What is the story about?
Barcelona’s defense of the Copa del Rey title is in serious jeopardy as the Blaugrana have a gigantic mountain to climb following a horrible 4-0 loss away to Atlético Madrid on Thursday’s semi-final first leg at the Metropolitano. The Catalans were the architects of their own downfall with a horrific first half performance, but were also the victims of a truly inexplicable refereeing decision in the final period that killed any hopes of a comeback as Diego Simeone’s side took a huge steps towards
a place in the Spanish Cup final.
Reactions & Observations
- Only one word can describe Barça’s first half performance: disaster. The defending was pathetic, players were slipping all over the place, the attack was all out of ideas, and every single person in a Barça uniform played their worst half of the season.
- Atleti had a 4-0 lead at the break, but that honestly doesn’t tell the story of their dominance. The home team had a very simple plan that destroyed Barça’s backline time after time: get in behind Alejandro Balde, switch the play to the other wing, and have runners coming late into the box. It worked like a charm, and Atleti could have easily scored six or seven in the first half. It was that easy for them, and that bad from a Barça perspective.
- The first goal was bizarre, with Joan Garcia failing to control a pass from Eric Garcia and not being able to stop the ball from crossing the line. The other three goals were somehow worse, with Barça’s defense cut open time after time as Antoine Griezmann, Ademola Lookman and Julián Alvarez had all the time and space in the world and scored some good goals.
- Hansi Flick couldn’t wait until halftime to make a change and took off Marc Casadó for Robert Lewandowski in the 37th minute, but that didn’t solve the attacking issues and only exposed the backline even further. Frenkie de Jong had a rare but truly awful 45 minutes, and every single member of the back four was easily beaten throughout the period.
- Fermín López was the closest thing to a good attacking performer as he hit the crossbar and missed a good one-on-one chance, but literally no one else around him showed up to the party in the opening 45 minutes.
- Barça needed a quick goal to have any hope at all in the second half, and they found it on a free-kick routine that ended with a shot from Fermín that hit Robert Lewandowski and fell to Pau Cubarsí, who scored the rebound to boost the Blaugrana’s spirit just five minutes into the period.
- What followed after the goal was an absolute travesty: an EIGHT-MINUTE review by VAR somehow found Cubarsí to be offside, even though the replays and the offside lines showed ZERO evidence of an actual offside. There was nothing remotely clear or obvious, but after EIGHT MINUTES they decided to rule out Barça’s goal and completely killed the visitors’ momentum with one of the worst decisions you will ever, ever see.
- The rest of the game was a desperate attempt from a deflated Barça side to make a comeback, but they never came close to troubling the Atleti defense again and things got even worse when Eric Garcia was sent off for a really stupid challenge.
- This was an extremely frustrating night in every possible sense of the word. Barça were horrible, the refereeing was somehow worse, and Atlético deservedly won the first leg in a manner that pretty much decides the tie unless Barça perform one of their greatest ever miracles in three weeks.
