FC Barcelona suffered but managed to bring back the three points from their trip to Las Palmas (1-2), regaining third place in the Spanish championship at the end of the 19th day. Xavi Hernandez’s team absolutely had to win to stay in contact with the two co-leaders, Real Madrid and its surprising neighbor Girona, victorious the day before. With 41 points on the clock, Barça remains seven points behind the duo.
The Catalans, unrecognizable, however conceded the opening with a goal from Munir El-Haddadi, a child of the club trained at Masia, who took advantage of the wait-and-see attitude of the opposing defense to deceive Inaki Pena in the 12th minute. Galvanized by this goal, the islanders increased the pressure on the Barça defense, without however managing to make the break. But if they returned to the locker room with this small advantage, it was not undeserved given the lack of enthusiasm of the Blaugranas.
Still at a slow pace, the latter however tried to press high and it was precisely thanks to a high recovery that they came back to the level of their hosts, a little naive at the time. After a fortuitous clearance from the defense on the back of Lewandowski’s head, the Catalans recovered the lead and Ferran Torres, very opportunistic, scored the equalizing goal (55th). Despite excessive territorial domination, Barça lacked edge and did not necessarily seek to expose themselves to opposing counterattacks, seeming to be content with this sharing of points.
Twelve minutes from the end, Xavi threw his Brazilian winter recruit Vitor Roque, whose license had been validated the day before, into the deep end in the goalkeeper’s place in the hope of finding the fault in the compact defense of Las Palmas . The young Brazilian (18 years old) found himself comfortable with promising combinations with Joao Félix and Lamine Yamal, who also entered during the match. Twice, he almost scored but came up against Pena (79th, 82nd). As we moved towards a draw, Barça obtained a questionable penalty accompanied by a red card for Las Palmas midfielder Daley Sinkgraven. Gündogan converted the penalty and avoided the crisis at Barça, who returned to the third step of the podium ceded at the start of the evening to Athletic Bilbao, winner 2-0 on the pitch of Sevilla FC.