Well the only recent winners who didn't have Ronaldo or Messi in their squad were teams who hunkered down at basically every moment. Di Matteo's Chelsea. Mourinho's Inter.
The outlier was Heynckes' Bayern which was basically the best Bayern anyone's ever seen.
+rep
This is as much a prep for CL as anything.
Do these fanboys seriously expect us to beat Barca at tiki taka.
We do lack a bit of attacking fluidity now, and that'll be addressed later. Team is being built from the back and as should be. Main problem was defense, and that has been addressed.
And that Bayern team might be the best CL/EC team ever. They were possessed and just ran over everyone. Was better than Pep's & LE's Barcas, better than Sacchi's & Capello's Milan. Only contender is 60s Real.
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They hunkered down against messi or ronaldo teams.
We hunker down against the likes of roma and napoli, and sometimes even against chievo or such. Heck I predict we will hunker down against tottenham in february.
That's the difference.
But we did get the results, and they were better than our struggles at the start of the season when we were scoring a lot of goals.
Like Allegri said, this is just what the team requires atm, team will adjust accordingly during the season based on team requirements and players' forms.
And having "hunkering down" (we actually only did that vs Napoli) as part of your repertoire is better than asking the team to hunker down all of a sudden when it'll be needed. Experience and practice matter.
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As good as our defense and how grest it is for winning league titles it is what shoots us in the foot against big teams when we go into or defense ways an allow teams to attack us freely. Thats we struggle to win the Cl.
It was more fitness issues (& mental ones in 2nd half) in final than tactical.
Overall, tactics vs Barca were perfect even if we do end up sitting too deep sometimes (but Max is against that, points out when we do).
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Aren't we talking about the same thing?

I believe it happened in the 2nd half.
Minute 5:52 here:
There was another Chiellini giveaway in 1st half.