Football returns to the fore at Barcelona after an uncertain summer

09/27/2020 World



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By James Nalton.

As Barcelona approached their first game of the new league season, at home to Villarreal, all eyes were on Lionel Messi. How would you react after an intermittent offseason that caused even more confusion in Barcelona’s boardroom and nearly led to a move to Manchester City?

All eyes were on Ronald Koeman. The Dutch coach and former Barcelona player in charge of fixing things on the field and making his players try to ignore what happens outside of it.

All eyes should have been on Ansu Fati. The 17-year-old Villarreal winger forgot to score in the early stages of the game, only making a symbolic attempt to do so after that.

Thanks to the Spanish international teenager, Barcelona went 3-0 up in 35 minutes. Any concerns Koeman had about the size of the task he was faced with eased slightly in the first half hour or so.

The full-back scored one from a Jordi Alba center (with a nod to Antione Griezmann’s movement to make room), another from a Philippe Coutinho pass, and the lack of Mario Gaspar in the area allowed Messi to score his first of the season from the penalty spot.

Lionel Messi Barcelona

A quarter before the break, after an own goal by Pau Torres, barely registered on the scale of the noise of the false crowd, and the Barça players congratulated each other as if they had just finished a particularly pleasant training session.

The furor around Messi’s future this summer meant there was more analysis of his contract, his burofaxes and his legal point of view than on how Messi, the footballer, could move on to play with his new coach.

The answer to that old-fashioned question is False 9, or at least it follows Koeman’s first La Liga game as Barcelona coach.

Fati was electric all night, and on the few occasions when he managed to bond with Messi successfully, he seemed to bring the Argentine to life.

We should all know how good Messi is by now, but the speed and quality of his movements and passing once he engages in a passage of play is still astonishing.

There is an air of uncertainty going into this next chapter for Barcelona, ​​but one thing that is certain after this game is that they will face tougher tests this season.

Other rivals will not give Barça that space that allowed central Clement Lenglet and midfielder Coutinho to launch the attacks that led to the goals in the first half. Coutinho ran the ball half the length of the court before feeding Fati for his second, and the Brazilian was impressive in his 10th role.

The truth is that Koeman still has good players at his disposal, and Barça is still one of the best teams in Europe. They still have Messi and they have one of the most impressive young players on the continent in Fati.

They still have seasoned pros Marc-André ter Stegen and Miralem Pjanić to make the squad, as well as Sergiño Dest, the American right-back who is set to sign for Ajax this week.

A host of young and exciting players await their chance behind the scenes, including Pedri, Ousmane Dembélé, Francisco Trincão, who replaced Coutinho, Fati and Griezmann in the second half as Barça warmed up.

The danger is that this game will give Barcelona a false sense of security, a false sense of superiority over the rest of La Liga rather than just Villarreal in this particular game. But Koeman is unlikely to be complacent, and unlikely to come close to this as anything more than a difficult job, albeit a difficult dream job, and this could be a good thing for Barcelona, ​​which they should look to do. make things happen this season. to expect them to.

When fireworks subsided on the pitch after the excitement of the first half, fireworks outside Camp Nou lit up the night sky for the second half as La Mercè festivities continued in the city.

Barcelona CF itself will not celebrate too much after this victory, but nonetheless felt much needed after a summer of uncertainty.



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