These are bad times to analyze a goalless draw in the second European competition. More so if you do it against a third-class rival, completely dejected in their local league (Galatasaray twelfth this year). They are Improper times to breastfeed despite a great second half because the team failed to score and a tie that should have been sentenced almost in the first leg was complicated excessively given the difference in level between the two.
These are bad times, moreover, because the week has allowed you attend a display of brutal courage from your eternal rivaljust the day before. Those games that, with the little difference between the two, make you doubt if you are watching the same sport. The Bernabéu thing on Wednesday is epic adhered to Real Madrid. The Camp Nou thing last night is junk food compared to the level of the menu the night before.
But while we’re at it, let’s try to break down a bland goalless tie that leaves everything open for a sizeable ambush, the one that will be found on Thursday in Turkey on Barcelona. And all because he dispatched a bad first half, without any football content and that seriously endangers him going to the quarterfinals. The azulgrana group did not do anything right in the first 45 minutes. For not doing, he did not even shoot on goal except for a free kick by Memphis that was stopped by Iñaki Peña, a goalkeeper on loan from the culé team.
Xavi didn’t like the first part at all. So much so that he did triple change to eradicate the situation. Something that he achieved halfway because Barcelona began to play more fluidly, more combinatively, but the chances came in dribs and drabs. He did not get a prize because he barely shot on goal but he did play the game that is supposed to get them. What happens is that in football, and in these qualifiers, what counts is the goal and yesterday Barcelona didn’t find it.
The culé team takes a small step back in these weeks where the work seemed to find a prize. The team had linked several good games and the image had changed. Yesterday, before 70,000 spectators, on a Thursday and in the minor competition, things did not work out and in Turkey, next week, we will have to do an exercise in good football and more aim because the tie has been turned considerably.
On Sunday against Osasuna it will be necessary to rediscover the image that was left parked in Elche and that was not taken up yesterday in an important game but to which Barcelona seemed not to give the importance it had. It is the second competition but you have the obligation to win it or, at least, not stay in these rounds.
After Osasuna, the lap with the Turks and then the classic before a forced stop. It will be good for the Barça team after months of roller coaster. Of comings and goings, of placid, good nights and other terrible ones that saw the objectives in danger just a month ago. Now that the tables have been turned, the club does not want to go back to their old ways. And that in last night’s game they did everything possible to bury a remarkable improvement with a stroke of the pen.
They are not appropriate times for a culé to show his chest. Just the day after a rival feat of stratospheric dimensions. Before a classic that promises but that will set the trend a bit from now to the end of the League. These are not times to be in the class of laggards, away from the elite. You live badly there and even more so if your eternal rival falls in love with his fetish competition again. Bad business.
