In other circumstances, a draw at home against Girona would have been a bad result for Barça, but after Real Madrid’s defeat on Saturday against Villarreal (3-2) and with a 12-point advantage over the whites (before starting his match), the Catalan team can afford to lose points.
Another thing is that the more than 78,000 spectators who decided to go to the Camp Nou deserved a better show after having made the ‘sacrifice’ of going to the Barça temple on Easter Monday, a holiday in Catalonia and the last day of the weekdays. Santa.
Surely, the late time of the match (9:00 p.m. local; 7:00 p.m. GMT) and the fact that the Catalan children return to class on Tuesday, prevented more than one from getting bored by the poor game displayed on the field.
Something very positive at a time when some of the soccer rectors are increasingly concerned about the little interest shown by the new generations in this sport.
Because, certainly, the Camp Nou game will not help those responsible for LaLiga sell the ‘product’, not to the youngest… or to anyone.
The highlight of the first half hour was the shouts of “Messi, Messi!” that the Barcelona fans shouted again in the 10th minute, as if those chants were prayers that could make possible the return of the Messiah.
Messi, Messi!”
In the absence of knowing if the return of Lionel Messi to what was his home is feasible, among other things due to the financial situation of the Catalan club, the Argentine goalkeeper from Girona Paulo Gazzaniga worked the miracle by taking a shot from the Uruguayan Ronald Araujo when the ball already had more surface inside the goal than by crossing the goal line (37).
Another Argentine, on the other side, Valentín ‘Taty’ Castellanos, decided at the beginning of the second half that the mediocrity of the match did not deserve goals and sent a shot off when he came face to face with Marc André Ter Stegen (55).
With the 6-minute discount, the game lasted another 41 minutes, or rather the ordeal, because nothing remarkable happened again, except for a header from Gavi that sent Gazzaniga to a corner when many spectators were already waiting for the clock to put end to ordeal (90+4).
Good luck for the Barcelona players that the fans see a league title close with which to forget their European sorrows, because otherwise the fans could be much less lenient with the game proposed by Xavi Hernández’s team, a paradigm of the touch game as a coach , but that as a coach he is having a hard time implementing that style that led Barça to excellence.
