Barcelona react, but they do not learn
When you wake up and the adrenaline wears off, you assess the situation. A few scratches, you’ve felt better, a splitting headache, but you’re alive and intact. Once in a position to ruminate on the previous night’s antics, with sober eyes, you thank your lucky stars you didn’t do any serious damage.
Barcelona’s 2-2 draw at Camp Nou with Manchester United was a thrilling encounter. Momentum switched sides on several occasions, chances flowed and every result was in play at the final whistle. Talent, stirred with imperfection, it was the very epitome of an electric Europa League tie.
Granted, the Blaugrana had enough chances to win it at the death, but this match was a mirror image of Barcelona’s 3-3 draw with Inter earlier in the season, which would ultimately send them out of the Champions League. A game defined by gaps, devoid of a midfield, and packed with errors. Barcelona have improved on the whole, the players stepping up and struggling were different (notice the green holes in midfield even without Sergio Busquets), but they looked like they had seen a ghost.
Xavi Hernández got his selections wrong. Altering his winning formula to include Marcos Alonso and Jules Koundé in central defence, in a bid to improve their build-up play, neither looked comfortable. Both incapable of tracking Marcus Rashford, Ronald Araújo looked on horrified as he should have been defending the back post.
United’s first was another turnover in midfield, with nobody close enough to Fred to stop the ball into Rashford. Symptomatic of the isolation of de Jong, while Barcelona have been controlling games through their off the ball work in recent weeks, after Pedri exited, they struggled to move the ball effectively. Every move looked like hard work, jerky to sight. At one time Busquets was definitively the player that was most noticeable for his absence; Pedri is not short of praise, but gets better and better when he isn’t there. The second saw a Liverpudlian corner kick defended in similar fashion to four years ago.
Barcelona didn’t lose. Barcelona did react. One evening should not erase the progress of the past six weeks. Barcelona could have crumpled, and showed some fortitude to grapple with United, bring them closer in and turn it into a dig for dig contest.
Their method of doing so was to once again embrace the chaos though. The very thing that the four midfielders were originally used to counteract. Losing control after half an hour, from that point on Manchester United made the rules of the game.
That splitting headache will be with Xavi for at least a week. Gavi made the foul Xavi asked for in November, but will be suspended when they travel to Old Trafford. Pedri and Ousmane Dembélé will also be missing. The club are still waiting for further tests on whether Robert Lewandowski will turn up too.
Switching to a four-man midfield also allowed Barcelona to play their best players in the same XI. Ahead of the return leg, Xavi will have some tough choices to make, and plenty to fix again. Chief among them is whether Barcelona have found a structure that works for them with four midfielders, or if it depends heavily on the individuals in it.