It cost him He had to suffer, sweat and recover, but Barça managed to beat Valencia and will finish ahead of Girona in Saturday’s derby. A match, Montilivi’s, which will mean a direct duel in the fight for second place and the last ticket for the Super Cup. With the victory, Xavi’s men maintain a two-point advantage over Girona ahead of what could be the game of the year at Girona’s stadium.
Yesterday in Montjuïc, the boss failed Ter Stegen and Araujo, but Fermín and Lewandowski worked. Carelessness penalized the first, and instinct rewarded the forwards to fix the stalemate caused by their teammates, in this game in which individual mistakes mark the fate of the collective.
The bad head complicated the night for Barça, but Fermín’s accurate shots from a great cross from Raphinha and Lewandowski’s two from two corner actions opened this new stage of the old Xavi and consumed the minimum goal of the season: the mathematical classification for the Champions League with the 15 points advantage achieved over Athletic. The stormy night ended so well that Lewandowski scored his first Barça hat-trick in added time. Then it rained again.
Lewandowski took home the ball of the match, but the goalkeepers punctuated a hectic first half with uncharacteristic mistakes. One for excess and another for clumsiness, they exhibited their impertinence with their feet. Ter Stegen tried to make a reckless hat, and with effect, to mock the arrival of Hugo Duro, confident that he was offside. Mamardashvili, without any threat, made a poor control and the ball was at the mercy of a running Lamini Yamal. He tried to dribble it but the goalkeeper touched the ball with his arm. Neither the linesman nor the referee were able to see it until the VAR alerted them. The invention was justified. The colleagues in the room prevented them from committing “a clear, obvious and manifest error”, the origin of the birth of video arbitration. From there, with numerical superiority, Barça increased the speed of the ball and found the spaces it did not see in the first half. It was at a set piece, however, that they calmed down. Lewandowski, in two corners came back and the Pole rounded off the party with a direct free hat-trick.
2024-04-30 06:30:00
#Barça #suffer #finish #Montilivi
