Does Barcelona have a plan B?

For cinephiles, Frankie Dunn had to pay managers on the side to get more fights for Maggie Fitzgerald. Because Maggie kept knocking out her opponents in the first round.

Luckily, Barcelona doesn’t need to loosen its purse strings to setup a match because club football follows a league system, unlike boxing. The Catalan club has this ridiculous propensity to kill matches even before the opposite side warmed up to the contest, like Maggie in Million Dollar Baby.

In the La Liga, they have been winning at both half-time and full-time in 11 of the last 12 matches. Any punter worth his salt would blow his money on EuroMillions tickets than risk betting heavily against this high-flying Barcelona side.

Everything changed yesterday evening; Barcelona’s wings were clipped by Real Sociedad and they lost their first league game under Tito Vilanova.

Any bets on Real Sociedad winning the match after going 2-0 down at 25 minutes would have resulted in windfall earnings. Even after Sociedad striker Gonzalo Castro scored a goal just before half-time, Sociedad stealing points from Barca would have been dismissed as wishful thinking. After all, Lionel Messi swapped shirts at half-time before disappearing into the tunnel.

Gerard Pique was sent off for a second yellow card offence 11 minutes into the second half. Despite the one man advantage, history was against Sociedad; they lost 4-3 against a 10-man Real Madrid side a few weeks ago, despite playing 84 minutes of the match with an extra player.

Castro equalised within six minutes of the sending off, after Victor Valdes outstretched arm failed to stop his deflected shot. With 30 minutes left on the clock, Barca looked like a side who traveled to Basque Country with just one game plan – keep possession and switch play to open gaps between Sociedad’s defence.

They looked lost in their endless game of rondo that they forgot to even shoot at goal. Despite just 32% of possession, Sociedad took the lead through substitute Imanol Agirretxe in the 90th minute of the game, winning 3-2 in the end.

Though 18 points behind leaders Barcelona – before third placed Real Madrid plays Valencia tonight – comparison between Mardrid and Barca is inevitable. Real Madrid did not look like a side that was down to 10 men against Sociedad in their first match of 2013. Madrid took 25 shots on goal, dwarfing Barcelona’s measly eight attempts on goal against Sociedad.

To inflame the dying embers of the Messi-Ronaldo debate post Ballon d’Or, Cristiano Ronaldo scored twice in that game and had 14 shots at goal. He lead Real’s vanguard from start to finish while Messi petered out towards the end.

Barca clearly don’t have a plan B to tackle the worst case scenarios. They seem to have been caught in their own whirligig of victories that they forgot to attach a safety net. They were once again caught in the familiar trappings of teams absorbing attack and breaking on the counter.

Barcelona, like Maggie, must learn that there are opponents out there, who will take the contest beyond the first round. They should have a contingency plan before they kick back and coast through the match in third gear.