Barça does not win. Barça devours. Barça does not submit to its rivals. Barça crushes them. One after another, Hansi Flick’s team puts its opponents in a centrifuge and does not take its foot off the accelerator until it has completely knocked them out. It can be with a brilliant start, with various encounters resolved in half an hour. Or it could be after the break, as happened at the Bernabéu or against Red Star in Belgrade. But at one point or another during the match, Barça will pass over their opponent without letting them breathe. Hansi Flick always asks for intensity, rhythm, pressure and a constant and relentless search for the goal.
The result is that the Barcelona team, launched in the League and revitalized in Europe, has accumulated 55 goals in 16 games, 23 more than a year ago at this point. Or what is the same, 3.4 points per game. An outrage.
Hansi Flick’s team, which always wants more, averages 3.4 goals per game
With its victory this Wednesday, Barça makes it seven consecutive wins by scoring three or more goals. Espanyol and Alavés received three. Four Madrid and Bayern. Five are Estrella Roja, Sevilla and Young Boys. Their forwards live a love story within a team that has scored four or more goals in half of the games they have played. They are led by Robert Lewandowski, who has already scored 19 goals, five of them in the Champions League, where he is one shy of 100 goals. When he achieves it he will be the third to reach three digits after Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi. He will be placed at the table of the greatest in the history of the competition. The Polish striker took advantage of the opponent’s weakness to score two goals from pigeonhole a striker with a sense of smell who is in the right place at the right time. Raphinha flies to his side. Namely, a goal, two posts and an assist against Red Star. He has a total of 12 goals this season, one more than in the entire last campaign, five of them also in the Champions League.
Largely thanks to the marksmanship of the Pole and the Brazilian, Barcelona has become the most successful team in the Champions League, with 15 goals. Who was going to tell the Blaugrana fan, who turned his nose up in summer at the continuity of Raphinha, who was wanted to be replaced by Nico Williams, and Lewandowski, who had shown autumn symptoms in the previous months.
Posh foreigners, like Koundé, who provided three assists in Serbia, within a team characterized by identity. In a Champions League where the greats do not usually have many players from their country (a Spaniard in Madrid’s lineup, no Italian in Milan, two in Inter, three Englishmen in City or two in Arsenal…) the Barça goes through Europe with the youth, with up to seven Spaniards in their eleven and with 17 in a squad of 22. A rare bird that amasses goals and fun.
#Barça #crusher
