20 horrible minutes to start the sport, and never adequate the remainder of the night time
Barcelona have misplaced their second consecutive match since being topped champions of La Liga, this time struggling a painful 3-1 defeat to Actual Valladolid on the José Zorrilla Stadium on Tuesday night time. Barça made a horrible begin and located themselves in a two-goal gap, and whereas that they had some actually good moments in assault they couldn’t discover a approach to comeback and dropped all three factors to a Pucela aspect that deserved the victory and acquired a significant enhance of their combat towards relegation.
FIRST HALF
The opening 20 minutes have been among the many worst of Barça’s season, with disjointed work in possession and sloppy defending that created lots of hassle early on. They suffered from self-inflicted wounds, making two essential particular person errors that led to 2 Valladolid targets.
The primary mistake was extra of an accident by Andreas Christensen, who tried to intercept a cross from Darwin Machís however ended up heading the ball towards his personal web; the second mistake was from Eric García who dedicated a mushy however foolish penalty by tackling Gonzalo Plata contained in the field and not using a likelihood to win the ball, and Cyle Larin scored from the spot to double the benefit for the hosts.
After a extremely poor begin Barça lastly put collectively a stretch of competent attacking play thanks principally to Pablo Torre and Frenkie De Jong, who managed the tempo of the sport in midfield and consistently discovered teammates in harmful positions with glorious passes. Barça began to look inventive and harmful, and will have simply scored not less than twice.
Raphinha had not less than three big alternatives, Andreas Christensen had an open header contained in the field and Robert Lewandowski narrowly missed the goal with a robust shot from simply exterior the world, and former Barça goalkeeper Jordi Masip made fairly a number of sensible saves to maintain the house group in entrance.
On the break Barça have been down two targets however performed very nicely in direction of the tip of the interval, and in the event that they saved up the nice work from the ultimate 25 minutes that they had actual hope for a second half comeback.
SECOND HALF
Barça’s second half was extraordinarily disappointing because the Blaugrana couldn’t stick with it the momentum from the tip of the primary and have become gradual and anemic on the ball once more, nearly not involved in attacking and giving the Valladolid an easy time as they protected their lead.
The house group remained harmful on the counter, and that’s how they acquired their third objective when Larin acquired in behind Marcos Alonso and crossed it to Plata, who simply beat Eric García for tempo and made it 3-0 for the hosts to seal the victory.
Barça lastly acquired a objective with 5 minutes to go when a masterful by way of ball from Frenkie De Jong discovered Robert Lewandowski on their own in entrance of Masip, and the league’s prime scorer dribbled previous the keeper and scored an awesome objective from a tough angle to offer the Blaugrana one thing to be ok with on the night time.
There was not sufficient time for Barça to mount a miracle comeback, and the ultimate whistle got here handy them their second straight loss since being topped champions. However that they had some actually good moments within the first half and Pablo Torre actually took benefit of his alternative, so this wasn’t precisely a horrible night time. Nonetheless, shedding on the street to a relegation candidate sucks and Barça actually should regroup and beat Mallorca on the weekend on their farewell to Camp Nou.
Valladolid: Masip; Fresneda, Fernández (Torres 16’), Sánchez, Olaza (Escudero 56’); Mesa (Monchu 56’), Aguado; Plata, Plano (Pérez 71’), Machís (Rosa 71’); Larin
Objectives: Christensen (OG 2’), Larin (pen 22’), Plata (73’)
Barcelona: Ter Stegen (Peña 46’); Roberto (Kessie 46’), Christensen, Alonso, Balde; Gavi (Fati 76’), Eric, De Jong; Raphinha (Dembélé 63’), Lewandowski, Torre (Ferran 63’)
Purpose: Lewandowski (84’)