Levante 1 - 4 Barcelona: Review and Highlights

By: Isaiah | October 1st, 2007

For all of you (ahem, us), who wondered if Henry had lost his scoring touch, Saturday’s game at Levante should have send you/us into rapturous squeals of delight as he bagged a hat trick. Or at least that’s what it did to me, eliciting strange glances from my brother as he sat next to me watching Michigan State lose to Wisconsin. Overall, a solid performance by the squad, with a few iffy moments at the back, especially from Puyol. That’s understandable since it’s his first game since the end of last season and it was just nice to see him flying around the field again, smashing into things and screaming at the ref. Good to have you back, capitán. The defense performed admirably throughout, despite the penalty, and that’s also just nice to see.

Anyway, some statistics and then the recap:

It was obviously another dominating performance by Barcelona, but I wouldn’t expect much less than that against such a woeful side as Levante. They are the worst team in the league, though Getafe looks like they’re going to give them a run for their money. Much like ‘Nastic last season, Levante just doesn’t seem to have what it takes to even make a reasonable go at staying up; that they were facing Barcelona as the first of a series of very tough matches (@Zaragoza, Sevilla, Atleti, @Villareal) probably didn’t help either. They’re averaging 2.33 goals allowed per game, which is just dreadful. In fact, they’re reverso-Real Madrid (bizarro RM, if you will), who have scored 14 and allowed 3.

Henry’s first goal came off a corner kick that was bounced around for a while. Messi ended up with a terrific snapshot that Storari could only parry with his hands and the rebound fell to an unmarked Henry who scored easily. He ran to the corner and probably endeared himself to most of the Barcelona faithful by kissing the crest on his jersey, much like Luis Enrique did. I don’t remember him ever doing that as a Gunner, but I also didn’t watch that many of those games for obvious Barcelona-lacking reasons. A classic poached goal, much like his Champions League goal, so I still wondered if he’d create goals from free play.

Moments after Messi supposedly committed a foul in the box before chipping an on-rushing Storari (and scoring what should have been the 2nd goal), in fact during the replay, Messi threaded a ball to Henry who calmly hooked the ball beyond a once-again on-rushing Storari; the goal was very well taken and it answered my questions about Henry’s abilities in front of goal. 7 minutes, 2 goals. Can’t really beat that. At the time I wrote in my match notes, “That’s an Henry goal. Swept beyond the keeper with wonderful technical skill.” So I gave up right then and there on the train of thought that Henry might not have the skills to put up big numbers for Barca.

Good thing I did too, because in the 49th minute, Henry scored again after a ball took a deflection off a defender and freed him into the box with no one near him. This time he went near post and Storari had no real chance at all. His hat trick was complete and despite how well the rest of the team was playing, he was definitely man-of-the-match. The first person to congratulate him was Puyol, who had just come on at halftime for Milito, which was just fun to see. The new and the veteran hugging. It was an unlucky bounce for the Levante defender, but if he hadn’t touched it, Messi would have been in on goal and there’s no doubt it would have been 3-0 anyway. So no issues there. In fact, Iniesta was in too, so a 3-on-1 with Storari would have resulted anyway. All of them were onside too. Crappy defending, eh?

In the 51st, Messi controlled a long pass on the right wing, beat his marker and then flicked the ball around Storari to the back post. Gorgeous move and gorgeous finish. 4 games, 6 goals. Ridiculous. Kid is good, apparently. In response to his goal, Messi was replaced by Gio Dos Santos, who had a decent enough game, but his introduction began what turned into a spell of possession for Levante.

This spell of possession led to a goal, albeit via penalty. Puyol committed an obvious foul in the box and I can’t really object to the call, but the ball was well out of the Levante player’s control by the time Puyol chopped him down. Thuram was closer to the ball than Geijo was, really. Still, a pretty good call and so Barcelona has now allowed 4 goals in their 6 games, one worse than Real Madrid.

RM leads the league in both goals scored and goals allowed (14, 3 respectively), but Barca is only one behind in each category (13, 4). Oddly enough, Villareal has a perfect goals allowed record, except for the RM game where they let in 5. Crazy. In 5 games they’ve scored 9 goals and allowed none, but that one game has skewed their statistics pretty insanely. They’re looking like a really solid team…except for that one game. Atleti and Valencia, too, really, but will they choke? For the good of the league, let’s hope that these top 5 teams remain strong and that Sevilla regains their form before their season is over.

Here’s part of Phil Ball’s take on Messi and also on the league title:

And as final proof of the pudding of greatness, the Levante supporters rose to applaud him as was taken off by Rijkaard, presumably to save his legs for the Champions League this week. That doesn’t often happen in La Liga. So by the way, Messi is the best in the world.

Meanwhile, Real Madrid continue to win as pragmatically as they did last season, this time with a 0-1 win at Getafe in a game where Schuster returned to the scene of his pre-Bernabéu apprenticeship. They may continue to do this for much of the season, but for now, if I were to put money on the league title, I would be looking in the direction of Catalonia.

Ronnie should be back against Stuttgart tomorrow, but more on that in the up-coming preview.

So there you have it and now the highlights, in Arabic as usual: