Roma defeat reinforces need for Barca changes
barcelona — Barcelona’s shock Champions League exit at the hands of Roma on Tuesday does not discount what is likely to be a double-winning season but the loss should serve as a warning for what comes next.
After the 3-0 defeat at Stadio Olimpico, which sent Roma through on away goals, Ernesto Valverde paid lip-service to shouldering responsibility but in the same breath pointed to a disappointment with his players.
“A week ago we scored four goals with the same line-up,” Valverde said. “We coped with their game and played ours. It went right. This time it did not.” But perhaps that was part of the problem. Barca won 4-1 at the Camp Nou with a performance that did not deserve the result.
Two own-goals and a late Luis Suarez strike masked what had been a disjointed display, low on fluency, high on mistakes, which on that occasion went unpunished.
Of all the trailing teams heading into the quarterfinal second legs, few would have predicted Roma to be the ones celebrating progress to the last four. But there were clues, and Valverde missed them. Barca were outplayed for large spells by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge but snatched a 1-1 draw. A 1-0 win at home to Atletico Madrid, which allbut secured them the title, was efficient rather than emphatic, decided only by a stunning Lionel Messi free-kick. And against Sevilla a fortnight ago, Barca trailed 2-0 in the 87th minute before Suarez and then Messi, as a substitute, engineered a dramatic late escape.
“Without personality, without playing well, without Messi and without cause for disagreement, Barca were shipwrecked in the Olimpico against an immensely superior team that knocked the Barca players off an artificial pedestal,” wrote Madrid’s daily newspaper AS. —