It’s over the first year without Messi, certifying the long journey through the desert (they are actually three years) being Barça second in the League, but with almost nothing to celebrate. Even on the last night, almost at dawn, the team suffered a useless defeat, but full of traditional frustration because it denounced all the problems that have hit a team that has not conveyed a sense of firmness and stability. It ended without any competitive fierceness.
Barça started with energy, but it faded. A Barça without Dembélé. Tired as the club is that the striker has been playing for months and months with that renewal that does not come and, perhaps, never comes. Tired as Xavi looks now, who left him as a substitute in Getafe (not a minute) and gave him the tracksuit on the last day so he could sit on the bench at the Camp Nou.
“Is this Dembélé’s last game?” Mateu Alemany, the Barça club’s director of football, was asked just before kick-off. “He will know, his agents will know. I have my opinion, but it doesn’t matter as in these six or seven months,” the executive said indignantly.
defensive disasters
Barça’s game had a spark at the beginning, with Adama’s gallops on the right, while Ferran Torres, at odds with the goal, always ran into Rulli, Villarreal’s goalkeeper, a team that gave the feeling that their last European passport was not at stake. The Camp Nou? To his own, celebrating each action, abandoned as he has in recent times that critical sense with which he used to subdue and scrutinize the team.
There was hardly any complaint about the football that was becoming increasingly vulgar, until Emery’s team woke up with a goal that portrayed Barça’s defensive deficiencies. Everything happened on the left wing of the yellow attack. In other words, everything was born in the disconnection of the culé right flank.
Adama did not follow Pedraza in his offensive adventure, which allowed him to go from area to area at the Camp Nou like Pedro at home, without anyone bothering him. alves? The person in charge, as the right back that he is, of that demarcation was not in his place. He wasn’t expecting her either. He didn’t even appear in the final photo of Villarreal’s goal, being an active and, at the same time, a passive part of that catalog of defensive horrors that made Ter Stegen bristle.
The worst yet to come
The worst at the back was yet to come because Adama’s error had just started in the second half. Perhaps, it will be the last Barça image of him in a sparkling period. He started the end well and ended badly. And a supportive defensive exercise, chased Pedraza as he had not done in the 0-1, later turned it into a disaster because he gave, as if it were an assist to a friend, the ball towards the center so that Moi Gómez will shoot a bewildered Ter Stegen. Not even an hour of play and the Camp Nou scoreboard was illuminated with a frustrating 0-2, a symbol of Barça’s mismanagement in its defensive structure.
And Xavi, angry as he was at the collapse of his team, acted coldly removing Adama, tormented by that mistake, and the invisible Aubameyang to put Ansu and Dembélé. He changed, again, the whole attack because he took out Memphis for Ferran. More of the same from a flat team, which, in the end, took whistles from a Camp Nou that also got tired. And the Camp Nou whistled for the team.
Data sheet
Barcelona: Ter Stegen (5), Alves (5), Araujo (6), Lenglet (5), Jordi Alba (5), F. de Jong (6), Busquets (6), Gavi (6), Adama (4), Aubameyang (4), Ferran (4).
Coach: Xavi Hernandez (5).
Substitutions: Dembélé (5) for Adama (m. 56), Ansu Fati (5) for Aubameyang (m. 56); Riqui Puig (5) by Gavi (d. 71); Memphis (5) by Ferran (d. 71); Mingueza (sc) by Alves (m. 80).
Villarreal: Rulli (6), Mario Gaspar (5), Albiol (6), Pau Torres (6), Pedraza (7); Moi Gómez (5), Capoue (5), Parejo (4), Trigueros (5); Lo Celso (4), Alcacer (4).
Coach: Unai Emery (7).
Changes: Estupiñán (5) by Mario (m. 67); Jackson (5) by Trigueros (m. 67); Aurier (5) by Alcácer (m. 67); Peña (sc) by Pedraza (d. 83); Chukwueze (sc) by Moi Gómez (m. 83). Goals: 0-1 (m. 41), Pedraza; 0-2 (m. 55), Moi Gómez.
Referee: Munuera Montero (6), Andalusian.
Cards: Gavi (m. 45), Parejo (m. 45), Busquets (m. 59), Alba (m. 65).
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Stadium: Camp Nou.
Spectators: 54,850.