The situation
The last image of Barça before the World Cup break takes us to the dressing room at El Sadar , where the players were celebrating a league victory with euphoria . But it wasn’t like that. It was evident that, for the squad, beating Osasuna after an hour with one less player, their star, was more than three points. Hence the rush, which was coupled with the confirmation that Barça will be able to see the leader in the classification photo for a couple of months without playing. Mission accomplished. Barça has turned a situation that looked tricky. The defeat in the Classic on October 16 was added to the double disappointment of training against Inter. Eliminated from the Champions League , the superiority of Madrid , which won satisfactorily (3-1), a black cloud covered Can Barça . The environment looked very far away from his eternal rival and the European KO aggravated the depression. The calendar also had curves: Villarreal , Athletic and Valencia at Mestalla . The national team break, which had brought injuries ( Araújo , Koundé , Bellerín , Memphis , De Jong …, then Christensen in Milan ) and defeats, had half-buried Barça after an interesting start to the competition. When it was worst, however, the team recovered with five wins in five games. Fifteen points with a balance of 12 goals for and one against in which Barça has not only shown football improvement, but also soul. He took the game out of Valencia with a goal from Lewandowski on the hour; and lifted the El Sadar game with ten players and a late goal, in the 85th minute.
The details
Raphinha , the Pole’s assistant at Mestalla, was also decisive against Osasuna . His goal unleashed euphoria in the locker room, which left with a very sweet taste in the mouth at the break and dreaming again of winning some great title this season after the BernabéuIt started to paint very black.