Valencia 1-1 Barcelona: 5 Talking Points

#4 A game of two halves for Valencia

The hosts seemed lost for ideas in the first half as the midfield trio of Paulinho, Busquets and Rakitic pressed extremely well. Valverde decided to go with just two up top, that to a loosely as Messi often dropped deep, leaving Suarez as the only man forward.

So effectively, it was a 4-5-1 when Barca didn’t have the ball and that got the better of Valencia’s attackers, who rarely troubled ter Stegen in the first half.

The second half, however, saw the hosts press more, thereby isolating the Barcelona midfield. The passing triangles that we saw from the Blaugrana in the first half disappeared in the second. After the goal, the away side went into panic mode and rushed their passes.

Luckily, they had Messi to pick out Alba with a sublime pass to level the scores. Until then, it didn’t seem like they would get anything from the game.

Edited by Aakanksh Sanketh