La Liga: Osasuna vs. Barcelona – Review and facts - Lionel Messi in rare form
Catalan giants Barcelona played an away fixture in Pamplona against the unbeaten-at-home Spanish side Osasuna on Saturday.
Much drama preceded the start of the actual match when air-traffic controllers in Spain went on strike and Josep Guardiola’s men were unable to take a flight to Pamplona on Saturday morning. The Spanish Football Federation had
decided to postpone the match until the next day, but under pressure from Osasuna, it then changed its decision: the match was going to go ahead at 8 pm that very day and if the Barcelona squad could not make it, it would lose points.
And so the Barcelona team boarded a train to Zaragoza, from where they took a bus to reach Pamplona, the home city of Osasuna. The match began 45 minutes late.
Barcelona showed none of the lustre of its performance last week against Real Madrid, when they gave Los Blancos a 5-0 thrashing. The team appeared to be quite tired from its four-hour journey. However, despite not being in top
form, Barcelona still managed to pull off a 3-0 win – and in the process, setting a new La Liga record by being the first team to win seven straight games away from home.
Barcelona scored their first penalty of the season and it was also the first time this season that Lionel Messi managed to score from a spot-kick. Messi then scored a brace with the help of a penalty kick by Pedro Rodriguez towards
the end of the game. These two goals took the Argentinean maestro’s tally to 15 La Liga goals in only the first 14 La Liga games that have taken place so far.
Rodriguez managed to extend his personal record as well – the Spaniard has managed to score seven goals in the last seven games he has played in.
Barcelona are hitting their top form this season, and even though the Spanish Champions looked to be tired during the start of the season, they have finally managed to get back on track. If the Catalan Cup is not counted in the
tally, then Barcelona have not lost any of the last four games that they have played. Moreover, during these last four games, the Catalans have also not conceded a single goal, while themselves managing to score 19.
Coach Guardiola did not want to take any risks during the game against Osasuna and it was for the first time during the season that he sent out the same squad for two consecutive games. Facing such a strong line-up, the Pamplona
side only managed to get four shots at the goal, as opposed to Barcelona’s 15.
Gerard Pique was the player who managed to recover the ball the most number of times during the game; he managed to tackle the ball 22 times in total and found the ball at his feet 17 times. Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez
– who, along with team-mates Messi and Andres Iniesta, has been nominated for the Golden Ball award – managed to complete 90 passes out of the 103 that he played as he ran more than three kilometres during the game.
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