Barca was dealt a chilly blow to their title hopes last night in Pamplona as Osasuna trounced the current champions 3-2 on an icy night. Ok, it was an icy pitch and they had to play in freezing conditions and they had a few players resting but there were no excuses – Barca let another 3 points slip away to a club they would usually beat with their B side.
Maybe Barca was thinking of this week’s Champions league match against Bayer Leverkusen and therefore rested a few good players. That doesn’t quite cut it though as they still had Messi, Fabregás, Cuenca, Tello, Alexis, Thiago, Abidal, Alves, S. Roberto, Mascherano and Valdés. not a bad side to take on Osasuna I’m sure you’ll agree.
This now leaves Barca in a precarious position as Real Madrid play Levante tonight at 21:30 if they win, they’ll be 10 points clear in the race for the title. Just lately, Barcelona doesn’t have a good away record with just four wins in eleven away games.
Osasuna got on the scoreboard first with two goals by Dejan Lekic and Barca found themselves 2-0 down by half time. After the break, Guardiola’s men came out fighting and got a goal just after 5 minutes courtesy of Alexis. Just 5 minutes later Raúl García got a third for Osasuna and that made it 3-1.
Barca pressed on and young Tello found the back of the net on 72 minutes. That made it 3-2 and Barca continued to heap pressure on Osasuna and Sánchez could have equalized but the linesman ruled offside.
Finally Cesc could have rescued Barca but his header found the arms of Osasuna keeper Fernández. With that final chance the Blaugrana’s chances of salvaging anything from this game evaporated just as their chance of retaining the title has too.
