• LaLiga: This is the classification

Antoine Griezmann is not new to football. This is his tenth season in First. He is also world champion. But Valverde cut him off from the beautiful: "Life has to be sought." To participate more. To connect with the ball. To score goals, it is understood. But that harangue, somewhat strange given the heights of the season, seemed to refer more to a misplaced being. To an Ignatius Reilly embedded in his cave. Or even that guy named Chris Peterson who starred in a cult series called, yes, Find your life. He distributed newspapers with 30 years - what irony - and lived with his parents, always in a dressing gown. Griezmann, at 28, has a better life plan. Earn the Camp Nou and blow confetti. Like LeBron with magnesium. [Narration and statistics: 5-2]

Griezmann was the main reason why Barça traced Betis. Griezmann scored his first two goals at the Barcelona stadium, where he had gone 13 times before without being able to score. Griezmann granted the assistance of the fifth for Arturo Vidal. Griezmann made Messi and Luis Suarez smile beautifully, delighted with their offspring. Redemption.

But there were many more reasons for the Barca fans to return home proudly. In times when there are those who relate the failure of Neymar's signing with the Apocalypse, a young man from La Masia in which very few people repaired, Carles Pérez, emerged as an extreme of care. Valverde was finally brave, offered an opportunity that not so long ago was for the middle of the day, and emulated Guardiola on that second day 11 years ago, when he played Sergio Busquets and Pedro after losing in Los Pajaritos. Carles Pérez even decorated his premiere at Camp Nou with his team's third goal, which finally drove away the ghosts.

Because there was a moment, maybe it was five minutes and after the first half hour, when the game was a nonsense. Arturo Vidal warmed up in the band. The day laborers ran like headless chickens in search of the comeback. Messy. Without any plan. With De Jong playing almost left-handed. With the players looking from left to right without really knowing what to do, like the retiree who looks clueless at the flight of the dove. Although seeing that the only plan of the Betis de Rubi was not going to be other than to be held in anticipation of a stroke of luck, the outcome seemed sung.

Carles Pérez insisted and led Pedraza. The boy unbalanced when he played and offered all those solutions that could not come from the static game. Holder before the pandemic of casualties in attack -Messi, Suárez and Dembélé-, began the plot of the first goal of Barcelona. He found the end to Sergi Roberto, impeccable in his new role as a right-handed steering wheel. And who appeared in the center of the area was Griezmann. The Frenchman flew and achieved the impact he had been dreaming about so much. Even if it was with the tibia. Dani Martín, Betis' goalkeeper goalkeeper, could do little.

The Barcelona stadium began to breathe after the disgust experienced at dawn. Barcelona had started the duel as a shot. It circulated with consistency and speed. Griezmann, referential as a false battering ram, offered and generated, with Rafinha on his left side. But there was no way to shoot with danger. Something that Betis did in the only mistake that Busquets made in the whole game.

The midfielder looked for a horizontal pass. It was neither too tense nor did its address seem the most appropriate for traffic on the axis. And Rafinha, who was the one to receive, didn't take too much effort to pick up the ball. So Channels advanced, Loren launched Fekir's career, and former Olympique de Lyon midfielder, all talented, crossed wonderfully before Ter Stegen. Valverde's initial plan suddenly cracked.

If something tries to make it clear to the Barca coach at this start of the season, it is that the chant that he limits himself to live and let live must be better lived. To survive, after all. He intervened in the hierarchy of the dressing room in his first San Mamés lineup, when he took the initial eleven to Busquets and Rakitic. And he also did it against Betis. He recovered Busquets. But he returned to embed the Croatian bench, whose area of ​​influence continues to be in charge of Sergi Roberto.

Valverde's play is not going wrong. Sergi Roberto, assistant in the first goal, was also the one who offered Griezmann the possibility of shooting in the second. And the Frenchman, emboldened all night, drew the perfect thread that definitely took Betis to the graveyard.

Rubi's team, already with two losses and despite the wonderful goal in Loren's sunset, never gave the impression of being able to respond. Not much after Barcelona accumulated indelible moments. As the first goal of Carles Pérez. Like the beautiful wrinkle of Busquets, exultant in Alba's goal. Or as the premiere of a 16-year-old boy, Ansu Fati, the second youngest player to debut in La Liga with Barcelona. His parents cried in the stands. Soccer is this too.

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  • Antoine Griezmann

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