Topic: UEFA Champions League 2023/24 Season - page 435. (Read 141898 times)

Of the 8 matches in the second leg, only Manchester City can be said to be safe they won in the first leg with a score of 3-1 and in the second leg Manchester City played at home so Copenhagen does not have any opportunity to change the situation. Other matches like Real Sociedad v PSG also interesting to wait for us to see if Real Sociedad can do something because they were 2 goals behind in the first leg so they had to win with a difference of 3 goals in the second leg, of course this is not easy because PSG is not a weak opponent.

The good thing after this first round is, we have basically all the keys open, and everything can happen, for me we can expect as i said before an Atletico Madrid coming back on Madrid, and also we expect the comeback of Arsenal in London, about Napoli Barcelona is a no clue game.

LEts see what is ahead for us, prepare your bets.

Always stay positive my friend. Barcelona has not yet moved to the somewere and club is still trying to defend its position. So many internal issues have been also affecting the performance from barcelona. This can be seen from how club become very inconsistent. It's winning against strong club but lost against mediocre club.
I have no problem in UCL caused by barcelona has good chance to enter into the next round. The second leg will not be a hard game for barcelona. Napoli will be thinking so hard about how to beat barcelona. The club has no chance to play safe caused by barcelona will be intensively pressuring napoli since the first half.
The second half will be very intense if napoli will able to keep the score to be draw. This is the hardest task  that must be completed by napoli. It's caused by club needs also to think about the condition from the players.
Napoli is not performing quite well in serie a. Theorically, that will be surely impacting the performance from the club but this totally depends on how good napoli players can handle it. There will be a lot of pressures to come for whole of players in the squad.
Napoli needs to win the game against barcelona even though this looks impossible to happen.

It seems like you don't need to be curious because it's enough to know that Napoli main mistake was just changing coaches 3 times in one season, whereas a team that changes coaches several times can affect the performance of its players.
from this mistake you can see that Napoli main mistake is clearly visible and for me this is very crazy because Napoli management's thinking is quite bad, too chasing something instant.
so I wouldn't be surprised if Napoli performance was bad and fortunately Napoli still had Osimhen who could still save a draw in that match.

In the second leg, I'm still quite confident that Barcelona at home will be able to beat Napoli.
the main reason is quite clear, even though they are both going through bad times, Barcelona is still better, currently retaining Xavi, who has experience in managing Barcelona in the UCL.

I am still curious about the primary factor that allows Barcelona to perform even better than Napoli. It feels like napoli has been weakened. The current state of napoli is very different compared to the previous season. Napoli less aggressive and it doesn't have good defenders as well. It was putting napoli in very difficult condition caused by the club must be getting draw in the first leg. barcelona still owns the game till the second leg. I saw that the draw as a win for barcelona caused by it played away. Napoli needs to use the strategy that was being used by intermilan to beat barcelona. Barcelona was not that strong but napoli seemed even weaker compared to the barcelona.
This is also the main reason draw was happening in the first leg. The second leg is gonna be even more difficult, caused by barcelona has no choice other than try to create the big wall against barcelona. Napoli needs at least draw against barcelona.

Maybe Barcelona only got a draw in the first leg. but I'm sure that in the second leg Barcelona will be superior and will even score at least 2 goals. I will favorite Barcelona as a form of my disappointment with Napoli in Serie A. We can see how Napoli's condition is currently in Serie A. They were not even able to win full points from opponents who were weaker than them in the Serie A standings. and this is very worrying considering that last season Napoli were unbeaten and were able to win the title very comfortably. But this season everything has really changed and turned 180 degrees.

In contrast to Napoli, Barcelona actually looks better at the moment. They are now even starting to approach Girona in 2nd place and I think Xavi will make the best strategy for Barcelona and make beautiful memories at the club he will leave.

Most big clubs are having close stadium built dates, Real Madrid built their Barnebeu into something huge, it's like a shopping mall, hotel, stadium, concert area, business place and more all at the same time, it's insane that they built something big. Of course when they are growing that big, it wouldn't be possible to think that Barcelona would let it slide, this is why they are trying to make a bigger and better one from their previous stadium as well.

The problem with modern stadiums is that you can't really increase the capacity all that much, around 70 to 80k is the best and most you can have without bad seats, maybe 90k or so if you want to add some far away high up seats too, but not like you can build a 300k stadium, who could even see the game from all the way up there. So they just modernize it, and charge more for seats.

Me too but let's wait and see whether there will be change to happen in the napoli. The stupidest thing made by napoli to get draw against barcelona. it was showing that if napoli has faced huge decline and this is trouble for other club. laporta is feeling very optimistic to face the next leg.
Playing at home will be strongly boosting the performance of the club.  Barcelona can't be considered as a weak team when it was playing at home. It makes thing become far easy for barcelona to get the full points from its opponent.

Napoli can only bet on try to fully defense against barcelona. The last match was very disappointed me. I thought napoli would be consistently attacking barcelona but it's not happening. Napoli likes to show another shitshow and we will see that again in the second leg against barcelona.
Im not even able to thinking other better strategy than fully defensive against barcelona. This is the only chance owned by napoli, napoli needs only just do it. Everything will be fine as long as napoli will able to build the big wall for barcelona.

Xavi will also struggle in advising his club during the game. So, the only chance owned by napoli to do fully defensive.

Barcelona didn't play badly in the first leg at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, but of course, if Barcelona had been in better form then they wouldn't have lost to Napoli. Including the first leg of this season's Champions League, Barcelona and Napoli have both drawn 3 times, while Barcelona won 2 of them. I remember Barcelona also drew against Napoli in the 2019-2020 season, but Barcelona was really able to complete its mission in the second leg with a 3-1 win.

I was not at all surprised by the draw because basically Barcelona also had problems in defense this season. The performance of their defenders is not as good as last season and Barcelona have conceded a lot of goals to date. For the second leg, Barcelona is the favorite to win and Xavi must be able to prove it at home.

Barcelona still has problems that have not been resolved until now. That is Barcelona always has difficulty in completing the attacks they build. Which means the effectiveness of their attacks is problematic and well it also indicates Barcelona's current front line players are losing their sharpness in scoring goals. And Barcelona's second problem is that they are always late to help the defence when they are too focused on attacking. So in conclusion Barcelona do not have a good balance at the moment. But fortunately Napoli also have the same problem this season. And even Napoli are much worse this season. So in the second leg later I also feel confident that Barcelona will be favoured and qualify for the next stage.

Yes, you are right, it is possible that Porto will carry out a strategy like what you said and I also said that before, I admit that Porto's defense is very strong so that Arsenal are completely unable to create opportunities, but this is likely because Arsenal's players cannot shoot on target so they don't was able to break into Porto's goal, while Porto himself shot at goal twice and 1 of them resulted in a goal in the last minute and that was of course very painful for Arsenal because who would have thought that Arsenal would try to hold a draw in the first leg so that in the second leg Arsenal would beat Porto easily but unfortunately Arsenal conceded a goal.

Of course, any coach would be disappointed if they saw their club lose, especially in a big competition like this, even all Arsenal fans would also feel the same disappointment and even many bettors would lose because of course there are many who favor Arsenal, but what is called a surprise is true. we can't predict it because Porto also cannot be underestimated, he has prepared himself before meeting on the field and this really makes him happy because he was able to beat Arsenal in the first leg and will make a defensive strategy in the future second leg if Arsenal uses a less powerful attack strategy.

Barcelona problem at the moment is the lack of chances conversion. They could have easily booked the quarter final slot as early as this first leg if those chances missed were well converted. It could have been definitely a big scoreline and pressure would be less in the return leg. I would also place bet on them to win because I have observed that Barcelona has improved in term of playing aggressively recently. Outside shots is one of the things that have been missing in some of their past games and it caused them lots of missed goals. You can not always wait to dribble every player before scoring, try outside shots and some might probably enter the net. If they can play the second leg with the same energy and aggression used in the first leg, they will definitely eliminate Napoli in the competition and advance to next stage.

Barcelona has been inconsistent for some time now, and that has made them struggle to win their matches this season. I think Barcelona are getting back to their winning ways because they are unbeaten in their last four matches in La Liga. Barcelona doesn't need to surprise us by beating Napoli at Camp Nou because they are the favorites to win against Napoli.

The source: Marca

Camp Nou is still under construction to increase the seat capacity. The construction is actually planned to be finished in 2026 but Barcelona are expected to be able to start playing their home games there by November 2024.

As a result there is still a long time until Barcelona to have their own stadium back.    They will continue to play their home matches at Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys until then. This stadium is also in Barcelona by the way so it shouldn't feel too strange for them. Besides Barcelona have bigger problems than not having Camp Nou recently. They are likely to reach the quarter finals here maybe but they are doing really bad in the La Liga.  

Barcelona and Napoli have met at least 9 times, including the first Champions League match yesterday and of these many meetings, Napoli has only beaten Barcelona once, while Barcelona won 5 times and the rest ended in a draw, so it is very possible that in the second match, Barcelona will actually win the match because apart from Napoli not being very good in European competition except last season, they are also not in good condition this season, also the change of coach may not be able to bring this team from Serie A to perform better, while Barcelona is a team that is not really taken into account in the champions league but against Napoli, they have better strength than their opponents, and winning by just 1 goal is enough to take Barcelona to the Champions League quarter-finals, but if the match had to be decided by a penalty shootout the result could be the opposite.

I also hope that Barcelona is able to send Napoli home sooner in Leg 2. Statistically Barcelona can take advantage of playing at home to dominate the game it's just that we need Lewandowski, De Jong and Yamal in on-fire condition so that every attack can be made from all angles to support more goal opportunity. For Yamal I think that even though he is young it cannot be denied that his contribution to Barcelona is very important. Yes hopefully we can maximize our abilities in Leg 2 later. Regarding Napoli this season, I think it is natural for them to reflect on the depth of their squad and not rely too much on Osimhen alone, if they want to show their abilities again then all players must be able to contribute in their respective lines.

That is Barcelona's problem at the moment. They have played inconsistently this season and we can also see several times they lost games they should have won. This is an opportunity for Napoli to provide a surprise in the second leg. But if Barcelona is able to perform as they should play then I think it will be very difficult for Napoli to beat Barcelona. They have everything to win. Moreover, playing as the host will certainly increase their motivation. I bet on Barcelona winning in the second leg.

Barcelona's condition this season is also no better compared to last season, so Barcelona itself will not win easily at home. Because Napoli will also try to do better at home to Barcelona in the second leg even though both of them already have one goal in the first leg. In the Champions League there are always unexpected things that happen so that victory for any team will not be easier, including for the home team like Barcelona.

Actually this arsenal vs Porto reverse fixture is going to really be a fascinating encounter, arsenal dominated most of the ball in the first leg but they fail to create anything tangible to threaten the goal of this Porto team.

I know that this Porto defense is very good of a truth,  but I really don't see them stopping arsenal from scoring and winning this game in the reverse fixture especially in their home tuff, let everyone just stay fit, then I believe that they are ready to go

Apart from all these facts, it must be underlined that Porto has a good defense, especially since they have a veteran defender like Pepe. We know that his experience in the Champions League is not small and since defending Real Madrid for many seasons he was one of the key players in Real Madrid's success at that time. I saw footage of the match where this 40 year old defender was always able to intercept Arsenal's attacks and maybe he is a defender who should really be wary of if Arsenal can have more freedom in carrying out attacks.

Apart from that, Arsenal is known to be very strong at home and they are lucky to be able to do so in the second leg. Usually they will do more than just attack and their strength can rise when they get full support from fans. Mikel Arteta has to devise the right strategy this time because they failed to do so in the first leg and ended up losing in the final minute. I hope all the players are fit before the second leg starts and we must remember that everyone's expectations are high for Arsenal and they must not disappoint everyone's expectations.