FC Barcelona 3-Elche 0 | Messi removes to the Barça of the UVI

Barça, Messi through, came back to life when his clinical situation seemed irreversible after an unpresentable first half that the Blaugrana set in a second half in which they ended up winning 3-0 over Elche thanks to the Argentine's acceleration.

Koeman spoke in the previous one, launching a challenge to the ‘sacred cows’ in the dressing room so that they could remedy the week of bleeding that Barça lived since they were beaten by Paris Saint-Germain. To accompany the most veteran in this supposed exercise of penance, the coach brought Umtiti, Mingueza, Pjanic and Trincāo into the team. Except for the latter, the initial response of the eleven Blaugrana starters to their coach was pitorreo. They achieved what seemed impossible: play worse than against Cádiz. On the way out, not a hint of the reaction that was expected from an injured team.

The staging of Barça was depressing. Koeman's team gave the image of being a buried dying man trying to escape from the grave by digging down.

The first part of Barcelona was desperate in attitude, in approach, in order and in confidence in victory. A full-blown disaster that before the general resignation he was only trying to save Trincāo, who ran into Badia twice, again great.

What Barça was could be summed up in isolated actions such as Messi's absence in the final meters, Pjanic's slowness, Mingueza's complaints about a stomp on the hand or the confusion shown by Braithwaite, who gave the impression of not knowing so that he had gone out into the field. All that, which looked so bad, was later corrected.

Faced with this Blaugrana wasteland, Elche felt increasingly comfortable at the Camp Nou. The Escribá team started timidly despite the fact that Lucas Boyé wasted a very clear chance to score after four minutes. They began to really believe it towards the final stretch of the first half, when they settled in the middle of the Barcelona field and the culé defense began to tremble.

Seeking to remedy the disaster, Koeman put the cross (again) to Pjanic at half-time and took out Dembélé, with whom everything is possible.

But The one who appeared was Messi, who woke up from the nap in the first half to face the rival defense, lean on Braithwaite, who gave him back the heel wall, so that the Argentine beat Badia. Barça seemed to be returning from beyond.

With the scoreboard in the face, Barça needed to show that it knew how to dominate a game and not fall into the same error as against Cádiz. From the outset, after the goal, Elche immediately had a chance from Lucas Boyé, who once again exposed the tension with which the Blaugrana team lives in matches.

But Barça managed to save that usual moment of doubt after scoring and took the opportunity to control the game in search of the goal that would allow him, even for once, to arrive with some tranquility at the final moments of the game.

In five minutes, Barça finished the game and achieved its goal. First it was Messi when he culminated an impressive gallop by De Jong breaking lines of the rival defense until he gave the ball to the Argentine who beat the rival goalkeeper in a one on one and scoring his 17th goal so far this season. Then, a new assist from Braithwaite, picking up a ball that Jordi Alba finished off in a striker position, definitively saved a game that depression began and ended with Messi rescuing Barça from the threat of ruin.