Barça 4-1 Celta: Recap

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GOAT-trick.

Barcelona remain the only perfect home team in La Liga this season thanks to a 4-1 win over Celta Vigo at Camp Nou. The Blaugrana were quite bad in the first half but got a little better in the second, and they won in large part thanks to another wonderful performance by Lionel Messi who scored a hat-trick and a pair of sweet, sweet free-kicks.

FIRST HALF

Barça made a really bad start to the game, with very little movement and a lot of sideways passing that did absolutely nothing to hurt a well organized Celta defense. Then Barça were given some help with a handball from defender Aidoo inside the box, and Messi gave the Blaugrana the lead just as Ernesto Valverde tried to fix the problems with Sergio Busquets replacing the injured Nélson Semedo.

Barça showed absolutely zero improvement with the change and continued to look poor in the final third, and Celta slowly but surely started to send people forward and cause some problems. Then the visitors were given a free-kick for a clean challenge by Messi that was somehow called as a foul, and Olaza equalized for Celta with a gorgeous free-kick.

It looked as though Celta were ready to take a big result to halftime, but Barça were given their own free-kick at the edge of the box and Messi sent it beautifully to the top corner. At the half the performance was terrible and Valverde was being outcoached again, but the GOAT happened twice and Barça had the lead.

SECOND HALF

The second half started with halftime substitute Ousmane Dembélé nearly scoring an unbelievable solo goal, but just a couple of minutes later Barça had a two-goal lead thanks to another fantastic free-kick by Messi, who completed his GOAT-trick and gave the home team some breathing room.

The rest of the game was positive from Barça who didn’t just think about not conceding and running out the clock but made positive changes and kept attacking in search of a fourth goal, and they came quite close in a few occasions until Sergio Busquets finally found the back of the net to score Barça’s final goal of the night.

The final whistle came to end a pretty mediocre performance from Barça that doesn’t change the coach’s image one bit. But it does look like we’ll have the same manager after the international break. Yay.

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Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Semedo (Busquets 22’), Piqué, Umtiti, Firpo; De Jong, Roberto, Arthur; Messi, Griezmann (Suárez 72’), Ansu Fati (Dembélé 45’)

Goals: Messi (23’, 45’+1, 48’), Busquets (85’)

Celta Vigo: Rubén; Mallo, Aidoo, Araujo, Olaza, Juncà; Lobotka (Denis 76’), Beltrán, Diop (Fernández 81’); Aspas, Sisto (Méndez 64’)

Goal: Olaza (42’)

Source: barcablaugranes.com