FC Barcelona 2, Valencia CF 0, Or, Barça Are Through To The Copa Del Rey Final

Neither injury plagues nor exhaustion nor being busy in three competitions at once nor an impossible amount of Clásicos stays this team from getting into almost all the finals at which they get a shot.

Since Pep arrived at Can Barça, some 3 and a half seasons ago, the team has played exactly 12 competition finals: 3 Copa del Rey finals, 3 Spanish Supercups, 2 Champion League finals, 2 European Supercups and 2 Club World Cup finals. And won 3 out of 3 Ligas in play. All this with a squad that could never be called ‘deep’ (not even if they spent their free time discussing Nietzsche) and more players promoted from the youth teams than bought from the cattle market… er, I mean, transfer market.

Soon, we'll have more finals than players!

So, of course we’re through to the Copa del Rey final.

No, what could I possibly mean by ‘of course’? There’s no taking for granted any of these wins, any of these finals. That’s what bandwagon fans do and, like Yazan so passionately pointed out in his match preview, we ain’t no bandwagon fans. We savour every win as if it were going to be the last one for five years and support every player even as we mock them (’We mock because we care!’).

With that in mind, yesterday’s was one of those matches in which even bandwagon fans might find a sense of pride. It wasn’t the most elegant, the most tactically brilliant, the one in which Barça had most possession or in which our players shone the most, but it was definitely one of those matches in which we saw our team of battered superstars grit their teeth and put in 90 minutes of hard work, and isn’t that worth many a 70+% possession stat?

Pep, every day a little more limited in his squad selections by the injury plague, decided to play Pinto, Puyol, Piqué, Mascherano, Abidal, Fàbregas, Xavi, Thiago, Alexis, Messi and Cuenca to face a Valencia weakened at the last minute by Roberto Soldado breaking out in a fever. It looked, at first sight, like the 3-4-3 which Pep has favoured for important matches lately, but after the team settled in, it became a pretty clear 4-3-3 with Puyol at RB, Mascherano and Piqué at CB, and Thiago taking on the fallen Busquet’s ungrateful DM position.

Though we wouldn’t see any of this at first because Valencia hit the ground running, putting so much pressure on Barça in their search for an early goal that we counted it as a success every time a Barça player made it onto the Valencia half with the ball, nevermind if he was dispossessed of it immediately. But where tiki-taka fails us, Messi’s incredible assists will not, and it was 15 minutes in when he set up Cesc for the first goal.

This took the wind off Valencia’s sails. They had been doing so well, having so many chances, nullifying Barça’s midfield… and all for what? To be trailing the scoreline already. You could almost see one or two players shrugging and taking the foot off the pedal. And thus did the match turn to Barça’s favour and chances at Alves’ goal began to rain down from the skies… except that they all went high, wide, straight at the goalkeeper or Diego Alves managed to save them with superhuman reflexes borrowed from Javi Varas.

When HT came around, Barça was controlling the match and keeping Valencia mostly at bay, but they had nothing to show on the scoreline for that half an hour of possession after Cesc’s goal. And a one-goal lead is the most dangerous, most fragile of illusions, particularly when you have Pinto as a goalkeeper…

Whistling Pinto, doing his best 'real goalkeeper' impression.

Unai Emery’s pep-talks must be something else entirely, because Valencia came out at the start of the second half like they did at the start of the match: dying for a goal. Again, Barça was cornered against Pinto’s goal; again, it took a combination of luck, epic defending and more luck to keep from conceding; again, Pinto pulled out several splendid saves in succession, leading us to fear for the terrible mistake that had to balance the karmic scales. And again, whenever Barça had a chance, it invariably led to a horrible, horrible miss.

At some point, Nike needs to think about adding a small compass to the Barça shirts, because the chances/misses ratio for this team has to be simply horrific. Obviously no player is going to score from every chance, but scoring from one in every ten or so would be a good start.

Not even Feghouli getting sent off cooled the valencianistas off; they had their eye on getting a goal past Pinto, sending the match into extra-time, and may the least exhausted team win. In any case, it was once again from the midst of a storm of Valencia chances that a Barça goal arrived: Messi to Alexis, who crossed nicely into the box for Cesc to pass to Xavi, who scored to equal his best goalscoring season (10 goals in 08/09).

2-0, 3-1 on aggregate, and only 10 minutes to go. The match was done and dusted. Dani Alves came in for Alexis, Tello in for Cuenca and, at the very end, Don Andrés Iniesta made his return from injury for Cesc.

All in all, a perfectly acceptable evening.

And now, for the player ratings…

Pinto: 8. The dreaded Pintocalypse didn’t come to pass. Once he was caught out of position, and then Masche saved the day, but otherwise he had a good match with some excellent saves.
Puyol: 8,5. Here, there and everywhere. Nominally on RB, he went head-to-head with Masche for Most Epic Defender and I swear that at least once I saw him acting as left winger to give a lovely cross into the box.
Piqué: 7,5. Better, much better. After a string of mediocre performances (which led some of you to blame Shakira… I mean, really?!), Gerard is regaining form and common sense; I still wish he didn’t take a few minutes every match to pretend he’s a striker, though.
Mascherano: 8,5. You know a defender is incredible when I put him on the same level as Puyol without thinking about it twice; who’d have thought this would happen when we bought a rough midfielder from Liverpool?
Abidal: 8. Solid as a rock. What would we do without him? (please, Football Gods, don’t make us find out!)
Thiago: 8. He didn’t shine much, but players at DM position never do, and he filled Busquets’ enormous shoes with a confidence that belies his age and experience.
Xavi: 8. You can tell when Xavi is back (even if he isn’t at his very best) because the team works better with him on the field.
Cesc: 7,5. He scores, yes, and he links up beautifully with Messi, yes, but I can’t help but think that he’s still half-a-step out of synch with the rest of the team. Oh well, it’ll get better with time.
Cuenca: 7. Not a bad match, but not particularly good either. He’s lost the ‘nothing to lose’ freshness he had when Pep called him up for the first time, and his newfound prudence doesn’t suit his speed, but he still puts in a lot of hard work.
Messi: 7,5. I don’t think Messi can -at this stage of his evolution into a superior being- have a bad game, but he still didn’t have a very good one against Valencia. An incredible assist and some beautiful runs aren’t enough to make up for a spate of baffling misses. His FKs are getting better, though.
Alexis: 7. He’s not fully fit, after his shoulder and thigh injuries, that much is obvious, so I’m willing to forgive him a few non-stellar performances, as long as he keeps putting in hard work instead.

Insert your own 'waka-waka' joke here.

None of the subs were on the pitch long enough to earn a rating, but I still want to nominate Iniesta for MOTM, if only because his return is the best news we’ve got in a while.

The Copa del Rey final will be played… someday (late May. Ish.)… somewhere (the RFEF might tell us on Monday)… against Athletic de Bilbao. Let’s rejoice in this for a moment, and then put it on the shelf until May and focus now on Osasuna and next week’s Champions League.

Some Related Barcelona Posts:

• Transfer Deadline Day? What Transfer Deadline Day? Copa del Rey Semifinal Preview: Valencia vs FC Barcelona
• Copa del Rey review: Osasuna 1, FC Barcelona 2, Or, Goals (and Injuries) In The Mist

Category: Barcelona, Copa del Rey, Highlights, Review, Team News