BarcelonaAn agonizing goal by Jordi Alba added three vital points to Xavi’s Barça against Betis. The win seals the team’s goal in the league. Then the hot notes of the match.
A brilliant dislike. Ten years after his return to Barça, Jordi Alba is still indisputable because he is very good. He has a high contract (until 2024) which makes it difficult to find a top-level relief that threatens his status. And the low-cost options on the market come to mind twice before you come in and take the plunge. In a way, everything is normal. Even the most loyal Barça fans are bad at it, but their talent for generating in attack is formidable. The goal that served to certify the Champions League at Villamarín is a testament to this. It will make it difficult for us to turn the page on him.
Efforts that make you doubt. Once again, Dembélé was Barça’s most active striker. And one more day this circumstance was of little use. When the team goes without ideas and puts the offensive production in the hands of the Frenchman, the risk of the points flying increases and, even worse, the collective expression goes down. Playing for the Mosquito is greedy, because he is a footballer with conditions and he does not hide. But it can be the plan A of a set that wants to grow big from the position game. It is understood that Xavi is counting on it despite the soap opera of his renewal. It would be much less understood if Barça made a great effort to retain such an inconclusive player.
Infinite smell. Quite the opposite of Dembélé (or Ferran Torres, who collected another insufficient performance) is Ansu Fati. The expectation that the Spanish-Guinean has is so great that it was even news that he did not score on his return to the pitch last weekend against Mallorca. Since he had done so on his last two returns, everyone expected him to do the same. The unloading of gunpowder was not long in coming and he arrived in Seville, just as Betis were pressing hardest. Brutal how an impossible shot was made between three rivals. What a dull smell from a damn injury! Let it last healthy.
Press immerescut for a Neto. Ter Stegen’s absence due to “indisposition” – we would appreciate more detail in Barça’s statements – was an opportunity for Xavi to make a brave decision. On the other hand, Egarenc was conservative and made Villamarín the proto-parasite Neto instead of the promising Arnau Tenas. There is a desire to test the young man from Vigo in the elite, but above all we must lose sight of the Brazilian goalkeeper, a chronic substitute who signed for the entity for 100% accounting reasons, who did not participate in the cut salary of 2020 and that has been caught in his contract in an almost clumsy way. It is unfair that so little is said about it.
