Joaquín Caparrós and Gerardo Martino stopped Barça from clinching a valuable victory last night against Levante.The Catalan giants were not able to penetrate a very good Levante side and Martino’s changes in the second half by bringing off both Cesc and Pedro who were playing out of their boots, wasn’t a good call.
Tello and Sergi roberto came on instead but were not capable of inflicting the same damage to Levante as Cesc and Pedro did. That combination has cost Barça three points and they come away with just one in the bag. Atlético were not able to beat Sevilla either and that means that Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid move to within a point of the joint leaders of La Liga.
Levante played extremely well and deactivated Barça’s usual game. Although the Catalans had 80% of the ball, it served as an anecdote as Levante didn’t let the Azulgrana’s do anything with it.
Levante was in this game for the long haul and expected to suffer. Suffer they did, as Joaquín Caparrós’ side began to thwart every Barça attack with a very organized defense.
Amazingly, Martino opted to take off the only two players who were creating any real danger in the second half. Off came Cesc and Pedro and on came Tello and Sergi Roberto in their respective positions.It was a bad move by Martino as Barça sought desperately to clinch a 1-2 win away.
Goals came courtesy of Louka Vyntra and Gerard Piqué for Barcelona in the first half of the match. Vyntra’s goal just after 10 minutes, was a well directed header from a corner that gave keeper Victor Valdés no chance of getting it. Pique’s goal came just 9 minutes later and was quite literally a carbon copy of Vyntra’s goal with the ball neatly directed into the keeper’s far side post.
The Catalan side pressed hard for a late goal to give them all three points but time, a brilliant Juanfran and a superb Levante defense, stopped them in their tracks and adding Levante to their recent scalps collected. The two sides will meet each other at the same ground on Wednesday for their Copa del Rey first leg quarterfinal showdown.
Arguable about Cesc but Pedro, for certain, should’ve stayed on instead of Alexis who absolutely should’ve made way for Tello…Even if Martino preferred Tello on the left, he could’ve flipped Pedro to the right…Thought it was a poor move and worse still is how late into the match he waited to make those changes
A #9 like Cardozo would’ve been pretty useful
Great observation