Barça won, but it is difficult to remember a similar report of incidents to achieve it, a sign that in the Champions League the Blaugrana team is once again prepared to compete, but it will take a while to enjoy it. Let's review: eight yellow cards and one red (unusual); Favorable VAR (in Europe, lately, also unusual); Lewandowski injury; Cancelo's tactical and metaphysical excursions; miraculous appearances by Koundé and Araújo, with cramps to add to the epic, in order to avoid goals scored; stomach ailment and flight to the bathroom of Lamine Yamal, who left everyone, including himself... There will be those who throw their hands in their heads because of the cost of the triumph. You can do another reading. Let's go to her.
Missing good players when you win avoids the suspicion of opportunism and allows you to justify a game that was defective in terms of play while enhancing the merit of a European victory that is not easy and very necessary. Xavi's Barça is and will be asked (with complete reason) for greater weight in its midfield to avoid uncontrolled games like last night's, but the players best suited to pause the scene are out of it, injured. Pedri and De Jong, the second still with detractors whose arguments your servant does not understand, would give Barça a less nervous air, but it turns out that they are not there, so winning in Portugal, even if it is with a crooked gesture, has extraordinary value for the Blaugrana face the season with less stress than in the last two campaigns at this point. Let us remember for those whose memory is failing that Barça has just failed to overcome the last two group stages of the Champions League, a competition that it has not won for eight years. You come from so low that you have to appreciate what you have. Two games, six points.
Xavi's team suffered because it was missing the Dutchman and the Canary Islander and because the triangle chosen to support the team was characterized more by its recovery instinct than by its ability to play with the ball. The center backs were Koundé and Araújo, and ahead of them was Oriol Romeu, who was out of tune in his international debut due to lack of habit. He opted for prevention, that's true. Christensen, much finer at the start, was left sitting on the bench, so the transition between defense and attack was thicker than the chocolates they serve on Petritxol Street. These types of approaches, if they end well on the scoreboard, generate, of course, predictable heroes. Araújo and Koundé were, saving so many scoring chances that Barça seemed like a very different thing to what they should want to be. The Blaugrana survived, they knew how to compete, but they still have a long way to go to be among the favorites. And also having two of the best back, who are Pedri and De Jong.
