The Squad salute their 500 supporters in the cheap seats
Barça went to Madrid on Saturday and beat their rivals 3-1. Though el Clasico appeared to be an uphill battle in light of Madrid's current run of dominance, Barça still managed to create the opportunities needed to come up on the (then) league-leaders.
How?
The game was thrown into a tailspin upon first getting possession of the ball in the first half, after sending it back to Victor Valdes, the goalie gifted it directly to Di Maria, who dished to Mesut Øzil, whose shot was deflected right to Karim Benzema, tapping it into the roof of the net past Valdes. 22 seconds into the game and Madrid was up 1 nil.
Jesus...
The problem was that as Barca had gotten possession their defensive backs started splitting wide and heading to play deep out of their end. They were so wide and far back, in fact, that they were way out of distance to effectively defend in front of their goal, which is where the Madrid front line were pressuring to attack and pounce on just such an opportunity.
Barcelona was playing the kind of daring football that no one else on Earth attempts. By splitting their defensive backs so wide apart and so deep up the pitch to play out from the back, they were daring their adversaries to challenge them up high in order to make holes in the midfield. 22 seconds in, they got caught.
But as they regrouped and got the ball into their own rhythm, steadily they managed to create those holes in the Madrid midfield and fatigue their forwards who were busy chasing the ghosts of opportunity created by Pique, Puyol and Abidal in the back field, still holding on to their now-you-see-me-now-you-don't style.
By the second half, the merengues were having to dash back upfield to defend their goal after being drawn out time and again, and their breath was no longer able to sustain the effort of keeping up with the claret and blue zig-zags.
The line-up that Pep fielded was different from the one that faced Madrid a year ago in the 5-0 rout at the Nou Camp. Instead of David Villa and Pedro on the wings, he put in Alexis Sanchez and Cesc Fabregas--both of the summer signings. Indeed, both of them would score in the game.
It wasn't the starlets presence on the pitch that won the game, though. It was Pep.
El Genio
Though he started the game with the team lined up in a 4-3-3, keeping four defenders in the back to deal with the aggressive Madrid offense, by the tenth minute, down a point, he switched it up to a 3-4-3, sending one of the backs up into the mid-field and beyond. Dani Alves was exemplary in shooting up the field in the role we saw him in last year as a make-shift winger that sent his pitch-perfect crosses towards the forwards swooping in at the goal. Sergio Busquets acted as a sweeper to make sure the defense always could get some kind of entry to Xavi and, most effectively, Iniesta.
Iniesta seemed to exhaust his counterparts as he whirled all over the pitch with his beguiling gait. They could not get a handle on him. And though he did not always connect with his teammates in the way we are used to seeing--in fact, the team in general seemed to give the ball away much more than would have been comfortable for their fans--Iniesta was always a problem for the men in white to contain. He was such a dazzler that as he was subbed off the game in it's final minutes, even the Madrid fans applauded his master-class.
Pep made the adjustments necessary to counter Mourinho's press-crazy tactics, while Mourinho let his boys keep playing the same way.
The resulting win for the Blaugrana was a win for flexibility.
The team is in Japan today, set to play in the final for the FIFA Club World Cup. Another fairly arbitrary cup, but a cup nonetheless.
On Friday is the Champions league draw for the final 16.
The pendulum is swinging back our way.
