The most open game at Camp Nou for years was only ever going to have one winner as Barça's front three sparkled and Leo Messi broke yet another record.
Barcelona’s 5-1 victory over Sevilla will go down in history as the game in which Lionel Messi finally became the all-time top scorer in La Liga history but at the end of the season we may look back on it as the match in which Barça turned a corner and began to look like the force we know they can be. For an hour they made hard work of it, but once they had established an unassailable lead the confidence was flowing through the team and it looked like every attack would result in a goal.
Luis Enrique’s selection wasn’t too surprising. Claudio Bravo continued in goal and the back four had a much more familiar look to it than the one that played in the last match against Almería, with Dani Alves, Gerard Piqué and Jérémy Mathieu all returning to action. Alves was his usual self, heavily involved in attacks down the right hand side, where most of Barça’s play ended up, while Alba’s advances on the other flank were more measured.
Xavi came back into the starting line-up and provided the balance and incision that seemingly no other midfielder has offered this season. This meant that Rakitić moved across to the left side of central midfield and played more like the box-to-box dynamo he was bought to be, rather than a mediating figure providing cover to Dani Alves on the right flank.
The front three was exactly as expected, with Messi and Suárez switching between the right flank and the centre and Neymar playing on the left side.
Unai Emery selected ten of his regular starting eleven and they played as the more reactive side, assembling in a defensive 4-4-2 when Barça had the ball. They didn't put much pressure on the man in possession - like most sides that have Barça have faced recently, they kept their defensive line relatively high and squeezed the midfield zone, encouraging risky long passes and avoiding being pinned in their own area.
Emery’s surprising selection was that Éver Banega, who played instead of Stéphane Mbia in the centre of midfield. The plan was presumably to use Banega’s vision and passing range to relieve pressure and start counter attacks, but it didn’t work. Despite playing considerably more passes than any other Sevilla player, Banega didn’t really influence proceedings and his more attacking positional mindset often allowed Barça a way through Sevilla’s central midfield.
The opening phases were notable for the excellence of Barça’s combination play and the quickness of their attacks. Recent matches have been notable for the ponderousness of the build-up play and the slowness of positional interchange, but Barça came flying out of the blocks, a blur of lateral movement and forward propulsion. Luis Suárez was the catalyst, turning defenders and driving into space in a way that no other striker has so far this season. His enthusiasm was infectious and the tempo steadily rose, though few clear cut chances were created.
When Sevilla had the ball, Barça refrained from pressing, dropping off and inviting the visitors forward. The plan was obviously to create space for the front three to sprint into on the counter, and Sevilla were wise to it, careful of committing too many men forward and always making sure they kept a good defensive structure even when moving forward as a unit.
There appears to be a growing feeling among La Liga managers that holding back isn’t always necessary anymore; that Luis Enrique’s Barça can be attacked, and indeed that the best way to beat them is to attack them. Emery certainly told his team before the match not to be afraid of pushing men forward when the opportunity arose. When it did, they had time and space and they tried to attack – they just did it badly.
In the 29th minute, for example, Banega had the ball in a good position and under no pressure and a decent passing option was available as Coke waited in space on the right flank. Giving Coke the ball would allow at least three of Sevilla’s midfielders to support Carlos Bacca’s run into the box in anticipation of a cross. Instead, Banega tried a spectacular Hollywood pass direct to Bacca and overhit it straight to Bravo.
By contrast, Barça attacked intelligently and with purpose. They moved Sevilla’s compact unit around in classic Barça style, passing the ball from side to side at high speed until a forward opening appeared or shifting the angle of attack with right-to-left diagonals. The tactics worked: Messi’s free-kick goal came from one of those switches from the right which caused the Sevilla defence to shift across. Neymar took the ball on the left while the back four was still adjusting, Messi darted into a small pocket of space created by the switch, received the pass and drew the foul.
Once the first goal had gone in, Sevilla seemed to shrink and Barça looked more comfortable. So often this season scoring the first goal has been the difference between a solid, flowing Barça performance and a panicky, brainless one. Particularly after what happened in the last home game, the defeat to Celta Vigo, Messi burying the free-kick took a weight off of everyone’s shoulders.
Within ninety seconds of the restart, however, Sevilla were level and though it was a fluke goal it should cause worry on many levels. It came about largely due to Luis Enrique’s belief that if Barça drop eight behind the ball when they defend and leave Messi, Neymar and Suárez up front, then they probably won’t concede and any clearance could result in a lethal counter.
Not here: Piqué punted a Bacca cross clear and Neymar took the ball in space, but with no-one nearby to whom to offload it and start a move, he ended up giving it away, allowing Sevilla to attack again. The remoteness of forwards is a problem all broken teams suffer with – for this reason Barça have often struggled to clear their lines this season.
With that phase over, Barça had to focus on defending properly, but instead they did almost everything wrong. As Sevilla advanced down their left flank, Xavi dropped in alongside Alves and covered the pass inside, allowing the full-back to square up to Vitolo. This would have been fine had Alves defended Vitolo properly, but instead he allowed the winger past without making a real challenge.
While this was happening, Piqué had followed Aleix Vidal’s decoy run across the box and was consequently out of position when Vitolo went past Alves. Instead of standing him up and stopping the cross, as any top centre-back should in that situation, Piqué overcommitted and got skinned himself. Vitolo’s low cross into the box wasn’t even a good one but Mathieu and Bravo got their wires crossed and left it, allowing the ball to ricochet in off the confused and flat-footed Jordi Alba.
Just when Barça needed a lift, they got one via the most unlikely of sources. That’s not to say that Neymar was an unlikely scorer: rather that few people would have expected Barça to score from a crossed free-kick here. It was the first instance of such a goal in La Liga this season and Unai Emery will be furious that his side conceded it so meekly, giving themselves a mountain to climb just when they looked like creating anxiety in the Camp Nou crowd.
The minutes following Neymar’s goal were the most chaotic and open of the match, as both managers urged men forward in search of more goals. The teams quickly became unstructured and for a while it was improvised counter-attack against improvised counter-attack, a real rarity in a Barça game. This should have favoured them given the clear superiority of their individual players, but they didn’t position themselves well enough or make good enough runs to punish Sevilla.
Take the below example: as Neymar drives through the centre, Messi should follow Suárez’s run across the defence from right to left, dragging Diogo Figueiras away and allowing Xavi to run unopposed into the box. Instead, Messi shows for the pass himself and slows the attack down. Neymar holds onto the ball too long and is tackled, ending the advance.
Or this one, in which Xavi is bringing the ball forward and looking for options. Neymar is hidden behind both centre-backs and unavailable. Suárez is jogging, waiting for Xavi’s decision, rather than driving into the space between left-back and centre-back and giving an option. Messi is standing to Xavi’s right, also waiting to see what happens. Neither full-back is there to provide real width and Rakitić is nowhere to be seen. Unsurprisingly, the attack goes nowhere fast.
Following a like-for-like double substitution from Unai Emery in which Kevin Gameiro and Gerard Deulofeu replaced Bacca and Vidal, Barça finally got it right and made it 3-1 with a quick break. Piqué’s early pass found Suárez sprinting into space on the right flank. Neymar attacked the near post, leaving space for a midfield runner to arrive at the far. Suárez’s weighted centre found Rakitić arriving bang on cue to score against his former club, all but settling the match as a contest.
After that, it was all about Messi breaking Telmo Zarra’s goalscoring record. The record-breaking 252nd goal arrived following yet another counter. Sevilla were committing more and more players forward to save the game and it was almost inevitable that Messi would take the ball on the halfway line and lead a three-versus-two attack, exchange passes with Neymar and finish.
With victory assured and Messi’s place in history secured, Barça turned on the style and Sevilla folded like a house of cards. The fifth was a classic Messi goal, dribbling in from the right, exchanging passes with Neymar and firing home from the edge of the box. Sevilla's defenders knew they were well-beaten and by this point weren’t putting up much of a fight, even allowing Messi two or three yards of space from which to pick his spot, but the hat-trick was no less than Messi and Barça deserved.
All in all, this was a slightly odd game due to Barça’s insistence on allowing Sevilla space and the bizarrely end-to-end second half in which the visitors somehow failed to produce a shot on target despite regularly having attacks. Emery's men defended very poorly throughout and offered absolutely nothing going forward, but despite their turgid display the match was won more by moments of Messi magic than by incisive team play from Barça.
As far as Luis Enrique is concerned, this was a game which showed a number of encouraging improvements. Suárez finally added the expected extra dimension to the attack, Rakitić looked far more effective in a box-to-box role in an open game and, perhaps most importantly, the shots that Barça have recently been crashing off of post and bar started to go in. However, the ways in which the own-goal was conceded and in which they messed up simple counter-attacks prove there is still lots of work to be done.
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