Barcelona Crashing Liverpool: On Their Way to the UEFA Final

In the Champions League 2018-19 1st leg of the semifinal, Barcelona broke the mighty British reds in their own ground, by a heavy margin of 3-0.Twice late strike by Messi brought a comfortable victory for the Catalonians. Quoting Klopp even he admired his that night’s mighty foe, as “Unstoppable”. Within 4 days the Barca played two major games, one that sealed their destiny as the La Liga Champions and another first leg semifinal of UEFA. In both of the games Messi being the striking distinction between them and the opponents, he carried on his team, first the only goal scored for his team that brought their La Liga title and against Liverpool in the semifinal of the UEFA scoring twice and touching the milestone 600 goals in club football.

The match’s scoring opened by Suarez, converting a cross from Jordi Alba in the 26th minute and the first half though Milner was twice repelled by the Barca goalkeeper. During the match, Milner shot thrice but couldn’t convert them into goals. Liverpool’s star player Mohammad Salah also denied by the Barca goalkeeper, who made many stunning saves in the second half, in the 48th minute a serious save of Milner’s shot and also in the 54th minute of Salah’s shot. It seemed like Liverpool was in an unlucky phase of missing everything despite having the greater possession of the ball, could not penetrate the bar.

In the second half, Suarez’s shot on goal bounced on the crossbar which was expertly converted by Messi on the 75th minute, and in the 82nd minute, Messi’s free-kick went all the way through.

In the match, Barcelona seems to be playing in a merry rhythm, not only their big guns like Messi and Suarez were firing but others also were providing, controlling, making saves and passing well, for example, Alba played magnificently, provided many opportunities for the scorers to comply, he controlled and passed the ball beautifully.

Despite Barcelona being victorious in the 1st leg of the Champions League semifinal against Liverpool, the Premier League title hopeful, Liverpool had a greater overall possession (52%), 14 attempts on goal vs. Barcelona’s 11, but their on target shots were 3 compared to Barcelona’s 5. Considering overall Liverpool was very unlucky to lose the match in such a manner, the quantitative result doesn’t represent how they performed on the field, they missed and many of their scorable shots at goal were blocked by the Barca keeper. So considering overall, their manager acknowledged Barca being superior, couldn’t cope up the might of Messi and also praised his own team playing beautifully.

Following are the match statistics:

Barcelona Vs. Liverpool

Goals: 3 vs. 0
Possession: 48% vs. 52%
Total attempts: 11 vs. 14
On target 5 vs. 3
Blocked : 2 vs. 5
Corners: 3 Vs. 5
Offside: 2 vs. 1
Fouls : 11 vs. 15
Yellow card : 3 vs. 1