The habit of wandering around in LaLiga gave way to a setback in Barcelona’s debut in the Champions League, making a false start to its title defense
The Barcelona women’s team began its defense of the Champions League title it won last season with a defeat that was as unexpected as it was surprising. They lost 2-0 in Manchester, a match in which they almost always ran after the ball, unable to control the game, much less dominate, and which caused their first defeat of the season, something unprecedented in the month of October.
Barcelona women’s team began its defense of the Champions League title with an unexpected defeat. EFE
Manchester City, absent from the competition in recent years, showed the Barça team that Europe is something else and suggested that the little, almost non-existent, opposition it finds in the Spanish LaLiga causes a lack of competitiveness or intensity that the who crosses paths with a rival capable of being familiar with him, has a hard time adapting to this practically unknown scenario.
Strange in a team capable of winning the Champions League the last two seasons or that has celebrated three of the last four, but suspicious when contemplating the difficulty with which they faced a Manchester City that from the first minute put pressure on them wildly, it was looking high preventing him from adjusting to the combination game and turned the first half into nothing short of a nightmare.
Barça could have scored first, very soon, with their first shot on goal, which entered the Japanese goalkeeper Ayaka Yamashita and the post they avoided, but that play was the exception because not long after the post also avoided the local 1-0 and the goal came shortly after half an hour, in full local control and after the launch of a corner that marked the catalan goalkeeper Cata Coll before Naomi Layzell finished off the net.
If it is true that the Barça team could complain about a very doubtful offside that before half-time prevented a very possible tie, it is also true that when the French referee Stephanie Frappart The break marked the end of a first half in which Barça was a shadow of what was expected.
REACTION AND SINKING
If the second half began repeating the previous script, as the minutes passed, Barça grew to the same extent as the home team lost momentum. The pressure and the game were already Barça’s and although their dominance did not translate into clear occasions, it did give the feeling that the tie had to come sooner rather than later.
Nothing could be further from the truth. With a mixture of order and fortune, City endured its minimal victory, almost unable to go on the counter and increasingly locked in its area, until it managed to link a deadly counterattack, with Layzell assisting Khadijah Shawwho left in the race, overcame Cata Coll’s desperate start with astonishing ease and scored a 2-0 that fell like a stone among the players of Peter Romeo.
Barça wanted to but couldn’t even close the gap, crashing into an unknown reality. If last season, when he held a title poker (full of trophies) he only lost one game of the 48 played and that defeat came after 35 wins and two draws, this time it came in the sixth game of the course.
Three days after crushing Madrid CFF 1-8 and eleven after defeating Granada 10-1, Barça opened its defense of the continental title with a defeat as unthinkable as it was surprising. And that led him to understand that Europe is something else.
