Stuttgart 0 - 2 Barcelona: Highlights and Review (Bitter Victory Edition)

By: Isaiah | October 3rd, 2007

The headline today on Sport’s website was “Smiles and Tears,” which is pretty appropriate, I suppose. Last night Barcelona defeated Stuttgart 0-2 in Germany with goals from Lionel Messi and, of all people, Carles Puyol. So Barca have 6 points from 2 games in the Champions League and lead the group on goal differential (Rangers defeated Lyon 0-3, surprisingly, at the Stade de Gerland) That’s wonderful and all that fun stuff, but according to Barca’s official site, Rafa Marquez, who was substituted out in the 7th minute for Puyol, suffered some sort of fracture in his right leg, meaning he’ll be out for the next 4 weeks. Couple that with the fact that Puyol himself limped off with a groin injury later in the game and we have a veritable crisis of injuries in the Camp Nou. We had Sylvinho on the left, Oleguer on the right, and Abidal in the middle!

Puyol apparently will be able to play on Sunday, but he won’t be 100%, that’s for sure. Milito should be back on Sunday, but we’re still short on defense as Toure remains on the sideline for at least another 3 weeks. Again, masochism: Eto’o, Edmilson, Marquez, Zambrotta, Toure. Did I miss anyone? Probably…

The game:

While the team as a whole started brightly, Barcelona’s defense routinely opened at the back by dangerous crosses aimed at Mario Gomez, who is like 7 feet tall or something, or at least he seemed so as he jumped ridiculously higher than Thuram and Puyol on a regular basis. While they recorded 5 shots on goal, Stuttgart did have 17 shots in total and all 5 of those ones on goal were dangerous. In fact, they should have scored and were it not for Valdes’ ridiculous saves, they would have gone in. Not that Barcelona deserved to lose as they poured forward regularly and were denied either by goal-line clearances or the luck of the draw, much as Stuttgart was.

Toure’s absence was very obvious throughout as Barcelona failed to control the midfield as effectively as they have done since the beginning of the season. Xavi and Iniesta were routinely forced farther back than they normally like to play so that they could cover the defensive area that Toure has on maximum security lockdown, the result of which was both that Barca’s forward motion was more delayed than usual and the back line was challenged more regularly. It should be noted, however, that most of the threats to the back line came from the left side, which is where Oleguer was playing.

Despite Toure’s absence, however, the front 5 (Henry, Messi, Ronnie, Deco, and Iniesta) were fairly effective in getting the ball into dangerous positions. My only complaint about our attack is actually directed at Messi: too selfish. Even though he has scored some great goals recently and even yesterday put one in the back of the net, he needed to pass a couple of times when he held the ball. When he did pass, Deco swept a ball against the post from distance, but Messi failed to pass when he had both Xavi and Henry unmarked in the box beside him after a nifty throughball from Ronaldinho. Instead he took on a defender and the keeper, Shafer, who blocked his shot. Not that I really mind his “selfishness,” since he typically scores those chances, but in a game as tight as the one yesterday, every goal counts. I’m not sure what minute that play was in, but if you’d like to watch it, it starts at 40 seconds on the video below.

Man of the Match: Valdes. Regardless of what one says about Messi, Henry, or even Ronaldinho (and like I predicted Sport seems as if it’s now in Full Praise Mode for the Brazilian simply because he didn’t lose Barca the game; more on that in a sec), Valdes was the most valuable player on the field for Barcelona. Period. I will accept no other suggestions, though may feel free to make them.

Now to Ronaldinho. He had a decent game, really. Nothing spectacular and nothing awful. But perhaps that is being unfair to him. He had some nifty moves and some brilliant passes; am I just overly critical because I know what he’s capable of? I wrote “nothing spectacular,” but then I turned around and wrote “brilliant passes.” Are we, and I don’t think I’m alone on this, thus the first person plural, too desensitized by the 2005-06 season to fully appreciate what Ronaldinho is giving the team now? One comment on my preview of this match stands out: “Iniesta had a disappointing game, may be because Ronnie was playing in his position…” which is indicative, I believe, of the general conception of the team’s tactics. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the poster that Ronaldinho was taking up the space Iniesta has been filling of late, but rather with the concept that Iniesta had a worse game.

We’re back to Toure, of course, because Iniesta was filling in a little behind Ronaldinho, in a sort of double cover role with Xavi. Compared to his previous few games, Iniesta had an “off day”, but only because his output was of the sort that earned him so many accolades last year. It’s a subtle role that shouldn’t be considered negative simply because he wasn’t providing as many incisive passes or getting on the end of goal opportunities. The “double pivot” as they say, was in full effect last night and while the defensive qualities on display were slightly lacking, Iniesta did his job pretty well. Still, you have to wonder what will happen when Toure is healthy again: Xavi or Iniesta out? Ronaldinho still has the quality to start over either of them (please, discuss this), so who drops out for Toure? I suggest Xavi, really, because Iniesta and Deco play very well together in the middle of the field.

Okay, what else: Abidal in the center of midfield was silly on-screen, but he did well enough. In fact, the team calmed down somewhat after Puyol went off and wrested back control of the game. I’m not saying that Abidal is a better central defender than Puyol, but the team at least stepped it up and worked hard to secure the win. Sylvinho did decently, even holding back some of his forward surges in order to remain at home to defend the counter Stuttgart inveriably attempted after each turnover on Barca’s part.

Overall, I’m super happy we won and are now the top of Group E. We might have trouble against Atleti this weekend thanks to the defense, but we’ll tackle that when we get there. Milito and Puyol in the middle for the first time?