‘Nastic 1 – 5 Barcelona: Ending the season with style

By: Isaiah | June 18th, 2007

First, congratulations to Real Madrid for winning the league. Certainly the better team during the last third of the season, the merengues, as always, left it late, but came away with all 3 points against a plucky Mallorca side whose finishing let Barcelona down in a game that was so thoroughly dominated by Madrid that there was never really much chance of Barça squeaking by with the title.

The Nastic game was a pretty solid testament to the fact that Barcelona are a solid attacking side and also that Gimnastic de Tarragona was a crap side. 1-5. Wow. They were operating on all cylinders, apparently. And I say apparently because GolTV was showing the Madrid match, which was fine because Barcelona was having themselves a rompfest and it was better to at least see the end coming rather than believe Mallorca was going to win when they were up 0-1. Not that they shouldn’t have scored 3 on those sweeping counter attack moves that showed off Cannavaro’s surprising lack of pace. So much for the 3million euros, I guess.

Puyol scored his first and only goal of the season by somehow appearing in the box and pushing the ball into the net to make it 0-1. It would have more than made up for his inability to stay with Tamudo during the final minute last week had Madrid not had a certain Robinho being brilliant along their left wing. Sigh. Messi scored twice, Ronaldinho drove in a brilliant free kick, and Zambrotta netted in second half injury time to take the lead back to 4 after ‘Nastic pulled one back through Tobias Grahn. The final result was never in doubt, but the players really pulled together for this game rather than rolling over and letting Madrid completely off the hook.

So it was a “disappointing” year in that the season started off with the possibility of winning 6 major trophies, but only the seventh potential trophy, the Copa Catalunya, made its way to the Camp Nou. There have been worse years, I suppose, but it’s hard to lose the league like that. Giving away trophies to your arch rival never feels good, but this one feels all the worse because we were right there, right on the cusp, and yet came away with nothing. Naturally, I’m inclined to believe Barcelona are the rightful owners of this year’s trophy because of goal differential (+19 over Real Madrid), but it was the inability to score at the Bernabeu or defend at the death that cost Barça the title.

Before I discuss the season as a whole in another post (with statistics galore), I’d just like to say that the season was not a failure. Disappointing perhaps, but in a year that we put 6 into the Vicente Calderon’s net, found ourselves a new “Messiah,” and came in second in a title chase that went down to the very last minutes (and really, if you think of Jornada 37 as the last week of the season, which it really was, then it was literally the last few seconds), the team played hard and well and overcame a lot of issues like injuries and egos in order to survive the Group of Death in the Champions League and very nearly take out finalists Liverpool in the round of 16 as well as get to the semis of the Copa del Rey and the finals of the FIFA Club World Cup. And next year there is Bojan and Giovanni Dos Santos to watch, which should be a distinct pleasure.

No doubt we will make some serious off-season changes, but we were not a bad team. It is merely that Madrid gelled at the right moment and we fell asleep at the wheel for a grand total of 20 seconds. The Real Betis and Espanyol moments of smack-yourself-on-the-forehead ineptitude were suggestive a wider problem in defense, but that should be remedied with a key addition such as Chivu. Puyol is still great, Thuram is solid, but Zambrotta has failed to be as dominate as he could be and Gio, Oleguer, Belletti, and Marquez haven’t had good seasons. Many critics suggest that Oleguer is having a perfectly good year, it’s just that he sucks. With Abidal, Chivu, and Yaya Toure all supposedly on their way the defense should be even better. After all, this year’s defense, as maligned as it was, was tied with Getafe for fewest goals allowed (33) while the offense blew away the competition with 78 goals, 12 more than 2nd place Real Madrid.*

*Ruud van Nistelrooy scored more than 1/3 of their goals (25). That’s crazy, especially if you consider the fact that Raul scored 7 and he was next on the tally. Ronaldinho hit 21 while Messi dropped in 14, Eto’o 11, and Iniesta of all people 6.