A 'beau geste' to come home with your head held high

Barça is leaving Europe again, but unlike the last few occasions, the Blaugrana team left Paris with their heads held high and leaving a clear message of “gentlemen, we are back”. Only the lack of aim of the Barcelona players, who failed everything in the rival area and gave away the usual penalty in their own, prevented threatening with an attempt to come back that remained at 1-1, but that justice could perfectly have been 1 -3. But the scared face that was put on PSG for many minutes of the game, no one takes it off.

What cannot be denied to the current Barcelona is illusion. This team lives in an overdose of optimism that is surely the compensation for being so long installed in defeatism. So the Blaugrana team went to the Parc des Princes ready to sign a ‘beau geste’, that adventure novel that places the action of its protagonists in the French legion. Those of Koeman were looking for an attempt at a feat, of which they would already look at the consequences in the end. It is already known, however, that these types of actions do not end too well for those who star in them, which as happens in the novel, but in return they leave a huge memory.

And the staging of Barcelona in Paris was a full-blown suicidal charge against Paris Saint Germain, who came to give the impression of being intimidated and surprised by the push of a Catalan team that did everything during many stretches of the match good … mLet us finish the plays.

Dembélé failed clamorously with the sword up to five times in the first 45 minutes. The French winger was again a toothache playing behind the centrals, but when it was time to finish, he ran into Keylor. He was not the only culé that gripped the French, Dest shot at the post and Messi threatened between the lines.

The approach of the Barça by daring presented a clear weak point that was the back of the defense, where Mbappé challenged Mingueza in superiority, who controlled him as best he could, but was soon charged with a yellow that forced Koeman to withdraw him from the field at 36 minutes.

The French star did not shine as in the Camp Nou and for a moment, he turned the match into a kind of contest between him and Dembélé, to see who was the first to hole.

It seemed that Barça fell on the house that with so much effort had tried to lift when Icardi fell in the area and nobody really knew why. The VAR review uncovered a stomp from Lenglet, whose feet are like strainers, from so many times it has been triggered. The penalty was converted by Mbappé and there any other team, and especially considering the result of the first leg, would have thrown the spoon. Barça, which continues with the faith of the convert, did not do it and Messi showed it with a huge shoe that was worth the draw and made Barça believe again and PSG doubted.

But the soccer scriptwriter never misses the opportunity to complicate a plot and kept an unexpected script twist. In the discount of the first half, a penalty favorable to Barça that had before it the opportunity to take a step in its confidence and undermine that of the rival. But Messi, the same one who had just achieved one of the goals of the year, failed from eleven meters.

After a frantic first part, with no time to stop for a moment, the second started somewhat more relaxed. With the same approach, but without so many occasions. The effort was beginning to be noticed, but Barça still found the strength to try again a new charge that once again drew a scared face on the faces of the French.

In the absence of fifteen minutes, Koeman, with the feeling of duty accomplished, withdrew Dembélé, Pedri and Busquets from the field of play and to be able to go home without the European depression of the last campaigns and think that there are still possible objectives.