Barcelona 2 - 2 Espanyol: I’d laugh if I weren’t crying

By: Isaiah | June 12th, 2007

Despite the fact that Lionel Messi has further proven he’s the second coming of Maradona by scoring what would truly have been the Hand of God Goal, Jr. before scoring a solid and legal second to cement Barcelona’s position on top of the league with a solitary game left at relegated ‘Nastic standing in the way of a “tricampeon” (threepeat). All was well and good in the world and then van Nistelrooy bundled a goal into the Zaragoza net and 18 second later Raul Tamudo became the worst person alive. I mean, not really, but actually kinda yeah. The move that created the league-killing goal was a pretty one, but it should have been thwarted. You’re 3 minutes from probably winning the league and you let down your guard?

Sure. Why not, right? It’s not like it’s basically your last chance to pass Real Madrid and grab the lead back or anything like that. Sigh. I mean, really, though. Regardless, it’s that Rafael Sobis goal that really gets me because Barcelona didn’t even learn from that and decide to play all 90 minutes of the game. It’s one thing to fall asleep once, but to do it twice is ridiculous.

I’m not going to discuss the game itself since I didn’t get to watch it (the Madrid match was on), but suffice to say that it was a terrible 18 seconds in my day and that I would have been pretty brutally disappointed in the whole weekend had it not been for the absolutely amazing atmosphere at the Mexico-Honduras Gold Cup match I attended the following day. Wow, what a match and what a good time. The beer salesman I talked to during the game said he’d never heard Giants Stadium so thunderous, even during a playoff game. Perhaps he was exaggerating, but from where I sat it was amazing. Even the Mexican fans (and I was nominally one of them through having lived there, even if I cheered all the louder because it was Oswaldo Sanchez who couldn’t stop Carlos Costly from equalizing or putting in the winner) seemed to enjoy it.

Enough about that, though. There have been reports that Thierry Henry signed with Barcelona and they have proven to be false, for the time being. If we’re going to splash out absurd amounts of cash, it should be on someone whose personality and preferred position don’t clash with Eto’o. And by that I also mean that we shouldn’t sell Eto’o. If our failure is in defense, why load the front line with more talent? Get De Rossi, Xabi Alonso, or Essien, not Henry. God forbid we get Heinze or some other defensive disaster. We could use a strong central defender (which is where the whole Diogo thing came from) and last I checked Henry can’t play in the back. If you’re going to get a striker anyway because you’re dropping Saviola, Gudjohnsen, and Ezquerro, please make it someone like Forlán because then you’ll at least have a few bucks left over to buy the players you actually need to mount a concerted effort to rewin La Liga and the CL.

I was asked before about Yaya Toure and I have to admit I’ve never heard of him except in the sentence “He’s the brother of Kolo Toure.” So I have no opinion on the matter, but if he’s better than Edmilson, bring him in. We should offload both Edmilson and Motta in an attempt to bring in a De Rossi because neither Barca player is really all that great. I used to talk massive smack about Edmilson, but he’s improved while Motta, who I used to think more highly of, has deteriorated. But hopefully Roma loves one of them enough to part with De Rossi. Which of course they won’t because that would be dumb.

Abidal is decent enough, but he’s not the type of player we really need right now so I hope we bypass that and actually go for someone to be our third central defender. With a healthy and in-form Rafa Marquez there shouldn’t the same holes that allowed Tamudo to score (what exactly were you doing on that one, Puyol?). The midfield will need to be bolstered on the right if Giuly leaves and Frank Ribery was the best option there, but since that’s no longer possible thanks to Ribery’s foolish move to Bayern Munich’s Champions League-less world, the cantera kids could be the ones to fill that gap. With Bojan and Dos Santos making the leap to the first team, there should be even more pressure to add defenders rather than other attacking options, of which Barcelona have about a million without counting the potential both Bojan and Dos Santos seem to be pouring out about right now.

So, more as things develop, as well as a statistical look at how things stand and a brief discussion of who is going up and down and to Europe. In short, it’s the end of the season and it’s about time to wrap things up.