Only Barcelona beat Real again tonight at the Alfredo di Stéfano with overwhelming superiority. Almost as if it were not difficult, with the routine of someone who goes to the office for another day, Barça beat the second placed team in League F without any difficulty to kill the tournament. There are now 13 points that the leader has over its pursuer with six games remaining, and another that suffers 23 lost classics and only one victory against the rival that this season knocked it out of the Cup and that will soon lift the League.
0
Misa, María Méndez, Rocío Gálvez, Yasmim, Eva Navarro (Iris Ashley, min. 86), Maëlle Lakrar, Athenea del Castillo (Irune Dorado, min. 62), Filippa Angeldahl (Shei García, min. 77), Sandie Toletti, Sara Däbritz (Caroline Weir, min. 62) y Linda Caicedo (Naomie Feller, min. 62)
3
Cata Coll, Esmee Brugts, Ona Batlle, Aïcha Cámara (Mapi León, min. 55), Irene Paredes, Caroline Graham Hansen (Vicky López, min. 69), Alexia Putellas, Patri Guijarro (Clàudia Pina, min. 55), Sydney Schertenleib (Kika Nazareth, min. 69), Clara Serrajordi y Salma Paralluelo (Ewa Pajor, min. 69)
Goals
0-1 min. 17: Ona Batlle. 0-2 min. 50: Alexia Putellas. 0-3 min. 54: Maëlle Lakrar
Referee Olatz Rivera Olmedo
yellow cards
Maëlle Lakrar (min. 12), Sandie Toletti (min. 74)
The staging of the Real, organized from the new structure that Quesada gave it, was instead more solvent than that of four days before. The coach changed the scheme from his usual 4-4-2 to a 5-4-1, with Linda Caicedo up front and María Méndez, Lakrar and Rocío Gálvez in the center of the defense. The group was more compact and stopped Barça’s initial attacks, but passed Caín’s to get the ball from behind. The forward pressure of the Blaugranas disturbed their rival in almost every action: sometimes it was a loss in their own half, in others the play died due to a bad pass and in many cases Quesada’s team found no choice but to make a desperate shot towards Linda.
Barcelona’s positional dominance had a hard time finding depth at first. Patri, Alexia and Serrajordi once again directed the score from the midfield, with Hansen, Schertenleib and Salma this time in the offensive trident. The team weaved and weaved and accumulated a lot of possession but did not test Misa. In that Barça order, with their rival increasingly sunk around their area, the white Caicedo, who four days ago had scored two postcard-perfect goals in which he frustrated Paredes, once again won the race to the center after a great ball from Angeldahl from the front. The Colombian was left with a meadow in front of her and only Serrajordi between her and the goal. The midfielder brilliantly withstood the one-on-one matchup with one of the most unstable players in the world and prevented her from standing up to Cata.
The scare immediately woke up Barça, who finally gave more verticality to their plays. Hansen got rid of Yasmim on a counter and forced Misa before Ona nailed the first from the edge of the box. The side’s shot grazed Gálvez and took on a warped parabola that ended up in the net. Madrid was so entrenched in its goal that the impression was that any deflection in a shot would be terminal.
The advantage gave Pere Romeu’s players a lot of calm, with Hansen getting bigger and bigger. The winger escaped again and again through Yasmim’s right lane, unable to stop her and having great difficulty with the ball. Gálvez avoided Alexia’s goal on the goal line after a tackle by the Norwegian attacker and Patri hit the side of the net with a right hand from the edge of the area.
There were no more signs of life from Real’s attack than a distant shot from Athenea that went over the crossbar. Barça’s superiority was so complete that the team already resolved the match at the beginning of the second leg. Hansen scored the umpteenth goal against Yasmim and assisted Alexia to break the tie with Pajor as the all-time top scorer in the classics with her 14th goal. Four minutes later, Lakrar scored the third in her own goal after another ride by the Norwegian.
The score was not more scandalous because Misa avoided the goals of Brugts and Vicky while Quesada gave a rest to Linda, Athenea, Däbritz, Angeldahl and Eva Navarro and Romeu allowed himself to retire Patri and give a reel to Mapi, recently recovered from an injury, Pina, Pajor, Kika and Vicky herself. The clash died in the area of a Real team that had no type of response to Barça’s hegemony and that next Thursday has an impressive visit to the Camp Nou after the 2-6 they received last Wednesday in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals.
