Malaga 0 Barça 2
Funny game football. Pep Guardiola rested Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Gerard Piqué for today’s game at Malaga, but both players had to come on due to what appeared to be minor injuries to Thierry Henry and Dmytro Chygrynskiy and both substitutes scored soon after coming on to give Barça a 0-2 win in a bad tempered game mainly due to an awful performance from referee, Delgado Ferreiro, who allowed Malaga to get away with some highly unsporting behaviour particularly from defender Weligton.
Malaga started the game well, pushing up on Barça’s defenders and we struggled to get any passing movement going. In the 8th minute Malaga had the first chance when Obinna got goal side of Chygrynskiy but he shot into the side netting from an angle on the left. Gradually Barça began to find some spaces to get forward, in the 20th minute Messi surged into the area but was crowded out by Malaga’s defence then as Messi lay on the floor Weligton disgracefully trod on our striker’s leg. Fortunately for us Messi always responds well to this type of aggression and three minutes later he sent over a good looking cross but it was just out of reach of both Henry and Pedro.
Just before the half hour Henry had to come off injured to be replaced by Ibrahimovic who immediately started to have an impact on the game. After having a penalty appeal turned down Ibra had a great chance in the 38th minute when Pedro threaded the ball through, Ibra had time to pick his spot but shot disappointingly straight at Munua from just inside the area. Within a minute Keita fed Messi who dinked a delightful pass over the defence with the outside of his left foot and Ibrahimovic this time finished clinically flicking the ball past Munuawith the outside of his right foot.
Once we were in the lead things began to look much easier, until the goal we had found it difficult to take control of the game and many passes were not finding their target, Dani Alves was particularly guilty of losing the ball too often. Early in the second half Alves received a some studs in his arm but again the incident went unpunished and then he suffered a whack, this time unintentional on the back of the head. However, it was Chygrynskiy who had to go off with Piqué coming on in his place, and Piqué got on the scoresheet even more quickly than Ibra had after Xavi floated in a free kick and Piqué found himself unmarked in front of goal and he jumped and stretched to get a toe to the ball and Munua made a bit of a mess allowing the ball to squirm under him and into the net.
We suffered one minor scare when the ball bobbled over Valdés’s foot but the ball rolled out for a corner but we were generally controlling things well. Xavi gave us the best moment of the match with a sublime backheel to send Messi running into the area but this time Weligton made an excellent tackle to save Malaga. Soon after Weligton showed his worse side again swinging a punch at the back of Piqué’s head at a corner, the ref of course saw nothing and booked both Ibrahimovic and Piqué for protesting. The ref was really beginning to wind us up now and Guardiola’s assistant, Tito Vilanova was sent off for expressing his displeasure. We had chances for Piqué, Alves and Messi to make it 0-3 and the ref capped his pathetic performance by ignoring a penaly near the end on Messi. Perhaps because he wanted to appear impartial he unfairly sent off Malaga’s Albert Luque but it was only when there was no chance of Malaga coming back.
this was not a match that you could enjoy much and I found myself shouting at the ref and at Weligton more than anything. It was not a particularly good team performance though Messi, Xavi and Puyol can take credit as can the two goalscoring subs. Dani Alves had an off day as did Henry before he got injured but with the quality in the team we can get away with a couple of below par performances. Interestingly we suffered most in the first 15 minutes when Chygrynskiy played as the right sided centre back but after he switched position with Puyol we looked more comfortable at the back. It was a shame Iniesta did not get a few minutes but with the early injuries it was understandable that Pep did not want to take any risks with the third substitution. We now turn our attention back to the Champions League receiving Dinamo Kiev at Camp Nou on Tuesday night. Hopefully we will see Andres back in the starting lineup.
Barça: Valdés 6; Alves 5.5, Puyol 7.5, Chygrynskiy 6 (Piqué m56, 7.5), Abidal 6.5; Xavi 7.5, Toure 6.5 (Busquets m79, 6.5), Keita 6.5; Messi 8, Henry 5.5 (Ibrahimovic m29, 7), Pedro 6.5.
Goals: m39 Ibrahimovic, m59 Piqué
Barça yellow cards: m32 Toure, m69 Piqué, m69 Ibrahimovic