Barcelona had to settle for a draw in the tricky away match in Frankfurt. A result that surprised but not too much: after all, the same thing had happened in the previous rounds against Napoli and Galatasaray. In those cases, too, the first leg had ended in a deadlock, despite Xavi’s Blaugrana having the advantage of playing the first 90 minutes in front of a home crowd at Camp Nou.
This time the former director of the ‘great Barça’ – who since November has been sitting on the bench of the club with which he won everything as a player and climbed onto the roof of the world – will demand from his team that the decisive shot should take place in their own stadium instead. The one admired in Germany, in fact, bore no resemblance to the Barcelona we have come to know in this second half of the season. The team kept the ball in their court but on the whole produced fewer goalscoring chances than Oliver Glasner’s side, who managed to take the lead through outside back Knauff at the start of the second half. Ferran Torres, one of the many reinforcements who arrived in the winter market and changed the face of the Catalan team, then put things back on track.
All is still open, then, in the return match, in which the 1-1 draw that took place seven days ago at Deutsche Bank Park will be re-started. In the meantime, the Blaugrana took a big risk at home to Levante (2-3) and it was thanks to Dutchman de Jong’s last-second strike that they narrowly escaped a victory that allowed them to retain second place. Eintracht, on the other hand, were still winless in the Bundesliga: after five consecutive draws the Rossoneri fell at home to Freiburg, moving further and further away from Europe.
©️Ansafoto
The Prediction
Xavi and his team have already shown that they are capable of pulling out all the stops in the important moments, and it will be difficult for them to beat Eintracht Frankfurt, with whom the technical and qualitative differences were already clear in the first leg. Blaugrana favourites for victory in a match with at least three goals in total
Barcelona v Eintracht Frankfurt matchday squad
BARCELONA (4-3-3): ter Stegen; Araujo, Lenglet, Garcia, Jordi Alba; Gavi, F. de Jong, Pedri; Adama Traoré, Aubameyang, Ferran Torres.
EINTRACHT FRANKFURT (3-4-2-1): Trapp; Hasebe, Hinteregger, Ndicka; Knauff, Rode, Jakic, Kostic; Lindstrom, Kamada; Borré.
POSSIBLE RESULT: 3-1
