• Narration: So we live the game
  • Eighth.All crosses

It would have been a stumbling block to go to Maradona's house to turn the ball into a simple decorative object. Barcelona, ​​who had spent a whole night sleeping the ball in San Paolo in the hope that the seas would open alone in front of Vesuvius, caught the booty when he understood something basic: the ball must be the end, not the excuse . Griezmann, sometimes Houdini, as many executors, was the one who caught a draw against Naples that, at least, will allow the Catalans to face the Champions League round of 16 with a better face. [Narration and statistics: 1-1]

Quique Setién is 61 years old. For his premiere in the Champions League he employed an eleven starter with an average of 28 years. At the moment of truth, few are those who do not use survival techniques. Ernesto Valverde did it. And so has Setién, precisely in his first border match as coach of Barcelona. They call it trusting experience, when it is nothing more than curbing fear.

So the Cantabrian had no qualms about trusting this time the right-handed end to Arturo Vidal, who really does not care where to play, because he always used to offer the same. With the agony for flag. He missed even more that Rakitic, twilight and discouraged football, occupied one of the interiors, or that Arthur, perhaps the best gifted footballer in the dressage of the ball, stayed in the bank. That increasingly inhospitable place in which four of its seven occupants have a record of the subsidiary. Umtiti, meanwhile, evidenced that Setién prefers it to Lenglet. And Ansu Fati and his stupid bravery did not appear until the same sunset. Hard to understand.

All this led to a bad first act of Barcelona. The midfielders offered no imbalance. Junior Firpo was only noticeable for the bad. Griezmann fiddled with invisibility again, while Messi, who had begun as a false center forward, spent the night desperately looking for any corner of the field where rival soccer players, but also their own, did not crush. Messi was left without understanding the enchantment that El Diego subjected to a sleepy San Paolo.

Gennaro Gattuso, who had to remember his old days in that Milan in which there was no better plan than a good defense, met the party he had dreamed of. A couple of very delayed lines in front of the Ospina area, go see how Setién's men chained horizontal passes with the parsimony of the one who feeds the pigeons, and awaits the error of others.

Of course, he arrived in the area occupied by Junior Firpo, a player who, in six months, has only managed to frolic with the football disaster. Being true that Piqué, after trying to cover an area that Busquets, Rakitic and De Jong disregarded, offered a bad pass to the side, nothing excuses Firpo's control. Zielinski, in the robbery and pass, and Mertens, specialist of the pause and the beating, only had to make sense of the nonsense. Ter Stegen was petrified, the same state of his companions.

Setién's Barcelona followed his own. That is, to press, steal and, once caught the ball, sing a lullaby. At times unbearable. Not once did the Catalans shoot between the three suits in the first half. And to Naples, which had barely passed from own field, it was enough with a couple of shots of Mertens to go with advantage to the locker room.

Between the weariness of the Neapolitans and the progressive improvement of the Catalans after Arthur's entry, Barcelona found redemption. Busquets, who lost more than one ball in risk areas and who will not be able to play the round by card accumulation, could be redeemed with a pass that finally gutted the Gattuso trench. Semedo interpreted the clearing well. And Griezmann, at the first touch and with the right, settled the task. It was Barça's first shot at the match. And the unique.

Naples tried to move forward. Even Ter Stegen, also a saint in Naples, snatched goals from Insigne and Callejón, who Junior Firpo penalized in an action that had been invalidated for offside. The blood did not reach the river. Although that did not end until Arturo Vidal, always beyond the limit of sanity, did not win the red before his inability to contain himself.

San Paolo, who was only agitated with the tumults of the Chilean, a demon for his past in Juventus, was silent before the sight. Without Maradona, but also without Messi. And, as Nobel laureate Tokarczuk wrote to the damn nostalgia and its weight in the present: "When the change in time is irreversible, loss and grief become everyday."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • sports
  • football
  • Champions League
  • FC Barcelona
  • Antoine Griezmann

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