Alexia and Patri's brilliance saves Barça from a slip-up

BarcelonaWithout suffering, but also without flow. Thanks to the brilliance of Alexia Putellas and Patri Guijarro against Tenerife, Barça has achieved another victory in the Liga F (0-2). In an awkward match against an opponent who knew how to defend very well, a Barça team with quite a few rotations—for example, the youngsters Alba Caño and Sydney Schertenleib started—hasn't performed as well as usual, but continues to add to its points tally: it now has 63, the highest in the main round, led by Real Madrid.

Barça arrived at the match after having qualified on Wednesday for the final of the Copa de la Reina and having defeated, precisely, the Real Madrid team, who took a resounding 8-1 aggregate result in the semi-final tie. In Tenerife, at the Heliodoro Rodríguez López stadium, which had a good crowd of 9,600 spectators, almost half the capacity, for the visit of the Catalans, a rather sluggish match was seen.

Alexia's lightning strike, just before the fifteen-minute mark, broke the deadlock. The captain connected with a beautiful, imaginative chip shot. The scoreline wouldn't budge again until the final whistle, something unusual for Pere Romeu's team, who coached his team wearing a Cruz Cafuné jersey, an artist he likes and who is from Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

With five minutes remaining, a curling shot from Patri, who had come off the bench, sealed the victory. Before that, a pair of good saves from Noelia Ramos and the post, which denied Rolfö a goal, helped explain a narrow result for a Barça side that couldn't find many openings. On the downside, Cata Coll requested a precautionary substitution at halftime after experiencing discomfort in his left knee.

This limb already kicked him a few years ago in the Barça goalkeeper, who suffered a serious injury and had to undergo surgery. "He felt a slight discomfort, we hope it's nothing serious," Romeu said after the match. The competition continues unabated, and on Wednesday Barça has its most demanding match of the month: the visit to Wolfsburg for the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinals.