Jordi Alba demands respect from Barcelona fans after victory
Barcelona secured a narrow 1-0 victory over an inspired Real Sociedad side at home on Saturday. It was a penalty goal which handed the Blaugranas the victory.
Barcelona displayed a performance that was far far away from impressive. The Blaugranas failed to convert the chances they created. The players showed a lack of effort for most of the game. As such, it is understandable that the home fans were not happy with how their team played at home.
It was a matter of time till the fans would boo some player or other. Unfortunately, it was Jordi Alba who was the aim of the boos.
What happened at the match?
The match at Camp Nou was a perfect example of how Barcelona is struggling in the current season. Setien decided to start a front three of Antione Greizmann, Lionel Messi, and Martin Braithwaite. However, for some reason, he put Messi in the middle and Braithwaite on the left-wing, despite the Danish being a striker.
In the midfield, he started a combination of Frenkie De Jong, Sergio Busquets, and Ivan Rakitic. Despite playing out of position De Jong actually had a decent match. However, Rakitic again disappointed. The Croat seems to have moved past his prime. Many times he slowed down the Barca attack by passing the ball back rather than forward.
The Barcelona defence showed an impressive performance, with Gerar Pique and Clement Lenglet on top of their game. Righ-back Nelson Semedo was also impressive and made some good runs forward. However, Jordi Alba was exposed a number of times by the La Real forwards and he was also poor while attacking.
Barcelona missed a lot of chances they created. Messi was again underwhelming. Not every day does La Pulga has a shot accuracy of 43%. The Barcelona forward suffered more as Braithwaite was the only attacker going forward with the chances created by Messi. Greizmann was absent in attack and substituting Ansumanne Fati for him injected much-needed life into the attack.
Barcelona got a penalty luckily in the 81st minute as VAR judged a handball by a La Real defender to be intentional. Messi converted the penalty and it was enough to carry Barcelona to a victory.
What happened to Jordi Alba?
Jordi Alba had not been on top of his form this season. He has been injured a lot of times and his general form is not good either. Last night, he was arguably one of the worst players on the pitch. His mistakes in attack and defence almost cost his team a couple of goals. Had Real Sociedad bee good in finishing, Barcelona would have surely lost the match.
Alba was being booed by the fans since the match was 15-minutes old. After he scored a goal in injury time from a sublime pass from Fati, he celebrated with his fingers in his ears. This is a common celebration which means “I can’t hear you”. However, VAR ruled out the goal for offside.
After the match, he explained his celebration, “Nobody likes that the fans are going against them. I respect the fans but the fans have to respect me. Nobody likes to be whistled”.
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