Teenage Wasteland: how to lose in style!

Athletic Club 4-2 Barcelona (AET) - Copa del Rey

The Williams Brothers have knocked Barcelona out of the Copa del Rey! Both Iñaki and Nico scored in extra time to seal a dramatic 4-2 victory for Athletic Club.

In truth, for the gusto with which they approached the added 30 minutes and the quality of the chances they managed to create over the course of the game, Athletic deserved to qualify even though Barcelona absolutely should have won the game.

That sound contradictory? It’s not!

Down to the bare bones with a line-up packed with kids and everyone else running on fumes, Barcelona created and missed two golden chances in the second-half of normal time that should have seen them run out with a 3-2 or 4-2 win.

The Kids are Alright

The man who missed those chances? Well, it wasn’t even a man but a boy: Lamine Yamal. Fresh off his heroics against Real Betis, the 16 year-old got the start and looked impossibly bright again. Dazzling and dancing away, around and through the Athletic defence. He should have been the match winner.

One could expect the potent atmosphere at San Mames to intimidate such a young boy, but it did little to phase Lamine Yamal. 30 minutes into the game he scored the goal of his career as he span away from one tackle, cut onto his left-foot and blew by another man before slotting a beautiful shot low into the far corner.

That goal made it 1-2 to Barcelona, who dominated the subsequent hour of regular time and, Athletic’s equaliser notwithstanding (more on that later), created the best two chances of the game for Lamine Yamal.

The first was created for him as a counter-attack saw Robert Lewandowski pick him out with a nice pass. The teenager was racing through 1-v-1 with Julen Agirrezabala and went for the delicate chipped finish, but he got his angles wrong and the ball sailed wide. Lamine Yamal looked devastated, but worse was to come.

With the game winding down in its last 10 minutes, Athletic were trying to kill time by passing the ball around the back, but Lamine Yamal was having none of it. He pressed and dispossessed Aitor Paredes with devastating precision before taking the ball away and around Agirrezabala, leaving him with an open goal to tap home with.

Except the ball was on his weaker right-foot and he was running away from goal, so he punted the thing over the bar. A staggering miss, but not one that Lamine Yamal should kill himself for, because it all came from his own brilliance anyway.

"Lamine is 16. We should not blame him for anything. He will score many goals in his career. He was very important in the match.” — Ronald Araujo

He should have left the game a hat-trick scoring match-winner. Instead he will be beating himself up and lamenting those two misses. Not that he should, of course, he was excellent!

Also: someone should point out to him that Lionel Messi’s god tier Maradona-esque wondergoal in the 2006/07 Copa del Rey against Getafe, the goal that to this day gets children going absolutely bananas when they watch it on YouTube, came in a tie Barcelona lost. And Messi went on to do kind of alright. Also Messi was 19 when he did that, three years older than Lamine Yamal is now.

He’s 16!

And once again he wasn't the only teenage sensation on the pitch. He was joined, midway through the second-half, by Pau Cubarsi. The Catalan once again replaced Andreas Christensen in the Copa del Rey and once again outplayed the Dane.

Not that Christensen was bad, but Cubarsi came on and Barcelona just got better. It’s really hard to explain it but the calm this kid transmits on the ball is something else. Once again he was passing the ball around with ease and one moment in extra-time, when Barcelona had baited Athletic into a press only to see Cubarsi pass straight through it, was true footballing beauty.

Cubarsi wasn’t the only or even the best 17 year-old on the pitch at San Mamés, however. 20 minutes into the game Alejandro Balde (himself only 20 years-old) went down in agony with what appeared to be a bad hamstring injury.

Balde had to leave the field, and with Joao Cancelo only just back from injury and so not fit enough for a 70 minute slog against Athletic Club, young Hector Fort came on.

Fort is a right-back and has played a few times before, looking decent. But today playing as a left-back he looked great. Going forward there was all the typical La Masia traits, great passing and composure, neat and tidy with the ball. About 5 minutes into his appearance he put in a cross that outdid any that Balde has managed in the last 5 games. He was great.

But while Balde is a poor crosser he’s a great defender, and as soon as Fort came on, Ernesto Valverde switched Nico Williams to the right-wing to try and exploit Fort.

That was when Fort displayed non-typical La Masia traits. He was strong, he was quick, he was super dirty if he had to be. He’s only 17 but he’s a broad-shouldered lad who isn’t afraid to put himself about. Nico Williams got no change out of him while he was fit, and even when Iñaki Williams came on there was little joy in trying to bypass Fort who more than held his own.

Until he got cramped up in extra-time.

"Hector Fort is ready for the first team. He was outstanding today." — Xavi

At 17 years of age, no one could blame Fort for being unable to cope with the relentlessness of playing full-back for Barcelona in such a hostile environment as San Mamés against opponents as formidable as Iñaki and Nico Williams.

Nevertheless, Fort played on until the very end, but his ability to handle the Williams brothers was understandably diminished and it’s not a surprise both goals were scored from his side of the pitch as he was no longer able to get back and intervene.

There’s also 18 year-old Marc Guiu, who was sent on late in the game to try and salvage something. But due to the three youngster rule, he could only come on for Lamine Yamal, which meant that Barcelona lacked the creative force needed to generate chances for him. Nevertheless, Guiu looked lively and had a couple shots at goal. He’s a big body forward with disruptive potential.

One of the key tenets of youth football is that the result is irrelevant, the performance is what matters. Well, Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsi, Hector Fort and Marc Guiu didn’t get the result they wanted in the Copa del Rey last night, but their performances thrilled everyone involved with Barcelona; fans, executives and coaches alike.

“One side of me is sad because of the result but on the other hand I’m proud of the performance of the young players.” — Xavi

These teenagers displayed incredible heart and courage throughout their time on the pitch, braving the blisteringly hot Basque crowd to drive their team forward. They couldn’t win, but oh how they deserved to. Almost all of Barcelona’s good football came through them (shoutout to Ronald Araujo, Pedri and Frenkie de Jong who were also excellent but you just expect that from them) and if they had taken their chances at key moments, Barcelona would have won.

But they didn’t take their chances, while Athletic finally did in extra-time. Such is the nature of cup football. The match is gone, the chance for a trophy is gone, but Xavi’s men can hold their heads high.

Well, not everyone.

The Misfits at it again

Iñaki Peña once again showed exactly why he is not capable of being a starting goalkeeper for Barcelona. There may as well be a regular section at the end of each column talking about how he screwed up this time, it’s that bad.

For all the big saves he did make, including one using his face from Iñaki Williams in extra-time, his complete inability to leave his line handed Athletic both of their goals in normal time and ensured Barcelona began each half playing from behind.

The first goal was typical hesitancy, as he darted a step off his line to come collect a cross but stopped himself, meaning his players had to deal with it. Alejandro Balde got caught out by a strange bounce/lucky header from Athletic, and the ball bobbled across the area to Gorka Gurzeta who slammed home.

This was less than a minute into the first-half.

The second Athletic goal took all of four minutes of the second-half but was a similar if even more egregious version of the same mistake. Nico Williams sent a peach of a cross over from the left and once again Iñaki Peña stepped off his line, hesitated, and stopped. He easily could have kept coming and snatched the ball out of the sky (as Julen Agirrezabala did on more than one occasion for Athletic) or stayed on his line and saved whatever shot came. Instead he took two steps, stopped dead in his tracks and then stood like a statue as Oihan Sancet headed the ball past him.

It was catastrophic goalkeeping and ignited the already raucous crowd at San Mames. And he did it twice! He could do nothing about the goals in extra-time (probably) but the game only even went to extra-time because he is such a flawed goalkeeper in terms of performing the basics of goalkeeping beyond saves. Saves he can do. Anything else? You’re flipping a coin and, honestly it’s more of a “heads they win tails you lose” kind of situation.

If Marc-André Ter Stegen isn’t back for the Champions League round of 16 tie against Napoli then Victor Osimhen is going to posterize Iñaki Peña (and Andreas Christensen) so hard and so often it’ll probably knock Barcelona out of Europe.

Speaking of Iñaki; the killer goal from Iñaki Williams was a collective failure from Barcelona as they displayed an uncharacteristic lack of care in possession, turning the ball over in a risky area then not adjusting their defence, which led to Williams’ strike (a lucky rebound off the post) giving Athletic a huge advantage over a tiring Barcelona.

“We needed to be a little smarter in extra time because there was a minute left in the first half. This is a hard blow because we were eliminated, but the team has to keep fighting." — Ronald Araujo

This wasn’t all the fault of individuals, of course, but just as Iñaki Peña was poor on the first two goals Barcelona conceded, Sergi Roberto was poor on this one. He was not mindful of his surroundings and got dispossessed by Athletic Club in the lead-up to that third goal. And his overall display after replacing Pedri was poor, too.

It’s not just that Sergi Roberto is worse than Pedri, it’s that apart from scoring the occasional goal out of nowhere he doesn’t do anything really well. He doesn’t even run around that much to make use of his excellent stamina.

So while you can see the logic behind Xavi bringing him on, especially as Fermin Lopez couldn’t enter due to Barcelona having too many players registered to Barcelona B already on the pitch, it was a gamble that did not pay off.

But enough about these godawful malcontents, what about the— okay fine just one quick word on Robert Lewandowski who was rubbish yet again but did score a goal that was a total fluke but did show he still has the old goalscoring instincts. And fair play his pass through to Lamine Yamal was really good as well and should have been a game-winning assist.

Apart from those two moments, however, he was startlingly poor and is now seemingly unable of winning a simple physical duel. This isn’t like at the start of the season when the refs were letting Getafe and Cadiz literally physically assault him with no repurcussions, these were just physical duels and he lost almost every one.

But no, seriously, enough about the bad performers. They were bad, of course they were, but the good points are what Barcelona need to focus on. The promising young talent they are producing through La Masia that stepped up even in the absence of La Masia’s other young jewels like the injured Balde, the injured Gavi, or Fermin Lopez.

With Barcelona not exactly flush with cash, this generation of young geniuses could save the club hundreds of millions of Euros in transfers fees and wages as they help usher in a new golden age of La Masia and bolster the first-team back to being one of the very best in the world again.