This week I subscribed sports channel for 30 dollars and stayed up till 3 am just to watch Barca play like headless chickens. I'm starting to think that at one point you're not unlucky, you're not robbed , the team is just not competent for UCL games. Losing Rapha for sure left a big hole in the team in terms of finishing chances and most importantly PRESSING. What is the point of high line if you cant F press? I thought rashy was gonna step up to prove that he deserved to be bought by Barca. He barely pressed yesterday and jogged around. he would have forgiven if atleast he scored the chances Yamal gave. Honestly, there were many atletico defense error that gave barca the chance to take up possession from their own penalty box, but the shots are very weak from Rashford side, olmo missed an open goal from corner. Yamal just wanted to dribble 4-5 players without taking the shot. Each player lacked smtn to talk about and most importantly each player forgot that this was a UCL match where if you f up, you only get to play next year. Mentality is zero from our defence. If there's a clear chance of conceding just let the fucking player to score instead of taking him down and get red card. Last year it was cubarsi too that got inter penalty in semis. High line is fucking risky and if you couldn't accept that they're gonna break the line, then whats the point of fouling the player? Where is the Barca that we saw in 2nd leg of copa del rey? You perform good in small trophy CDR and cant do it for Big matches in UCL? that's what separates us from the big teams like Real Madrid and Bayern. What do you guys think was the problem yesterday?
by ryder234167
37 Comments
not cursed. we just lack iq and we never learn
Severely underperformed nver learned from our mistakes….. if this goes on, we going to have a yamal dependencia soon
Our team is technically just not fit for the big games. We are delusional in playing and winning against La Liga teams which include Underperforming Real Madrid too. We need changes. We need good players coming in. La masia has been good so far, but focusing only on These players will likely get us nowhere. Or else we need to lower expectations as a whole and try building slowly.
Yamal and pedri should leave ngl. Any team would go for them instantly and they’re wasting their careers here
Fans have to accept some players aren’t made for this level. Some players have passed their prime long ago, some players are too immature to perform at high stakes
Simple as that, squad needs a revamp.
We need clinical finishers when our whole game is based on creating many chances, we created a lot last night but Rashford was terrible in front of goal and Lewy was non-existent whole match
Maybe we are not barca level anymore,it’s just nostalgia factor inflating the clubs value and expectations
We need new signings finisher plus defence asap but the finances? I mean how can we have good finances when we blew 400m+ on some ineffective signings in recent the past and we tend to overpay our players,and we let messi go who brought us the most revenue, KILLING THE CHICKEN who produces golden eggs, we are stuck…. It’s like we show ourselves larger than what we are……just produce some yamal level finisher(I mean I used yamal as a metaphor ,and we need his level in finishing,not him in finishing)in la masia and sign good defence
It’s a combination. I still think we need a strong, experienced defender – Iñigo Martinez was not always brilliant, but he was consistent.
And then our finishing is not great. Lewa is amazing, but he can’t play game after game anymore. Lamine is obviously brilliant, but he has to improve his finishing. Rashford is imo not up to the task – yesterday there were 2 or 3 opportunities where he should have scored early on. Ferran needs to be sold. It’s harsh to say but we can’t keep babying him
Irony is same thing happened in laliga last time versus Atleti one simple ball in behind Simone runs from deep and it’s a goal but got lucky last time. How the fuck same mistake happens again Atleti didn’t even need to pass around midfield to break our defense they just need 2 players to pass our whole team. And yeah I’ve been telling in this sub that Rashford is trash Dani Olmo and ferran Torres are overpaid Spanish players and yamal always overdo shit without any end product ,Can’t blame lewa as he’s old.
Barca were in complete control of the game until the red and goal.
Barca will always struggle in the CL against good teams if they choose to play to Barcas high line.
Cursed: missing Raphinha and FdJ was a deficit, Koke should have been sent off right before Cubarsis red card, VAR did not intervene with that handball, even with 10 we were very hard to play and had multiple chances. I am proud of the boys and I cant wait till la vuelta on Tuesday. I still have some hope.
Man , words couldn’t tell how much I missed Messi yesterday, he would have dribbled this team and score at 38 years old age.
I think people tend to be super pessimistic after these kinds of matches.
The game was shaped by Cubarsi’s “foul.” Cubarsi isn’t playing badly. Cubarsi has never made this kind of “mistake” before. Seriously, this wasn’t even a mistake, he was just running and Simeone hit him.
Araujo’s red card in the last UCL wasn’t like this. He messed up. But I don’t feel Cubarsi made any mistake. It’s a totally different situation.
The team is playing well. Even with one less player, chances were created. More than 20 chances for Barcelona, and only 5 for Atlético. Barcelona’s biggest problem is finishing. We don’t have players who can finish inside the box; our only player who can do that is a retired guy who’s almost 40.
Not even our best player, Lamine, is good at finishing. He’s bad at it.
Give this team a striker and every game would be completely different. So I think we are underperforming, actually. By the time Cubarsi gets the red car, we should already be winning with 3 goals or more.
Barcelona is playing brilliant football, but without any player to finish with a goal. And that’s like… the most important thing in football.
get some fresh air, relax
Robbed
Maybe i saw a different match. I thought we did fine. Our press was great. The two goals were still random and typical Atletico goals that come out of thin air. It sucks to see another red card in a ucl game but I don’t think Cubarsi could have done much there apart from not pursuing Simeone. Too bad they scored off a free kick. We did decent despite being one man down.
Everyone can hunt their glories with other clubs.
Football is the BEST sport in the world because you never know what will happen. Yesterday’s game is a good example of that. Apart from not having a striker, our team was doing most things right but a very unlucky red card and 10s of wasted opportunities happened. That’s football. Grow up.
And no, we don’t have a mentality issue. We had a mentality issue when messi was the captain and the team used to lose in every away game in the champions. And losing by far. We lost to Roma 3-0 ffs. First xavi, then flick fixed that.
We had a capacity issue when Dest was the starting RW against madrid. Now we have a decent team despite the ridiculous financial outlook.
We have homegrown gavi, fermin, cubarsi, martin, lamine, cubarsi who are still incredibly young but play to become the difference maker almost every game. If you have a problem with Barça, look at the Spanish NT and remember which Barça players made the most contributions.
There is still 1 away game and I am going to watch that as a proud Barça fan.
Imo a little bit of both. Cubarsi’s red was so harsh but you can’t miss this much chances in this tournament and concede from the only 2 true chances atleti created. Also we clearly don’t have good squad depth for the cl in term of attackers and cb’s even.
Inexperience and immaturity are clear problems. Pedri got a yellow in the first half because of yelling at the referee. You don’t do that in the Champions League 1/4 final, when your opponent is playing counter-attacking football, and you can save yourself from conceding by fouling one of them.
UCL is based on luck, and the Flick-way to win the games makes it even more dependent on it. The team is very young, and the way they play can make them suffer even more in big situations, to put it simply. I’m not sure how much things would’ve changed yesterday with someone like Bastoni instead of Martín, for example.
Rashford isn’t close to Raphinha, neither on the ball nor off it. He’s not much of a threat as a winger: decent crossing, decent at free kicks, an above-average finisher, but offers little in pressing. Still, €30m sounds like a reasonable price (probably, I don’t know the market well, but I like what I saw from Benfica’s young LW in highlights).
Our backline was missing an experienced defender in the match, and like you said, the attack missed lots of chances even when we were one man down. Cubarsi is still 19, and his inability to withstand the pressure from such a big game was clear to see. I wish he would learn from such mistakes because I believe he will grow to become a better player in no distant time.
Barca isn’t cursed.
The team lets themselves down due to poor disciplined CL performances with poor defending being at heart of it.
It’s been the same story for the last 11 years.
The last time Barca won a CL was during a time when we still had Pique, Alves, Mascherano and Alba performing at world class levels. How many world class defenders have Barca had since our previous generation of defenders exited past their prime?
We dominated that game with 10 men. The only people that underperformed are Rashford in front of goal.
We got robbed by the ref that’s all
“Never learned from our mistakes” is a crazy narrative right now.
What mistakes? Not hitting the target? How’s that a mistake and not just inaccuracy?
Was Cubarsí existing where Simeone sticks his leg out behind him, while trying to press without engaging a mistake? What the fuck is he supposed to do? Just let him run with no pressure????
It’s very very unfortunate that the card happens, even if it’s a pattern. However, if we want to deduct what happened yesterday and try to find a reason:
We play a high line, – this tactic works only if we can finish chances, because we bet on defending by attacking (like in the second half) and we hope to out score, not to keep the opponent from scoring.
The high line brings risk. Whenever we win, it’s great and you guys shut up. When we concede an unfortunate red, you all appear again.
When we don’t hit our target and the ref allows for teams to hack us to bits, teams take advantage.
How to solve this?
Get a striker that can threaten the opponents backline while they aggress and defend, not just on the transition- and one that hits the fucking target so we can out score the opponent.
In an ideal world, we don’t even need defenders to do anything except hold a tight trap and then the press should disarm the opposition.
Thats it. Is the tactic a mistake? We’re winning la liga. We just beat this team. Can we suddenly drill a completely new philosophy because we get punished every 10 games? And spend less time practising what we’re good at?
Great shout, brainiac
I’ve seen this exact play from Rashford ever since I saw him at ManU in 21/22. Unlike traditional wingers, this guy doesn’t shoot the ball in a way that it curves to the first or second post.
Just notice all his shots and he shoots many of them directly in a straight line with a lot of power, that too with his inner foot. I believe this is what failed him as well.
Current amazing wingers like Doue, Yamal, Antony, kvaradona, Vini all have that ability to shoot the ball with a curve but this guy can only go direct. Unless he fixes that, he’ll remain a back-up
Flick always gambles on the attack line, if they do not score over two goals we know we are not winning, missing chances, even with 11 players i did not felt we are gonna score, atletico were gonna score anyway
We didn’t underperform at all tbh we were wasteful, yes now that’s a different topic altogether but we did well even after the red card . The entire game from barça was decent I would say much better than atlético. The only criteria in which atlético beat us yesterday was efficiency in the second half atlético only had 1 shot 1 shot on target and 1 goal. We didn’t take our chances and they scored a brilliant free kick and a proper striker’s goal
In the first half before the cubarsi red card we were dominating them for a good 20 mins before one lost possession, one good pass and a well timed run from Simeone basically decided the match I know cubarsi is getting a lot of hate rn which I don’t really condone he is 19 yo leading this inexperienced barça defensive line and he has been great for the past 2 months also another thing I would like to clarify is for people comparing this red card with Araujos red vs PSG and calling it a ” bozo” moment they are not the same Araujo clearly MEANT to tackle barcola in this case cubarsi wasn’t trying to do that he was trying to either intercept the ball or trying to get ahead of him to close down the shooting angle it’s just unfortunate that doing so he clattered into simeone’s legs
Also I do kind of believe we got robbed koke should have been sent off can’t believe he is still gonna play in the 2nd leg and pubill touched the ball with his hands when it was in play in his own box that’s a penalty 100% tyrone mings did that exact same thing vs villa and they got a penalty asw
Going back to the positives I did like the way we approached the second half our intensity somehow doubled after half time and we created 3 decent chances within like 15 mins I am going to be honest none of those chances were absolute sitters by any means but if we had raphinia I do believe he finishes off that chance by rashford where lamine set him up with a dime of a pass and I still can’t believe olmo failed to reach out to the ball to tap it in from that corner chance. Ofc due to our ref card we couldn’t continue playing the man to man press we are famous for that’s why the last 25 mins after atlético’s 2nd goal felt slow and boring
Speaking about sørloth and his goal who was eric garcia even marking ? There were no runners from behind that he was marking from that position and neither was there any threat of ruggeri carrying the ball inside kounde had forced ruggeri to only one option and that was a cross and eric still didn’t help Martín in double teaming a famously physical and aerial monster .
Anyways, I do believe in the comeback I think we have what it takes to show them up at their backyard and as fans that’s all we can do also forgot to mention it but lamine Yamal had an exceptional performance almost as good as last year’s first leg vs inter he deserved so much more today
We’re still alive in the tie
Against Atlético it was pure bad luck. Nothing else. The team could have scored more than 2 goals but the early red card conditioned them.
Robbed
You guys are way too easy on Cubarsi, seriously how many red cards in UCL do we need to pick up before we learn? it’s the exact same red every single fucking time. Take the one on one and maybe lose a goal but keep the whole team but no, our defenders are way too hot headed.
It’s not his fault? Please.
“can’t F press” holy shit what a bad take.
Was just an unlucky game, same luck we had with sociedad
I feel like Ferran should have gone on the wings and Rashford up top since Rapha is out. Lewy should be super sub at ucl
Stuck in the past. Teams need Great scorers to win the CL. Barca have been lacking that since Suarez left
next one could be nil nil because they will for sure will park the bus….
Frenkie, Bernal, Raphina, without them we are only good in league. In CL match I saw this coming But i am hopeful because wounded Barca is dangerous barca. Its 2-0 lead, so it is little complicated but if Barca is able to burried atleast 1 or 2 chances in the first half then. But we don’t have clinical striker for that. I think Yamal should do some shooting now. Because he can’t rely on striker and no support at all.
We aren’t cursed. We are the curse
It’s the same, tired, self-soothing 3 excuses on this sub god, can none of you actually process your emotions before word-vomiting a bunch of dumb shit on the TL?
What the fuck does the high line have to do with this loss? We conceded from a dubious setpiece at best and a counter-attack when we’re one man down; our defensive output was so good, we only conceded once post-red card
How do you say “Yamal wanted to dribble 4-5 players” and “Yamal didn’t want to take a shot” in the same breath without being an absolute moron?
Our team lacked mentality? have you not watched the game?
This has to be ragebait, or you’re genuinely brainbroken