Messi directs the hunt – AS.com

As the guest that nobody has and who ends up being the star of the party, as the secondary of a work that against the prognosis marks a memorable scene or as the gregarious that escapes in a process stage and turns the Tour classification upside down, Barça, without a bad noise, is already second in LaLiga to four Atlético's points after beating Huesca 4-1 in a more effective than brilliant match against bottom LaLiga. Barça won, but it never gave the feeling of having the situation under control in a perfect metaphor for the path of this team, which has an ironically poor health that has left it at this stage of the competition besieging the leader. Having Messi, let's be fair, helps his thing. The Argentine led the hunt to the leader.

In this disconcerting Barcelona there are two immutable commandments: the first is a new one and Koeman has embraced it and is summarized in the old cliché that says “if something works, it is not touched”; the second that summarizes all culé religion and that is above all things dictates that Messi always appears on the designated dates.

By virtue of the first argument, Koeman repeated against Huesca, bottom of LaLiga, the same alignment that he had in Paris against PSG in the Champions League. By virtue of the second providence, Messi celebrated his 767th match with Barça, which makes him, together with Xavi, the footballer who has dressed as a Blaugrana the most times, with a sensational goal to open the scoring and another to close it.

But for much celebration, for much Messi and for much playing against the bottom with the option of besieging the leader, at the Camp Nou nothing has been easy for a long time. Everything in this house is more complicated than sweeping up a staircase. It finished 4-1, but it was not a festival.

Even the day that Barça, without doing anything on the other Thursday, beat Huesca in a match that seemed controlled and managed 2-0 thanks to the aforementioned goal by Messi and another by Griezmann, the landscape darkened in the discount of the first half when the referee signaled a penalty against Barça in a knockdown by Ter Stegen to Rafa Mir as a result of inertia when the play was already over and the ball was out of bounds. Koeman always says it, “today it's sunny, tomorrow it's raining”. Barça goes from sunny to rainy in a matter of minutes.

Mir himself converted the penalty into the discount and turned what seemed like a duel already decanted into a landscape of nerves and insecurities. Barça was once again one error from the debacle, a situation that Koeman's men have handled badly this season.

In the second half, the Blaugrana team added a new enemy to the contest: the pressure to manage a minimal advantage, which as time went by could play against him as happened against Cádiz.

To alleviate stress, he seemed the most unexpected protagonist in the most unpredictable way. Mingueza and made his debut as a scorer when he finished off a corner kick, the play that Barça provokes the most and takes less advantage of. With 3-1, anyone would say that the game was definitively archived, but the house rule at the Camp Nou is to invite the rival to reengage at any time and in any situation.

Three minutes after Mingueza's goal, Huesca had their second goal from a blow to the chest from Rafa Mir in a new empanada from the culé defense, always ready for the audience to never take anything for granted.

Until Messi arrived again to put things in place by scoring a new goal, He has already been in the championship for 21, and put Barça on the prowl.