countdown to paris
venue: stade de france
team: Arssenal vs Barcelona
date : 17 may 2005
This is one fixture everybody is looking forward to can anyone deny that Barcelona v Arsenal in one of the world's most magnificent capitals represents anything other than a mouth-watering prospect?
Barcelona and Arsenal favour playing their football in a manner that attracts the uncommitted. That is of course, if you disregard Arsenal's woefully unadventurous semi-final second leg performance at the Madrigal!

It's difficult to imagine that Arsène Wenger himself believed his normally free-flowing, risk embracing team could reach the final on the back of a competition record 10 successive clean sheets: a grand total of 919 minutes without shipping a goal, and still counting. All this with a makeshift back four for whom Ivorians Kolo Touré and Emmanuel Eboué have excelled.
Still, defending superbly is one thing. Repelling Barcelona is another matter altogether. I'm in the privileged position of getting to see a lot of the blaugrana. I'll concede that they've lost a little bit of their dynamism in recent weeks, and one can justifiably put that down to the thigh injury young Leo Messi picked up on 7 March against Chelsea.
But with or without Messi, Barcelona are an absolute joy to watch. Only a philistine could fail to enjoy the verve and charisma of Ronaldinho, Eto'o and Deco.
sportxtreme has this to say where the who wins the trophy will be determined by either of this two players.
henry vs ronaldinho