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Local sides faltering

The presenter of El Punt Avui TV’s The Week in Football, Barney Griffiths, takes a look at how Catalonia’s leading clubs are faring in the 2021-22 season

The storm clouds are gath­er­ing around Ronald Koe­man’s Barça, as con­vinc­ing de­feats to first Bay­ern Mu­nich (0-3) and Ben­fica (3-0) in the Cham­pi­ons League, and then away at Atlético (2-0) in La Liga at the start of Oc­to­ber led to fur­ther calls for the Dutch­man to be re­placed. Prior to that game at the league cham­pi­ons, club Pres­i­dent Joan La­porta gave Koe­man the dreaded vote of con­fi­dence – dreaded be­cause it so often pre­cedes an im­mi­nent dis­missal in foot­ball – al­though gen­eral sen­ti­ment in the Cata­lan media is that Koe­man’s con­ti­nu­ity is now only as­sured by the lack of a se­ri­ous con­tender to re­place him. As the sec­ond in­ter­na­tional break of the young sea­son dawned, the gen­eral view­point is that La­porta and his board will spend these ten days scour­ing the planet for a cred­i­ble suc­ces­sor to Barça’s “hero of Wem­b­ley”.

Those painfully glar­ing de­feats to clearly stronger op­po­nents were ac­com­pa­nied by fee­ble draws at home to Granada (1-1, and only thanks to a last minute equaliser by Ronald Araújo, one of Barça’s brighter sparks this sea­son) and away at Cádiz (0-0). The sole vic­tory since my last col­umn came against a very poor Lev­ante side at the Camp Nou, when the much an­tic­i­pated re­turn of Ansu Fati – who had been out in­jured for 10 months – lived up to the hype, the young­ster com­ing off the bench to score in an easy 3-0 win. Bravely don­ning the Nº 10 jer­sey last worn by you know who, Ansu Fati briefly gave Barça fans some hope of a change in for­tunes. But the sub­se­quent de­feat at Atlético ex­posed all of this Barça’s short­com­ings for all to see. Caught out twice at the back by some slick Atlético one-touch pass­ing, Koe­man’s men were barely able to cre­ate any se­ri­ous threat on the league cham­pi­ons’ goal, aside from one poor miss by Coutinho in the sec­ond half. Koe­man’s re­peated be­moan­ing of the fact that Barça can­not get around the back of teams be­cause they are lack­ing the play­ers to do that – the miss­ing Dem­bele, Jordi Alba and until last week, Ansu Fati being those ca­pa­ble of doing that – there­fore forc­ing Barça to play a di­rect at­tack­ing game with balls into the area is get­ting short shrift from media and fans alike, and the Dutch­man’s reign at the Camp Nou seems to be close to end­ing, as the team will re­turn from the break in an un­prece­dented 8th place in the league, with dif­fi­cult games against Va­len­cia, Dy­namo Kiev and then Real Madrid await­ing them.

Es­panyol

Es­panyol’s form has taken a turn for the bet­ter in the last cou­ple of weeks as they reg­is­tered their first wins of the sea­son. The first came against lowly De­portivo Alavés at the RCDE Sta­dium, a Raúl de Tomás penalty pro­vid­ing Vi­cente’s side with a much need lift fol­low­ing a start to the sea­son which had re­turned just three points from five games. The seeds of op­ti­mism had al­ready been sown with a 96th-minute Le­an­dro Cabr­era equaliser in a 2-2 draw away at Betis after being un­lucky to lose 2-1 at home to two late goals by cham­pi­ons Atlético (the win­ner com­ing in the 98th minute in that one), but a 2-0 de­feat at Sevilla could hardly have pre­pared fans for the mon­u­men­tal achieve­ment of beat­ing Real Madrid 2-1 at home at the start of Oc­to­ber. Aleix Vidal added to an­other De Tomás goal to put the periq­ui­tos 2-0 up be­fore they sur­vived a late rally after Madrid had pulled one back through Ben­zema. With those two wins and the way things are at Barça right now, Es­panyol fans will sud­denly be view­ing the trip to the Camp Nou on No­vem­ber 21 with an­tic­i­pa­tion rather than dread.

Girona

Al­though Girona es­caped from Oviedo with a point (0-0) in the final game of Sep­tem­ber to add to the three points they had picked up in the vital 1-0 win at home to Val­ladolid, there was lit­tle to sug­gest that Michel’s side is going to make much head­way this sea­son. De­feats in the pre­vi­ous three games away at Pon­fer­rad­ina (2-1) and Malaga (2-0) and at home to Sport­ing Gijón (1-2) had al­ready high­lighted the team’s lack of at­tack­ing prowess, and those four points, which lift Girona up to 18th in the table, will not yet bring fans much hope of an­other pro­mo­tion push. Im­prove­ments will be needed in all areas, es­pe­cially from play­ers ex­pected to con­tribute much more than they are doing, such as Borja García, Samu Saiz and Baena, if Girona are to threaten more than a mid­table fin­ish this sea­son.

Foot­ball

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