A championship performance from the virtual champions
Barcelona took another big step towards winning back-to-back La Liga championships thanks to a dominant 2-0 win away to Deportivo Alavés on Tuesday night. The Blaugrana were in control from the very start of the game, and second half goals from Carles Aleñá and Luis Suárez ensured a comfortable win for the leaders, who now need just three points to officially become champions.
FIRST HALF
The first 45 minutes were dominated by Barça, who had possession from the very start of the game and looked really creative and sharp to find spaces inside a tight Alavés defense. Unfortunately Luis Suárez and Philippe Coutinho weren’t very good in front of goal, and the Blaugrana wasted some really nice scoring opportunities early on.
After surviving a super strong Barça start, Alavés slowly recovered and started to show some attacking promise, though all of their best stuff came on set pieces that didn’t really bother Marc-André ter Stegen. For most of the half it was all about the home team keeping nine men behind the ball and trying to get a free-kick or a corner to send the ball into the box, but their plan didn’t really succeed.
At halftime, Barça were clearly the best team on the pitch and deserved the lead, but they needed to find their scoring boots in the second half.
SECOND HALF
Barça made a great start to the second half, continuing to dominate possession and looking even more dangerous in the final third. And this time, the goals came: first it was Carles Aleñá who found himself in loads of space after a dummy by Luis Suárez; then after a VAR review led to a penalty on a Tomás Pina handball, Suárez buried the spot kick and doubled his team’s lead.
With two goals in the first 15 minutes of the half the Blaugrana pretty much guaranteed the victory, but Ernesto Valverde wanted to make sure and brought on Lionel Messi with 30 minutes to go. Messi was hungry for his goal and even hit the post, but that was really the highlight of the last half-hour as Barça really just wanted to keep a clean sheet and wait for the game to end.
The final whistle came to end a dominat, professional performance from the leaders. Just three more points to be champions now, and if Valencia beat Atlético Madrid tomorrow the league is over. Good job, boys!
Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Semedo (Alba), Piqué, Umtiti, Roberto; Vidal, Busquets, Aleñá (Arthur); Dembélé (Messi), Suárez, Coutinho
Goals: Aleñá (54’), Suárez (60’)
Alavés: Pacheco; Vigaray, Laguardia, Ely (Twumasi), Navarro, Duarte; Rolán (Brasanac), Wakaso, Pina, Jony (Guidetti); Bastón
Goals: None
from Barca Blaugranes - All Posts http://bit.ly/2IYRW0P
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