Barcelona 0 - 0 Sevilla: Copa del Rey review

By: Isaiah | January 17th, 2008

This is a delayed posting because of some technical problems. Sorry for the inconvenience. -The Management

I had the good fortune to leave work early on Tuesday in order to race home and tune in to GolTV’s presentation of Barcelona hosting Sevilla in the second leg of the round of 16 of the Copa del Rey. And as I pulled up TVU Player, as my TV does not get GolTV until this coming Saturday (yipee, even though I’ll be out of town), I found that GolTV was not available. So like millions (if not billions) of adoring Barcelona fans around the tubes was forced to do, I turned to live-footy.org and proceeded to watch the Arabic language broadcast in what can only be described as “High Definition”. That is to say, I saw the game, technically speaking, but could make out little to none of the actual actions. Sometimes I knew where the ball was, but mostly I was guessing.

From what I could tell (and the commenters on the previous post seem to confirm this), the game was a sham. Not that the game didn’t become exciting in the final 3 minutes, but the first 87 were a crock of shit. Neither team came out to win it, especially not Barcelona, who didn’t have to win. So 0-0 it remained and I swear I lost a couple of days off my life because Gio Dos Santos was once again left on the field for about 23 minutes too long.

The routinely solid official Barcelona website review described the game thus: “Both sides were more intent on defending than attacking and the game descended into what was hardly the most thrilling of spectacles to watch, with both sides generally floundering hopelessly whenever they pressed forward.”

Our defense was great. I don’t say that because of the clean sheet, but rather because of the way that clean sheet was achieved. Was there a single moment Sevilla threatened on the ground? They never made it beyond the back line; only when fouled 30 yards out did they ever threaten and not really even then. Alves hit the bar, sure, but Valdes was there, I think, covering it. Other than that, it seemed that Sevilla were sitting back, giving the match away. Abidal and Zambrotta were wonderful going forward and Marquez was just unreal at the cleanup job. Puyol is so much better in the center and Milito plays better with him there than he does with Marquez. Role players win championships and I can’t help but wonder how much better we would have been over the course of the year with Zambrotta at full fitness the whole time.

Here’s a funny tidbit from the above-mentioned Barca official organ review: “…Navas saw his 85th minute goal rightly disallowed for offside. Frustration was setting in, with the Barça players unhappy with the way every refereeing decision seemed to be going against them.” Did those sentences realy just get stuck right next to each other? Jeez, you made my eyes roll there, Roger Bogunyà.

With Real Madrid done and gone from the Copa, it’s up to us to grab the Triple. And I think we owe it to the greater public to do so. Step 1: Win the Copa del Rey by beating a plucky (and very good) Villarreal side starting next week, then rolling through the rest of the competition. Step 2: Win the Champions League, starting with Celtic on Feb 20. And Step 3: Make a ridiculous comeback in the league by not losing another game and not drawing at home. Possible, yes. Probable, no

That’s all I’ve got for right now. Hopefully I’ll expand on these thoughts tomorrow during the Racing preview.