This is a public service announcement to all LaLiga clubs not named Barcelona:
Do not foul Barcelona anywhere near the goal. Lionel Messi will take the ensuing kick and he will score on you.
That is all.
Swaths of empty seats around the Camp Nou on Tuesday for Slavia Prague's visit in the Champions League reflected the current malaise surrounding Barcelona, one amplified by this past weekend’s 3-1 defeat to Levante in LaLiga. That match both increased the pressure on manager Ernesto Valverde and condemned Luis Suárez to a three-week spell on the sidelines with a new calf injury.
Lionel Messi hit a remarkable milestone, but he won’t be celebrating it after his Barcelona side gave up three goals in seven minutes in the second half of a 3-1 defeat to Levante on Saturday at Ciutat de Valencia.
Messi opened the scoring with a well-taken penalty in the 38th minute, giving the visitors a 1-0 lead at halftime with Barça’s first awarded penalty of the LaLiga season.
The goal was the 500th Messi has scored with his left foot for Barcelona.
Nutmegs — alongside cross-field rakers, back heels and an inordinate amount of step-overs — constitute one of the greatest forms of artistry in our beautiful game. The act of the nutmeg is equal parts illusion and imagination; it transcends the simple reality of moving the ball from Point A to Point B and replaces it with something sublime. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, a nutmeg tells us of beautiful, untrue things. (After all, a nutmeg is rarely ever a decisive moment.)
Even by Lionel Messi’s ridiculous standards, the Barcelona captain’s 90 minutes against Valladolid at the Camp Nou on Tuesday constitute something outrageous. After the two clubs exchanged heavily deflected efforts in the opening 15 minutes, Messi sprang into action with a beautiful assist, stunning free kick (and two brutal nutmegs) to put Barcelona up 3-1 at halftime. In the second half, he scored another goal and added another assist to lift Barça to the top of the LaLiga table.
Granada is top of the LaLiga table. No, not the country. Granada CF, the football team from Granada, Spain. The same Granada that appointed Tony Adams in 2017 and was relegated.
Some big news coming out of UEFA Youth League Group F on Wednesday — perhaps the biggest UEFA Youth League Group F news we’ve ever presented on the hallowed pages of The18: In the group’s early match, 18-year-old American winger Konrad de la Fuente scored two great goals as Barcelona thumped Slavia Prague 4-0. Later in the day, Inter Milan responded to Borussia Dortmund’s early goal with four unanswered, but that Dortmund opener was scored by Youssoufa Moukoko.
Barcelona needed everything it could muster to hold on to a narrow 2-1 win over Slavia Prague on Wednesday in the Czech capital, surviving a late flurry from the hosts.
The three points would have been much easier to come by had it not been for a once-in-a-lifetime miss from Barcelona’s No. 10.
Barcelona had to leave for Eibar a day early due to massive political protests around the city, but the Blaugrana got out of town with an easy three points on Saturday.
MSG all found the back of the net in the same game for the first time for Barcelona, which cruised to a 3-0 victory over Eibar, momentarily leapfrogging Real Madrid into first-place. Los Blancos can surge back into first place in LaLiga with a win over Mallorca later Saturday.
El Clásico will not go on as scheduled next week, LaLiga made this much clear. But why was El Clásico postponed and when will the match be made up? Here’s a quick explainer of everything going on in Spain right now.
The first El Clásico of the season — the biggest club match in the world — was slated for Saturday, Oct. 26 at Barcelona’s Camp Nou. Now it appears the match will be rescheduled for either Dec. 4 or Dec. 18 (both Wednesdays).
But why was El Clásico postponed in the first place?