[Sport]Barcelona is a disaster

[SougarLord]

 

Barcelona is a disaster. He had only to defeat a Cádiz at home that had been losing four games in a row and conceding goals to think about something other than their miseries. And, who knows, to dream of discussing the League against Atlético. But this team that lives in the eternal European embarrassment, and that was also sheared in the Copa del Rey, does not give for more in the League. He continues eight points behind the leader. He scored a single goal against the Cadiz, from a penalty, and allowed himself to be tied in the same way in the 89th minute. It was the only shot between the sticks of his rival, caused by another rude error by Lenglet. Martyrdom is stitched on the shield.

 

Ronald Koeman has a lot of Johan Cruyff stuff. Perhaps the idea of his game is nothing like it, but the way to manage the egos of the dressing room is. Cruyff, who like all geniuses was a peculiar man, said that he liked training sessions to go open. Thus, if any of his players believed himself to be the king of the mambo, he would put it in his place. At the right-hander he would shoot with his left foot until the fan got fed up with laughing. "That was how he solved the problem immediately," Cruyff said, proud of the lesson. Professional football closed training for years. The Camp Nou has not welcomed the public since the pandemic began. But Koeman, old fox, put the same eleven players who were devastated against PSG in the Champions League to play against Cádiz. The message stayed there.

 

Negredo, the long-suffering 35-year-old striker from the Cadiz team, is not the 'wonder boy' Mbappé. But, above all, the Spanish League, a competition that gives off an air of increasingly pronounced mediocrity, has nothing to do with the red carpet of the Champions League. However, the protagonists of the collapse against PSG did not even know how to fulfill their mission against a Cádiz that had been accelerating its fall into hell for weeks. What difference does it make.

 

Barcelona believed for a good part of the game that they could catch the victory, even if it was lackluster. That would be left over with Pedri's street instinct and a caress from Messi's penalty spot, increasingly absorbed in a territory that is no longer his. Without a credible game plan, and without the players knowing what to do on the difficulty, the team is always exposed to the last bullet of Russian roulette.

 

But let's not be fooled. We love soccer. Above all, because there are still guys like Álvaro Cervera. Dress like the coaches from before. If it's cold, then he puts on a hat. Between the wool and the beard there is already a coat. Why so many modernees. He covers his eyes with sunglasses. And he becomes so serious that it is inevitable not to remember Eugenio, that humorist who, highball glass in hand, told Russian jokes in Russia without changing his gravedigger gesture. Nothing should steal attention from what is important. Álvaro is a remarkable coach who even with the limitations of his Cádiz fights with pride for permanence. Although for this he has to pile nine footballers in front of his area. He beat the Catalans at Carranza and drew a draw from the Camp Nou. Little more can be asked.

 

Cádiz achieved its main objective, that the game had the same impact as the torture of the Chinese drop for Barcelona. Fali helped this like nobody else, imposing every time someone happened to step on his domain in the area. The Catalans, despite having advanced in the first half in which they looked for a thousand and one ways to find exits to the labyrinth, ended up catching an unbearable cachazudo rhythm.

 

Griezmann was as insipid as he is usual. He neither he leads, nor combines, nor is he unchecked, nor shoots. So the arguments offered by Barcelona throughout the game were the same as in recent times. Caught in the static attack and with the ball turned into a medicine ball, almost everything was summed up in Dembélé's incursions, frantic in the race and artistic in the breaks, but ineffective in the resolution. Sergiño Dest tried to help him on shore without much success. De Jong camped between the rival centrals, thus wasting the coach's incidence in the center of the field. Whereas Pedri, a beacon in the fog and incomprehensibly substituted when his teammates needed him most, at least illuminated his people when he slipped between other people's legs until he was knocked down by Iza in the area. Messi only had to accompany the ball with the booty to bring Ledesma to his knees.

 

 

So delicate is the health of this Barça that, immediately after opening the scoring, Sobrino already had the chance that would have meant a draw. But he finished off with the thigh. Cádiz tried again when he played, in the last breath. He only had to attack the area and take advantage of Lenglet's madness with Álex Fernández's penalty goal.

 

Such an outcome would have been expected by anyone except Barcelona itself. In Babia. Too fragile. Too self-destructive for his transition not to be a torment.