Ray 1-Barcelona 2 | The Barça sweats blood in Vallecas

Barça has come to this Cup to suffer. In Vallecas he experienced another birth to seal his classification for the quarterfinals of the competition after beating Rayo in Vallecas by 1-2 in a game in which the Blaugrana were on the brink of the abyss. After crashing three balls into the posts, Koeman's men were only able to overcome the local goal after Koeman was forced to take out the artillery. after checking again that there are substitutes who are not up to the level of the team.

Koeman opted for a starting team with qualms. Messi returned to eleven, although he did not show signs of entering the game until well into the first half, and around him Koeman rode a team in which Trincāo entered in the lead, forming an attack with Griezmann formed by three left-handers. Riqui played to rest Pedri and Junior did the same with Alba.

The changes did not affect the theoretical superiority of Barça, who dominated the game, but he could not hide that he felt very uncomfortable under the pressure of Rayo, which during a good part of the game managed to short-circuit the Blaugrana game, which lacked continuity.

With the game moving to arreones, Barça had opportunities to get ahead on the scoreboard and put the duel downhill, but failed in all of them. Some were missed by the success of Dimitrievski, who was phenomenal before a header from Araújo and a shot from Trincāo. Others he missed by centimeters when De Jong and Riqui shot at the post in the first half and Messi at the beginning of the second. Also influenced by the fact that two falls by the Portuguese winger in the area were not considered penalties.

For its part, Rayo was limited to complicating the life of his rival from the beginning, waiting for his moment to come in some loss of the ball by the Barcelona players or in a set piece. In the first half, Iraola's men warned with two lateral fouls in which Rayo's finishers clearly won the game over their markers, but Neto was attentive.

In the middle half, the game was where Rayo wanted and Barça began to consider its effectiveness problem again in the face of the rival door. The question was how both teams were going to manage this situation in the second half.

And that's where the Lightning stepped forward. Iraola gave entry to Álvaro García, who revolutionized the party. His speed into space portrayed Junior, his dribbling sat Lenglet and his center pushed him into the net Fran García after the timid rejection of Neto. Everything that could go wrong for Barça was coming out.

To try to avoid tragedy Koeman gave entry to Pedri, Alba and Dembélé. The Dutchman took out the artillery to rescue the team from another disaster in 25 minutes. The arrangement worked instantly. One minute, Alba broke the defense and saved the local goalkeeper and the next minute, Messi tied for Griezmann's assistance. The goal went up to the scoreboard by the centimeters that prevented the French offside.

With the changes, Barça had found a way to take advantage of the highway on the left side that Junior turned into a goat path, but with Alba, things were different. At 80 minutes, Messi reconnected with the Catalan side who served the assistance so that De Jong, the best of the game, scored the second goal for the Blaugrana. Rayo's dream had lasted a quarter of an hour, Barça's suffering lasted until the last minute.