Souce  : Dailymail

At the end of match day 2, Barcelona are the only club in La Liga who have not dropped any points in the league. As it stands now, we are at the top of the table with 6 points, having a lead of 2 points. Not insatiable by any means. However, in La Liga, it's very  important to get good start. The team which accrues more points in the first half of the season has maximum probability to win the league.  For instance, In match day 1(2012-13), Real Madrid  dropped points vs Valencia at Santiago Bernabeu. Just after that, we thrashed Real Sociedad at home. See?. Barca won, Madrid lost. After that we continued to win all matches in the first half of the season. Tito Vilanova finished miles ahead of Mourinho at the end of the season. It all started from matchday 1. That positive start was a clear psychological advantage for us  and was kind of setback for Real Madrid. So getting all 3 points against Villarreal was impressive for the team as both our rivals, Real Madrid and Atletico have dropped the points.

      Coming to the match, both Villarreal and Barcelona played with high intensity for 90 minutes. Though Villarreal were playing very deep, in their own half, they ran continuously to break our passing rhythm instead of sitting deep ,like the way Chelsea do.  We created few chances in the first half as both the teams were playing safe. Rakitic, in particular was pretty impressive. He was the answer in the midfield for the teams who play physical game. Our defenders didn't have anything to do in the first half and as expected it remained goal-less in the first half.
    
       Another positive aspect about this team is : Alacrity is back. The pressing is back. Messi is back.  I was very happy about the way we played. We were attacking with intent. After Neymar's introduction, the chances were created in regular intervals and we were playing some fascinating football.  But we missed hell lot of chances. It reminded me of the match at Stamford Bridge.  Neymar had some very clear goal scoring opportunities, but he bottled it on all the three occasions.  We were in "Full attack" mode, so Villarreal too created a few chances on the break, and came very close on many occasions.  The game was wide open, and anyone could have scored the goal. The ball didn't get inside the post for whole 80 minutes. Who else than Lionel Messi can change the game?.
After 80 minutes of goalless show. Messi kept his cool and gave a brilliant assist for Sandro to score the winning goal. 


Of all, Dani Alves had a frustrating time at El Madrigal. Last time we played here, Dani Alves's reaction to the racist gesture took the center stage . Keeping that in mind, Villarreal fans started booing Dani Alves right from the kick off. Just before writing this post, I read a post on Booing by the brilliant Jonathan Wilson. http://www.espncricinfo.com/blogs/content/story/776461.html.

                Booing is the way for fans to express displeasure

 Every time Alves had a touch of the ball, we could hear the boos, It shows that they  disapproved the way Alves reacted to the racist incident? . I believe that humor is the perfect way to express problems in the society. Alves  altered serious incident into something humor by eating  the banana .Much similar to the way artists use Comic strips, in various newspapers to  enlighten people about the problems with the glimpse of humor. PERFECT REACTION.  But Villarreal fans had different notions towards that particular incident. Maybe their fans believe(d) that : The reaction to racist incident and punishment given to the fan was harsh. Maybe.

   In that previous fixture here, Dani Alves had a very good match. His crosses were vital for Barcelona to make a comeback. Dani Alves had said something similar to this after the match : " I was motivated after the incident and I gave couple of crosses which helped my team. I am happy".  The same happened in this fixture too. Whenever fans booed him, Alves started to cross the ball.*chuckles*.  ( May be wanted to repeat his 2-3 performance :D by crossing the ball). So please show some mercy on Dani Alves.

Next week, Real Madrid play Atletico Madrid and we play Athletic at home. Expect another weekend full of spectacle after a boring international break.

Visca Barca