Barca welcomes Tata Martino with 7 nil win

Barca welcomed their new coach Tata Martino with an exhibition style game of football that allowed the team to go home with some good vibes with young Jean Marie Dongou becoming the unexpected top scorer in Barca’s pre-season so far.

Of course, the Norwegian outfit Valerenga IF was a very weak opponent and certainly no match for Barca (0-7), but Martino was able to see clearly from the stands that Jordi Roura has left him a team with some very clear concepts intact: lots of ball possession, high passing rhythm along with lots of movement for generating positional spaces, precision passing and, to cap it off, lethal in front of goal.

Messi was in charge of orchestrating the downfall of Valerenga IF  that ended their chances almost immediately and in the first 15 minutes. Messi masterminded the first two goals, scored the third, hit the post and nearly scored with a cheeky backheel.

Messi delighted an enthusiastic audience and gave their new home kit the first outing this pre-season. Valerenga, who have already started their season, wanted to go one on one with Barca thinking that they had what it takes to stand up to the Catalans, quickly found out the hard way. Messi found space after four minutes and found Alexis Sánchez, who ran with the ball to cut inside of Nicolai Hogh (the poor guy features in almost all of the goals) as he entered the area to strike low and hard to beat the keeper.

The effect of that goal was devastating to Valerenga who began to fall apart. Just two minutes later, Messi found support from Tello after leaving his marker Ghayas Zahid. Tello took full advantage of the Argentine’s assistance and found the back of the net.

It was Messi’s turn to score just before 15 minutes after a determined run through the middle in which he left the Norwegian midfield for dead to round Hogh again and slot home the ball.

The fourth goal was the work of Jonathan who found the net via an Alexis Sánchez assist.

The second half, again with lots of the Barca first eleven on the pitch, served mainly for young Dongou to present his credentials as a striker for the future. The young Cameroon player came on for Messi and moved around the pitch with ease. He found the net on two occasions, both from Alexis Sánchez assists.

The eight changes that Valerenga made at once, had Barca on the back foot for a few minutes as the whole Norwegian side were fresher than the Catalans, but Barca keeper Oier managed to keep a clean sheet. Then it was finally up to Román to complete the scoring after a good combination with Dongou. It appears that Tata Martino has some good players to work with after that exhibition of good football.