Another agonizing victory for Barça

Electric Barça in attack, with rhythm, interpreting spaces very well. Fantastic Ter Stegen at the start, very delicate Pedri. All pretty but sterile. It was difficult to predict if Barça was going to face its waning impotence or Real against its fatality of losing almost always in Barcelona. Duel of sadness

From local dominance of the game we went to shared control, with the Basques growing and Barça showing that despite good intentions it is not yet a mature team. Xavi’s men tried everything they could but little came out of what they tried. La Real was not capable of doing much, but in everything they did, some danger was intuited, if only because of the very worrying Barça incapacity of not being able to realize their theoretical and budgetary superiority.

The VAR left the visitors with 10 due to a very severe expulsion of Brais. Hard entry? It was. Direct red deserving? At least orange. Nothing objective to reproach Gil Manzano for. But it is also true that in fair proportion, Dembélé should have been sent off in the previous league match against Getafe. The VAR is for many sets a fantastic technology, but those who claim a unit of criteria that until now is conspicuous by its absence are not without reason.

Correct first half for Barça, with no major reproaches to make to the team, but the goalless draw was somewhat worrisome against a team that plays so face to face that when you have more individual quality, it is normal for you to beat them from the start. The expulsion, not unfair but strict, made one think of a second half of the local doormat, although all the precautions are few to calculate the risks that Xavi can get into.

But just after the restart Dembélé solved the mystery and put his team ahead with a powerful shot at the near post. It is true that Remiro was weak and that probably Ter Stegen, with his much stronger German arm, would have been able to stop the shot, but in any case, the Frenchman’s action had a merit and lowering it would not make any sense.

La Real went on the attack and Sorloth miraculously did not score. When you are Real and you fail this at Cam Nou, it is very difficult to ask us to take you seriously as a candidate for anything. This is hard, I imagine, having to read it, but it’s harder having to write it for someone who was on this team when the goalkeeper was Arconada. My father asked the goalkeeper for my first team shirt when he returned from Vitoria to Barcelona the day before I had an eye operation and I could go blind. Arconada was the goalkeeper of the National Team and I played in all the recesses of my 6-8 years, in a Catalan school, with the shirt of my goalkeeper and the shield of Spain. I wasn’t going to tell it but I tell it so that no one believes that this team is alien to me, much less strange.

As always when they have an advantage, Barça lost the rhythm, the ball, the grace. It seemed unbelievable that a team with numerical superiority, in a single-game tie, would risk its advantage in such an inconceivable and irresponsible way, which had cost them so much to achieve. Xavi was desperate in the band but Xavi was solely responsible for not knowing how to focus his team. Dembélé was much more delicate than usual but he was replaced by Ansu, and Real defended themselves as best they could and seemed to have neither the energy nor the players to try to equalize but they were still just one goal away from achieving it.

Ter Stegen opened the gates of hell and closed them himself, in a mistake-hit without consequences but dramatic. Barça won in its perennial agony without it being possible to determine what this team can really aspire to.