Celta Vigo vs Barcelona, La Liga: Final Score 2-2, 10-man Barça escape with lucky draw

We’re so bad right now...

Barcelona remain unbeaten in La Liga this season, and they also remain painful to watch. The Blaugrana played another bad game, went down to 10 men and were lucky to escape with only a 2-2 draw against Celta Vigo at the Balaídos. Ernesto Valverde rested his biggest stars for this match, the team suffered, and it’s really hard to understand how Barça haven’t lost in the league yet.

FIRST HALF

If you need just one word to describe this first half, don’t think for too long and just say entertaining. Every Celta game is a lot of fun because they’re brilliant with the ball but awful without it, and that’s exactly what we got in the first half. And because Barça are bad both with and without the ball without their best defender, midfielder and forward, the Blaugrana were just as entertaining, but in a bad way.

We saw plenty of chances for the hosts and some incredible saves from Marc-André ter Stegen early on, and when Celta really deserved a goal Ousmane Dembéle just popped up with an amazing strike to put Barça ahead. It didn’t take long for the Blaugrana defense to be bad again, and Jonny Castro equalized just before the final whistle of the half.

At halftime, the game was wild and really fun to watch, but Barça were just garbage and really lucky not to be losing by a lot.

SECOND HALF

Football is a cruel game, and Celta continued to experience that in the second half. The Celestes remained the better team and created giant scoring chances, but they just couldn’t find the back of the net. And then out of nowhere Barça popped up with another goal against the run of play, this time from Paco Alcácer.

But then things changed because of a Sergi Roberto foul that stopped Iago Aspas as he was through on goal, and the Barça midfielder was deservedly sent off. The red card gave Celta all the freedom in the world to attack, attack, and attack some more, and their pressure was brutal at times.

And then Celta finally got a little bit of what they deseved when substitute Emre Mor played a really nice cross and Iago Aspas anticipated Ter Stegen to score the equalizer. Aspas actually used his hand to direct the ball into the net, but Barça have absolutely no reason to complain in this game.

This was a horrible performance and there are no excuses, not even the Iago Aspas handball. Let’s be honest, we get some favorable calls at times, so we can’t complain here. We didn’t play to win, or draw, and we were really lucky not to lose this one really badly.

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Celta Vigo: Álvarez; Roncaglia, Gómez, Jonny; Wass, Méndez (Boyé), Jozabed (Radoja), Lobotka, Sisto (Mor); Gómez, Aspas

Goals: Jonny (45’), Iago Aspas (82’)

Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Semedo, Mina, Vermaelen, Digne; Paulinho, Gomes (Roberto), Denis; Dembélé (Vidal), Alcácer, Coutinho (Messi)

Goals: Dembélé (36’), Paco Alcácer (64’)