Despite still being top of La Liga, Barcelona’s form over the past month heading into their Champions League match against Borussia Dortmund had been rather shaky. Of Barça’s six most recent matches in all competitions, the Blaugrana emerged victorious in just two of them. Barça also saw their lead atop La Liga slashed by a three-match winless streak which saw them lose to Real Sociedad and Las Palmas as well as draw against Celta Vigo.
Although the Catalan club might have again been nowhere near their peak level against Dortmund, they were nevertheless able to leave Signal Iduna Park with all three points following a 3-2 victory over Die Schwarzgelbe. After a goalless first half, Barça broke the deadlock in the 52nd minute after Dani Olmo put Raphinha through on goal; the Brazilian winger duly took full advantage of the opportunity to put Barça ahead. Soon after, Dortmund equalized from the penalty spot after having earned that same penalty.
Ferran Torres put Barça back ahead in the 75th minute, just four minutes after entering the match to replace Robert Lewandowski. However, this lead didn’t last long as just three minutes later, an error by Barça goalkeeper Iñaki Peña set up Guirassy to score his and his team’s second. With just five minutes of regulation time remaining, Torres finished off a counter-attack off a Dortmund corner to clinch the win and ensure that Barça would remain three points behind league phase leaders Liverpool, who are yet to drop a point after six of the eight league phase matchdays.
Among the talking points following the match, one of them has to be about the abundance of weapons up front that Barça have at their disposal. This is a front four that could contain any combination of Lamine Yamal, Lewandowski, Torres, Olmo, and Raphinha; there’s a case to be made that it’s the most stacked attacking line in world football right now. The stats seem to back up such a claim: with 50 goals scored in the league thus far, Barça rank second in average league goals per game among all clubs in Europe’s four major leagues only behind Bayern Munich - who have played four fewer matches.
The potency of Barça’s offense was clearly on display against Dortmund with the German club’s defense often having no answer for Barça, especially in the second half. Even prior to that, though they weren’t quite able to make it onto the scoresheet until after the break, Barça had been creating the majority of the goalscoring chances in the first half and applying much pressure - as such, it came as little surprise when they did score the opening goal early in the second half.
It’s also worth noting that Torres entered the match as part of a triple substitution alongside Fermín López and Frenkie de Jong; the trio replaced Raphinha who had suffered an injury, Lewandowski who’d had a dismal showing, and Olmo who was taken off to enable Barça head coach Hansi Flick to better adjust his tactical approach.
Having most recently been at the helm of a then-struggling German national team, Flick’s arrival at Camp Nou was initially questioned by some. However, so far he seems to have proven that his ill-fated stint at the helm of Die Mannschaft was an aberration; in this match as well as the vast majority of Barça’s this season so far, Flick’s tactics and setup have been on point.
However, one area which might very well be cause for concern is the defense. Barça’s back five played an error-strewn second half; both goals scored by Dortmund came from errors by Pau Cubarsí and Peña respectively. It’s also potentially worth questioning if, following Marc-André ter Stegen’s torn patellar tendon which will keep him out of action for the rest of the season, Peña really does have what it takes to be the starting goalkeeper of a La Liga-winning team.
While on the surface it does appear that Barcelona have managed to get things rolling again, there’s still more than half a season to be played. That being said, on the whole they’ve shown that they not only have more than a slight chance of reclaiming their La Liga title; they might even go all the way in the Champions League and claim the biggest prize in European club football for the first time in a decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment