BarcelonaGreat match at the Camp Nou between two European giants in the process of playing again in the final rounds of the Champions League. A 2-2 draw between Barça and Manchester United in the first leg of the last 16 of the Europa League. It will all be settled at Old Trafford next Thursday. Next, some hot notes.
A moral victory. If Barça is alive in the Europa League it is because it was able, at times, to match the tremendous intensity with which it is played today in the Premier League, a title that United will aspire to repeat this year. Saves from Ter Stegen aside, the tie is explained by the rampels of Raphinha, a Brazilian winger educated by Bielsa in England; the duels won by Araujo, for whom the greats of the United Kingdom sigh, and the teenage passion of Gavi, a player who does not tremble even against Casemiro, the most feared (and dirty, depending on how) of stoppers. Xavi’s team uses resources with the ball, but does not negotiate any effort when it has to recover it. In pressure and desire, no one should be able to overcome this Barça.
Against United, no. When everyone expected Xavi to repeat the line-up of the last important matches before unloading it with rotations in the match against Cadiz this Sunday, the Terransen surprised by starting Jordi Alba and Marcos Alonso in the places of Balde and Christensen. With them, the team gained good footwork and natural laterality in the release of the ball, but lost force in defensive duels against a physically superior opponent and on a winning streak. The sample, Rashford’s first goal, which penetrated like a knife through butter between the two new players in Barça’s eleven before scoring. On the way back, outside experiments.
El Pichón would be very happy. The match became unbalanced in the second half after Ter Stegen had kept a clean sheet with two spectacular saves before the break and De Gea had also intervened with merit to prevent the Blaugrana goal. Marcos Alonso, who played the first few minutes since the death of his father, was responsible for opening the can with a header at the far post. A definition similar to that of the famous goal that Pichón scored in Madrid in the final of the Zaragoza Cup in 1983. Sometimes football writes round pages like this.
Same muscle, different leg. Barça will gamble its future in the continental consolation without the suspended Gavi (what a shame he can’t go to Manchester) or the injured Dembélé and Pedri. Two of the footballers who define Xavi’s book have fallen at a very compromised point of the course. In La Liga, the team remains solid and has built up a considerable points cushion, but in Europe it will depend on playing a good role at Old Trafford, where it will be difficult to find an alternative to the talent of the Canary interior, which has injured a muscle, the quadriceps, which already had him out for a few months last year. Luckily it’s the other leg. A relapse would have been even more fatal. Let it be light.