SougarLord Posted March 11, 2021 Posted March 11, 2021 Soccer is beautiful because it is absurd. It is in its incongruity, in its madness, where the feeling of belonging really is born. A handful of days ago, Barcelona was just that wreck unaccustomed to ridicule by his old regime and condemned to walk his shame wherever he went. At the Camp Nou against Kylian Mbappé (1-4) or on his visits to the circles of continental hell (Turin, Rome, Liverpool or Lisbon). But this team, already with the Kennedian smile of Joan Laporta in the box, has proposed a new dawn. He did not make the comeback in Paris. Perhaps the dream would end in the same contradiction as Leo Messi, who went from scoring one of the best goals of his career to missing a penalty that would have taken PSG to the limit of sanity. Although the night should not be one of miracles or obscene results, but of the final goodbye to embarrassment. It was a funeral with honors. Barcelona, after 14 years, will not play in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. The punishment might be impossible to circumvent given what happened at the Camp Nou. And the evidence that historic nights like 6-1 in front of the Parisians are unusual was even clearer after attending the first half of the Parc des Princes. Because the Catalans, at least in that initial act, played much better than on the day of that comeback. Although with a deficit impossible to ignore in games without return, the lack of effectiveness. They finished those of Ronald Koeman up to 20 times. Keylor Navas, faithful to that European nirvana that they knew so well at Real Madrid, stopped the unspeakable and even towed two balls to the crossbar. The first propelled by Sergiño Dest, the second that Messi's penalty shot just before the break that would have meant 1-2, with the visitors two goals from extra time. The emotional slab, inaugurated by a habitual suspect like Clément Lenglet, has already definitively conditioned the night. INCOMPRESSIBLE PISOTON But let's go back to the beginning. To what was plotted by Koeman, a 3-4-2-1, with Frenkie de Jong as central, and Antoine Griezmann and Messi behind a referential Ousmane Dembélé. Mauricio Pochettino only found a way to withstand the harassment to which he was subjected. There was not much of a secret. Everything happened through the rear pitch so that Mbappé attacked the spaces left by the Barça defensive line. The French forward would not even need to approach the sublime version of the first leg at the Camp Nou to condition Barcelona in a bad way. In fact, Óscar Mingueza played with fire by threading a grab and a kick from behind to Mbappé in less than a minute. English referee Anthony Taylor only showed him the first yellow, but Koeman rushed his center back out of the field for Junior Firpo to enter. The martyrdom of the centrals was completed by Lenglet, responsible for an incomprehensible penalty when he stepped on Mauro Icardi, without the striker having any option of reaching the ball. The VAR confirmed this, and Mbappé advanced to PSG. Barcelona still stirred to the beat of Dembélé's tame shots. Messi decided not to be Messi. He abandoned the sweetness of the touch and left his life in a shot turned by the instep into a howitzer. Although his good fortune had no continuation. Layvin Kurzawa committed a penalty on Griezmann, although the referee left the second yellow in a safe place. But Messi was assaulted by old demons, all of them gathered on Keylor's legs. The VAR did not notice, however, the incorrect position of Marco Verratti, who ran to punt from the crescent of the area. Messi's dejected gesture would no longer change. "I am sure that man will never renounce true suffering, that is destruction and chaos," believed Dostoyevsky from underground. Messi, like Cristiano Ronaldo, cannot renounce something so intrinsic to our existence.
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