BarcelonaEasy victory for a Barça led by Pedri González against Elche. The Blaugrana, with a few rotations in the eleven, have settled the game thanks to Lewandowski and Memphis and have benefited from the numerical superiority due to the expulsion of a rival. Next, some hot notes.
Remove vices from the past. With the permission of the brilliant Pedri, the star of this nascent Barça is Lewandowski. The Polish veteran, who has been scoring goals wherever he plays for more than a decade, has landed at the Camp Nou to continue dominating the trade like few others. He has already scored eight goals in the League, numbers that Barcelona fans have not seen since Messi and Suárez, two strikers who, with goals and more goals, earned the (debatable) right to play everything. Lewy fills the void created by the Argentine and the Uruguayan, but Xavi replaces him when he considers it appropriate and does not receive grimaces in return, but an outstretched hand. We applaud it.
Luis Enrique judges Barça. The substitution of Jordi Alba has stopped being news. Of the eight official matches that Barça has played this season, the hospital player only started with Rayo and Viktoria. Xavi opted for the tough test in Munich for Marcos Alonso, while in the League he has almost always opted for Balde, who is taking advantage of the opportunity without complicating himself in defense and contributing things in attack. Against Elche he distributed two assists and controlled the powerful Tete Morente. He has made Alba forget, who will have to vindicate himself in the coming weeks with Spain under Luis Enrique. Who was to say!
Ansu has more World Cups to play. By installing Alba on the bench, Xavi contradicts the criteria of Luis Enrique, who maintains that of Hospitalet among his chosen for the absolute. On the other hand, the Barça coach and the coach are in tune with Ansu Fati, whom they do not see 100%. To take him to the World Cup, Lucho urges the Spanish Guinean to “recover the level”. For his part, Xavi is more diplomatic, but when it comes to deciding he remains firm in “prudence” and “caution”. Ansu, filling in again with Elx, should not run to go to Qatar. That he respects processes and thinks long term.
Kessie, with Casemiro or Ramos. In the same way that the other day we criticized in this section the refereeing of Bayern-Barça, today we understand that Elche leaves the Camp Nou upset with the performance of Muñiz Ruiz. And not for the clear expulsion of Verdú in the 14th minute for knocking down Lewandowski in an obvious goal-scoring action, but for the red card awarded to Kessie, who abused his elbows for a walk during the first half. The Ivorian midfielder saw a yellow card in the first effort, but was saved from going to the street despite reoffending twice more, as if it were Casemiro or Ramos. Gavi replaced him at half-time.
