Youthful Barça Reserve Team Pays the Price for Inexperience Against Córdoba, Misses Promotion Opportunity

Jun 23, 2024, 5:25 p.m. ET

The Barça reserve team took the lead but paid dearly for their inexperience against an opponent who came back taking advantage of their own mistakes.

He Barcelona Atlético was one step away from promotion to the 2nd Divisiondefeated by Córdoba (2-1) in the second leg of the final of a play-off once again cruel for the team of Rafa Marquez, superior in football but condemned by his own mistakes. Mistakes from youth that allowed the Andalusian team come back from Hector Fort’s initial goal and take the prize with a double from Toril, which sealed the tie.

Barcelona Atletic fell to Córdoba and could not advance in category. Pedro Salado/Getty Images

The Mexican coachwho according to his words in recent weeks would have directed his last game at subsidiary in Córdobagave his team a very clear personality and a very recognizable football commitment in the Barcelona clubbut the lack of experience and the abuse of the game of touch, combination and position, in adverse conditions ended up sentencing him.

Youth invites impudence and sometimes recklessness. This mixture of virtues and defects are what led to the Barça Atlético youngest in memory until the last stage of the season, until they played for promotion face to face against a rival mentored from Bahrain. A Córdoba thought, planned and worked to ascend. A lot more than the team led by Rafa Márquez.

It also happens that inexperience and inexperience affect moments of maximum competitive tension. Even though the majority of footballers in the Barça Atlético They have always known the pressure in the club’s grassroots football, reaching top-level football, even if it is in the third category, facing rivals like this Córdoba, or Deportivo, Gimnàstic or Leonesa, teams with more senior players, takes its toll on them at certain times.

No matter how much Rafa Márquez has managed in these two years to provide the team with an excellent personality, increasingly clear automatisms and a game with moments of unquestionable quality, moments of downturn come at a high price. And just as it happened to him in Riazor, the afternoon in which Deportivo was mathematically promoted, beating him 2-1, or against Nàstic that took second place from him, beating him at the Johan Cruyff stadium, in Córdoba, on the final day, he could not escape this curse of youth.

2024-06-23 21:25:00
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