Real Betis gave Barca their first defeat in long time
FC Barcelona lost their undefeated streak against the most unlikely of all opponents - Real Betis. We went in to this match on the back of our 28 consecutive undefeated match and was expecting to add one more to the list. But Real Betis had some other plans. When Guardiola said in the pre-match conference that he is going for the win, everybody thought that he was extending his usual niceties in the match. But the team he put on the field showed that victory was all he had in mind. Pique and Milito formed the centre of defense. Maxwell and Adriano occupied the flanks. The midfield had Xavi, Mascherano and Keita. The front trio had Afellay, Messi and Bojan formed an unusual front trio. The earlier match ended with Almeria winning against Deportivo and has now booked a semi-final clash against Barcelona. Almeria was thrashed 8-0 last time when we played them, but they should consider themselves in a much better form following this result and the Real Madrid result.
Real Betis had a great start to the match scoring in the 2nd minute from a free kick conceded by Milito. The marking was absolutely poor marking allowing Molino to find all the time and speed in the midfield. In the 7th minute another brilliant move once again found us wanted with Molino scoring again taking Real Betis 2-0 ahead. When the first goal came nobody bothered but the second did put us some problem. The biggest worry was Betis had two attacks and they scored from both. We were in serious trouble of losing our undefeated streak tonight in the city of Sevilla. We were struggling to impose ourselevs in the mathc, it looked more like we were not interested. In the 13th minute Keita had our first shot on target with a regulation strike from outside the box, which was too easy for the keeper to hold on. In the 15th minute Molino was once again played on and Pique had to go for a desperate challenge to prevent the third. Our central defenders were getting rocked by every Real Betis attack.
In the 19th minute Afellay saw his shot from outside of the box being svaed by keeper. In the 38th minute Messi restored a bit of order when he outmuscled the last defender to latch onto a not so great aerial ball and finished it through the keeper's legs. That goal gave us more comfortas Real betis has to win the game now by 7-1 to progress. In the njury time our defense made another mess defending an aerial ball conceding the thrid of the night. That goal was all of Pinto's fault, what the bloody hell he was thinking coming out for a ball which was easily won by Milito. I have never seen a match where we were chasing the ball this much. Even in our worst matches we used to easily dominate possession. We had only 55% possession in the first half and that was way past usual. Milito looked completely lost in the first fifteen minutes and the lack of playing time really showed with him having no sync with Pique.The Lionel Messi goal had bailed out easily in the first half with his goal which actually showed his strengh, pace and persistence.
We started pressing really well in the start of second half and was seeing more of the ball than in first half. In the 53rd minute Barca won a crucial penalty for a handball inside the box off a Messi shot on goal. There was no doubt that he unintentionally prevented the ball from going into the net with keeper completely beaten. But Messi lobbed the penalty over the bar, have to admit that was one of the worst penalties you will see. we holding onto the ball better in the second half and that cut down any Real Betis chances. In the 66th minute Betis hit the post from their first real threat of the half. Once again Milito slipped in the build up and after that we were completely exposed. In the 78th minute Guardiola brought in Busquets and Abidal for Xavi and Afellay. The idea was not to concede anymore.
I have to admit that this was the worst performanec by a Barcelona side for sometime. I don't think that we played this badly even in the later parts of Rijkaard era. The first half performance was simply put nonsense. Milito undoubtedly was our worst player of the night. Playing a big part in all three goals conceded is an awful take home for anyone. Milito lacked any kind of match fitness and Guardiola have to think of giving him more playing time to get him back to match fitness. Guardiola have been recently preferring Abidal and even Busquets ahead of him, but that has to be stopped. With more playing time Milito should come back to full match fitness soon. For me the worst player on the pitch was Mascherano. I now wonder why we had to pay this much for him. he was never shielding the centre back, never winning any challenges and was not at all distributing the ball properly. He is either too away from the attacker or too away from the defenders all the time. Another ridiculous performance was from keita. He did bring in some desperate challenges at times to save us, but going forward he was ridiculous. There were n number of times when Xavi was crowded in the midfield and Keita was nowhere near to bail him out.
It would be a big disgrace if I don't recognise the excellent performance put up by Real Betis. There was a banner in the crowd which read "Yes, we can" with a 6-0 scoreline given, they may noot have achieved it but they did achieve something which has been very rare this season - defeat Barcelona, and that too pretty convincingly. It was really sad to see we lose the unbeaten streak and that too with such ridiculous performance. But this had to come to an end one day and now its time to go for the next one. Its a pretty good wake up call ahead of the Hercules match, and also ahead of a very gruelling second part of the season. Even though we were completely outplayed and outrun by Betis, we could say that its better it came in a match like this nor at any later stages in the season. WEell played Betis, time to buckle up Barca