This was a chastening night for Aston Villa, and a familiar one for Unai Emery in this corner of town. On a chilly, damp, oddly processional night at Camp Nou, Barcelona produced a performance of unhurried, high-grade incision, easing to a 3-0 Champions League victory that never really seemed to tip into an actual close-quarter contest before it was gone.
This Barcelona team will always give you a chance, a thrilling mix of gliding possession football and large open spaces behind their own teasingly high line. But Villa never looked like getting their teeth into those tender spots, always held at arm’s length, fists whirling in the space between.
Two goals for Raphinha maintained his numerically superlative start to the season, but Pedri was the real star here, producing 69 minutes of elite midfield guile. A footballer who, at times like these, seems to be tickling you very slowly to sleep while someone else sticks the dagger in.
This was a significant game for its emotional, cultural weight, rather than any real sporting jeopardy, which is hugely minimised at this stage by the Champions League’s mega-table format. For the Villa fans crammed into their pen at the top of the stand, it was a chance to register a genuine note of progress for this high-wire, ever-evolving team.
Camp Nou is currently in a state of mid-renovation chaos, packed with debris and random clutter, and with vast gushing waterfall-friendly holes in the raggedy corrugated roof. Think: Old Trafford, but deliberately like that. The new tiers at the top of the stands are already in place. The internal fixtures are being laid between hoardings and fences. Even on a drab and chilly November night you can feel the skeleton of what will be starting to loom ominously.
But the atmosphere was still a little thin at the start, the cape-clad home sections heavily speckled with empty seats, required to summon a fittingly grand-scale atmosphere out of the November air.
Hansi Flick put out a strong team, perhaps his strongest, with Lamine Yamal on the right and his hard-running straight-man Anthony Gordon on the other flank. Rodri and Pedri were the midfield pivot, a delicious-looking thing in outline, two physical extremes, the familiar wardrobe-like unit of high-spec midfield generalship, and next to him a more classically twirling, ball-funnelling Barça-issue sprite. Pedri is fun to watch even away from the ball, with that easy, fluid way of moving, just rolling along, never really seeming to stop or switch directions, like a paper bag being blown across the turf.
Emery picked a team to press and stifle the space. It was always likely to be their strength against these opponents, ideologically wed to their own version of the Cruyffian omni-ball possession game, but with occasionally wild level of defensive risk-taking: the high line, pressing bodies forward rather than countering the counter at all times.
Early on Villa sat deep and snapped into their challenges. There were some early long passes from John McGinn on the right to set Nicolas Jackson in beyond the Barcelona line. On the other side Lamine Yamal looked, as ever, like a different species of human every time he took the ball, just in the way he snaps and grooves inside, a player who walks on to every pitch carrying his own portable yard of space.
With seven minutes gone it was Lamine Yamal who opened the scoring, in a way that felt almost too easy and too natural, cutting in from the left, just too quick in his movements, all alone in front of goal suddenly in that crowded space, with time to clip a simple left-footed shot into the far corner.
Camp Nou let out a devotional roar, Lamine Yamal ran through his brand-friendly celebration routine in front of the ultras behind the goal. And at that point you feared for Emery’s team on that open right side.
Villa did come surging back straight away, pressing at Barcelona’s tender points with a succession of corners. Johan Manzambi shot wide after good work from Jackson. But with 12 minutes gone Ian Maatsen was booked for bringing down Lamine Yamal as he eased away by the touchline, a Chekhov’s shotgun-style scenario for any full-back given the nightmarish job of marking this miracle of feints and snaps and pond-skater glides.
Gordon had a shot well saved by Zion Suzuki after a disastrous attempt to play out from the back had been strangled by the Barcelona press. But the game wasn’t really changed by Barcelona going 1-0 up. When they play like this the test is as much patience, concentration and retaining the energy to break when chance arrives. As it did on 33 minutes, Manzambi driving down the left before shooting powerfully but too close to Joan García.
Half-time arrived with Barcelona looking a little too easy and unbloodied for their lead.
Rodri was withdrawn at the break and replaced by 19-year-old Marc Bernal, another high-spec home-farmed Catalan central midfield product. Nothing much changed. Villa continued to chase shadows, and also press, mark and nibble at the ankles of shadows whenever they got the chance.
And with 52 minutes gone it was 2-0, the goal scored by Raphinha via a deflected shot, Villa seeming a little hypnotised by a sustained spell of possession and pressure. The goal was Raphinha’s 18th in 13 appearances this season for Barcelona. But Pedri made the moment happen with a driving run through the centre followed by a nudged forward pass. It was a fascinating piece of midfield play. Pedri had spent the previous 90 seconds lurking behind João Cancelo, sitting in that space watching the play, then accelerating on to the ball like a rugby union full-back waiting for the moment to enter the line.
Emery made a triple substitution, refreshing his midfield for the final 30 minutes of chase and harry. But before long it was 3-0. This time it was Cancelo’s turn to produce a moment of sublime skill. First Cancelo skipped away form McGinn like a man teasing the family labrador. Then he produced an outrageously cinematic low cross with the outside of his right foot for Raphinha to twinkle in and finish neatly again.
Villa had their closest moment to date, clipping the post off a Barcelona head in the crush at a corner. Pedri came off to an adoring ovation: he is just a delight to watch when he has space to direct the flow and tempo of the game. Villa barely got close enough to shake his hand before he was gone.
The final minutes ticked down in front of a steadily emptying stadium. Villa remain well-placed in the first phase mega-table. Emery will crave another chance to get closer to this calibre of opponent. But this was a demonstration of the gap, still, at the very top. – Guardian
Source: The Irish Times · Barney Ronay
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