Xavi’s lost look. Hands in pockets. It was the 40th minute of the game. And Barça, as is now a fateful custom, started a match losing. It is the fifth time (Eintracht, Levante, Eintracht, Cádiz and Rayo) that it has happened to the Catalans in their last six duels. No, nothing has been by chance for a long time, submerged in a sensation of chaos that once again swept him away.
The coach had a lost look, stunned as he was by Barça’s poor start at the Camp Nou, unable to detect the fantastic unchecking of Álvaro García, who with his astute movement punished up to four Catalans. He first undressed the two central defenders (Araujo and Eric García), then uncovered the fragility of Dest, the closest to the rayista, but the least threatening, in addition to looking for the kidneys of Ter Stegen, who fell too slowly.
Frenkie de Jong’s anger
Lost look remained to Xavi, sunken in the grass, looking for explanations, which go far beyond football, to justify the fall in his team. A Rayo shot in the first 45 minutes, a goal. Nor is it anything casual in a Barça that has disengaged from the Camp Nou. It doesn’t matter whether the Animation Stand comes, as happened last night, or abstains as a protest, as happened against Cádiz.
The public ends the season. 57,495 spectators against the Andalusian team; 57,023 against the Rayista team. Nor is it accidental. It’s a trend. The two largest attendances at the Barça temple bear the signature of the women’s Barça. First setting a world record against Madrid (91,553), a record broken by themselves with Wolsburg (91,648). They, on the other hand, do not connect. And the anger, like that of Frenkie de Jong, as soon as he is replaced, is not hidden either.
As soon as he was replaced by Nico, he threw his shin guards to the grass, frustrated as he was at the other end of the field. Arriving at the bench area, he didn’t want to cross paths with Xavi, going directly to the locker room without wanting to hide his anger. Then he came back. Thousands of culés were angry with the game, another one, sad and timid of a team that gives the feeling of being consumed. Strangely consumed in a self-destructive spiral when he should have been happier than ever after the 0-4 at the Bernabéu.
Then came the unexpected fall, while the Camp Nou, tired of Rayo’s wasting time, wielded a referee chant. “How bad you are! How bad you are!” He shouted at Diaz de Mera, the Castilian-La Mancha referee. It was, at the same time, a cry of impotence as the entire stadium shouted “out, out, out! & rdquor; for a cathedral penalty on Gavi that he did not whistle. The old Barça. Chaotic on the pitch. Victimist in the harrow.
“It is costing us to get the games at home. We concede the goals very quickly and when you are not effective in the two areas it costs twice as much here at the Camp Nou”
Busquets, captain of Barça
And for the second time in history they chained three consecutive defeats (2-3 against Eintrach, 0-1 against Cádiz and 0-1 against Rayo), the first in the same season. “It is costing us to get the games at home. We concede the goals very quickly and when you are not effective in the two areas it costs twice as much here at the Camp Nou”, confessed Busquets.
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“The team hasn’t gone wrong. It’s a move that we’ve seen 200 times on video and they’ve done it to us with Álvaro García. They’ve been well planted afterwards, we haven’t been effective. We had a cushion that we haven’t taken advantage of,” acknowledged the Barça captain.
“In the second half we put more offensive players, we had crosses, arrivals, plays in the area and it couldn’t be”, added ‘Busi’. Behind him, and while he was speaking, all the Rayo players appeared, along with the technical staff, for a photograph for history. They had beaten Barça at the Camp Nou and had been saved. They continue one more year in First and the azulgranas destroying themselves.