Barça League Lead: Latest Updates & Analysis

And the start of the game was a test for Barcelona, ​​because in front of them was a Mallorca team that moves like a fish in water in the low block. Arrasate proposed a thick 4-5-1 and Flick did not have his two engines. Pedri is still out and Frenkie de Jong, with discomfort, was waiting on the bench. The absence of both was a problem for the culés to be able to turn the game from side to side and also to find Fermín and Dani Olmo between the lines, two players who acted as interior players and who should have been key to disrupting the vermilion team.

That circumstance did not occur in the early stages in which Barça did not have fluidity. The ball reached Lamine Yamal and Rashford at such low speed that they constantly had help that made the plan of a Mallorca that maintained the counterattack threat thanks to the speed of Jan Virgili more comfortable. The Barça youth player was a headache for Koundé. A ball came out of his boots that Muriqi failed to shoot between the sticks, a header and a running shot that was thwarted by Joan García.

Mallorca forgave and was going to pay dearly. Barça did not even need to find its best version for its freest verse to appear. And Rashford has been waging war on his own since his football emerged at Old Trafford. He did it in a Manchester United adrift and now that anarchy allows Barça to have a player who goes off the script. That’s how it was against Mallorca. In two isolated actions the game changed. First with a shot that grazed the post stump and then with a missile that knocked down David López and gave Lewandowski the opportunity to score at will. The Pole did not fail and solved for Flick’s team a low-paced first half that could have gone either way and in which Rashford’s omnipresent rebellion was decisive.

a flash

After the restart, Barça raised the level of offensive aggressiveness. The culés tried from all fronts, but they were not fine. Fermín was not, less insistent than usual, nor was Olmo, less participatory, and neither was Lamine Yamal. The ’10’ couldn’t leave Mujica behind or assist his teammates, but the stars need very little to be decisive. Just a flash was enough to bury Mallorca’s options. Lamine received the ball from the front after the hour mark, feinted from Maffeo and took an unpredictable left foot shot out of his hat, from another game, which ended up hitting the post and turning a dedicated Camp Nou upside down.

From there, Barça’s dominance was total. The culés were no longer threatened by Virgili’s speed and settled in the opposite field to generate superiority inside and out. The result was a Lamine Yamal that was finally able to unleash itself and that left details of its quality before Flick began to look askance at next week’s Cup match against Atlético at the Metropolitano. The German coach rested Rashford, Lamine, Lewandowski and Olmo and moved towards the final minutes of the game in which there would still be time for a new goal after a gallop by Marc Bernal that he defined as if he were a striker. The Blaugranas, with this victory, remain undefeated in the League at home, adding their fifth consecutive victory in all competitions and putting pressure on a Real Madrid that must win at Mestalla to follow in the footsteps of the solid leader.