it's an elimination round match, so it's basically impossible to tell what's going to happen.
form, luck, confidence will play a big role as usual.
anyhow, having said that, inter fans should be way more worried than u guys.
personel-wise inter and man utd are both amazing teams with a good share of world class players in many roles.
but considering the quality of the football played by them (and when i say "quality" i'm not referring to how attractive their football is, or how offensive, or other silly points like theese... i'm referring to the overall quality of the football expressed by the teams) man utd is just on a different class.
the understanding between the players on the pitch, the contribution of the offensive players to the defensive phase, the fluency of the game, the solidity of the tactical imprint.....
under all theese point of views, man utd is just a better team than inter.
inter is definitely a hell of a team, but it's a team built to win championships, not cups. it relies mostly on its physical strenght, wich is a strategy that usually pays good dividends in championships competition.... but cups competitions are something different.
and one last point. to be honest, this inter is not stronger than last season's inter. actually is nowhere near as good as last season's inter.
the 4-3-3 experiment was a disaster, and now mourinho is slowly getting back to mancini's system (even though he'll never admit it). but the overall quality of the football is way poorer than last year.
besides mourinho lost vieira for most of the season and muntari took its place... with all the respect for muntari, this is a huge step behind.
cruz isn't scoring as many goals as last season, adriano still didn't step up, mancini is playing less (and worse) than he used to play in roma and maxwell (wich was a great asset last season) is facing a bad form period.
last season's inter was a much better oiled machine than the current team.
obviously those of u who don't follow serie a will think about the liverpool cl double leg, and tend to base your opinion on those 2 performances.
but those 2 matches won't give u a correct idea of that team. mancini faced liverpool with a brand new defense (as the starting cbs were all injured, stankovic was just recovering from an injury and his form was horrible, ibra was playing despite a serious knee tendon injury (the same kind of injury that messed up kaka last season).
to sum up, inter wasn't able to express at all its qualities in those 2 matches.
today inter is still a top class team, but its football is nowhere near as fluent as it used to be last season... and they already made many false steps this season (much more than man utd).
today's inter is like an alfa romeo. when it's in the right mood it can be great... but pretty often it's stuck in the garage with the engine broken. it's not consistent. consistency doesn't mean anything in champions league of course.....but consistency effects confidence.... and confidence is vital in this competition.
one last point. inter's defensive line is just amazing. definitely among the 3 best defensive line in europe. but it's also pretty "specialized". against a "conventional" attack this is a great defence (even though, even under this point of view, last season inter was way better).
but against an unconventional, extremely mobile attack as man utd's one, that world class defence might have some serious problems.
obvioulsy, as i said before, it's impossible to tell wich team will go through the next round.... but i think it will be much harder for chelsea and arsenal to beat juve and roma than for man utd to beat inter.
