his popularity has more to do with his strong tackling since he’s bulked up than an appreciation of the subtler facets of his game.

Nevertheless, Dalglish being replaced by Brendan Rodgers should do Henderson some good. Rodgers didn’t appear too convinced by him at first, but he’s gained a more solid place in the team as the season has gone on, which should benefit them both: Henderson is, in theory, the perfect type of player for the pass-and-move style of play Rodgers is looking to implement. However, at a time where Liverpool aren’t particularly good, Henderson’s shuttling could be seen as superfluous. If everyone was just endlessly playing simple balls, the team wouldn’t get anywhere – there would be no one to act like the stereotypical English box-to-box midfielder and hammer the ball home. A player like Henderson, while still probably underappreciated, performs best when they are acting as the easy link between high quality players – they may rarely contribute to the headlines, but they keep the play flowing.

For the time being, Henderson’s main contribution to the Liverpool midfield is energy. He may have caught viewers’ eyes with his superb goal against Arsenal, yet he had already been Liverpool’s star performer beforehand, squeezing Arsenal out of the game in front of the less mobile pairing of Lucas and Steven Gerrard. Being the designated water carrier may not be the ideal job for Henderson, but it is a necessary one that pretty much guarantees him a place when his simple play will not. Overpriced he may have been, but there are far more deserving targets for derision in the Liverpool squad.

Can Liverpool make a late push for a Champions league place or does Brendan Rogers need more time? check the latest odd’s at FREEbets.org.uk now

It was a year ago this month that Egypt’s Health Ministry officially reported on the 73 soccer fans that were killed and the hundreds more injured after the Port Said stadium riot. Events took place after a match between Al Masry of Port Said and Al Ahly of Cairo, two teams who have come to represent different political factions in Egypt after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak two years ago, although historically they are not major soccer rivals.

The match kick off was originally delayed by 30 minutes because Al Masry fans were on the pitch and refused to get off – a sign of things to come. During half time and after each of Al Masry’s three second half goals, their fans stormed the pitch, with thousands of spectators running on to the field at the final whistle. The Al Masry fans started throwing bottles and fireworks at the Al Ahly players and as the players ran from the field taking cover, the Al Masry fans, who were armed with knives, swords, clubs, and stones, began attacking the Al Ahly fans who tried to flood the few exits to escape the stadium.

 Television images of the mayhem in Egypt showed the images as the Al Masry thugs chased people out of the stadium, raising immediate questions about the lack of security at the stadium on the day. Cameras caught images of police officers standing by as players and fans rushed past them to escape without any protection.  An Egyptian state-owned news site called Ahram reported on the day:

‘Ahly’s panicked players flooded the club’s in-house television channel with phone calls to speak about the post-match horror and call on authorities to intervene and protect them.

“The security forces left us, they did not protect us. One fan has just died in the dressing room in front of me,” veteran playmaker Mohamed Abou-Treika screamed during a phone call with the club’s channel.

“People have died, we are seeing corpses now. There are no security forces or army personnel to protect us,” attacking midfielder Mohamed Barakat added.’

Both players and fans of Al Ahly seemed rightly justified in questioning why the security forces at the stadium were absent on the day, raising strong suspicions that this was not fans getting out of control on the day of a big match. Instead, it was believed to be an orchestrated event by the Al Masry ultras - police at the stadium accused of allowing the Al Masry attackers to enter the visiting team’s stands and locker rooms. Al-Masry Al-Youm, an independent Cairo daily, published photographs of Al Ahly’s players being evacuated from the stadium in an armored personnel carrier.

These catastrophic events are believed to have happened because Al Ahly’s ultras are known to have played a large role in the toppling of the Hosni Mubarak regime as they teamed with the ultra supporters from the other leading Cairo club to fight against police in the early stages of the revolution. This is apparently why the police allowed the Al Ahly fans to be attacked, as a retribution for their political movement. Now, a year after one of the world’s deadliest soccer riots, that killed 74 and left over 1,000 wounded, a Cairo court sentenced 21 of those involved in the violence to death sentences. This has caused another outbreak of violence in Egypt as ultras from each club clashed after the ruling, leaving 28 dead and at least another 300 wounded.

Friends and relatives of the fans and police officers charged attempted to storm the jail where the men were being held resulting in clashes between civilians and police again as well. The police officers who allowed the violence at the Port Said stadium a year ago to take place will not be sentenced until March, which will likely lead to more violence in a month’s time. It was the Al Masry supporters who were mainly at fault once again for the violence last week, as members of their ultras group were sentenced to death, and now the Al Ahly ultras have stated that they are waiting to react to the sentencing of the 54 other defendants, including former police officers, next month. 

 “We are waiting for the March 9^th verdict,” said an Ultra fan who asked not to give his name. “This fight was between us and those responsible from the military, police, and government. We vowed retribution or chaos. We will take our revenge.” 

With more dead and injured this month because of last year’s riots and with more violence likely to come after the March 9^th verdict, Egypt is once again bracing itself for large outbreaks of violence in its capital city. Supporters of Al Ahly are looking for revenge on the police officers that allowed their friends and fellow fans to be beaten to death, whether it is via the courts or by their own hand. This is yet another example of how soccer can be used as a catalyst for change and political leverage. 

Historically the rivalry between Al Masry and Al Ahly is not the most intense in Egypt, with greater venom in Al Ahly’s clashes with Giza-based club Zamalek. However, the antagonism between Al Masry and Al Ahly started to come to the forefront in recent seasons, exacerbated by Al Masry’s decision to appoint Hossam Hassan Hussein as their new manager. Hassan was a legendary striker for Egypt as a player and made 169 appearances for the national team, scoring 69 goals. He started his club career with Al Ahly and played over 200 games for Egypt’s biggest club before winding down his career with a stint playing for Al Masry. His managerial career has also seen him coach Al Ahly’s fierce rivals Zamalek. In the 2011 season, Hassan was involved in a touchline argument with Al Ahly manager Manuel Jose while he was in charge of Zamalek, which furthered the ultras’ distaste for the now Al Masry manager. Before the stadium riot of 2012 both Hassan and Al Ahly director Sayed Abdel-Hafiz made public appeals for calm before the game, but afterwards Manuel Jose was outspoken in his belief that the violence was orchestrated between Al Masry fans and the police. 

The ultras of Al Ahly are a relatively new fanatical group of supporters who follow their club in a similar fashion to the ultras groups of Italy and South America, but are already famous for their support of the Egyptian revolution. Al Ahly is the most successful club in all of Africa and were named “African Club of the Century” by the Confederation of African Football. Since their founding in 1907 they have gone on to win 36 Egyptian Premier League titles and 7 CAF Champions Leagues, both of which are domestic and African records. Many fans of this historical club and all Egyptians alike await to see what is going to happen in March and if more of their fellow countrymen are going to die for their support of a soccer club and/or the revolution.

You can read more from Jared on Field of View.

Okay, maths lesson is now over…

So football, what do you think the chances are of a keeper making a fantastic save only to parry the ball right into the path of an oncoming striker? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but supporters of the opposing team would call it a lucky goal, with them being right as that ball could have been parried anywhere else except straight at the feet of the opposing player.

The same could be said about a player having a thirty yard effort on goal that is looking like it will be a screamer until it comes off the bar, again many would say he was unlucky. Another player would be classed as lucky if their free kick was to deflect off of a player in the wall to loop over the keepers head.

Luck is simply everywhere, though whether or not one person is luckier than another is a debate that could go on for a lifetime, one that I do not want to be “lucky” enough to witness.

Poker Is A Little Different!

People claim that there is luck in poker, however I do not really like to call it luck and neither would many of the players that play the game. Poker is a game of probabilities and chance broken down into percentages, with each player making their move dependent on their chances of making a hand coupled with how much they have to risk to see if they can.

To the right is a graph with a number of statistical percentages each player will have in a particular situation in a game of Texas Holdem Poker.

These suggest that a player has a certain chance of making each hand.

This is why I believe that playing Texas Holdem is about making your own luck, simply by playing the right way and when the odds are in your favour.

You may lose from time to time but over the long run the “luck” should go more in your favour.

This control that players have over their own luck is what has made Texas Holdem Poker so popular today on big poker sites like Full Tilt Poker. Players are not held to ransom by luck as they would be in many other forms of gambling, they have that certain level of control that enables them to play to the odds whilst also making use of the various strategies available to overcome their opponents.

Poker is a game of skill and ability much like football, with just a little bit of luck thrown in at certain points.

After the embarrassment of failing to win their last World Cup on home turf in 1950, Brazil are understandably desperate to win the 2014 World Cup, but their hosting appears to have come at the wrong time, with their player pool stuck between generations. The generation Scolari used to win his first World Cup are mostly retired or on their way out, while the next lot of stars are still young. Those who are in or around their prime are the likes of Thiago Silva or Ramires – quality players, but not the most creative of types. Mano Menezes was sacked after poor showings in the Copa America and Olympics – his philosophy not fitting in with the players he had at his disposal – but whether Scolari will manage to rescue Brazil this time is up in the air.

Big Phil has proven himself to be an accomplished and pragmatic coach, yet he may just not have the players to get Brazil working again. Against England, he picked a fluid front four spearheaded by Luis Fabiano in a 4-2-3-1, while England ventured away from Roy Hodgson’s typical 4-4-2 with a 4-3-3.

At Euro 2012, England grinded their way through the group  before exiting on penalties to Italy. Although they managed to hold the finalists to a draw, England were outclassed thanks to them giving Andrea Pirlo as much space as he wanted to dictate the game. Against Brazil, they appeared to have learned from their mistake, looking to close down the opposition high up the pitch. Wingers Danny Welbeck and Theo Walcott tracked Dani Alves and Adriano, while Jack Wilshere and Tom Cleverley pushed up against Ramires and Paulinho, making it difficult for Brazil to get the ball out of defence. By cutting out the short options for the defenders, the only option for Brazil to get the ball to their attackers were long balls, which would suit England’s stronger more physical play better than the slighter Brazilian frontline.

Similar to the gameplan under Fabio Capello, the attacking focus was on Theo Walcott. Poor touches frequently let him down, but the main strategy seemed to be sliding the ball through so he could make a diagonal run behind the Brazilian defence. It mostly didn’t work, but it did result in the first goal, as Walcott was played through, his shot fell to Wayne Rooney to finish.

The only way Brazil were able to get the ball forward was when England’s wingers came inside when attacking, leaving the Brazilian full-backs free. They would then race forward or try to curve the ball into the free attacking players from their wider angle, who were left in lots of space with England’s midfield dragged high. Although England had better control over the game, Brazil were having the more dangerous breaks. As Walcott wasn’t playing particularly well, the only real chances for England came from the play of Wilshere, whose willingness to run at players forced players to close him down, creating space for whoever he would slip the ball towards.

After England’s goal, Brazil put a lot more focus on hitting it wide for their full-backs. Regardless of how they were tracked, they began getting Adriano and Dani Alves forward and pumped balls in their direction from deep. The ball mostly trickled out of play but the plan was to presumably stretch England and have the full-backs running at enough pace to make defending them very difficult. Like a no deposit free bet, it was still a gamble but given their other options, there wasn’t much else they could do to get the ball forward.

Although they did make an effort to press, the Brazilian forwards weren’t very good defensively, which meant England found it easier to get the ball forward than their opponents. Nevertheless, Brazil’s goal came from one of the times they actually pressed excellently. When Gary Cahill received the ball, Oscar cut out the simple ball to Steven Gerrard and closed him down, forcing Cahill to run with the ball in the direction of Lucas Moura. He then closed him down, also cutting out the angle for a ball to Leighton Baines, the ball ricocheted to Fred, who had the time to pick out a perfect finish as Chris Smalling couldn’t close him down properly since Moura carried on his run outside. The winning goal was pretty much the same at the other end though. England’s pressure meant Arouca and Paulinho couldn’t get the ball away and substitute Frank Lampard punished them with a superb finish.

Although it remained entertaining, there was little else of note in the second half. Hodgson had obviously reaffirmed the emphasis on Walcott, who was picked out even more frequently and looked to beat Adriano with straight foot races until the Barcelona man was replaced by Filipe Luis, but with the lead the focus was mainly on making things difficult for Brazil.

A bit of an odd game really, as although it was decent to watch, there were few real chances. England did well to throttle Brazil, but, for the most part, their attacking gameplan didn’t work and they may have to reevaluate should they come up against a bteer opponent. Still, Hodgson would prefer to be England manager than Brazil’s right now, as Scolari’s men simply didn’t function in any way offensively.

2) Jerzy Dudek vs AC Milan

3) Gregory Coupet vs Barcelona

4) Fabien Barthez vs Liverpool

5) Iker Casillas vs Valencia

In the Europa League both Bayer Leverkusen and Stuttgart have done well to advance, while in the Champions League Schalke look a decent side and Bayern Munich are perennial favourites. The giants from Bavaria are contenders once again to take Europe’s top club prize again after narrowly losing to Chelsea in the final last year on penalties – a game they really should have won. However it is Borussia Dortmund who have won the past two Bundesliga titles, captivating fans and neutrals alike with their strong attacking play and a youth system that is creating stars like Mario Gotze.

This season in Germany, Bayern Munich appear to have such a lead in the table that they may be uncatchable, but it is the Champions League where Borussia Dortmund’s focus appears to be after last year’s group stage exit. Thrown into the group of death with Real Madrid, Manchester City and Ajax, Dortmund were up against it but managed to come out on top of the group and can now consider themselves one of the bookies’ favourites to go deep into the tournament. Their manager Jurgen Klopp has brought the team back to the glory days of the mid-1990’s, winning big matches in scintillating attacking form.

Watching Dortmund home games at the 80, 720 seat Westfalenstadion with the famous Yellow Wall of fans in the standing terraces waving giant flags and chanting is something to behold. It is this atmosphere that Dortmund’s chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke says makes the Bundesliga a considerably better experience than the Premier League amongst others. Watzke is a self-proclaimed romantic who is a strong supporter of the Germany’s 50% Plus One rule, which requires Bundesliga clubs to be owned by their members. Upon visiting Manchester City in the group stage, he said that it is a shame English clubs and fans are OK with being owned by Americans and Saudis and that they have banned the standing terraces, which carry most of the atmosphere in a stadium.

Watzke said: “I am a little bit romantic, and that is not romantic. In England people seem not to be interested in this – at Liverpool they are fine for the club to belong to an American. But the German is romantic: when there is a club, he wants to have the feeling it is my club, not the club of Qatar or Abu Dhabi.” Last year the 50% Plus One rule was challenged by Hannover president Martin Kind, but it was strongly backed by Watske and other Bundesliga officials. Borussia Dortmund themselves are floated on the stock market after a mid-2000’s financial collapse, but it is the members who elect the president and the four members of the club’s supervisory board. These members also get to vote to decide major issues in club policy as well.

“I was the biggest opponent of changing the rule,” Watzke said in an interview with the Guardian at Dortmund’s Signal Iduna stadium in the build-up to the City match. “Germans want to have that sense of belonging. When you give [the supporters] the feeling that they are your customers, you have lost. In Germany, we want everybody to feel it is their club, and that is really important.” The only clubs in Germany not owned by their members are Wolfsburg, owned by Volkswagen, Bayer Leverkusen, owned by pharmacy giant Bayer, and Hoffenheim, a team with a meteoric rise funded by a single very wealthy entrepeneur, Dietmar Hopp. When the rule was contested the only club outside of those three to vote against it was Kind’s Hannover, while the other 32 big clubs voted to keep the rule that was introduced in 2001.

“In former times in England I think the relationship between the club and supporters was very strong,” Watzke argued. “Our people come to the stadium like they are going to their family. Here, the supporters say: it’s ours, it’s my club.”  Within the famous Die gelbe Wand (Yellow Wall) at Borussia Dortmund’s stadium, the 25,000 who fill the standing area on the south side of Signal Iduna stadium pay just €190 for a season ticket for the 17 home Bundesliga matches. Season tickets that also include entry to the first three Champions League group games cost slightly more at €220, working out at exactly €11 for each match. “Here, it is our way to have cheap tickets, so young people can come,” Watzke said. “We would make €5m more a season if we had seats, but there was no question to do it, because it is our culture. In England it is a lot more expensive. Football is more than a business.”

This way of running things wasn’t always the way of the Bundesliga. After a terribly disappointing European Championships in 2000 where the Mannschaft were eliminated bottom of their group, winning just one point despite possessing stars like Michael Ballack and Dietmar Hamann. The 3-0 loss to Portugal followed by a 1-0 defeat to massive rivals England sparked the German FA to do something about the national program, which looked in tatters after winning Euro 96. This began with rebuilding the youth academies in the fashion of France’s Clairefontaine, and then restructuring the Bundesliga to change the manner in which each club is controlled.  This brought about the 50% Plus One rule, which means there is not a single overseas owner in the league and the president of a German club, even a big one like Borussia Dortmund or Bayern Munich, is always accountable and can be voted out by the members, which is said to keep the clubs rooted in their cities and traditions.

The youth programs set up across Germany immediately started pumping out talent, and at the 2006 World Cup the first wave of true academy graduates began to populate the national team. Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philip Lahm, and Lukas Podolski were a few to shine through at the time, and by Euro 2012 there was Mesut Ozil, Sami Khedira, and Mats Hummels. At present, of the 525 Bundesliga players, 60% are German and the average age is 24. Last season in the Premier League 39% of players were English and only one player in Manchester City’s line up against Borussia Dortmund (Joe Hart) was English, while Dortmund had seven German starters. Not only is the game more accessible to German fans and players, but getting the community back behind the teams has been very important to Bundesliga officials as well, ensuring the Bundesliga has the highest attendances in Europe.

Bundesliga chief executive Christian Seifert, who has been in place since 2005, said in an interview with the Observer that the league was going to keep its standing seats as they are an important part of the game in Germany. Cheap seats like these were banned in England after a number of disasters in the 1980s called for higher security and stadium safety, but in Germany they continue to exist and without much difficulty. “We value the fan culture we have,” Seifert emphasises. “We are the last of the big leagues with standing areas and nobody wants to touch these standing areas. The clubs are committed to having many cheap tickets, because it is considered very important in Germany that people who do not have very much money are able to come to the stadium.”

“Here, football is one of the last activities which really brings people together, across all ages and all classes of income,” Seifert says. “Politics does not do it, the church does not make it happen. Most chairmen and chief executives have been very much involved with football, they have been supporters and players. They see from a pure business perspective they could raise prices and make more money. But they have decided to take less money and enable people whose families have supported the club for generations, and young people, to keep coming. We want to have our whole society as part of our football, in our stadiums.” Many football fans across the continent are regular working people and keeping costs down is important to keep it the people’s game. There are still calls from within the German game to remove the standing areas as well for safety purposes but right now the fans remain standing.

The rule is intended to not only keep German teams strong and backed by their supporters but also to be of great benefit to the national team as well. “The rule keeps clubs closer to their roots, their community and the central purpose they have,” Seifert argues. “And maybe it keeps the clubs closer to the country, too. The rule means that the control of each club is in Germany. Bayern Munich, of course, is a global brand now, Borussia Dortmund has the opportunity to be the same, but the people running the clubs are very aware of what the clubs mean to the city and they pay attention to that, and the history. The people who run the clubs very much have their roots here, and together with the DFB I guess we share one idea: that Germany should have world-class German players.”

“Of course each club is focused on its team, there is competition. Nevertheless the shared vision of the clubs in Germany is that we have to have a strong national team, that helps football in the country.” When asked about the Premier League, whose clubs make so much more money than the Bundesliga does – €2.5bn in 2010-11 compared with Germany’s €1.7bn from still strong sponsorships and rising TV income – and so attract more world stars, Seifert was diplomatic in his response: “We have a lot of respect for the Premier League, it has great club names, great coaches and players. But this is a completely different system. We think a lot about the future. The big challenge is to keep performing, at a very good, top European level, while having affordable tickets and deep roots in society. In that, we do feel we have something in the Bundesliga of which we can be a little bit proud.”

Growing stronger on the field will only help to increase the fans from overseas that the English game can boast, and then in turn more profit. While looking at global branding, German clubs still purposefully maintain a grass-roots feel with their fans in the manner of the peoples’ game in a super commercial and globalized time as the present. With two teams challenging for the Champions League (and one other putting in a good effort), and two others blazing the Europa League path, the Bundesliga is likely to attract fans across the globe.

You can read more from Jared on Field of View.

Gerrard’s a walking paradox. He’s arguably the most talented player to have donned a Liverpool shirt, yet hasn’t added to their many league titles; he may be the finest English player of his generation, yet he’s been one of the major reasons for their failures; he possesses all the attributes a centre-midfielder would need, yet has repeatedly proven himself incapable of playing there; he’s a perfectionist, yet still makes the same mistakes he did when he made his debut; he’s noticeably self-conscious, yet continually puts himself as the centre of attention on the field; he’s the locally born captain of his boyhood team, yet he doesn’t fit the mould of the classic Liverpool player.

When he first burst onto the scene as a scally-haired 18 year-old, Gerrard was a rambunctious ball-winning midfielder. Replacing the injured Jamie Redknapp, Gerrard’s role was primarily defensive – charging around the pitch, diving into tackles to win the ball back – but with a bit more attacking quality than someone like Lee Cattermole today. Although Liverpool’s coaching staff rated him highly, they became worried by his lack of maturity – he had a tendency to be overzealous with his challenges, giving out more than his fair share of lunging challenges, resulting in an alarming flurry of red cards. However, a year alongside Gary McAllister in the centre of midfield did him far more good than his stints on the “graveyard shift” of right midfield ever did, calming down not only his over the top battling but his decision-making when picking out a pass.

As Gerard Houllier’s erratic transfer dealings weakened the squad and Michael Owen’s appearances became less frequent thanks to hamstring trouble, Gerrard’s influence became more important – going forward more as Liverpool’s other attacking options waned, earning him the captain’s armband. By the time Rafa Benitez replaced Houllier at Anfield, Gerrard was head and shoulders above the rest of the squad. Nevertheless, Gerrard was causing Benitez problems: although he was Liverpool’s best player, he didn’t have the footballing intelligence to play in the centre of the midfield.

Under Houllier, they had been counter-attacking and tight in midfield, so Gerrard’s charging about and playing the ball forward every chance he got was encouraged. Benitez’s side was more considered though – when Gerrard charged forward, he left a gap and when he hit an inappropriate long ball it ruined Liverpool’s possession play. Things reached a head in the Champions League final: he may have been the man to spur on Liverpool’s comeback, but that was only after he was pushed forward and Dietmar Hamann took his deeper role. In the first half, Kaka had run riot, gifted space by Gerrard’s ventures forward and Xabi Alonso’s lack of mobility.

Post-Istanbul Gerrard was shifted back out to the right, where he was far more productive this time around. With the acquisition of Fernando Torres however, Gerrard was moved back into the centre, but higher up behind the striker. Forming a telepathic partnership, the pair toyed with opposition defences, almost storming their way to the Premier League title in 2009.

Gerrard was less successful for England. Having Frank Lampard beside him meant they needed someone sitting behind them to play their natural games, yet David Beckham and Michael Owen required them to play in a 4-4-2 to give them the proper support.  The failure of the Golden Generation was born in its wealth of talent, leading to an unbalanced, dysfunctional team. Fabio Capello improved this, giving Gerrard a freer role on the left, with the license to come inside, but a more rigid system saw England and Gerrard flop at the 2010 World Cup.

Benitez’s sacking and a string of injuries, that have stolen that burst of energy away from him, have seen Gerrard moved back into the centre of midfield. Pundits, most notably Andy Gray, barracked Benitez for playing Gerrard higher up the pitch, but the occasional performance against weaker sides aside, he’s consistently proven he can’t play deeper. While he has the technical and physical defensive ability in his tackling and harrying to defend properly, an inability to track runners and poor positional sense makes him a defensive liability.

The same poor judgement stunts his attacking. Although on a technical level, Gerrard is one of the world’s best passers and possesses a near-perfect shot, he rarely knows the right time to use them. In closely-fought games a clear head is key, but Gerrard gets nervous, and the more nervous he gets the more desperate he gets. The odd poorly thought out long ball or speculative shot become the only option he chooses when things aren’t going his team’s way. This resulted in the stunning volleys against Olympiakos and West Ham – goals that will burned into Liverpool fans’ minds for eternity – but the ball rolling out of play has been far more frequent.

As Arrigo Sacchi said of Gerrard: “When I was director of football at Real Madrid I had to evaluate the players coming through the youth ranks. We had some who were very good footballers. They had technique, they had athleticism, they had drive they were hungry. But they lacked what I call knowing-how-to-play-football. They lacked decision making. They lacked positioning. They didn’t have the subtle sensitivity of football: how a player should move within the collective. And for many I wasn’t sure they were going to learn. You see, strength, passion, technique, athleticism, all of these are very important. But they are a means to an end, not an end in itself. They help you reach your goal, which is putting your talent at the service of the team and, by doing this, making both of you and the team greater. In situations like that, I just have to say, Gerrard is a great footballer, but perhaps not a great player.”

Gerrard is aware of his gifts, and they have made him one of the best players of his generation, but a calmer head on his shoulders could have seen him become a true great. Instead, a less energetic Gerrard is spending the end of his Liverpool career frustrating fans with poor decision-making and keeping more deserving youngsters out of the team. Most players could only dream of having the career Gerrard has, yet he will probably look back with regret.

A year or so ago, the idea that Barcelona’s current side was the best to have ever played the game was pretty popular. The ball was passed from world-class player to world-class player as Barca would patiently strangle the life out of opposition teams.

One tricky season later and it seemed we had been caught in the hype, but is that fair? When you reach a certain level of dominance like Barcelona did, weighing up the side against the others that reached that level becomes a matter of deciding how the miniscule weaknesses and extraneous factors detract from each team’s greatness.

There’s a tendency to rank older teams and players higher in football, but that doesn’t really make a great deal of sense. For all the whingeing about modern football, the game is as good as it has ever been: higher standards of physical fitness and a tactical organisation that the likes of Roberto Mancini believe has reached an end point, at least as far as major developments go, mean the quality of football has increased dramatically over the past few decades. The likes of the Dutch Total Football sides were revolutionary but they would be ripped apart by most average sides today, which makes an excellent case for Barcelona being the best team of all-time – the last side to reach a similar level of greatness to Barcelona was probably Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan, and they came 20 years before.

The second factor that sets Barca apart is that, in Lionel Messi, they have a player for whom you could make a genuine case for being football’s greatest ever. The greatest teams are usually made up of great players, yet the greatest usually go to teams that will build a team around them. Pelé and Diego Maradona played with good players at Santos and Napoli, but few will really go down in history, whereas Barcelona had a team that could go down in history in its own right, then have Messi on top of that – able to pick up the ball, dribble around five players, and dink it over the keeper when things aren’t quite going to plan.

At the tail end of Frank Rijkaard’s reign, Barcelona were looking more like Santos or Napoli – several players running around doing the defensive legwork for the stars – yet, unlike Pelé or Maradona, the stars weren’t putting in the creative effort to make the team function. Their B team, on the other hand, had been successful, with former captain Pep Guardiola leading them to promotion from their Tercera Division group, so Joan Laporta promoted him to the first team for the 2008-09 season.

Rijkaard still had a great squad to work with, but several key issues had plagued them. Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto’o and Deco had been the main reasons for Barcelona’s success under Rijkaard, but their laziness had become a massive problem by the end of his time there – Guardiola moved the Brazilians on immediately, while a new club couldn’t be found for Eto’o so he was allowed to stay on. The main change was what made those outgoings necessary though: Barcelona had played a possession-based style since the Johan Cruyff side Guardiola had been a part of, but they were left unbalanced by the laziness of some when they weren’t in possession – now everyone was expected to defend in an intense pressing game. To compensate for the harder fitness demands, they became even more possession-focussed. Barcelona would tire the opposition by making them chase the ball for long periods then give them no time to recoup when they finally got it back, having multiple players close in around them.

The team was built from back to front with this philosophy in mind. Victor Valdes was by no means a world-class goalkeeper but he was excellent with his feet, and having someone comfortable enough on the ball for his teammates to pass back to and recycle the ball when their build-up broke down was more important – if Guardiola’s plan worked, Valdes wouldn’t be facing many shots anyway. The intense pressing also made a high line a requirement for Barcelona, making Valdes’ quickness off his line important to Barcelona’s defending, stopping the opposition from just hitting it in behind them repeatedly.

Ahead of him was Carles Puyol and Gerard Pique. The rugged Bette Midler-haired Puyol doesn’t appear to fit the Barcelona template, but he offered solidity and most importantly a bit of pace to what was potentially an easily exposed defence. Looking at him, new signing Pique didn’t appear to fit the template either: he was big, bulky and also pretty slow, yet he ended up being one of Barca’s stand-out players. Earning the nickname Piquenbauer, he combined strong defending with class on the ball, striding out from the back at will to carry the ball forward.

While not that special going forward, Eric Abidal was a very good choice defensively at left-back – perhaps needed to cancel out the forays of Dani Alves on the right. In the style of fellow Brazilian Cafu, it wasn’t rare for Alves to be the furthest player forward. With Messi cutting in off the wing, width was needed from full-back and Alves was the perfect man for the job: raw athleticism and the space that attacking from deep gave him allowed him to easily power past opponents and pull it back across.

To ensure they didn’t get caught out at the back when the full-backs bombed forward, versatile defensive midfielder Yaya Toure would drop into the centre of the defence with the centre-backs spreading out to the wings. The Ivorian added muscle to an otherwise lightweight side and was good enough with the ball to later play as an attacking midfielder at Manchester City, nevertheless he played one of the uglier roles in Catalonia. Still it was necessary: under Rijkaard, Barcelona had attempted to play without a holding player to little success.

Before Guardiola’s appointment, Xavi Hernandez was starting to get squeezed out of the team. Andres Iniesta and Deco were more dynamic, flexible players and, with the holding midfielder-less experiments a failure, it was only Iniesta’s willingness to play in the forward trio and Deco’s fall from grace that had rescued Xavi from a place on the bench. With Guardiola’s increased focus on passing though, the one-footed metronome established himself as one of Barcelona’s most important players. Between them, him and Iniesta would keep things ticking over, passing backwards then sideways, prodding the ball around as they led defenders away their positions, manipulating enough space to slip in the killer pass. As the more mobile player, there was more emphasis on Iniesta to get into attacking positions, but this left Xavi to do what he was good at: dictating the tempo of the game.

Messi provided a more direct version of this ahead of them, drifting in from the right to do what few other players could. At this point in time, the debates over whether it was him or Cristiano Ronaldo that was the best player in the world were still raging, but Barcelona’s destruction of Manchester United in the Champions League final made it a formality, with his headed goal not a bad response to those who gave Ronaldo the edge for his aerial ability. While Ronaldo was a monstrous goalscoring weapon, Messi could do the same then set up his teammates like a trequartista. Thierry Henry’s considerable powers were fading fast yet he still managed a decent goal tally from his wide left position, while Eto’o did his best to convince Guardiola he was worthy of staying in Spain, leading the line with energetic aplomb.

An opening day defeat to Numancia had the alarm bells ringing, yet Barcelona ended up winning every competition they entered, with a 6-2 thrashing of Real Madrid at the Bernabeu a particular highlight. Guardiola looked to refine his side further over the summer. Despite Eto’o's impressive year, Guardiola still wanted to offload him, trading him for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, while Pedro Rodriguez and Sergio Busquets were promoted from the B team. Although they had won the Champions League convincingly, Guardiola’s team had been lucky to get past Chelsea in the semi-finals, taking advantgae of some poor refereeing to fight their way through. Guus Hiddink had his team sit deep and soak up Barcelona’s pressure, comfortable that the short Catalans wouldn’t be able to challenge his side in the air, ensuring they would be squashed out of the game. Guardiola’s response to this problem was to bring in Ibrahimovic – a player talented enough with his feet to fit in at Barcelona, but also handy in the air, meaning teams couldn’t just camp out in their own box and let Barcelona play in fornt of them.

This ultimately didn’t work: used to Italian football, Ibrahimovic would slow the play down slower than what suited Barca, was often too slow to get onto the end of balls from deep and, although he put in a greater effort than he’s typically credited for, didn’t match the defensive work of his opponents. On top of that, the money they gave Inter allowed them to rebuild their team, putting together a squad strong enough to knock them out of the Champions League and win the competition.

The Masia graduates were a success however. In Toure’s role at the base of the midfield, Busquets was less physical but neater in his play, relying on his positional play and a keen sense for when football’s dark arts are approriate to get back the ball, then getting involved in the small passing triangles when he had it, while Pedro gave the added option of a tricksy more direct winger when needed. Barcelona were less dynamic, but, since opponents were starting to adapt to them, their more patient thoughtful play may have been a better move.

Rather than second guess his opponents, Guardiola seemed more willing to embrace his team’s philosophy the next summer. Messi had requested to play centrally, in a false nine role similar to the one Francesco Totti played in at Roma – he had done so to some success at the tail end of the 08-09 season, with Eto’o moving out to the right wing, so out went a grumpy Ibrahimovic to be replaced by David Villa. Fresh from playing in a left-sided role for Spain at that summer’s World Cup, Villa was the perfect man for the job: Messi could drift around in the middle and Villa would lead the line with diagonal runs behind the opposition defence, while still being comfortable enough to get involved in any build-up play.

The other major buy was Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano. Originally thought of as a waste of money after the success of Busquets, Mascherano was moved back into defence, where the defensive ability that made him one of the world’s best defensive midfielders was put to good use. His lack of height wasn’t that important when Barcelona’s high line meant aerial challenges were rare, putting a greater pressure on his superior speed, and his underrated passing was given a better platform with more space deeper on the pitch.

A loss in the final of the Copa Del Rey was the only disappointment of the season, but Barcelona seemed to wane the following year. Guardiola became more obsessed with changing Barcelona’s shape to combat other teams trying to predict what they would do, yet this seemed to just confuse his own players more. The loss of David Villa to injury also had a huge effect: Alexis Sanchez attempted to replicate his diagonal runs to lead the line, but didn’t look comfortable in a role more suited for a striker, while Messi found himself dropping deeper to join in with the midfield’s creation, often leaving an outnumbered and pretty lightweight frontline. Guardiola’s decision not to continue seemed best for his sanity, yet his poor final season shouldn’t sully the three years that preceded it. He built the most dominant, controlling team in history – even those that beat them rarely bettered them.