Barça Beat Oviedo: Regain League Lead | Match Report

BarcelonaPlaying for Barça is not easy. He is always expected to win and dazzle. You must always win and you can never fail. You have a bad day, as it happens to all of us, and in a few hours half the planet criticizes you. It is not easy to defend Barça when your opponent is a Madrid that is in theory experiencing a crisis but on Saturday night they were leaders. In Madrid they have always had seven lives. And so they put pressure on a Barça team that solved the return of an old friend, Oviedo, to the Camp Nou with a good second half. Three goals, three points and first position in the bag. A game that at times was difficult to digest ended with an ovation for Lamine Yamal, author of one of his own goals, with an aesthetically perfect finish.

Sometimes Barça creates many chances in attack and loses, as happened in Sant Sebastià, and at other times it takes the three points despite offering a lackluster show. The first half was particularly terrible, but in the second two Asturian mistakes changed everything. When Dani Olmo scored the first goal, the opposing defense cracked and Barça came a little closer to their best version. Not much, but he improved to avoid suffering until the end. Olmo’s goal was a liberation. One of those plays where, once the ball hits the net, everyone takes a load off. It was the moment of change in a game that ended with a thrashing.

But before that it was time to cut stone. Barça returned to Camp Nou after a long time. After weeks of holidays, travel, a Super Cup won and an election call. A strange return, with a schedule that invited a nap and a pleasant sun that did not hide that the cold would arrive, cruelly, towards the end of the game in the form of rain. Cold days, like the party. Most Barcelona fans were expecting a formality match against the bottom ranked team, but the beauty of football is precisely this: it always ends up surprising us. Sometimes the surprises make your face happy and other times they leave you with a drooling face. And the Asturians, a team with wet gunpowder that usually ends games scalded, found a way to turn the game into a loose spectacle, in which little happened, beyond the well-calculated fouls of Oviedo with a certain refereeing permissiveness.

It had to be a comfortable afternoon of football to regain first place and the minutes were ticking by in a desperate manner. At the break, frustratingly, Madrid d’Arbeloa were still in first position. Barça played awkwardly as if they had put stones in the boots of some players, slow, tired and without aim. Pedri’s light was missing, who is always missed. The canary watched it from a stand that didn’t even cheer. Nothing about chants of independence or missing Messi. From time to time someone would claim the cheering stands, so they could do precisely what the rest of the field didn’t do: cheer. It neither cheered the crowd nor cheered a shockingly imprecise and uncoordinated team. It was not the best version of Flick’s team, who had placed Gerard Martín in the center and the returning João Cancelo on the right wing. Portuguese, little. A loose return. In the middle of the field, Marc Casadó went up and down, all heart, aware that he needs to take advantage of the opportunities he has, but the context did not play in his favor. Nor the company, with a very gray De Jong. No Barça player seemed to have the day. They all looked like the white label of players who usually fall in love.

Lamine’s magical moment

The result was a game to forget, with a very disciplined Oviedo who managed to stay alive on their own merits. They had a plan. Not spectacular, but a plan that despaired a Barça in which Lamine Yamal, from time to time, made one. Flick, who looked like he had few friends, moved the bench at half-time and brought on Kounde. And the team, without improving much, at least moved the epicenter of the game closer to the Asturian area. To see if Oviedo, who are playing with fire because the ghost of relegation haunts them, could withstand the pressure. And no, he didn’t hold it. Two defensive mistakes allowed Barça to recover the ball in the opponent’s area. First Olmo scored the first with a cross shot and then an out of sorts Raphinha was able to face Escandell alone and beat him with a beautiful vaseline. job done The game was already going downhill.

With the second goal, Oviedo surrendered. All his efforts had been for nothing and Lamine Yamal took advantage of that to come up with a beautiful volley. A game as uncomfortable as a toothache was turning little by little into a party, with spaces that Lamine Yamal took advantage of to score a beautiful goal when the rain was already the protagonist and had emptied a box that was still uncovered. Another game won for a Barça that is firmly back at the top of the standings, and that, by the way, managed to make the last few minutes very quiet while Cancelo was replaced, which caused some indifference. Oviedo’s visit could have been one of those traps where you get hurt, against the grain and when everyone assumed they would win. It was necessary to win. And he won, with a last goal that will be remembered. More than the party, in fact.