High flying Koeman's Barcelona was brought down to reality by a very sturdy and efficient Sevilla side. In the end, everyone agrees that the 1-1- draw was a just result as both teams showed their pedigree.
After keeping two clean sheets and scoring a ton of goals in their first two matches, Barcelona were reminded of their fragility today when Sevilla was held to a draw at Camp Nou. Luuk de Jong opened the scoring for Sevilla before Coutinho equalizing within minutes.
Both teams failed to add another to the tally, even though they had enough chances. In the end, both teams were equally balanced. Barcelona had the better of possession, but the Sevilla had the better of Shots taken. The differences in all these between the teams were very minute. And that's how well these two teams were balanced!
Once again Koeman lined up with the all familiar 4-2-3-1 formation. There were minimal changes from the line-up which were fielded in the first two matches. We had Messi as the false-9, Griezmann started on right, Fati on Right and Coutinho started on the centre. De Jong and Busquets started as the double pivot. The defence had Araujo, Pique, Alba and Roberto.
The match started as expected with Sevilla remaining very compact in possession. They had better control of the proceeding from the beginning. And it resulted in them going ahead in the 8th minute. Barcelona immediately responded through Coutinho, even though the architect was Lionel Messi who lofted ball trying to find Alba created the chance.
From then on, Sevilla imposed their way on the game. They were better than Barcelona in all aspect of the game and more importantly they negated the treat of Messi being the false-9. This was a first proper match were we made to realize the futility of having a false-9 in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Once Sevilla controlled our double pivot, we never had a good shape to dominate the game.
Barcelona Improved , but Sevilla Remained a Threat!
After the half an hour mark, Barcelona improved with their game and started to wrestle back the possession stats which was greatly in favour of Sevilla till that point. They created the majority of danger, but without a target man in the box, Sevilla found it too easy to deal with our attack. The best two chances fell to Griezmann, who failed to take any of them.
The proceeding remained the same after the break also. Messi was involved in creating danger, the last one was a very good chance for Trincao towards the end of the game. But the Portuguese failed to take advantage of the opportunity. In the end, both teams settled for a well-deserved draw.
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