Barcelona vs. Espanyol – Spanish La Liga Review (Part 4)
The front three players for Espanyol included Javi Marquez who featured on the wings, secondly, Verdu, who also featured on the wings. Lastly, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Pablo-Osvaldo-c28996 – the Espanyol striker who has done wonders throughout the season.
The Argentinean striker has scored eleven goals for Espanyol this season in only twenty appearances which he has made for the club. http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Osvaldo-c28821 showed the team how great defences can easily be broken with burst of pace.
With these line-ups, both the teams kicked the game off at the Nou Camp, Barcelona.
The home side were favourites to win the fixture. With only games lost throughout the season, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Barcelona-c38604 were not to take any chances in an important game like this.
Barcelona lost their last fixture against Real Sociedad. With that loss Barcelona lost their chance of completing the Spanish La Liga’s all-time best unbeaten streak. Real Sociedad were the ones who kept that record and they were able to defend it in their home ground, Anoeta last week when Barcelona visited them.
Josep Guardiola fielded a second-choice team last weekend and in case the Spanish Champions won the game against Sociedad, they could easily have won the league this week. However, with that loss, Barcelona had to make sure that they take all three points against Espanyol in order to win the Spanish La Liga for the third consecutive season.
As the game kicked off, it was hard for Barcelona to dominate possession. Espanyol pressed hard and denied Barcelona to keep hold of the ball. However, the Argentinean striker http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Lionel-Messi-c22296 fell back into the midfield and gave Barcelona the options to play free-flowing football.
The Argentinean striker found himself in promising positions and exchanged a few passes with his team mates. Sadly, some of the passes were not very well returned and he was left frustrated after not receiving the ball on time.
The visitors were playing good counter attacking tactics. They were making it hard for Barcelona to play their usual tiki-taka style of play. With speedy strikers in the Espanyol line-up, the Catalans Giants were threatened time and time again during the counter attacks.
http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Javier-Mascherano-c18071 made a perfect recovery tackle to deny Espanyol a great goal scoring opportunity.
With a goal scoring threat given by Espanyol, Barcelona were not to sit back and watch Espanyol play. The Catalans moved a gear up in order to give Espanyol a tough time in their defence. It was time for the Spanish Champions to show why they were leading the points table.
Andres Iniesta and Pedro Rodriguez combined well in the opposition’s territory. The Spanish winger, Pedro Rodriguez received the ball right outside the box. http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Carlos-Kameni-c8464 was on his feet to deny Barcelona a wonderful goal scoring opportunity.
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