Spanish focus: UCL matchday 3 roundup

Valencia and Barcelona, the last two Spanish clubs with Champions League group match commitments, returned sour and sweet results respectively, which I will go into detail in this roundup.

Valencia traveled to Germany to play Group E opponent Bayer Leverkusen and ended up losing 2-1, thus virtually ending their Champions League dreams. Valencia started well, looked confident with Jonas scoring in the 24th min and continued to create chances but failed to finish them and ultimately lost their way.

The game plan crumbled in a space of two minutes in the second half for Valencia when Leverkusen’s Schurrle equalised in the 53rd min. Before Los Che could figure out what happened, Sam put Bayer ahead in the 55th min with a brilliant goal.

This was a classic case of how you will get beaten down if you don’t deliver the sucker punch to your opponent when you have him on the ropes. Valencia made that mistake and were made to pay dearly as Leverkusen hit back.

Barcelona hosted Victoria Plzen in their Group H clash and won 2-0 thanks to goals from Iniesta in the 10th min and David Villa in the 82nd min. Iniesta’s strike was a marvelous display of individual skills and was brilliantly taken.

Barcelona dominated 90 percent of the match, but still did not exactly open the floodgates since they seemed to run at half throttle, attempting to entertain themselves rather than kill off the match. Messi hit the post in the second half in a moment where he attempted to go for individual glory while passing to a team-mate would have done the trick in getting a goal.

In the end, Barcelona won easily and that was all that mattered.