In his defence he was absolutely wonderful for Liverpool and he was great here for a time until he got injured ..
Great to see Malcom getting a REAL chance and taking it. Messi with a less good 30 minute performance but given his match fitness it was kind of expected. Great game by Busquets and Arthur (second half in particular) as well. Piqué great/good/above average as well in the big games. Semedo with a great match as well. One of his best. Showing promising offensive moves and runs too which was/is his weakness.
A very bad first half of the first half where RM, with some sharpness, could have scored more than once. However so could we, in particular in the second half. Overall a decent result all things considered. Once Dembélé returns and Messi is match fit and ready to start the return leg, it will be a completely differently ball game. In recent years we tend to perform better at the Santiago Bernabéu than the Camp Nou.
Coutinho once against a complete and utter waste of space. Not surprised as I saw this coming already 2 years and wrote about it openly here as one among a tiny minority of users. The sooner we sell this enormous flop the better. Not even Hristo's open letter changed anything for the better, nor the continuous playing time that he has been receiving lately. His attitude and body language is as bad as usual as well. I have NEVER been more frustrated with one of our players as I have with this guy. To think that we bought him for €160 million, is just stuff of nightmares.
Happy that Malcom, a player that I have continuously been defending here, shinned and took one of his very, very rare opportunities against our most historic rivals at home. Hopefully we will see a resurgence of Malcom and thus Coutinho's permanent presence on the bench or on the tribune. At this point in time, I don't want to see this version of him playing at all.
Copa | Semi Final: Real Madrid - FC Barcelona 1-4 agg.
- Thread starter Barcaman
- Start date
Madrid started the game full speed, to take advantage of the slow Marca starts in these 2 leg ties. This is a quite a Barca problem, when the opponents are of high quality. I though only Malcom started the match with the intensity that RM brought.
Barca did create enough scoring chances, Navas had a fantastic game. That shot by Suarez had goal written all over it.
The other players sag when Messi is not on the field. Suarez in particular is much, much better when Messi is on the field, but also Alba, most of the players.
With Messi out for the first hour, I'll take 1-1. RM is a very fine team again, which was not the case earlier this season. Vinicius is a major improvement from Bale. Right now, I would take Coutinho over Bale, though Coutinho needs to sit quite a bit in the near future.
Most of the RM attacks were on Semedo's side. Not that he was bad, RM has big talent over there. No, Semedo was not the best Barca player, RB is not one of the stronger positions for Barca. Malcom, this is the first game where I could see a real future for him with this team. Excellent aggression, better linkup with his teammates, finally got off a good shot. Pique was about 50% of the entire Barca defense, without him RM would have scored about 4. Good subs by Valverde, Barca has a real bench now.
Barca did create enough scoring chances, Navas had a fantastic game. That shot by Suarez had goal written all over it.
The other players sag when Messi is not on the field. Suarez in particular is much, much better when Messi is on the field, but also Alba, most of the players.
With Messi out for the first hour, I'll take 1-1. RM is a very fine team again, which was not the case earlier this season. Vinicius is a major improvement from Bale. Right now, I would take Coutinho over Bale, though Coutinho needs to sit quite a bit in the near future.
Most of the RM attacks were on Semedo's side. Not that he was bad, RM has big talent over there. No, Semedo was not the best Barca player, RB is not one of the stronger positions for Barca. Malcom, this is the first game where I could see a real future for him with this team. Excellent aggression, better linkup with his teammates, finally got off a good shot. Pique was about 50% of the entire Barca defense, without him RM would have scored about 4. Good subs by Valverde, Barca has a real bench now.
Neeraj
Senior Member
My thoughts on the game:-
- Great atmosphere to begin with (up to the anthem at least), 92k people in the stadium! Was fabulous
- We are lucky Vinicus is still raw and doesn't have a good final ball / shot yet, because we are not equipped to handle a fast creative player coming at us. People keep talking about how good Pique is because of all the last ditched tackles, and while he was good, a really good defensive unit should not need to make those many last ditched tackles to begin with. Varane for example outpaces most attackers, so he often doesn't have to do anything that looks spectacular.
- Coutinho was terrible, but Rakitic's performance needs a new word to define it. It was one of the most horrid midfield performances you will see. The crowd around me were all facepalming themselves every time Rakitic got the ball and eventually fucked it up.
- Malcolm's goal gave him a lot of confidence and you could see his body language change. The atmosphere in the stadium just following that goal was as electric I've seen ever, and I really thought we would be able to push for a second and potentially third at that point.
- We desperately need to inject pace into this team. Defence, midfield and offence. We have Dembele in offence, but the rest of the pitch, the movement is just not there. Because we have Suarez playing upfront, Madrid was basically playing him from the halfway line when MATS had the ball. Imagine Dembele or someone even remotely quick playing off of the shoulder of the defenders. They would never be able to close in that tight, and we'd get a lot more space in midfield.
- Overall, I think we should still be able to make it through to the final; I don't care so much about the Copa, but knocking Madrid out is always great.
- Great atmosphere to begin with (up to the anthem at least), 92k people in the stadium! Was fabulous
- We are lucky Vinicus is still raw and doesn't have a good final ball / shot yet, because we are not equipped to handle a fast creative player coming at us. People keep talking about how good Pique is because of all the last ditched tackles, and while he was good, a really good defensive unit should not need to make those many last ditched tackles to begin with. Varane for example outpaces most attackers, so he often doesn't have to do anything that looks spectacular.
- Coutinho was terrible, but Rakitic's performance needs a new word to define it. It was one of the most horrid midfield performances you will see. The crowd around me were all facepalming themselves every time Rakitic got the ball and eventually fucked it up.
- Malcolm's goal gave him a lot of confidence and you could see his body language change. The atmosphere in the stadium just following that goal was as electric I've seen ever, and I really thought we would be able to push for a second and potentially third at that point.
- We desperately need to inject pace into this team. Defence, midfield and offence. We have Dembele in offence, but the rest of the pitch, the movement is just not there. Because we have Suarez playing upfront, Madrid was basically playing him from the halfway line when MATS had the ball. Imagine Dembele or someone even remotely quick playing off of the shoulder of the defenders. They would never be able to close in that tight, and we'd get a lot more space in midfield.
- Overall, I think we should still be able to make it through to the final; I don't care so much about the Copa, but knocking Madrid out is always great.
Leo_Messi
New member
Agree with all of your points and would like to elaborate on a few of them if you don't mind.
1) Yes, as usual against RM at the Camp Nou. Although I wish that such atmosphere would be typical of every single home game regardless of opponent.
2) Yes, had Bale had as much space as Vinicius had, RM would likely have scored more than 1 goal in that first half. Us leaving so much space behind is mostly due to our non-mobile midfield and in particular an invincible Rakitic and us having no control of the game in the first half. Once again the fault of the midfield and our intensity as a team. All this improved in the second half where we were clearly superior.
3) True. I said it in another thread but we actually played with 9 men since Coutinho and Rakitic were invisible.
4) Malcom was growing with each minute and each touch after that initial miss (ruled offside). Great to see as I rate him and find it very sad that he has had so little playing time and thus consistency. As things stand right now, he has more to offer for us than the current version of Coutinho which is a pathetic sight given his even more absurd price tag and the expectations before his arrival.
5) In complete agreement hence I did not understand why Valverde subbed Malcom off leaving us with zero pace outside of Alba and Semedo. We desperately missed Dembélé. A Semedo-Dembélé right flank and Alba on the left gives us the needed pace and makes life easier for Messi and Suárez.
This was also what caused RM to go "all in" in the final minutes as they had little to worry about in terms of counters with Suárez, Messi, Aleñà, Arthur, Busquets and Vidal on the pitch.
6) I believe that are favorites to advance to the final as well but it all depends on whether or not Messi and Dembélé will play, our lineup and form coming into the game although El Clásico games are notoriously unpredictable. It was important that RM only managed to score 1 goal. Same, us going out in the CdR after winning 4 in a row and 5 in 7 seasons would not be the end of the world (not even close) but beating RM at the Santiago Bernabéu, denying them one of the 3 most important trophies each season and reaching a CdR final, is obviously much better than going out.
Arizona Scott
New member
I think there are some good points but some over-generalizations. I re-watched the game this morning. Arthur and Busi were absolutely fantastic after settling in (maybe 25 min mark). These two are 90 minute starters the big games. Rakitic is the next choice. He had one really bad play (as did Busi and Arthur early) but other than that had a good match (smart play, sharp passes, good help defending) and was very unlucky for that header not to score. His sub wasn't because of bad play but because he played almost 3 whole matches in 1 week’s time and we have a good player in Vidal ready to give a solid 30 minutes. That is just good use of a team sheet and could well have been mostly predetermined. I think what we will in the big games is these 3 starting plus Vidal as the 1st sub. These two--Rakitic (from game flow and set pieces) and Vidal, look the more of goal scoring threats than Arthur and Busi, so they are good compliments. Busi still is a brilliant player and Arthur is the best combination of active movement (offense/defense) and control (though he doesn't offer much in the final 3rd the other parts are outstanding and critical to this team). None of these 4 are going to rip you open in the middle of the part or final 3rd like Iniesta or Modrid or KDB or Pogba are capable of, of course that is the hope of FDJ. Both Rakitic and Vidal are better not having to play the whole game and not having to play heavy loads in 1 week (the last week included 3 high intensity matches). Alena is not ready for elimination and intense circumstances (he was really poor those 15 minutes, kind of got in the way and not showing good control in some patches of space he had), unlike the other 4, but give Alena a lot of play in league not against Real or Atleti (unless the league is mostly wrapped up by then)--both to critical to rest Rakitic and Vidal right now but also let's get him more experience and a better look at him.
Some other observations. Madrid again really tried to kill the tie the 1st 1/3rd of the match--if Barca kept playing like the 1st 30 minutes it would have been over, but they didn't, on balance they won the last 60 minutes. It wasn't like the 1st leg vs Sevilla or Levante that was a pretty poor 90 minutes, had they done so they would have been out of it because the veteran core of Real (Modrid, Kross, Benzema, Carvajal, Marcello, Ramos) played very hard to try to end the tie and for the most part well. They have to be a bit disappointed because they went for it against a starting sloppy (1st 3rd), weary (Madrid was sitting on this match whole Barca had 3 intense ones in one week) and half strength Barca team, but yet don't really have an edge--a tie and 1 away goal isn't much for these two teams score whether home or away.
Barca really missed Dembele. Right now Madrid could press without too much risk of getting punished. With him and Messi in there the risk of a quick counter is so much higher. Coutinho, Suarez, and the midfield (no matter what the combination of the top 4) just don't threaten you vertically--the opponents can press and recover if they have half the field to make up ground thus can play very aggressive. Malcom did a very good job of doing what he can and added some bite--but getting Messi and Dembele out there changes the calculation dramatically.
Suarez is not the same player from last Classico to yesterday’s one. He needs to get about every other match off the rest of the season. You put him out there and he will work hard and do his best--but he is worn. Valverde is the only one who can conserve him, he doesn't have the self-regulation/efficiency mentality Messi has. Malcom was great and has now shown he should be in the forward rotation, great sign.
Time for Valverde to really conserve Suarez, Rakitic, Vidal, Pique & Alba (and a little bit Messi) so we don't get low energy or injured versions for the CL elimination stages. Coutinho is a bench player when the team is all healthy--so might as well keep playing him a lot in league so hopefully he gets some confidence so he can be a good bench player this year. Harder and harder to see him being a long term fixture but that is for another day. Right now we just want him to be a decent player who can contribute to the 14-15 person core rotation for the big games.
I thought it was Semedo's best game as a Barca player. Lots of Barca players played well, that was a full strength Madrid squad that was sitting on this game and would have overmatched most opponents in the world. To hang in there with no Dembele and 1/3rd of Messi, and 3 tough matches in one week, I'll absolutely take it.
Arizona Scott
New member
No we were much worse 1st leg vs Sevilla and Eibar quite recently, and in that period in Sep-Oct we were throwing away league points. We were pretty good against one of world footballs 8 best teams after 30 minutes.
FCBfan22
Senior Member
Should try:
------------MATS-------------
Semedo-Pique-Lenglet-Alba
-----------Busquets----------
-----Rakitić-------Alena------
Dembele---Messi---Suarez--
Dembele is just so much better as a RW in terms of playmaking, that it's almost a crime that we are sacrificing his position to play Suarez in his favourite one. Last game, he played 20 minutes at RW and got an assist. Play Suarez as LF and move Dembele back to RW.
Alena and Alba can fill in with the winger things that Suarez can't do.
------------MATS-------------
Semedo-Pique-Lenglet-Alba
-----------Busquets----------
-----Rakitić-------Alena------
Dembele---Messi---Suarez--
Dembele is just so much better as a RW in terms of playmaking, that it's almost a crime that we are sacrificing his position to play Suarez in his favourite one. Last game, he played 20 minutes at RW and got an assist. Play Suarez as LF and move Dembele back to RW.
Alena and Alba can fill in with the winger things that Suarez can't do.
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