Nothing Xavi was asking for failed in the Barça fiefdom, but the lack of effectiveness in front of goal was too expensive a toll.
Barça offered their best version of the season against Benfica, but the performance was not enough to go from 0-0 at the Camp Nou, and the pass to the round of 16 will be played on the last day of the group stage of the Champions League, In which they will have to beat Bayern Munich in the impregnable Allianz Arena or hope that Benfica will not be able to beat Dynamo Kiev.
On Monday, Xavi Hernández, wearing his psychologist suit, asked his team for four things: pride, a spirit of revenge, optimism and keeping in mind that it is Barça. None of that failed this Tuesday in the Barça fiefdom, but the lack of effectiveness in front of goal was too expensive a toll.
“In a while you will see a 4-3-3, at times a 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2,” Xavi announced in the run-up to the meeting, while it was pouring down on the Camp Nou grass as during much of the rest. of the day to the despair of a large part of the fans, discovered, in a new sign that the Barça house has become outdated.
The rain, friend of the epic, diminished once the match started and then it was found that the 3-4-3 that Xavi put into practice at Al Saad was also the starting drawing for the Barça team.
Xavi’s solution to complete the starting lead was the Austrian Yusuf Demir, who had not played from the start since September 23 against Cádiz. Evicted on the bench were the most expensive signing in the history of Barça, Philippe Coutinho, and a noted Luuk de Jong.
Precisely Demir had the first chance to score with a strong and low shot that forced Odisseas Vlachodimos to stretch. But the most positive thing for Barça was their intensity, embodied especially in Ronald Araujo and Nico González, and their effective combination game, led by Sergio Busquets, who drowned a Benfica that was slow to connect with the giant Roman Yaremchuk.
Barcelona approached the Lisbon team area again and again, but the doubts of Memphis Depay, the lack of aim of Gavi (author of a new recital in the center of the field) and the success of Vlachodimos against Jordi Alba kept the tables . Faced with such an offensive, Nicolás Otamendi asked his teammates for a reaction on the edge of half an hour of play.
And the Argentine himself was about to exercise it, putting his team ahead in the 34th minute with a shot inside the area that crossed the goal line after hitting the crossbar. But the referee Sergei Karasev annulled the goal because the ball had previously left the rectangle.
In the previous play, Yaremchuk headed in against Ter Stegen, that silenced some recent criticism. The Barça reply was overwhelming. Starting from the right, Demir executed a parable that crashed into Vlachodimos’s right crossbar when more than one Barça fan had already gotten up from their seat to open the champagne.
The second half became infatuated with being a replica of the first and Barça continued to delve into Benfica’s weaknesses with no luck, especially since what the Lisbon midfield failed to contain was disrupted time and again by an imperial Otamendi and his squire Jan Verthongen.
If Benfica’s best line was defense, Barcelona’s worst was attack. And that explained the 0-0. Thus, in the absence of 25 minutes Xavi looked to the bench to bet on the limping Ousmane Dembélé.
The best Barça opportunity was born from the French forward when he had just replaced Demir. Frenkie de Jong finished off his cross from the left wing with a header and again Vlachodimos avoided the goal.
But Barça began to notice the fatigue of the accumulated effort until then, increased by the fact that the French forward was still the only Barça refreshment player when Benfica had already completed the five changes.
In the 84th minute, an unstoppable volley from Araujo to the center of Jordi Alba seemed to be the reward for so much chipping stone, but when the euphoria had already broken out at the Camp Nou the referee annulled the goal for offside.
Thus, Barça had to settle for a zero draw, which was on the verge of being a defeat when in the penultimate play Haris Seferovic missed a goal practically to an empty goal that condemns him to suffer on the last day to go to the second round of final. (D)
Ricardo is a renowned author and journalist, known for his exceptional writing on top-news stories. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he is known for his ability to deliver breaking news and insightful analysis on the most pressing issues of the day.
