[Sport] Messi defeats boredom

[SougarLord]

 

Where football does not reach, Messi does. Barcelona, each time with fewer truths to believe in, plunged into a strange feeling of unease that prevents it from transmitting any joy, spends its last breath tied to the Rosario's left booty. He scored two goals and intervened in the third in the bureaucratic victory against Elche, with whom the match of the first day of the League was still pending. But not even the victory, in the end clear, aroused any optimism. The night ended with Griezmann missing clamorous occasions and Umtiti complaining about his muscles.

 

The first part showed a good part of the evils that torment Barcelona. The players were not related from the ball. Because they were not joined by the game, but by anguish and discouragement. The ball roamed the seams dragging across the grass. The footballers were unable to wind it because they always needed two, three, four touches before pulling it off in any way. Life should be something like the time it takes Pjanic to drop the ball. There was no way to interpret the spaces. Nobody was looking for unchecks. Nobody was pressing the rival exit.

 

He was finishing that opening act, unbearable, when Koeman could not take it anymore and plummeted into his chair.

The solutions he had sought to revitalize his team after the disaster against PSG and the impotence treaty against Cádiz did not improve the team at all. A good handful of suspects (Sergiño Dest, Lenglet, Busquets, Dembélé and Griezmann) came out of the eleven so that not so much homegrown players appeared (only Mingueza took a gap) but Umtiti, Pjanic, Braithwaite and Trincao. The problem would be Koeman in the new arrangement of parts, doomed to disfigure the team.

 

PJANIC AND THE UNCONTROL

Pjanic and De Jong had to be integrated into a kind of double pivot, which never became so because the Bosnian stayed and the Dutch fell off the hook. The lack of control was absolute. Pedri was a false left-handed winger with all the sacrifice in the world. The right winger should be kept by Trincao, whom goalkeeper Edgar Badia, always agile, stopped in the two clear options available to him. The second was especially painful for Trincao, who did not know how to cap off a brilliant action in which he knocked down two defenders in the area. The Portuguese, perhaps frustrated, turned off.

 

All the Barça danger in those first 45 minutes was summarized there. The new Elche by Fran Escribá, on the other hand, lived in peace. Without having to seclude like Cádiz in front of your area. And also having a clear opportunity. That of Lucas Boyé at the dawn of the game and after taking advantage of the hole left by Piqué and Umtiti in the heart of the area, however, ended in nothing. The people of Elche no longer disturbed them.

 

Koeman had no choice but to return to his ER habits. That is to say, eliminate midfielders and pile forwards. Pjanic had won the purgarty by far. In his place Dembélé entered to take over the left bank, thus retaking the coach that 4-2-3-1 with which he began his government work at the club.

 

DE JONG'S RAID

Although Barcelona's goal came as always. Not as a consequence of the game, but thanks to the individuality of the day. The second half had just started when Messi took to the mountains in the middle lane. He found that Braithwaite, yes, Braithwaite, reacted to the wall with his heel. And the Rosario, already falling before Mojica's opposition, was still able to release his foot to finally bring the ball to the net.

 

That goal finally relieved the Catalans, who were gaining both in precision and in offensive decision. De Jong had it in his long foray until he found Messi, who before stinging Badia got rid of two rivals whistling. The Argentine also intervened in the third goal, culminated by Jordi Alba acting as striker after the second assist of the Braithwaite match. Little would Elche oppose. He has not scored a goal for Barcelona in 42 years.

 

"Boredom is inherently painful ... and is associated with physical pain," wrote Foster Wallace in The Pale King before climbing into a chair and ending it all. The greatest danger that Barcelona runs is getting bored with itself. Or that Messi does. He still has the strength to defeat boredom. At this point it seems incredible.