Can Spanish giants restore some pride tomorrow night?

Last Wednesday arguably the two top teams in Europe brought shame to the Champions League.

Real Madrid and Barcelona players shamed Europe’s biggest competition with diving, cheating and under-handed tactics.

Spectacle

The semi-final clash at the Bernabeu should have been one of the best spectacles of this season.

The two giants of Spanish football meeting in one of the most important games of the season and all everybody is talking about is their poor conduct.

Better

Tomorrow night the pair meet in the second leg with Barca leading 2-0.

The game at the Nou Camp is a chance for a lot of last Wednesday’s worst offenders to restore some pride. A lot of reputations were damaged.

Reputation

Barcelona have gained a reputation as one of the best club sides to ever grace a football field. However they have tarnished that reputation with the fact that certain players in their team have a liking for play-acting.

The likes of Daniel Alves, Pedro and Sergio Busquets have an infuriating habit of going down far too easy when opponents hardly touched them and this is coming from a big of fan of Barcelona.

They are all top players with superb skills, yet they feel the need to ruin it by play-acting. I just hope these players are remembered for their ability and not their poor acting. Surely the offending players must realise how ridiculous they look at times.

Real

It’s not only the Barcelona players who tarnished their reputations though Real Madrid boss Jose Mourinho really hasn’t done his any good either. A lot of pundits are even suggesting that other clubs wouldn’t want to employ the Portuguese boss after his behaviour on Wednesday night.

I think that’s a bit of an over exaggeration as he’s still a highly-rated coach but certain clubs will be put off by his defensive tactics and also his controversial behaviour after the game. He has always been a controversial character but he took it to a new level after this clash.

Attack

What I and lots of other spectators would really like to see is Jose Mourinho pick an attacking line-up to face Barca at the Nou Camp and avoid negative tactics. He has so many top attacking players to choose from.

Real need to win by three goals to progress into the final and the likes Gonzalo Higuain, Cristiano Ronaldo and Karim Benzema are more than capable of scoring the goals they need. Even if Real don’t progress past Barca then at least Mourinho has tried to win, instead of going out of the competition with a whimper.

If he sets his team up in a defensive manner like the first leg then I think he will lose a lot of the respect he has built up over the years. It will be like he has already accepted defeat and Mourinho has never been seen as a loser.

Football

The second leg has to be nicer on the eye than the first leg. Lionel Messi was the only one to come out of the first game with any credit. Hopefully after the second game we will be talking about the quality of football, rather than the histrionics of the two players and coaches.

Can Real and Barca restore some pride on Tuesday night?