Champions league up for sale: 14 man Inter beat Barca

'It's a fucking disgrace', as Didier Drogba would have put it. Never has a referee been so moronic, the decisions so glaringly wrong as has been in the Inter-Barca first leg match last night at San Siro. Dani Alves' hearty laugh said it all when he was fouled by Sneijder inside the Inter penalty box, and what does the referee do? Instead of a penalty to Barca, he throws down a yellow to the fallen Alves. The refs mistakes had reached such comic proportions that one wonders how fatter his wallet got after Tuesday's match.

No doubt Inter played well; attacked on the break and defended well, but the scoreline should have been 2-2 rather than 3-1.

To add to the circus, look at how the commentator describes Milito's goal - "Well Deserved". Now sir, before using any other adjective, a remotely sensible person would say, "that was clearly an offside". Well deserved? You must be joking, right? Or did the Mafia manage to scare the commentators too?

Champions league final preplay

If you are curious about what’s going to happen on the 27th of May at Rome, here is an indicator. We as summer interns dedicated to contributing to humanity’s powers of prediction decided to check out what fortune and the game engine of FIFA 09 had to say about the match. So it was, with difficulty level set to world class and half length at 6 minutes did the kickoff start.

Lest the validity of the game should be questioned, it was played in front of two witnesses who alternated between watching out for the big boss Tanya and taking a peek at the interesting happenings on the screen.

Astonished we were at the accuracy of FIFA makers at modeling reality as Messi dominated pretty much of the whole game. Ronaldo with all his spread legged free kicks was at best a shadow of the swerving and shimmying Messi. Wayne F. Rooney burst into an occasional run and a shot which often went wide off the post. All in all the attacking trio of Etoo–Messi–Henry proved to be too good for Man F. United as Barcelona trounced them 4-2 in 90 minutes.

Barcelona took the lead in the 26th minute as Etoo slipped the ball inside from five yards with a grounded pass from Henry. Man U equalized in the 44th minute with a low shot by Berbatov from just outside the box. The game went into the break with 1-1.

Messi exults after scoring in injury time

And then second half saw the real genius that is Messi. The heat was on Man U from the word go as Messi took the ball from midfield, burned down the right wing and unleashed a fierce shot from an acute angle. Van der Sar parried the ball off just to see it being tapped in coolly by the well positioned Henry. The third goal followed soon enough as Xavi and Iniesta combined to set up Etoo who slot it home. Michael Carrick gave Man U some hope with his spectacular goal from about 20 yards, but by then the damage was already done. Messi sealed the deal for Barcelona in injury time with a straight left footer after another solo run down the right wing.

P.S. Down with Man F. United. This is what is going to happen.