Barça demolishes the Dortmund wall

Barcelona hit the table in Germany this Wednesday. Hansi Flick’s team beat Borussia Dortmund 2-3 in a match that had everything, in which they wasted two leads on the scoreboard and in which Ferran Torres ended up being the main protagonist. The one from Foios scored two fundamental goals in the final stretch and puts the Blaugrana closer to achieving the goal of being among the top eight.

And the match was a test of personality for Barça even before the ball got rolling. The yellow wall lived up to its fame and gave color to an unbeatable Champions League atmosphere, a pressure cooker about to explode that surrounded Nuri Sahin’s team in the attempt to overwhelm the culés from the start. They tried, but they couldn’t. Flick put into play the eleven that the Barça fan begins to recite by heart to show personality in one of the most complicated stadiums on the Old Continent.

Barça did it in a promising start in which all the pieces fit together one after the other, like falling dominoes. Dortmund’s pressure was sterile after Marc Casadó and Pedri appeared between center backs to generate superiority and from there the culés were protagonists with the ball. Raphinha and Lamine Yamal widened the field, allowed Olmo to appear between the lines and the Blaugrana created imbalances for an opponent who entered well, but who in just five minutes already had their foot changed.

The good start of Flick’s team was, however, without a reward. The culés were superior thanks to a circulation of the ball that anesthetized Sahin’s men and they collected chances in which they were ineffective. Kobel saved two shots from Lamine Yamal that had poison in them and accompanied with his gaze one from Raphinha that narrowly missed the post stump. The lack of punch hindered a Barça that amassed the ball with 70% possession, but went from more to less and ended up giving up meters before going through the locker room.

After the restart, the swords were still high. The train wreck was total and the match could be broken by the possibility that the two advanced defenses of both teams missed the shot. The coin came out heads for Flick’s side. Guirassy scored, but his goal was disallowed due to offside by Gittens and immediately afterwards it was Raphinha who presented himself to Kobel after a masterful pass from Dani Olmo. The Brazilian winger beat the Swiss goalkeeper low and made good the plan of a Barça that could now give up meters and take advantage of the rival’s spaces to strike.

That possible script lasted as long as a piece of candy at the door of a school. Letexier awarded a penalty in an isolated cross into the area in which Cubarsi slightly pushed Guirassy and the Guinean striker himself took advantage of the gift to score from eleven meters and open a new match at half an hour. By then Barça had lost control of a match that was in their hands in the first half. The helm could only be recovered by Marc Casadó who was immense once again in coverage and who now had to take the ball in the final stretch.

Flick introduced Frenkie de Jong, Fermín López and Ferran Torres in one fell swoop, three key changes to provide fresh legs and bring the entire team to a final stretch in which the game was going to break down definitively. There the smartest one was Ferran. The one from Foios always delivers and had his big night in Dortmund. He took advantage of a rebound in the area to score the second and appeared in the final moments to score the third after a slingshot counterattack in which Pedri and Lamine Yamal participated. Along the way Guirassy had scored Dortmund’s second, a goal that came to nothing against a Barça that took three golden points from Germany and that already has the possibility of being among the top eight in its hand.