Sevilla 2 - 1 Barcelona

By: Isaiah | March 5th, 2007

I’m not happy about the loss, naturally, but it wasn’t your typical defeat, which somehow makes it worse. Two men sent off and they’ll be suspended for the Real Madrid match on Saturday. Barça led 0-1 after the 14th minute thanks to a headed goal by Ronaldinho and by the 30th minute the blaugrana were up a man, but by the 40th minute the score was 1-1 and Ronnie had uncharacteristically missed the penalty Ocio had gifted him while being dismissed. Odd how fortunes can swing so dramatically. As Ronnie lined up the penalty I was positive Barcelona were going to score and then, even after failing to go up 0-2, the Catalans took their foot off the gas and looked as if they wanted to play defensively for a while. Kerzhakov made them pay after a good run by Alves set up the Russian striker for a nice turn and shoot, leaving Valdes with absolutely no chance. Marquez, of course, should have done a little better in defending Kerzhakov, but it’s hard to blame Rafa for the failings in midfield where Alves should have been stopped.

The first sign of impending lunacy, at least in retrospect, was the moment Marquez received his yellow card: 43rd minute of the first half. A weak foul, not much in it, and Marquez gets booked. I’m not saying the ref was biased because he made the right calls for most of the first half, but right there with the Marquez call he proved he was looking to put a stop to any sort of physicality in the game. And that meant when Giuly nipped Alves from behind (and I mean nipped because even Alves, who’s Brasilian and thus prone to bouts of weightlessness when coming in contact with other players, didn’t fall over), Ludovic got a straight red, which he rightfully laughed at before walking off. The foul that got Zambrotta sent off was a hard tackle and not an entirely uncalled for yellow card and certainly Zambrotta overreacted; perhaps he said something since he didn’t touch the ref. Puyol was pissed enough at Gianluca that he must have said something silly.

The Alves goal was a well-taken freekick that took a little deflection off the Barcelona wall (Iniesta, I believe) and it looked like Valdes had it covered until then. Bad luck for Barcelona and it got worse a few minutes later when Giuly got sent off. Down to 9 men they really didn’t have much of a shot, but they pressed a little though they were fortunate Sevilla didn’t score more. Alves in particular missed an absolute sitter.

Highlights from the game can be found here and the in-game commentary found here, though they’re both in Spanish; the second one shows Ocio’s red card, but not the two Barcelona ones. The first does the opposite.