Naples – Barcelona (1-1): Griezmann relieves Barcelona in San Paolo | Champions League 2019

The Barca team saves the night in Naples thanks to a single shot between sticks, executed by the French. Vidal, expelled, and Busquets, by accumulation, are lost around

• Narration
  

  This is how we live the game
  

• Eighth
  

  All crosses
  

It would have been a trifle to go to the house of Maradona to turn the ball into a simple decorative object. Barcelona, ​​which had spent almost all night sleeping the ball in San Paolo with the hope that the seas would open alone in front of Vesuvius, caught the button when I understood something basic: the ball must be the end, not the excuse . Griezmann, sometimes Houdini, as many executors, was the one who caught a draw against Naples that, at least, allowed the Catalans to face the second round of the Champions League with a better face. (Narration and statistics: 1-1)

Quique Setin He is 61 years old. For his premiere in the Champions League he employed an eleven starter with an average of 28 years. At the moment of truth, few are those who do not employ survival techniques. I did it Ernesto Valverde. And so has Setin, precisely in his first border match as coach of Barcelona. They call it trusting experience, when it is nothing more than curbing fear.

So the Cantabrian had no qualms about trusting this right-handed end to Arturo vidal, who really does not care where to play, because he always used to offer the same. With the agona by flag. Extra more than Rakitic, twilight and discouraged football, occupy one of the interiors, or that Arthur, perhaps the best gifted footballer in the taming of the ball will stay in the bank. That increasingly inhospitable place where four of its seven occupants have a record of the subsidiary. Busquets He did not leave without giving attention to those responsible for such Machiavellian planning. Umtiti, while, evidencing that Setin prefers it to Lenglet. Y Ansu Fati and his stupid Valenta did not appear until the same sunset. Hard to understand

Bad first time Barça

All this led to a seventh first act of Barcelona. Midfielders offer no imbalance. Junior Firpo It was only noticeable for the bad. Griezmann replay with invisibility while Messi, who had begun as a false center forward, spent the night desperately searching for any corner of the field where rival players would not be crowded, but also their own. Messi was left without understanding the spell he submitted Diego to a San Paolo also sleepy.

Gennaro Gattuso, who should have remembered his old days in that Milan in which there was no better plan than a good defense, he found the party that had dreamed so much. A couple of very delayed lines in front of the area of Ospina, to see how Setin's men chained horizontal passes with the parsimony of the one who feeds the pigeons, and awaits the error of others.

How not, he arrived in the area occupied by Junior Firpo, a player who, in six months, has only managed to frolic with the football disaster. Being true that Piqu, after trying to cover an area from which they disregarded Busquets, Rakitic and From Jong, I offered a bad pass to the side, nothing excuses the control of Firpo. Zielinski, in the theft and pass, and Mertens, specialist of the pause and the beating, they only had to make sense of the disapproval. Ter Stegen remain petrified, the same state of his companions.

Setin's Barcelona according to his own. That is, to press, steal and, once caught the ball, sing a lullaby. At times unbearable. Not once did the Catalans shoot between the three suits in the first half. And the Naples, which had just passed from their own field, were enough with a couple of shots of Mertens to go with advantage to the locker room.

Between the weariness of the Neapolitans and the progressive improvement of the Catalans after Arthur's entry, Barcelona found redemption. Busquets, who lost more than one ball in areas of risk and who could not play around for card accumulation, could be redeemed with a pass that finally destroyed Gattuso's trench. Semedo interpret the unchecking well. And Griezmann, at the first touch and with the right, ditch the task. It was the first shot on goal of Bara in the match. And the nico.

The Naples tried to move forward. Even Ter Stegen, saint also in Naples, snatches goals to Distinguished Y Alley, to whom Junior Firpo made a penalty in an action that had been invalidated for offside. The blood did not reach the river. Although that didn't end until Arturo vidal, always beyond the limit of sanity, the red wins over its inability to contain itself.

San Paolo, who only stirred with the tumults of the Chilean, demon for his past in Juventus, remained silent before the sight. Without Maradona, but also without Messi. And, as Nobel writes Tokarczuk before the long-term nostalgia: When the change in time is irreversible, the loss and grief become everyday. The Naples knows it, locked in its past. But also Barcelona, ​​suffocated by its present.