Fear blinds. And sometimes it’s not even enough to open your eyes and try to remove a bandage already dirty from so many tears. When you know emptiness well, you live with pain. Even if one day you win.
Barcelona beat Porto in Do Dragão, scared to death. Without any trace of exuberance, only of that fear that is always present in Europe. The team was uncoordinated, had very little play, but, the most serious thing, was also reckless.. That Xavi Hernández, with a quarter of an hour left and with the rival on his back, did not rush to make the substitution for Lamine Yamal when he was unwell, was about to cost him the tie. Cancelo, who had one of those disconcerting days, touched the ball with his hand. However, he was spared the maximum penalty after the referee reviewed the VAR monitor because Eustaquio had done the same thing a moment before.
So Barça could only hold on to one episode, Ferran Torres’ goal. The striker, who had such a bad time last season because he felt misunderstood and undervalued, who later became interested in self-help techniques and adopted a strange nickname that seems to work for him – Shark – was the one who showed some silence to the bustling Do Dragão.
Ghosts
Xavi Hernández, in his pre-match appearance, assumed that, in football, you win, but you also lose. But the problem does not lie in that dichotomy, but in how much one allows oneself to be carried away by the ghosts of the past. And Xavi, at least for the fans and journalists, wants to raise the flag of optimism. It will be others who remind him of the miseries.
So Xavi did not stop with stories, and lined up those he considers to be his best players – even assuming that De Jong, Pedri and Raphinha are injured. Christensen paid for Araujo and Koundé to be the starting center back pair; Oriol Romeu returned to the eleven almost out of obligation, not because of the level he has been showing; while Lamine Yamal, as could not be otherwise in the first big game of the season, took over the winger without any vertigo in a team that also included Cancelo and the booed João Félix on his return to the place where he had not He could have been a prodigal son.
It was very difficult for Barça to look ahead knowing they were being tested in a Europe from which they had been rudely removed the last two seasons, when they were not even able to get through the group stage. And that Porto of footballers without much international prestige, but very willfulknew how to put the Blaugrana in trouble.
Corrections
Romário Baró, then sad protagonist, suggested that he would be more than enough against the trio of midfielders who had to support an outmatched Oriol Romeu from the base. But the locals, who saw a good place to sneak into Cancelo’s zone of influence through Galen’s attacks, were unable to go further. Frustration grew due to the corrections to the limit of Koundé and Araujo.
Because Barça had no other enemy than itself. Although, little by little, he found his place in the first half thanks to the contagious confidence of both Lamine Yamal on the right bank and João Félix on the left. He was the former Porto youth player who first warned the draconian fans of his intentions. His shot, sharp from the edge of the area, was repelled by goalkeeper Diogo Costa. But the test of life was worth it.
It was already in the addition of the first act when Romário Baró decided to ruin all the good things he had done until then. His booty started to shake, Gündogan showed maturity, and Ferran Torres, who had to replace the injured Lewandowski after half an hour, he stuck out his left foot to beat the goalkeeper low. Who would have thought, with the Polish striker out of combat after being caught in the ankle by Carmo – the Englishman Taylor did not even whistle a foul –, it was Ferran Torres who gladly assumed the necessary role of finisher.
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The goal, however, neither improved nor calmed Barça, who were not very good, disoriented, and only waiting for the goal to come in. Gavi, sent off at the end after seeing his second yellowTer Stegen and the center backs will get them out of any trouble.
“Joy and pain are not like oil and water, but they coexist.” May Saramago help us understand this Barça that knows a lot about pain and that tries to find a taste for joy.