With a second place finish, and possibly more funds, on the line for Barca, their match against Getafe stood as one of significant importance.
A positive result wouldn’t come easy though, as suspensions and injury weakened the quality of Barca’s squad.
Let’s see how it all went down.
First half
Boring, dull, uninteresting. These are the words that you typically don’t associate with Barca, even when they’re at their lowest.
It’s a club with great fame, reputation, and tradition. With that, comes good talent and a good product, supposedly that is.
But today against Getafe — and especially throughout the first half — Barca simply played boring football. Side to side passing, inefficient attacking play, a sheer lack of high danger opportunities, nothing seemed to work out in the attacking aspect for Barca in the first half.
Maybe that was due to Xavi opting to sit Ousmane Dembele for today’s match. The Frenchman has been in need of some rest for a while now. Or maybe it was due to the lack of potency in the midfield today, as Riqui Puig started for the suspended Frenkie De Jong.
Whatever the problem was, it plagued Barca for the entirety of the first half.
The one positive for Barca was that they were good defensively. Oscar Mingueza, Clement Lenglet, and Alejandro Balde all played well as replacements. Balde’s play was especially being magnified, since any sudden emergence from him could move Barca away from urgently searching for another left back during the summer transfer window..
But aside from that, there simply was not a lot of positivity from Barca in the first half.
That’s why the half came and went as fast as it did. With a nil-nil scoreline, and not a lot of excitement being provided from both sides, all we could hope for was a better second half.
Unluckily for us, we didn’t get that, as the second half provided little in the way of improvement.
Second half
The second half could’ve been a clear cut copy of the first.
From minute 45 until the last minute of injury time, opportunities remained scarce, and excitement failed to rise to desirable levels.
Xavi tried to combat that with a mirage of substitutions in the second frame. Ansu Fati replaced Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the 61st minute, but Fati himself didn’t do too much either. Luuk De Jong — in perhaps his second to last game in a Barca shirt — replaced Memphis Depay, but the Dutchman couldn’t provide another one of his signature clutch goals.
The only memorable moment in the second half came in the 90th minute. As highly touted Barca prospect Mika Marmol came on to make his official first team debut.
Marmol has been training with the first team for weeks, and his potential debut has been one of heavy discussion at times throughout the past few months. Today though, it finally happened.
Brilliant moment for the young man.
As for the match, it ended in a nil-nil draw. But as boring as the game was, the end result did come with some positives for Barca.
Final word
This match was a total bore. There were no good chances, both teams looked content with a nil-nil result, it was simply a snoozefest of a match.
However, this result did provide from positives for Barca. With this draw vs Getafe — and a draw between Sevilla and Atletico Madrid — Barca has officially finished second in this season’s La Liga campagin.
The second overall finish qualifies Barca for the Spanish Super Cup semi-finals next season. They’ll played Real Betis – the winners of the Copa Del Rey — next season.
The qualification for the Spanish Super Cup also gave the club at least a reported 8M in funds.
So it isn’t all bad.
Barca’s next match
Barca’s next match is next Sunday against Villarreal at the Camp Nou.
See you all then!
I’ve been a big time Barca fan since I was 14 years old. I love the club, the history, and the tradition that the club has built over its prestigious history. Forca Barca!
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