Lamine Yamals historic night, Barcelonas disappointing one

The game Barcelona played at Granada will go down in the history books, as Lamine Yamal became La Liga’s youngest goalscorer at the age of 16 years and 87 days.

But Sunday’s 2-2 draw against the league’s second-bottom side also provided another worrying reminder of Barca’s defensive fragility right now. They conceded the first goal for the third time in four games — fighting back from a two-goal deficit in two of those — and after nine La Liga games, they have conceded the same number of goals (10) as they did from 31 fixtures last season.

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On his 12th appearance for the club, Yamal scored the goal that got Barca back in it, but we didn’t see the jubilant scenes of celebration you might have expected.

The winger quickly took the ball from the net and carried it back to the halfway line with the maturity and seriousness of someone who scores a couple of times a week.

Yamal did not have his brightest game, but his goal — and record — will serve as further confirmation of how significant a player he is in Barcelona’s upcoming new generation.

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Here, there is another worry, though. Yamal was substituted in the 76th minute, with Xavi confirming he picked up a small injury. “He felt something but we still don’t know what it is. We’ll do more scans soon,” the manager said.

It remains to be seen whether Yamal is fit to join the Spanish national team next week. He has already taken the record for the country’s youngest player — and scorer — after the 7-1 win in Georgia on September 8.

One player who will be travelling for the Euro 2024 qualifiers against Scotland and Norway is Granada’s goal hero Bryan Zaragoza. The 22-year-old was called up after Sunday’s match, in which he scored twice, as a replacement for the injured Yeremy Pino of Villarreal.

Zaragoza’s second goal is one to watch — a stunning solo run in which he dances around Jules Kounde before sending him and Marc-Andre ter Stegen to the floor and finishing coolly. His first came just 17 seconds into the game and established another record — it was the quickest La Liga goal Barcelona have conceded this century. According to Xavi, it was “unacceptable”.

HIGHLIGHTS: #GranadaBarça 2-2

A top match-up that sees points shared!#LALIGAEASPORTS | #LALIGAHighlights pic.twitter.com/P6sfgmVcPe

— LALIGA English (@LaLigaEN) October 8, 2023

“We just can’t come into the game like we did,” he said after the game. “We can’t lose the ball in a position where we knew their midfielders were being aggressive in their pressure. Then, on a counter, they managed to score the second, and suddenly we had a huge mountain to climb.”

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A draw against the second-last team in La Liga, as well as the team with the league’s second-worst defence, is not a good look for Barcelona, who now go into October’s international break third in the table, three points behind leaders Real Madrid and one point behind second-placed Girona.

Enhorabuena por el primer gol, Lamine Yamal. A seguir 👍 pic.twitter.com/iXnAo1Z6RW

— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona_es) October 8, 2023

The more troubling aspect, without a doubt, is that the mood around the club has not improved after Wednesday’s scrappy Champions League win at Porto.

That performance had been heavily scrutinised, and Sunday was supposed to offer a chance to revitalise the club’s spirits, but no one from Barca left Granada pleased. It won’t help to see Kounde added to the already crowded injury list, either.

The French centre-back suffered a sprained left knee and was subbed off in the first half. Kounde will undergo more scans in the coming days to determine the timescale of his recovery. In Granada, Barca’s backroom staff were initially fearing the worst — a cruciate ligament injury — but this was dismissed after first explorations.

Raphinha, Robert Lewandowski, Frenkie de Jong and Pedri complete the list of Barca’s injured first-team players. The latter seems the most likely to return soonest.

Attacking against Granada’s low block, Barcelona missed the influence of another key player: Ilkay Gundogan.

The former Manchester City captain was deployed as a holding midfielder on Sunday, as Xavi decided to drop Oriol Romeu. He had been singled out as one of the worst performers in recent weeks, and an erratic display at Porto pushed Xavi to trust in Gundogan for the role instead, with Fermin Lopez starting in his place.

Gundogan’s performance was very solid, but he just can’t be everywhere, and his talent was missed further up the pitch. With Gundogan playing as an attacking midfielder, everything in Barca’s build-up process goes smoother, and the options Xavi had from the bench were very limited. Even still, they could have easily won in Granada.

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Gavi, Ronald Araujo and Ferran Torres all might have done better with chances. Instead, Sergi Roberto’s 85th-minute goal saved the day, before some VAR controversy saw a Joao Felix stoppage-time header disallowed.

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The reason was an offside from Torres. He didn’t actually touch Joao Cancelo’s cross, but the VAR still interpreted that his jump to try and reach the ball influenced play enough for his team-mate’s late winner to be ruled out.

You could argue Xavi had reason to question the referee’s decision. What was probably more unexpected was hearing the manager say he was pleased with his team’s performance.

“What is Ferran interfering with? Can you tell me? Because I can’t,” Xavi said. “The referee could have allowed it. In the same way he’s entitled to disallow it, there’s a case to say it could have been given. It was heads or tails and we got the bad end tonight.

“We deserved the win, everyone saw it. We dominated all the way, but in the end, football is like this. I am happy because we played well, especially in the second half, where we created many chances.

“We can’t just analyse the result today. The performance was much better. Just like the other day we won at Porto but no one in the media valued the result and said we didn’t play well enough, now we must do a fair analysis and look into more things than just the score.”

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(Top photo: Alex Camara/Europa Press via Getty Images)

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