The dusk of Barcelona

• Narration: So we live the game
• Classification Group F

Barcelona has been living on football for too long, but agony. A few days, players get carried away by laziness. But there are others, as in the double confrontation with the Slavia, in which impotence is the only response to their particular torture. Chaos is the norm. The imbalance, an entelechy when Messi gets tired of trying. The team dusk without remedy. His draw at home against the notable Czech champion was not a surprising fact. But one more sample of twilight. [Narration and statistics: 0-0]

Jindrich Trpisovsky, trainer of the Slavia in Prague, is a kind of pleasant smile. Of those who understand, and also demonstrate, that he has not reached football to suffer, but to enjoy. Quite the opposite of Valverde, a bad habit of survival. Just over five years ago, Trpisovsky was nothing more than an amateur technician. He lived to attend the night after the bar of a disco. On the eve of the duel in front of Barcelona, ​​he mixed with the tourists and took a first look at the Camp Nou. But after that daily admiration of the first time the denial of fear also coexists. The Czech coach advanced his defensive line to the division, allowed the void in front of his goalkeeper, the imposing Kolar, and ordered his men, without fear, to deploy in droves. Piqué and Lenglet could only think that the horsemen of the Apocalypse came upon him.

Valverde was taken by demons. His hands, unable to sit still in his pockets, shot towards Piqué. He had a reason. There was no other way out than the central long passes to the Semedo races - denied by Kolar. But Barça players, without knowing what to do, emulated the frozen Jack Nicholson in the maze of the Overlook hotel in El Resplandor.

And that Valverde believed he had discovered how to avoid suffocation. To do this, he twisted the drawing as much as he could, taking advantage of the fact that Luis Suarez was injured. He raised a 4-2-3-1, with Busquets and De Jong in the double pivot - the call of the antichrist in the Cruyffist creed -, Arturo Vidal taking turns with Messi in the work of center forward, and Dembélé and Griezmann on the banks.

However, the wiggle Valverde gave the team did not intimidate the opponent. The two Barca midfielders were erased with man markings. Messi came to receive his own field. The left-handed lane of Jordi Alba -replaced by injury to rest- and Griezmann did not exist. While Dembélé preferred the ball to the foot, although for this he had to caracolear the crowd in an increasingly grotesque scenario. He lost nine balls. The remedies of the second half, with Sergi Roberto, Ansu Fati and the abandoned Rakitic, also did not help. At least, the young man was able to attend Messi, defeated by Kolar.

Of course, Barcelona had no choice but to look for La Pulga wherever it was. The Argentine proved it foul, caused the restlessness in the Slavia goalkeeper when he tried an Olympic goal, and also struck the ball that ended up in the crossbar. An action that had left Frydrych in Babia through a feint in the media line, and that also perpetuated the desolation of Griezmann, who believed that the Argentine could pass the ball. Messi, already in the second act, gave a goal ball to Arturo Vidal. But the play had been invalidated for offside.

Nothing bothered Slavia, which turned every advance into occasion. The one who tightened the most was Olayinka, a lightning bolt in the band and capable of taking Piqué by the hand to the asylum, no matter how much the central one sought redemption with a head-to-head reprimand repelled by Kolar. A frantic play by the Nigerian also left the Czechs with the shout of a goal caught in the throat. Masopust intruded on a shot by Stanciu with Ter Stegen about to take the sentence. The Slavia was not going to stop, which closed the first act seeing how they annulled a goal to Boril. Yes, the same left-handed side who scored in the first leg and who went so hot to attack.

The time has come, once again, when Barcelona surrendered. Caught in a most uncertain destination. Engulfed, on a windy day, by the swell. The swell is increasingly treacherous. And threatens to take everything ahead.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• sports
• football
• Champions League
• FC Barcelona
• Ernesto Valverde

ChampionsValverde: "I don't know why the classic was postponed"

ChampionsThe anger of Ter Stegen: "You need to talk about some things"

ChampionsThe Czech hero of the Eurocup of 96 who could die from a tick