ALAVÉS – BARCELONA | Barça falls asleep and ends up paying it

When you wake up late, then everything is in a rush. That is what explains the puncture of Barcelona in Vitoria where he could only draw one against Alavés after throwing the first half in the trash and wasting the fact of playing half an hour in superiority. Koeman's men add two points out of the last 12 possible and fall dangerously behind LaLiga.

A team under construction is supposed to have ups and downs, but this Barça is worthy of a roller coaster. Barça appeared in Mendizorroza as if the Turin match against Juventus had been played three years ago instead of three days ago. All the good that was built against Juventus fell apart in a dumpy first half of Koeman's, who did everything wrong.

The Koeman game was misplaced in a cruyfismo attack that surpassed him. Emulating the teacher, the Barça coach relegated Pedri to the bench, whom he had praised in the previous one, and gave a reel to Ansu, whom he had pulled by the ears in the same press appearance. It didn't work for him any more than the extravagant idea of ​​using Demebélé to attack a defense without gaps.

Not all the initial disaster was the coach's fault, the players also did their part. And if we add to that the fact that two of the most reliable and safe elements of the equipment such as Piqué and Neto got involved and bought all the tickets to go out in the summary of the mistakes of the year facilitating Luis Rioja's goal at half an hourOnly the first part of Barça can be defined as disastrous.

Only Ansu, who was coming of age, had some presence when he was enabled a couple of times by Lenglet. The rest was nothing. Messi sank in the last meters and not even in fouls he had a fortune, Lejeune took one from the goal line.

Absolutely powerless Messi came to lose his composure, something inappropriate for him, when he kicked a ball in protest that earned him a yellow card. If he gets to hit the referee and makes a “Djokovic” (he did not hit him by centimeters) he would have had to go to the shower expelled.

Barça was aware that it had to accelerate because it had thrown miserably the first 45 minutes due to a lack of attitude, errors in the approach and due to the bad management of the players' minutes after the Champions League.

Koeman got off the donkey and made three changes at halftime. He withdrew Lenglet, with a card, Busquets and Dembélé to ask Pedri, Trincao and Pjanic to fix the damage.

The second part was played on an adventure with Barça shaking hands with the young people. The outlook was darkened for the locals at game time when Jota Peleteiro saw the second yellow for dangerous play. No time margin for Machín to correct on the fly, Griezmann took advantage of a gift from the local defense to tie the game. Barça had half an hour in superiority to fix the disaster, Alavés, half an hour for the epic.

The end of the game was played to chaos, with an accumulation of forwards in which Braithwaite participated, who entered for Ansu in a decision that only Koeman understood in his bet in case the disorder paid off, but Pacheco was huge against Messi, Trincao, Dest and Pjanic and ended up being the hero against a Barça that paid for his neglect in the first half.