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Half-paced Barcelona hold off Bayer Leverkusen 1-1

By on December 9, 2015

It was an unconvincing performance from Barcelona, at best uninterested, yet the reigning European champions somehow managed to keep 51% of possession nevertheless. Having already sealed qualification into the Champions League knockout stages, Barca let Bayer Leverkusen, who needed a win, hound their goal with twenty-six shots and only a heroic performance from Marc-Andre Ter Stegen in goal kept Barca level for the token away point.

Luis Enrique used the opportunity to rotate his squad, although Lionel Messi still started up top. Munir El Haddadi replaced Luis Suarez in the starting lineup and Sandro Ramirez stepped in for the injured Neymar. After the match, Enrique was coy about how long the Brazilian will be sidelined. Sergi Samper and Wilfrid Kaptoum also slid into a midfield rooted by Ivan Rakitic. However, Barca’s youngsters were overwhelmed by Leverkusen’s intensity and although the conviction of players like Sandro and Kaptoum was lukewarm, El Haddadi, perhaps the most experienced of the bunch, was downright lazy.

Even Thomas Vermaelen buckled at the back, losing the ball twice in dangerous areas. His centerback partner, Marc Bartra, was all over the place. Barta is already twenty-four and clearly still has a long way to develop into a world-class defender (Gerard Pique, lets remember, rooted Manchester United’s Champions League winning squad at a younger age). For Barca, it’s games like these that make the days of a strong, valiant leader at the back in Carles Puyol seem all too far removed. Neither of Barca’s starting centerbacks Pique and Javier Mascherano travelled to Germany and neither Varmaelen or Bartra proved themselves as particularly appealing replacements in the long-term.

However, it is often said that good teams manage to get results even on bad days and it felt like one of those nights for Barca. They coasted through the first half and only Hakan Calhanoglu’s dipping free-kick, palmed away by ter Stegen, marked an otherwise low-key opening.

In the twentieth minute, though, Barca Enrique’s men sprung to life as Rakitic slid an incisive through ball into the run of Messi. The Argentine forward could never miss from the one-on-one opportunity and rounded Bernd Leno before poking the ball home. Yet all this seemed to even be backhand work for Messi, who only seemed to be going through the motions of celebration out of respect for Leverkusen.

Credit is due to Leverkusen for not letting their heads down; just three minutes later, Roger Schmidt’s men struck back on the break. Barca’s defense was spread thin as the ball was filtered out wide left to Admir Mehmedi and Barta came across to cover for Adriano, who was nowhere to be seen. Mehmedi whipped a low cross in, which bounced off of Calhanoglu and straight to the foot of Javier Hernandez, who had far too much time and space in the middle of the box to tuck a cool finish home.

Although Messi came close from Jordi Alba’s cutback soon afterward, it was the closest Barca came to another goal for the rest of the ninety minutes. The visitors were content to sit back and soak up pressure, which Leverkusen dished out in spades. Barca’s defense was torn apart again on the other side of the half as Alba miscued a clearance. The ball fell to Hernandez, who attracted Vermaelen out of his position. The Little Pea played the ball into the run of Karim Bellarabi in behind Barca’s back-line and the winger should have done better with a weak finish straight at ter Stegen.

As the clock waned down ter Stegen came up big on multiple occasions, holding out a strong arm to somehow block Hernandez’s near post finish in the eighty-ninth minute. With the final touch of the ball Leverkusen smacked a hopeful volley far wide yet even at half-pace, Barca held on to the draw, leaving Leverkusen crashing out of the Champions League and into the far-flung depths of Europe in the Europa League. The Blaugrana will face either Paris Saint-Germain, PSV Eindhoven, Benfica, Juventus, Arsenal, Dynamo Kiev or Gent in the next round, though it’s hard to imagine that any side at the moment would scare a full-strength Barca team when even their second-string managed an away draw against one of Germany’s better outfits.

Homepage photo credit: By Lluís from Sabadell (LFS_13335) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.