Barcelona 7-0 Levante: Barca crush Levante in their opening fixture

The team’s first competitive fixture of the new season was supposed to greet the fans with enthusiasm and provide them with confidence. Well, Barcelona provided plenty of both. Barca, in a performance that might have hypnotised the viewers that there was never a search for that messiah of a central defender, crushed Levante 7-0 in their opening fixture to start their campaign with a bang.

In a week when the search for the defender was officially called off, the return of competitive football could only have left Barca fans with mixed feelings. But not for long. It took Barca all of three minutes to open the scoring through Alexis Sanchez and after that, it was simply a case of the flood gates being opened. 4-0 up by 26 minutes and 6-0 by half time, Barcelona simply road-rollered Levante to surely start the new league campaign at the top of the table. The goals were scored by Leo Messi(2), Pedro(2), Xavi, Dani Alves and Alexis Sanchez.

Neymar, Iniesta and Alba start on the bench

The starting line-up had a few surprises. Neymar was expected to make his first Liga start, but instead started as a substitute. Iniesta and Alba also had to start on the bench. This was perhaps due to the fact that Barca have a busy first two weeks, playing five matches including the two legs of the Super Cup against Atletico Madrid. After a fatigue-inducing pre-season in Asia, Martino probably wanted to save a couple of important players for the remaining fixtures of this hectic period.

Whatever hopes Levante had of leaving the Camp Nou with a point or three were put to bed in the initial quarter of an hour. Pedro, who had a field day on the left wing, thanks to a dismal performance from Pedro Lopez, found himself in space again and again and on one such foray found Xavi at the edge of the box. Xavi, being the pass master that he is, played an excellent ball through the Levante defence to put Fabregas one-on-one with the keeper. But Fabregas decided to be unselfish and played a simple square ball to Alexis and all he had to do was put the ball into an empty net. Mind you, there were times when he couldn’t put the ball into such empty nets last season.

Messi stars again, when does he not?

Now it was simply a matter of time before Messi scored, and that was about nine minutes later. Again Pedro found himself in plenty of space, this time with enough room to have a go at the keeper, but taking a leaf out of Fabregas’ book, he unselfishly cut it back for Messi to score. If anything, it was a night of unselfish acts.

As the match progressed, Barca stamped their authority over the game and scored again and again at regular intervals to make it 6-0 by half time. It was all Messi as he pressed intensely to recover a ball near the right corner which resulted in the Dani Alves goal and curled a defense-splitting ball to assist Pedro’s goal. After a rather silly foul committed on Adriano which resulted in a penalty, Messi stepped up and scored his second of the evening. Probably to save Levante from more humiliation, in the second half, Barca stepped down a gear and although they still tried to score, the hunger to score was somewhat reduced, that is until Neymar came on.

Neymar came on in the 64th minute and had some lively moments, although none of them resulted in goals. His direct approach of taking on defenders, banking on his pace and skills, can be very crucial when more stubborn defences are encountered in the future.

Levante rarely troubled Valdes. After having a couple of sensational seasons considering the kind of over-aged squads they had, it looks like this could be the season when they stop defying everyone’s expectations. They gave up too easily after the first goal and were unusually poor in defence. These are early days indeed, but I have a feeling they will have a relegation battle on their hands sooner than later.

The Verdict

Yes, it was a good result for Barcelona. But as they say, it is only the three points that matter. They have an important Super Cup tie coming up in a couple of days against a much better team which will prove to be a much better litmus test for Martino’s Barca. And it doesn’t stop there, at least not for the next couple of weeks.

As mentioned in the season preview, Fabregas is looking very good under the new coach and his performance in this match was excellent too. And one other thing which was noticeable was the kind of intense high pressing from Barca that resulted in a number of good attacks and even a goal or two. Martino has been talking about this, about how the answer to Barca’s defensive worries is not a new defender, but the rediscovery of the kind of pressing that put Barca at the top a few years back. If that is indeed the case, it looks like the players are responding to their new coach well.

All in all, this was a good result, better than what was expected. However, we should not read too much into it. The real test is still far off.