Barcelona completed a thumping 4-1 victory over the second placed Atletico Madrid in an all important La Liga fixture on Sunday. This result put Tito Vilanova’s side 9 points clear in the La Liga table and the Catalunian club is yet to be defeated this season in the league.
First half :
Atletico started the game destined to get all 3 points. Though as usual Barcelona dominated the possession, it was the Madrid club which fired in the initial shots.
They had 7 shots in the first 30 minutes with the ball hitting the woodwork once.
They were rightfully granted the lead in the 31st minute when their ace striker Falcao opened the scoring with a wonderful goal after half an hour. When Messi lost possession in midfield, Falcao pulled square to receive a short pass. His first touch took him away from Busquets on the halfway line and put him in a 1v1 against Valdez. He calmly chipped the ball over a charging Valdez.
But Barcelona responded very well. They started to put pressure on Atletico who were now sitting deep and waiting for the half to get over. This paid off Barca when Adriano drew them level with a magnificent strike before Sergio Busquets put the home side in front on half-time.
Second Half :
Messi had been quiet for almost an hour, but at 57 minutes he skipped around Juanfran to curl his shot into the bottom corner from 18 yards for his 89th goal of 2012.
Though Atletico had a few chances in the second half, they were just not given any room by the tight Barca defence. After having 7 shots in the first 30 minutes, they managed just 1 more shot for the entire game.
Messi then rounded off the game with a 89th easy tap in goal after a defensive error from Atletico.
The conversion rate of Atletico was below par compared to that of Barcelona. Despite dominating the initial half hour of the game, they were able to convert just 1 of their many shots. This cost them dearly as Barca went on to hit 4. Had they taken their chances initially and gone 2-0 up, the entire scenario of the game would have been different.
The picture below shows us a further split of the shots and concentrates on the shots of Messi vs Falcao :
Fair Result? :
Yes, it was a totally fair result. Keeping aside the Messi vs Falcao battle, if we look at the overall team stats, Barca dominated Atletico in every field. They had a better possession (66 – 34), more corners (9 – 5), total number of passes were 834 compared to 253 of atletico’s and finally a pass percentage of 92% compared to 77% by Atletico.
This game was their biggest challenge of the season so far and this performance has just proved to one and all why they deserve to win the La Liga title this year.
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