Seville: Barcelona got back their second place in the La Liga and have extended their unbeaten run to 11 games in a row, thanks to an emphatic comeback 3-2 victory over Real Betis in Seville.
Barça were particularly poor in the first half and had to come from behind, but played some great stuff and showed excellent spirit in the second half to find the goals and win again, with Lionel Messi and Francisco Trincão coming off the bench to lead the Blaugrana to three huge points away from home.
Barçelona has a substitution early on after Ronald Araujo suffered an injury just 10 minutes into the half. Frenkie De Jong came in his place and had to play as a center-back for this match. The Catalans simply could not get into the game and their midfield struggled to get hold of the ball and find the forward players, who themselves didn’t offer much in terms of movement and the Betis defense did not have to deal with much.
Barça did create one clear chance from a short corner and a beautiful cross from Jordi Alba found Clément Lenglet all alone in the six-yard box, but the Frenchman headed wide. To make matters worse, Betis broke the deadlock from a fantastic counter-attack after a great cross from Emerson met Borja Iglesias who slotted it home on 38 minutes.
Ronald Koeman brought on Pedri, Messi and Trincão in the second half and the trio delivered. Barcelona were more intense in their pressing and looked more dangerous with the ball, as they started finding spaces that weren’t there in the first half.
The equaliser came in via a Messi rocket on the hour mark and was aso involved again as Barça took the lead on a weird own goal by Víctor Ruíz on 68 minutes. Barça couldn’t protect their lead for much longer and Ruíz redeemed his team with a powerful header from a set-piece on 75 minutes.
After scoring their second Betis came close to again taking the lead, but Marc-André ter Stegen made a couple of really important saves. As the final five minutes rolled out, it looked as though we were set for a draw, but Francisco Trincão recovered a ball at the edge of the box and scored a beauty with his left foot on 87 minutes to win it for the visitors.
