Super Cup (semifinal) | Real Sociedad 1 (2) -Barcelona 1 (3): Super Ter Stegen leads Barça to the final

In the absence of Messi, Ter Stegen led Barça to lead the Blaugrana team to the final of the Super Cup in which they will wait for the winner of the match between Athletic Club and Real Madrid. The German goalkeeper was the guardian angel of the Barcelona fans in the game and in the dramatic penalty shoot-out that qualified a team whose luck is already smiling.

The match started at 12 noon, when Moisés Llorens on ESP announced that Messi was doubtful to play the match. The Argentine stayed at the hotel and was not present at the activation training scheduled by Koeman. It dragged annoyances from the party of Granada and the BarçaIn an already precarious starting situation due to the losses of Piqué, Sergi Roberto, Coutinho and Ansu, they pointed to a ‘even more difficult’ that would be completed later with the absence of Dest, also touched, from the starting team.

Faced with this precariousness, Real Sociedad, which was missing Elustondo and David Silva, came out to Barça's jugular from the start. By means of suffocating pressure at the outlet of the ball from the Blaugrana, the Basque team played a first quarter of an hour in which they had up to four occasions to open the scoring. The clearest of all, one of Isak in a one on one against Ter Stegen, which the German goalkeeper solved by saving Barça.

The Blaugrana team, orphan of Messi's lighthouse, found the pick to get out of the mess in Dembélé, who as soon as he grabbed the ball threw himself against the realistic defense, who did not see how to conjure up their accelerations. Once it appeared on the right, sometimes on the left, and sometimes in the center. Living off Dembélé, Barcelona was taking his head out of the water and Bratihwaite began to appear both to unload balls and to warn Remiro, the Txuri-urdin goalkeeper, that Barça was the rival.

With the game already balanced and the Real tamed after his departure in a whirlwind, Barcelona managed to spin a long possession that began with a recovery by De Jong and culminated with a header from the Dutch himself in the small area coming from the second line. The pearl that Barça signed from Ajax has been slow to hatch, but it seems that with Koeman he is finding his place.

But this Barça is a team of ups and downs, as De Jong himself demonstrated at the beginning of the second half when clearing with his elbow a harmless center of La Real, which became a penalty, which at Oyarzabal's feet is synonymous with a goal. Few players have the security of Eibar from eleven meters, where it is a spectacle. Five minutes after the restart, the Royal tied and decreed a new game with the strength of the one that comes back.

The game was again in the hands of Real and Barça again applied the Dembélé recipe, which was about to unbalance the duel with a shot at 60 minutes, but the duel was headed for a duel of flashes in which neither team seemed to gain control of the game. The game hung by a thread and both coaches kept the changes fearing a stretch.

The first move was from Koeman, who brought Trincāo in and Imanol responded with Barrenetxea. Two young band members to change a game that was going to be decided in extra time.

Riqui Puig and Pjanic were Koeman's bets for overtime, while Imanol entered William José and Zaldua. New cards for an exciting game that in the second part of extra time had moments of heart attack in both goals, especially in a free kick from Januzaj to the post after an unlikely flight by Ter Stegen, which completed the miracle in the penalty shoot-out that Riqui Puig certified.