Saturday 19 May 2012

Chelsea wins Champions League with Penalty Kicks

Bayern was clearly the dominant team in the first half.  Chelsea did what many expected, they defended.  Regardless Bayern missed several great opportunities.  What was missing in the first half were the concentration to put the ball into the net. Bayern had 15-2 shots on goal and 8-0 corners in the first half and the ball possession was 60 to 40%. There has to be some credit to Chelsea's keeper Cech, who often came out of his goal further than one would expect. It was scoreless after one half.

 Bayern dominated for the most part of the second half, but again missed too many opportunities to move ahead.  Finally in the 85th minute Mueller headed the ball into the net when Toni Kroos passed a ball from the left corner.  1-0 Bayern.

Celtic reacted by taken Kaloun off and replacing him with Torres.  Bayern followed shortly thereafter by pulling Mueller and putting Van Buyten in, showing the shift of strategy of the two teams.

The strategy fell apart for Bayern when Drogba scored after the very first corner for Chelsea.  Lampard took the corner and placed it near the close goal post, where Drogba headed the ball just under the crosspost in the right corner of the net.  1-1.  At that point Chelsea had the momentum.  It remained a draw through 90  minutes and on it went into overtime.

As overtime started Chelsea dominated initially, before Bayern composed itself again.  In the 94th minute Ribery took a run at the goal and was brought down from behind by Drogba, which resulted in a penalty kick.  Robben missed the shot.

Ribery was replaced by Olic in the 97th minute.  The steam seemed to have gone out of Bayern, although shots on goal were 39-9.  There were equal opportunities for both teams.  After the first half of overtime it was still 1-1.  Despite a good effort by either side in the last 15 minutes of overtime, the game remained a draw and went to penalty kicks.

Chelsea wins after defeating Bayern in penalty kicks 5-4.  Congratulations to Chelsea, which will now competing next year in the Champions League, while Tottenham is out. 

FC Bayern:  Neuer - Lahm, Boateng, Timoschtschuk, Contento - Schweinsteiger, Kroos - Robben, Müller (Van Buyten 86th), Ribery (Olic 97th) - Gomez.

FC Chelsea: Cech – Bosingwa, Cahill, Luiz, Cole – Mikel, Lampard – Bertrand(Malouda 73rd), Mata, Kalou (Torres 85th) – Drogba

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