Barça 1-2 Osasuna: Recap

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images

A horrible night to end a horrible season.

Barcelona’s La Liga title defense is officially over thanks to a 2-1 loss at Camp Nou to Osasuna, which combined with Real Madrid’s 2-1 win over Villarreal at the Santiago Bernabéu confirmed Madrid’s title in the 2019-20 season. Barça were awful from start to finish in their last home game of the season, and will have to watch their rivals celebrate the championship.

FIRST HALF

Barça didn’t look like a team that still believed they could win a title in the first half. The Blaugrana started slowly, conceded an early goal to José Arnáiz thanks to terrible defending, and didn’t try as hard as they could to equalize, relying on Lionel Messi to save them with some individual magic.

Real Madrid scored in their game, Barça learned about it during the water break, and continued to play awful attacking football as if there was no urgency anymore. Osasuna defended well and create problems on the counter, and at halftime Barça looked defeated and in need of two goals to turn the result around and not lose the title in embarrassing fashion.

SECOND HALF

Barça looked hungry and desperate to start the second half, but the creativity just wasn’t there. The Blaugrana misplaced easy passes that killed promissing attacking moves, and players were running into each other in the box. Messi continued to send free-kicks into the sky, and things weren’t looking good in the first 15 minutes.

Then Luis Suárez came on, won a free-kick at the edge of the box and Messi finally got one right, curling a beauty off the post and into the right corner to equalize. The Blaugrana got new life with the goal and started attacking with more intensity, and a red card for Gallego forced Osasuna to finish the game with 10 men.

As we entered the final 10 minutes, Karim Benzema scored Madrid’s second at the Bernabéu to officially end the title race, and for Barça the win was simply about pride. Barça certainly tried but couldn’t create anything and saw Roberto Torres score a late winner in the 94th minute to add insult to injury.

The final whistle came to end a terrible performance from a Barça team who threw La Liga in the garbage thanks to a horrible record in the league restart. This team is old, badly coached and deserves to finish the season in second place. What a horrible night.

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Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Semedo (Vidal 59’), Piqué, Lenglet, Firpo (Alba 79’); Roberto, Rakitic (Busquets 67’), Puig (De Jong 79’); Messi, Braithwaite (Suárez 59’), Ansu Fati

Goal: Messi (62’)

Osasuna: Herrera; Vidal, Aridane, Navas, García, Estupiñán (Lato 90’+1); Brasanac (Oier 46’), Moncayola (Torres 85’), Pérez; Arnáiz (Gallego 70’), Adrián (Barja 70’)

Goals: Arnáiz (16’), Torres (90’+4)

Source: barcablaugranes.com