We left the quarterfinals of the Champions League with a frenetic back-and-forth in which no one had absolute control and where all the teams had their moments to make differences and tip the balance on their side. Conclusion, second legs even and full of emotion.
Through the evenly matched competition on the pitch, some intense debates were opened about DNA issues and football purities that added spice, as if it were missing, to the clash between Barça and PSG. The result at the Parc des Princes left the resolution for the return leg with, perhaps, a slight advantage for the Blaugrana ranks.
First of all, I have to tell you that I do not believe in these debates, since if there is something that evolves and changes, it is the personality of a team as long as it remains recognizable in its game and its way of trying to win each game. And it evolves because the game evolves, because the rivals study these concepts of the game better and better and are capable of finding the loopholes through which to sneak their strengths, because the players change and the circumstances of the clubs change, because if we live, as The great Mercedes Sosa would say, in a world that is constantly changing, trying to anchor soccer seems like a contradictory task to say the least.
A few years ago it occurred to me to say that the idea of Barça’s game remains but also evolves. I continue in that same line of thought.
If you want examples we can go to the first 30 minutes of the second leg played in Montjuïc with the two teams arranged with open ends, two different solutions for the 9, both already used in Can Barça years ago, with Lewandowski as a pure 9 and with Mbappé in that false 9 position also developed in the best culés times. High pressure to steal in the opponent’s construction phase and thus find more spaces in the attack and closer to the rival area, defensive lines that wanted to push their midfielders and attackers to the rival area and a lot of positional play, almost a chess game in the midfield, to find, or eliminate, the free player, the player who would allow the ball to be played and thus accelerate the attack towards the rival area.
The two teams were in all this when Lamine Yamal found one of those balls that a winger enjoys, one of those that allows him to play one on one and, at the same time and at full speed, be able to visualize where he should end up. his play. And a goal from Barça.
That’s what everyone was doing when a loss by Araujo led to a Parisian robbery and a ball thrown into free space (remember that thing about stealing and taking advantage of the spaces that your rival gives you). And there Barcola took off, like Yamal, although the Frenchman had the advantage of free space and would only (only?) have to think about how to surpass Ter Stegen. And the red card that Araujo received changed the course of the match and the tie. Nobody knows how the game would have ended in an eleven against eleven but what we do know is that that extra player against a team like PSG that handles and attacks very well with the ball made Barça’s qualification a heroic act.
If you want more examples, watch the match between Manchester City and Real Madrid, where the English had the ball, possession, corners, opportunities and opened their ends to attack from the outside. But, above all, inside and where Real Madrid took advantage of their scoring opportunity and then put on their overalls and reduced the attacking spaces to a minimum until taking the tie to penalties. Lunin’s arrest of Bernardo Silva was then decisive. You have to have a lot of courage to stay still in a shootout and even more so when your teammate has missed his previous shot and this penalty can open a gap in the shootout. Both courage and daring, recklessness?, the Portuguese had in launching it.
The fact is that the winning DNA was that of Real Madrid and its permanent link with the old European Cup, that DNA that it shares with Bayern Munich capable of returning to the Champions League semi-finals in an agonizing exercise in the same week as the Bayer Leverkusen had deprived him of that Bundesliga that seemed to be his property.
Resist, suffer, compete and go determined for victory through the slightest loophole to win.
The oldest DNA of football that is still valid and that never generates debate.
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