There is no game, nor is there sanity. Nothing escapes nonsense. Neither Xavi’s team makes sense, nor do those who try to decide for the coach know how to differentiate the field from the box. The canapé ball. In this Barça in which nothing is built, if anything it is destroyed, the nightfall of Oriol Romeu or Koundé is nothing more than the metaphor of football and emotional decomposition of a group caught in the heat.
Barça lost in Antwerp against Van Bommel’s team that, until the Barça visit, had not even been able to score a point. The Barça managers lost those 2.8 million euros with which they planned to plug some of the holes of a management chained to the fictitious money of the funds. And Xavi lost a good part of his credit between bad decisions and poor performances by players who will still believe that the fault is the environment or the Holy Spirit.
Surrealism has long made fortune in the club. What happened in the last few hours is funny, with a footballer –Lewandowski– who didn’t even have to put on the lights suit because Because the Pole is always so by decree, his own, the coach or the president. What does he care? In this Barcelona where Joan Laporta, of course, exercises plenipotentiary power, the protesters have little future. Either you applaud and accept, or you deny and leave. At the boardroom table or on the bench. Meanwhile, Xavi and Deco play cat and mouse without noticing the ridiculousness. Lewandowski played 70 minutes. He didn’t even finish.
Gündogan, who also thought on Monday that he was going to enjoy a few days off, had to travel to put his buttocks on the bench and then go out for a walk when Xavi thought of him for the rescue. Araujo was also there, who at least was left off the list. There was only mercy with De Jong’s low-grade fever.
Patchwork ‘Eleven’
However, and despite the pressure put on by the board to extract the 2.8 million euros that UEFA grants per victory, Xavi had no qualms about putting together a starting eleven full of scraps. Only four players who started in the starting eleven of the collapse against Girona in Montjuïc were repeated: the goalkeeper without a substitute (Iñaki Peña), two defenders (Koundé and Christensen) and the aforementioned Lewandowski, who resists everything while in the offices they await the arrival by Vitor Roque as if the young Brazilian had soaked his boots in holy water.
Although the problem with this Barcelona team may not be so much the value of the pieces, but rather their usefulness in a sport that, yes, is a team sport. So Xavi’s team, disfigured in the conception of the game, but this time also from the same lineup, woke up fainting in the Antwerp night. He had to pay the price first for a soccer player in diapers, Héctor Fort, a 17-year-old full-back from La Masia who found himself making his debut in the worst possible conditions. Not even half a minute had passed and the boy had already lost a ball that left the locals an inch away from the first goal.
Oriol Romeu, mirror of terror
Although we had to wait just the blink of an eye for it to arrive. Iñaki Peña looked to start the game by partnering with Oriol Romeu in the area. It happens that the midfielder gave the ball to the rival, either because of his lack of confidence in a place that he does not feel is his, or because his feet and head are not responding to situations of very high tension. That was not a control. Not a bad pass either. It was simply the mirror of the most earthly terror, the one that dwarfs us without remedy. And the young Vermeeren (18 years old), who already offered very good sensations in Montjuïc, only had to finish the job.
The 1-0 score did not help Barça wake up. Sergi Roberto and Fermín, Romeu’s bodyguards, did not offer that depth that Lewandowski claimed so much with his bad face as his flag. So everything had to happen, of course, so that he could create Lamine Yamal from the right bank.
So Barça, after starring in a first act as grotesque as the second, was able to at least reach half-time on an equal footing, at least on the scoreboard. Lamine Yamal ran his sole over the top of the ball, fooled the hard-working Yussuf, and was able to find Ferran Torres where he needed to be. Ferran controlled well, shot as best he could, but, at least, he was able to beat the goalkeeper.
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But Oriol Romeu, swallowed by the ghost of Busquets, returned to his old ways. He lost the ball, and this time Janssen scored. And he was still able to give thanks that the referee regretted sending off Sergi Roberto for a stomp, or that the VAR warned of offside. in the middle of a walk through the clouds of Koundé. The French defender, who did not have enough, even spoiled the momentary equalizer taken by Marc Guiu to return Barça to the torment in the twilight. He unabashedly led the grotesque final play culminated by Ilenikhena.
That Barça qualified for the round of 16 of the Champions League as first in the group only causes despair. It is not a time for alibis, but for blushing.