You definitely have to take teenagers’ Barça very seriously. In a week baptized in advance as great because it chained Sevilla, Bayern and Real Madrid no less than at the Bernabéu, Flick’s team, at the time master of the girls, knew little of what was great and declined it to great. The ‘Dream Teen’, who could be named because of his average age and for already deserving international attention, left Madrid more of a leader than he was, moving six points away from the current champion thanks to two goals from Lewandowski, a kind of Barça’s Benjamin Button, a third from Lamine Yamal, leader of these delicious brats, and a fourth from Raphinha, who is still unleashed.
Football, a mass sport partly due to its unpredictability, has seen the League’s sock turn when it was least expected. The Madrid of Mbappé and Vinícius, the unofficial Ballon d’Or reduced to a failed lambretta against the shameless Barça, will not win anything without getting off the bus as predicted. Not at all. Barça has been reborn at the hands of a German coach, a splendid team of footballers from La Masia (what exhibitions those of Casadó and Cubarsí) and the rebirth of footballers who were shadows of themselves, in the case of the now luminous Koundé and Raphinha . The balance of the big week shows a favorable score of 13-2, what a nonsense.
The Bernabéu with the acoustic problems ended up very quiet and abandoned its team before finishing, subdued by the guys who had Coldplay printed on their shirts. They sounded better. Even Iñaki Peña, in theory the weakest link, vindicated himself at the Bernabéu, stopping everything that came to his area. The 0-4 could have actually ended in 0-5, 50 years later, if Lewandowski had hit the mark with two free shots against Lunin and if the referee Sánchez Martínez had not taken pity on Madrid by granting just two minutes of added time (how strange) at 90 minutes. The white team was looking for its 43rd consecutive game without losing in the League, a record that will continue in the hands of Barça under Ernesto Valverde.
Barça knew how to contain their rival in the first half, maintaining a zero-zero by causing offsides (up to 12 in the total of the match), and they beat him in the second, goading him in each attack, leaving him disoriented without knowing what do.
The Barça team came out with the same lineup as Bayern’s day, with Fermín in the midfield to the detriment of Dani Olmo and Casadó delaying De Jong’s return as a starter on his own merits. On the other side, Ancelotti opted for Camavinga and Tchouaméni rather than Modric, an inclination towards muscle that was initially detrimental to the ball reaching Mbappé and Vinícius in the best conditions, which to explain it bluntly are the authentic game system of the white team.
Already on the field, Madrid did not hide its search for its two purest forwards, whether through long changes of orientation of its centre-backs, or through Bellingham, an undetectable pivotal player whose demarcation is a mystery. It happened that Barça, more than anything else in the first minutes, dedicated themselves to showing their control over the offside. Since Hansi Flick arrived, risk in the form of advancing the defensive line has been accepted as natural as a formula to reduce the opponent’s spaces and put pressure on them. In short, Barça left Madrid offside in the first half. The whites fell off-side on up to seven occasions, even scoring a goal in an action by Mbappé that disabled the VAR. At this point it was tempting to wonder what the result would have been on the scoreboard in times past, when those types of dubious plays usually landed on one side.
Barça’s problem, beyond making it difficult by forcing offsides and leaving their fans on the verge of cardiac collapse, was that they were not good with the ball before the break. He had spaces but wasted them due to lack of finesse or haste. All the final passes lacked precision to end up threatening. In reality, they only reached Lunin Lamine Yamal resolving with a lukewarm shot, as well as Pedri from afar and Raphinha erring on the side of individualism, mentally driven by Wednesday’s hat-trick when Balde ran to his left, more alone than one. Lewandowski, Raphinha and Fermín were not fine and the most relevant part of the first half ended up being a seized lambretta by Vinícius against Koundé and an ugly stomp by Tchouaméni on Pedri.
Flick intervened at half-time, bringing on De Jong for Fermín and activating Pedri as a playmaker. The change gave Barça more possession of the ball and much more order, further marking the contrast in style between the two teams and decisively uneventing the duel.
Lewandowski was the spearhead, scoring two goals in two minutes. The first thanks to a vertical pass from Casadó that left the Pole alone. The second, when he headed a cross from Balde, another member of the beardless army.
The final stretch of the match made evident Ancelotti’s lack of plan, his team unable to chew plays, in a hurry for everything. Lamine Yamal made his debut at the Bernabéu with a shot from the right and with his right foot and Raphinha added velvet to the matter with a soft Vaseline. Madrid rightly trembled at the departure of Dani Olmo, but there was nothing more. The ‘Barça teen’ was left hungry. There will be more. They have half their lives ahead of them.
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