Two goals on his competitive home debut helped lead Barcelona into the light against Betis at the Camp NouAntoine Griezmann had watched the best and wanted to do what they do. And so, when the ball came to him just to the right side of the area 50 minutes into his Camp Nou debut for Barcelona, he did. Pausing for a moment, he looked up and curled it into the corner, bending past the goalkeeper’s hand and in by the post. If the shot was familiar, the foot wasn’t. “I see Messi do it in training and I copied him,” the Frenchman said afterwards. Beaten in Bilbao on the opening night, Barcelona had been 1-0 down to Betis, darkness descending,...
Barcelona, PSG, Bayern and Juventus have won 25 of the last 28 league titles. Europe has become the only testing groundD id you feel it? The great disturbance in the force, as though millions of voices cried out in hope? Last weekend, something remarkable happened: none of the champions of Europe’s big five leagues won (a statistic that admittedly loses some of its potency when it is acknowledged that Serie A hadn’t started: Juventus kicked off their Serie A campaign on Saturday with a 1-0 win at Parma).Last season was the first time that each of the big five leagues had been retained, but here was the little man striking back: Barcelona lost, Paris Saint-Germain lost, Manchester City drew, Bayern...
Ernesto Valverde’s team failed to deliver on Lionel Messi’s Champions League dream and the issues seem to run deepAt the end Leo Messi collapsed to the floor and for a time he just lay face down on the grass, until a teammate eventually came and lifted him to his feet. Exhausted, he was barely able to breathe. Barely able to believe it, either. When at last he walked, the noise deafening as he headed towards the touchline, he was still wondering how it could have slipped through their fingers like that.This is not Anfield, this is the Camp Nou six days earlier. Related: ‘Shame. There is no other adjective’ – Spanish press on Barcelona’s defeat Related: Lionel Messi broke down...
Technique must now be matched by physique and Klopp’s side used old English virtues to blow away a decadent BarcelonaTalk all you want about great European nights. Talk of the swell of the crowd, the roaring emotion inside Anfield. Talk of St-Étienne and Olympiakos and Borussia Dortmund. Talk of glory and heart and implausible goalscoring heroes, of Fabinho’s energy, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s wit and Jordan Henderson doing it on one leg. All that played its part. But talk also of Barcelona’s impotence in the maelstrom, of the familiarity of their problems, and conversely of the way in which Jürgen Klopp has resurrected the great historical virtue of English football: its power.When a three-goal advantage is overturned, of course it is a...
From U9s in parks to Pep Guardiola’s champions, no one person has had such a vast impact on a major sport’s footprint as Barcelona’s superstarThere was some consolation this week for anyone feeling a little maxed-out by the relentless individual brilliance of Lionel Messi. We have at least found something he isn’t good at on a football pitch. It turns out Messi isn’t very good at punching Fabinho in the head.Frankly, he’s terrible at it. The TV replays showed Messi doing something along these lines at the Camp Nou just before that mind-bending free-kick goal. Fabinho looked stunned at the time, but perhaps he was just shocked by the nature of the blow, a slappy, wristy thing executed with laughably...