Real Madrid – Barça de Liga: chronicle, result and goals

Xavi’s Barça is too tender, emotionally. Sometimes he seems afraid to dare, too cautious. And when he puts in one more gear, he ends up condemned for the mistakes. A matter of maturity, surely. Everything in this life takes time to come to fruition. Teenagers make mistakes they will learn from and wines take time to mature. The issue for Xavi is that in football, there is little time. Barça needs to be big very quickly, to open the income tap, to recover the illusion. The season started with talk of titles and standing up to eternal rivals, but every big game has ended in a stalemate. Perhaps he wanted to go too fast, in setting up a competing project. And the higher the expectations, the worse the scams. In the classic, few players got a good grade. Xavi didn’t get away either. He thinks a lot about the matches, but ends up making the same changes. Raphinha is always the first sacrificed and Alba ends up getting minutes.

Aware that Piqué can no longer play these games, Xavi smiled when he heard that Kounde would be recovered. It was a bit of a clamped defense, though. Sergi Roberto had the unpleasant task of defending Vini Junior, a real demon, as good and as unsporting as he is. Balde was seen with Valverde, while in the middle of the field Frenkie de Jong provided a little spark entering for a sacrificed Gavi. Xavi did caress Busquets, the apple of his eyes. And some wingers under suspicion, Dembélé and Raphinha. Barça managed to have moments of good play, but did not shoot at Lunin’s goal. A sterile domain, which reinforced the sense of Barça’s frustration. What a cruel script, this one. Seen so many times. Madrid don’t need the ball. Nor the praise. He doesn’t want them, he just wants to win. He waits for the opponent’s mistake, like a predator waits for the moment when his victim will lower his guard to jump on his neck. AlMadrid cares little, what they say about him. Who does not have possession at home, who is limited to defending? So long, if they win. And before the break he had already bit the neck of Barça twice, always taking advantage of mistakes from a defense that was too soft and a midfield where Busquets felt the cold sweat running down his back every time he lost the ball. In the first goal, Ter Stegen was able to prevent Vini’s goal, but Benzema was ready to start celebrating the Ballon d’Or which he will win with a goal. The second, after a mistake by the two central players, brought Valverde’s signature. Two dry shots, two hits on the Blaugrana waterline.

A team without gunpowder

Something cracked in the soul of Barça in that cursed stoppage of selections where half of the defense was injured. And Xavi has not found the formula to redirect the course, waiting to recover players, one by one. Barça was condemned, as if it were a curse, to butt heads again and again against the white defense, while Lewandowski tried to make Dembélé understand what he had to do. They speak different languages, also in football. The second half turned into a long torture, with the Madrid fans waiting for the few arrivals of their own, aware that they would be clear opponents. At times it seemed like a game of adults against youths, between a consolidated work and a project under construction. A duel of styles where Madrid is willing to do anything to win and Barça knows what it wants to be, but not how to get there, at the moment. She lacks men, true. But also time, patience. After 20 minutes of play without a shot on goal after the break, Xavi opted for a triple substitution in an attempt to stir consciences and change the game. Gavi took it upon himself to come in to stand up, hand out tow and take hits, brave as he is. But Barça’s game did not match. Lewandowski was always overshadowed by two men, although he claimed a rather dubious penalty with 15 minutes remaining. And Dembélé dedicated himself to playing his game, alone, oblivious to everything, always failing the last pass. Ferran, who had more than 30 minutes, was responsible for scoring the goal that seemed to open a door to hope, after a play by the man who changed the script in the last minutes, Ansu Fati. Good luck with him, the author of the individual move for the goal and a shot that almost left the Bernabéu frozen. It would have been a sweet finish after a week of passion, but Rodrygo netted after converting an Eric penalty. Hope didn’t last long.

The project, however, has lost the joy it had as quickly as it gained it. If a few weeks ago he seemed ready for any challenge, now Barça is losing all direct duels. From euphoria to nerves, from joy to doubts, directly. If during the first half for a few minutes, Madrid managed to put their foot down, when Pedri combined with Lewandowski, in the second half only Ansu knew how to excite the fans in the final 10 minutes which serve to give Barcelonians a reason to believe. Hold on to this insufficient reaction, as if it were a stamp from a saint or a life preserver in a shipwreck, to trust in the fact that little by little, optimism will return. it will cost