Eto’o Returns, Barça Wins, Critics Shut Up

By: Isaiah | February 26th, 2007

If what Barça have needed all along was a healthy dose of Samuel Eto’o, well, now we’ve got it and, if the weekend is any indication of the future, most teams are going to need to start studying film from last year if they want to find a way to beat the blaugrana. I won’t call it a resurgence or a rebirth since I refused to call it a crisis, but when I see the Ronaldinho of old clipping the post after a brilliant run in which he smoked three players, it just sends shivers of delight down my spine. That and oh yes, Eto’o is back. Did I mention that? He pretty much made all three goals (pressured an own goal, assisted on another, and scored the third…all in the first half) and was well-received by the Camp Nou crowd. Naturally. After all, the Spanish do seem to love themselves some football and blindingly wonderful football is what Barcelona played at times on Sunday.

The scoreline is almost an afterthought. Bilbao, no doubt, doesn’t think that way, but they’re not looking forward to visiting Zaragoza and Anfield where Eto’o will combine with Messi and Ronaldinho to create brilliant 0-2 victories and passage to later rounds in both the Copa del Rey and Champions League. That, of course, is probably all pipe dreams, smoke and mirrors, especially with word coming from Eto’o that his knee is extremely tired and he might forgo the Zaragoza match. Sport quotes him as saying, roughly translated, “I don’t know how my knee is going to react, nor do I know if I’ll be able to deal with so many games in so few days.” Understandable, of course, what with his having torn his meniscus almost exactly 5 months ago. It’s a miracle he’s playing, much less scoring goals and looking like a vengeful lion. Expecting too much out of him and being surprised when he’s unable to deliver is, of course, as stupid as saying that Barcelona had gone bust as of the 74th minute of the Liverpool game when Riise realized for the first time ever that he has a right leg and that a foot comes along with that side too. Regardless, I prefer to dream sometimes than look at reality.

Looking at the box score of the Bilbao game you can’t really see a terrific difference between it and those of the Liverpool or Valencia matches except that it turned out 3-0 and not 2-1 (or 1-2 as the purists would have me write the Liverpool score). Despite the fact that Bilbao were unable to muster plurality in their shots-on-goal stat (they had one), Liverpool only had 4 and Valencia 3, which suggests that Liverpool and Valencia have much better players than Bilbao who know how to make their shots count, but it doesn’t tell the story, really. The other side of the story is Barcelona’s SOG number, which was a much more respectable 8 in the Bilbao game as opposed to 3 in both the Liverpool and Valencia matches. That alone will account for the difference in the Barcelona’s scoring (after all, given 8 chances you are certainly more likely to score than if you’re only given 3). And yes, I know I’m ignoring the fact that shots-on-goal is an extremely subjective statistic, but 3 and 8 are different enough numbers that I think you get the point. (Unless you understood the point as “Bilbao sucks,” which, while not necessarily untrue as they’ve slipped back into the relegation zone, was not what I was driving at.)

There’s obviously serious room for improvement, both offensively and defensively (if a season was won or lost in single games, I’m not sure any of us would ever watch) and Zaragoza will be a much tougher test and a much better barometer of how the team is doing than Bilbao could ever be this year. Messi needs more time on the field and Eto’o needs to get fully healthy, not rush back so that he can score a few goals and then limp out for the rest of the season, even if those goals help the blaugrana cause tremendously. And yes, I care more about an athlete’s long-term health than trophies.

Wednesday at Zaragoza will be a tough game as it’s away and Barça are down an away goal after losing at home 0-1 way back on January 31. Preview of that coming tomorrow.

And for everyone’s viewing pleasure, the man is back: