Barcelona kicked off the new year in victorious fashion and have opened up a seven-point gap at the top of the La Liga table thanks to a hard-fought 2-0 win away to Espanyol at the RCDE Stadium in a tense
and dramatic Catalan derby on Saturday night. After surviving tremendous pressure in the first 80 minutes thanks to several miracles by Joan Garcia on his return to his former club, the Blaugrana showed their superior quality and scored twice in the final five minutes thanks to two magical assists by Fermín López to pick up all three points and win their ninth league game in a row.
Reactions & Observations
- The first half seriously lacked in quality from both sides, who mostly denied each other and committed a few rough fouls along the way. Barça had more of the ball and some good attacks with Alejandro Balde and Lamine Yamal, but the rest of the forward line was too wasteful.
- Ferran Torres was especially frustrating in the period, killing some really promising moves with bad first touches and poor decisions. Raphinha struggled as a 10, and Marcus Rashford could not make one good decision for 45 minutes, though he did have some good moments defensively.
- But the star of the half was Joan Garcia: the Barça goalkeeper made two big saves, one to stop Roberto Fernández shot inside the box, and a second that just does not make any sense whatsoever as he denied Pere Milla’s header from close ranger with one of the best reaction saves you will ever see.
- Joan’s distribution and work as a sweeper keeper were also excellent, and his overall performance in the opening 45 minutes in a very hostile atmosphere was about as good as it gets.
- Despite Hansi Flick making four substitutions in the first 20 minutes of the second half, Espanyol were by far the better team in the period and could have easily scored at least two goals if not for Joan Garcia, who made at least three world-class stops to keep the home team from taking the lead.
- Barça did absolutely nothing going forward and their only chance came in a set piece, and Marko Dmitrovic made a spectacular save of his own to stop Eric Garcia from scoring from literally a yard out.
- There was a giant scare went Pedri went down in the box holding his knee and screaming in pain, but he turned out to be fine.
- Barça finally slowed down Espanyol’s momentum around the 80th minute, and then we got two moments of magic to break the home team’s hearts: Fermín López made a spectacular turn in midfield to get away from his defender and find Dani Olmo, who curled an asbolutely gorgeous shot into the top corner to put Barça in front in the 86th minute. That was really special.
- And in the 90th minute Fermín made some magic again to seal the victory, as he won the race against both Espanyol center-backs and assisted Robert Lewandowski, who chipped the keeper with remarkable poise and killed the game for good.
- The final whistle came to end a game that Barça did not deserve to win by two goals, but they will definitely take all three points on a night in which they were made to suffer by a really solid Espanyol team and were able to find a way to win thanks to Joan Garcia’s brilliance and Fermín’s star turn. This is a gigantic win, and it was exactly as difficult as expected.
